journal features

The world is getting worse

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.10.04

I'm at the embassy getting my son's passport updated. There is a Canadian fellow here who is working in China. The Chinese staff at the Guangzhou consulate wouldn't give him a passport because he's PR in Japan and his wife is Japanese. The queried him at some length about his Japanese connections and went on to reject his birth certificate and passport on the grounds that they couldn't possibly verify the documents given his circumstabces. So he went to Hong Kong and it was the same story so he had to come back to Tokyo.

This recent fisherman story seems to be just what the Chinese have been waiting for when it comes to Japan. My bet is that the "prime minister of the month" will step up courageously and win them over .. heh heh not really. Actually I could see this blowing back in the face of every foreigner in this country, too.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner