Amber at the 美術館

The Lonely Planet guide to Taiwan quotes an expat father as saying that the children's library at the Taiwan Museum of Art in Taichung 台中 is the best one that he had ever seen. I don't know if I would go quite so far - I haven't seen any other children's libraries, and I didn't notice the igloo, castle and rainforest areas that are described in the LP book. Nevertheless, there were lots of books for children to look through, with a surprisingly large number of English titles (and at least one in Japanese that I found). Amber was more interested in the interactive computer displays, but if you have children and find yourself with time to kill in Taichung, the art museum and the children's library there are worth a visit.

We arrived at the museum this afternoon just in time for Amber to take part in a mass painting project. The mural will be displayed inside once it is dry.

 

My daughter's masterpiece (on the bottom)

Preschool

Today was my daughter's first day at preschool. Everything seemed to go well - as soon as we arrived at the classroom door, Amber quickly took off her shoes and ran inside to join the other kids. When we stopped by around noon to see how she was doing, she hardly paid any attention to us. There were tears, but only when my wife came to take Amber home - it seems she didn't want to leave! One day isn't enough to go on, of course, but the program appears to be geared more to having the kids engaged in hands-on activities and play, and less on learning academic subjects. My main concern is language. Seeing as Amber will be immersed in a Chinese-speaking environment (there are some English lessons in the curriculum), will this have a negative effect on her ability to communicate in English? Only time will tell, but it will be an area in which close attention will have to be paid. In the meantime, I have to face the fact that my little princess is growing up. Sniff...

An open letter to Monica in California, USA

Monica,

When I checked my blog around lunchtime today, I saw that you had replied to my previous comment. However, this evening after returning home from work, I discovered that somehow your message had been deleted. I certainly didn't do it, and I'm not sure what happened. I'm going to reply as best I can from memory of what you had written.

First of all, I owe you an apology for my erroneous assumptions. However, having done so, I have to say that considering your personal and professional histories, I'm having trouble comprehending how you of all people, who should be well-aware of the accusations and controversies related to Soka Gakkai, Daisaku Ikeda and the Komeito, would still willingly choose to align herself with such an organization. Like I asked before, did you do any independent research before making the decision to become a member?

I'm also still having trouble understanding how you found my blog. You say who came across a link to Sponge Bear while you were researching "Daisaku Ikeda", but when I ran the same search on Google, I couldn't find my blog on any of the first ten pages (and I wasn't about to look at all 231,000 listings!). However, when I entered "SGI Fengyuan", well what do you know - Sponge Bear was the second entry! I'm certainly not out there trolling in cyberspace looking for pro-SGI blogs where I can leave opposing comments. Perhaps I'm being a little paranoid, but I find it a little creepy how on the couple of occasions when I wrote something about my personal experiences with Soka Gakkai, in less than 48 hours someone connected with the organization felt the need to leave something on my blog (which isn't private, by the way. Everybody is free to take a look, and I don't delete comments).

If I remember correctly, you then went on to write something to the effect that as a journalist, you were conscious of the need to present factual-based, objective information. I certainly wouldn't disagree with that. But you then proceeded to dismiss out of hand everything that was contained on the two links I provided. I'm afraid I can't recall your exact words, but I went back and looked through that 19-page report on the CAIC website, and I can't find anything that looks made up. As for the link to the Victims of Soka Gakkai Association, obviously these people are going to biased in their outlook, but can you just so readily dismiss all those allegations so quickly? As you claim to have training in journalism, shouldn't you at least look into such stories first before reaching any conclusions? For some reason, I'm reminded of those southern police chiefs in the U.S. in the 1960s who blamed civil rights disturbances on "outside agitators", or those spokespeople at the Chinese Foreign Ministry who brush off any questions about Tibet, food safety etc. as the acts of "splittists" out to tarnish the image of the country.

I also did a Google search this afternoon on the two academics you cited, and while I'm sure they are competent researchers who are sincere in their beliefs, the first thing I noticed was that SGI-approved blogs were among the first links that came up. I'm not satisfied that they are the kind of "independent sources" I wrote about in my earlier reply to you.

Monica, your religious beliefs are your own business, and I'm not out to change your mind. But I am curious about several things. If you don't mind my asking, I have the following several questions for you:

1.) As someone who says she has studied religion, do you really feel that chanting just a part of the Lotus Sutra over and over is enough to grasp what Buddhism is getting at?

2.) Spirituality is a personal matter, is it not? If so, why do you feel the need then to identify your spiritual beliefs with a large organization, especially a controversial one that has a political agenda, and is dominated by a single individual?

3.) And to repeat the query from my previous comments, why is it necessary to chant in Japanese?

Give my best to Orlando!

Nature's wrath

It looks like the No. 3 Trail in the Dakeng Scenic Area has taken quite a beating from the elements since the last time I went on it. There were three different places where the trail had collapsed and fallen down the side of the mountain, but fortunately new routes have been set up...for now.

Wolves in Sheep Clothing

This Sunday afternoon the Kaminoge family drove over to the Fengyuan Culture Center (apparently there is culture in this city after all) to check out some kind of fair that was being held there. Various government and local groups had set up booths to display a variety of things, including a number of arts and crafts. It all sounded innocent enough, but once we got there something started to bother me, something about all the tricolor (blue, yellow and red) flags flapping in the wind:

I was trying to work out the connection between this fair and an as-yet-unidentified European country when the answer appeared right in front of me, on the backs of the vests being worn by hundreds of volunteers at the event:

SGI - Sōka Gakkai International. Sōka Gakkai 創価学会, for those of you who don't know, bills itself as a "Buddhist lay organization". In reality, it's about as Buddhist as the Mormon Church is Christian, and is more like a cult, led by the Kim Il-sung-like figure of Daisaku Ikeda 池田大作. Like the Mormons, SG has been around long enough, and has grown large enough in size, that it has become respectable - almost. SG members still have a reputation of being aggressive, intolerant proselytizers, which combined with the group's supposedly unaffiliated political wing, the New Kōmeitō Party 公明党, has resulted in most ordinary Japanese being distrustful and wary of the organization.

