One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there’s muck, there’s brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn’t pay well, for reasons of supply and demand.
-Paul Graham
http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html
Hey you, horrible lingering cold since Friday, please go away.
I spent the entire weekend at home, half of the daytime sleeping with Mia in my arms. We make a great team, Mia and I. We’re both good at sleeping when we need to.
The problem is I still have my cold. It’s given me a few headaches, a sore throat, dizziness, and has kept me from being able to focus on anything much. I’m doubling up on the orange juice and fruit intake, but I can’t seem to shake it. Hopefully some good warm weather will show up soon and my cold will just disappear.
In other news, I finished book 3 of Game of Thrones about 10 days ago then promptly picked up the book “Dogs and Demons, The fall of modern Japan” and decided to see what it was all about. In 2 days I managed to push myself about halfway through it but eventually felt such revulsion that I had to put it down. Not that Alex Kerr is a bad writer, but that the subject matter was overly depressing and hard to accept as unbiased or, perhaps, a bit overly enthusiastic in its attempt to show the shortfalls of society around us (although I have no doubt that all of it is based in fact).
I plan on picking it back up again to finish it, but the timing to put it down couldn’t have been better — I started my Japanese classes again. JLPT N2 is in July and I’ll be there to get a taste of it, but until then I’ll take 2 classes a week and try my best to do my homework assignments :D がんばります！
An excellent read on Reason.com: Triumph of the Willpower
A couple excerpts:
reason: You write about decision fatigue. I think we’ve probably all felt that. But can you describe what it is and how it works from a scientific perspective?
Tierney: Willpower—the popular idea is that it’s something that you use to resist temptation and to make yourself work. But they’ve also found that this same energy is used in making decisions, simply deciding what to have for lunch, what to do at a meeting; all these things deplete the same resource. After a while, when you’ve depleted this resource, it’s a state called ego depletion. You’ve got less self-control, you’re more prone to give in to temptation, it’s harder for you to work, and you tend to make worse decisions.
What they’re talking about is a term called “ego-depletion” which was coined by Dr. Roy Bauemeister and Dr. Mark Muraven during their research on self-control. One of the things I’ve been most interested in over the last couple of years is how to beat those lapses in self-control, how to keep doing the things I know need to be done even when I don’t have the willpower to do them. The book I wrote on this very subject: The Two-Minute Challenge - by Charles Abbott dived into the results of over 50 studies on self-control, motivation, and positive psychology and how the findings can be easily applied to real life.
One piece of advice which Reason.com’s interview also mentions is here in this tidbit:
reason: You have a great line where you say that the people with the best self-control are the people who take themselves out of situations of temptation. You say of Ulysses lashing himself to the mast, that someone with real self-control would have just taken a different route home, which I really liked. Can you talk about how that works? And how we can sort out cause and effect? If you don’t set yourself up for temptation, you’re awfully good at resisting it.
Tierney: There are a couple of strategies. The Ulysses story is a good one because that’s a classic example of what’s called precommitment. He ties himself to the mast, the sailors have plugged their ears so they can’t hear the Sirens [and be tempted to jump into the sea to their deaths]. Now that’s one form of precommitment. But an even more extreme form of precommitment, and an easier one, would be just don’t even sail by the Sirens in the first place.
That’s what they found in deeper studies recently when they ask people how they’re exercising self-control and when they follow people, the people who have the best self-control use it least because they set up habits. So instead of waking up every day and thinking, “Am I going to jog this morning or not,” they just set up appointments with friends, so they don’t have to make a decision to do it. There’s no energy, and your friend is helping to enforce [your goal]; you’re outsourcing the self-control. So they’re conserving self-control that way.
Using self-control as little as possible is the best way to exhibit self-control. Sounds funny right, but that’s exactly the same conclusion I came to in my own research. Creating habits is the key to reaching goals, and you do that by following a few basic rules which I try to explain in full in my book (another shameless plug):
I highly recommend reading that Reason.com article, there are a few more interesting points in there worth checking out. I'm certain that I'll pick up the new book that Tierney and Baumeister wrote as well -- I'm curious to see how they presented the argument for habits, self-control, and the drive toward self-actualization.
Last night Mia was 元気 (full of energy) and made lots of cute baby sounds while kicking her legs and punching her fists in the air for exercise. Realizing that she was going to get tired earlier than normal, I quickly got cleaned up and ready for bed so that I could put her to sleep. My intention was to get her comfortable and sound asleep then return to my computer to write a nice interesting blog post about a reason.com article I read recently. What happened instead was that Mia somehow put me to sleep. As I was laying next to her to help give her some body warmth and let her fall asleep comfortably I actually ended up dozing off. The next thing I know it was 2am and I was still sleeping in the most awkward position (surprised Ayako didn’t move me or wake me up) - neck cramp and all.
Oh well, instead of a post about self-actualization (I suppose you’ll get that on Friday), I’ll just give you this:
A completely unrelated photo of our last 飲み会 which included a “last call for drinks” order of hot sake. Somehow amidst the confusion, we ended up with 12 bottles of hot sake… and not a single person complained — because it was an all-you-can-drink 飲み放題 deal for the same low price of roughly 12$.
A very tasty bowl of miso ramen I ate when Ben was here. Just thinking about those perfectly cooked noodles, thin sliced ham, spicy onions on top, and the thick miso broth is making my mouth water. Japanese love ramen, and now I can see why.
Last night I made some goulash for me and Ayako, and it took me down memory lane. I recall my mother making this style of tasty — yet simple to make — goulash, as well as many other things I miss (fresh baked biscuits, fried bread, bacon and eggs and pancakes, gravy, mashed potatoes, skillet fried potatoes, meat loafs, chocolate oatmeal, and a million other things), on a regular basis.
Japan is a very safe country. But, even here they have some problems:
This sign says “watch out for perverts!”
This is the only metallic sign i’ve ever seen on side of the road with this type of message. I occasionally see posters in the subway warning the same thing.
Yesterday, Wednesday, was a good day… I got my results back: passed the JLPT N3!! Wo0T!
Not only that, but I also got to get a little piece of Americana yesterday:
Some KFC for lunch.
Only a biscuit and this newly released sandwich here in Japan.
It’s not actually new to KFC (in the US), but it just touched down in Japan and I had to give it a try. The Double Down!!! Here’s the marketing page for KFC Japan: Double Down Japan
And here’s a really funny page showing people that had dressed up like the Colonel for some promotion contest: Colonel Look-a-like Japan ~~ check out the girl that won a years worth of free chicken (the big picture with the face all painted)
I’ll post some more cool photos this week.
As for other news: I’ll be starting Japanese classes again next week. I’m about to finish book 3 of Game of Thrones (great series). My mother plans to visit us in Japan near end of March. Mia has started making funny baby sounds as she flexes those vocal chords. Ayako is doing well, we’re getting a bit more sleep at night. I’m itching to play basketball a little. Last Friday was Setsubun, and even Mia dressed up:
Some photos of our trip to Kyoto:
Capsule Hotel - a special type of hotel in Japan. Small beds in a shared hallway, with a shared bathroom. Super cheap, and surprisingly not a bad location.
The Golden Temple, Kyoto.
Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto
Some of the landscaping midst the hills of Fushimi Inari shrine.
Snow between Kyoto and Tokyo. It was very cold the days we were walking around Kyoto and it snowed there all through the day.
To stay warm, we drank a lot of hot sake in these handy cups you could buy at the convenience store. Drinking alcohol is acceptable in public in Japan, and we were glad for its warmth.
entrance to a temple at Matsushima
500 year old temple facing the island filled bay of Matsushima
We ate tebasaki and hot pot for dinner that night.
Pagoda at the famous Asakusa temple at night.
The Asakusa temple, one of many temples, shrines and tourist places we visited in Tokyo.
