First Day in Tokyo

The flight over was without incident, except that they had no free drinks or personal entertainment screens – but the real kicker was no power points. I think I have gotten spoiled flying Air France and Delta everywhere.

Well the PSP, noble creature that it is, survived me playing through about 5 or 6 demos, listening to a ton of music, and watching 4-5 episodes of Kung Fu during the flight. I just re-discovered the genius of Kung-Fu the old TV series, which is why I am so freaked out about this morning’s news. Aside from that depressing story, life in Tokyo is great so far.

First, we are prepared for swine flu. I have been through quarantine and they even had some physicians come inspect the plane before we were allowed to get off. Above is a photo of my survival equipment. There are about 300-400 cases of H1N1 in Japan as of today, mostly south of here and not directly in Tokyo at all – or even the suburbs for that matter.

Last night we went for traditional Japanese food at a fantastic place that served the most wonderful shashimi and fantastic dishes. I wish I could remember all the names, but the beer and the lack of sleep were hurting my mental prowess.

We had a very good discussion revolving around some of the differences between LD debate and policy debate in the U.S., as well as the relationship between CEDA and NDT. I thought this was very auspicious since the topic committee as well as the CEDA development conference is going on half a world away, or about to start in a few hours from when we were discussing this history.

This morning breakfast was amazing, as usual with rice, fish, coffee, eggs, croissants and many different fruits. Miso soup was available as well but I’m just not ready for that at 8AM. I’m thinking of going for a walk for about an hour with the camera and getting some shots of this part of Tokyo. I’m on the opposite side from where I was in August for the JDA conference. The neighborhood is a University one, with many bars, restaraunts, and other student-oriented shops. At lunch, our host is taking us to the University campus to watch some video and prep for the national topic debates which I think will be on whether it’s a good idea to ban staffing services or not. Interesting topic, and I hope that we can get a good look at an Affirmative before the debates tomorrow.

I will not be debating, but speaking. Tomorrow is the Japanese Businessperson’s Debate Club, and we will be Affirming on a motion similar to this one. I hope to tape the debate if they have no objections. Unfortunately, my Flip Camera decided to die and nothing seems to fix it. I brought my HD camera with the bad battery life, and my mini DV – so if I tape it on Mini DV, you’ll have to wait about a month to see these debates. I will keep you satisfied though with clips and other videos from my HD camera, which uses SD cards and is easy to upload from my netbook.

Tonight is a reception welcoming us. It will be good to see old friends as well as make new ones. Expect a lot of photos and video from this one!

Blogging from Japan

For the next few weeks, I will be travelling in Japan as a part of the NCA’s CIDD (National Communication Association’s Committee on International Discussion and Debate) American tour of Japan.

What this means is you will see a lot of pictures and video from Japan, some tourist stuff but mostly public debates, scenes of Universities, and stuff like that.

I’m traveling with 2 students during this time who are exceptional debaters. They will be debating against many students from Japan about many different topics. These debates will be presented on this blog for your interest and enjoyment.

I’ll also try to keep up with my ideas, thoughts and experiences in convenient text form as well. I’m looking forward to the trip, especially being able to examine some Japanese debate pedagogical practices first-hand.

Politics and Poetics of Translation

The phrase “Politics of Translation” is quite a trope – it is sometimes used pretty badly as an excuse for doing the hard work of learning languages. Of course, there’s not enough time or energy in the day to study every language that one might want to read in. However, this trope should be recovered and moved toward the idea that when one is reading a translation one is reading an interpretation at the same time.

Backing up this idea is a brilliant book review of a recent edition of Chinese poetry that has been published.

I love this book review. It’s just so wonderful how the reviewer takes us through the impossibility of knowing the meaning of these poems-in-translation, yet at the same time how they have an essential meaning that we must strive to understand.

And with that out of the way, my wife is telling me it’s time to go to the mall so she can get her mobile phone repaired.

Brain and Mind (and a return from silence)

People are often mystified that I find currency in Freudian and Lacanian thought.  The ground/warrant usually revolves around “Psychoanalysis is not scientific.”  The backing to this warrant is usually the simple minded “Science is the Truth.”  What I say in response is, “No, science is your prefered flavor of the truth.” What these people are in effect saying is “Your ice cream is not vanilla, therefore it is not ice cream.”

Re-encountering Gadamer has me thinking about the role of rhetoric in the act of “interpretation” which I think is central to the act of “arguing.” Imagine an argument without interpretation, and you have what TV news passes as argument – what Deborah Tannen does a lukewarm job of identifying as “The Argument Culture.”

Interpretation is, it seems, what modern scientific work, at least in the way it is communicated by lay people, is to remove interpretation from fact.  Facts without interpretation seem more stable, they require less of us, but they are a mirage.

Check out this great article I read this morning, it’s fantastic. Here’s the best quote, although long:

“The most irritating (to us lay people) aspect of philosophical and scientific attempts to reduce the mental to the neural, and to squash down human beings into being on all fours with other physical things, is that their proponents nearly always say that actually they are just putting the truth about consciousness more clearly and taking nothing away from our experience. Like politicians deviously withdrawing privileges, they expect us to be quite happy about this. Some developments of identity theory, however, are more upfront. They force consciousness into equivalence with lightning and water by impugning the ignorance of us ordinary people. The way we talk about sensations, memories and beliefs is, say eliminative materialists, hopelessly antiquated, a form of ‘folk psychology’ as hidebound and superstition-laden as talk about witches, or about epileptics being possessed by devils. ‘Folk psychology’ is a theory about how humans function, they say, that is pathetically inadequate in both describing and predicting. In time, a more scientifically sophisticated vocabulary will replace it. Really? So we were wrong all the time about our memories and our passions? What sort of a world, I wonder, do these eliminative materialists envisage with their revised vocabulary about mental (or rather neural states). What exactly would be doing? What would be the point of training ourselves, or being trained, to report on our brain states?“

What is the difference between brain and mind? It is the difference between the human and the object. It’s the difference between a subject that can account, justify, attribute motives, and hold attitudes toward the world, judging the recalcitrant responses, or an object that is of the world with no culpability for its actions. And it is the reason that I find Freud and Lacan so fascinating is that they attempt to account for the subject, not explain it away with machines.

(Sorry about the long gap in posting, I’ve been quite busy with finals and other projects, but I’m back now!)