Sōka Gakkai and I have had a long, mutually antagonistic relationship, going back to my early days living in Tōkyō. I used to date a woman who was a member, and through her, I was able to witness firsthand the level of control and brainwashing the organization had over its followers. She tried her best to convince me to join - by going to concerts to see bands made up of SG converts, eating out at restaurants owned by SG followers, and most of all, by giving me lots of English-language literature by and about Ikeda the Great One. Instead of seeing the benefits of chanting "Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō 南無妙法蓮華經 day and night, I only saw a group that was preying on...er, recruiting those in Japanese society who did not already belong to large groups - the self-employed, homemakers, part-timers and bar hostesses and others from the nighttime "entertainment" business 水商売. After 18 months of subtle and not-so-subtle attempts at getting me to see the light, my Dedicated Follower pretty much gave up and our relationship came to an end. I may have been a waste of time, but judging from the number of people serving as staff for today's event, it seems Sōka Gakkai International has established a significant presence in Taichung County 台中縣. Are all those Mormon missionaries I see around Fengyuan 豐原 aware of the formidable competition they are up against?

SGI-organized though it may have been, we still enjoyed ourselves at the fair today. My daughter was able to try her hand at painting...:

...my wife went for a spin on an earthquake simulator:

...and we came away with two free cherry trees, though I'm not sure where we can keep them in our small, dark apartment:

 

Meanwhile, Fengyuan's mausoleum kept watch over the city from its perch in the hills:

 

Silence is Golden

Last night I was feverish and my joints were aching, and today was rainy. So of course I took advantage of a free afternoon today to ride out to the Dakeng Scenic Area to do some hiking. I arrived at the start to the No. 1 Trail just after 12:30, and set off in a steady downpour. Fortunately, the rain let up as soon as the repaired trail started climbing in earnest, and for the entire two hours I was out on the trails (up No. 1, down No. 2), not a single other walker was encountered. The hike was far from quiet - birds were singing, (more ominously) there were continual sounds of falling rocks, and at one point I was sure I could hear monkeys moving about - but the sounds of the mountain are never annoying. It was great to be alone in the mist, even for a brief couple of hours.

Young Taiwanese children in public places, on the other hand, are often far from quiet. This evening I was teaching a private lesson at the local KFC when a mother came in with her young son. As is sadly too often the case in this country, Mom proceeded to let her child run riot all over the dining room, never looking up from the magazine she was reading (or the cell phone she was speaking into) while Junior climbed over various chairs and tables, stood up on countertops, yelled at the top of his little (but still powerful lungs) and had a good, up-close look at the hairy barbarian in his midst. As a parent of a small child, I can understand (and sympathize) how one might want to take a break from constantly having to tell their little one not to do this or that, but when we're out in public places, I'm always conscious of what negative effects Amber's actions might be having on the people around her, and therefore do something about it, if necessary. However, and to be honest, unsurprisingly, many parents in Taiwan just don't seem to care. My students, who are no doubt used to these things, just tried to ignore it. Had I been on my own, I might not have.

Them computer blues

This weekend was supposed to have been one in which I replaced my five year-old laptop (the one with the loose keys and occasional electric shocks) with a relatively new desktop computer that my brother-in-law, having recently sold his printing business, no longer needed. Unfortunately, the continuing thread running throughout my life - Things Which Are Supposed To Make My Life Better Usually Don't - popped up again. Basically, I found that I couldn't get a number of plug-ins to work on the desktop, including the software to upload photos from the digital camera. So now I'm back on the old notebook once again, and wondering if I should invest in a new one. Wait, what is that theme music I'm hearing?

Now that it's back to business as usual, here are a few photographs from this weekend, beginning with my daughter modeling her new swimsuit:

Saturday was Amber's first proper swimming lesson. For the past 18 months, she had been taking classes to familiarize herself with being in the water, but now that she is three, it's time for her to learn how to swim. It was also her first time to be in a class without either of her parents present (we were watching from a distance, through a window), and everything appeared to go well yesterday morning. Last one in the water...

This morning we went into Taichung 台中 again, to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts . The purpose wasn't to expose Amber to the world of art (that time will come later), nor to check out the facilities there for children (which I've read are excellent, and thus hope to see for ourselves in the very near future). It seems that my wife had posted some photos of our daughter online, and in short order, she received an email from a professional photographer saying that he thought some companies specializing in clothing for children might be interested in her as a model. So we agreed to meet at the museum in order to have some sample photographs taken. Amber wasn't the most cooperative model at times, but for the most part, things went well and she seemed to enjoy herself. The bubbles certainly helped:

My wife is much more interested in this than I am. We'll wait and what, if anything, happens.

The attractive grounds of the art museum also brought other photographers and models this morning:

The woman in the top photo was being photographed by no less than seven cameramen, all male and all looking like the stereotypical otaku おたく.

Before heading back to Fengyuan today, we stopped off at Dunkin' Donuts. Yes, the interior really does look like this: