*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Saturday 15 October 2011

'How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down [in Toronto]? (After They've [Lived in Tokyo])'

Oh Tokyo -- I never can sleep in your arms
Mind keeps on ringing like a fire alarm
Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup
Did you have to show me that accident scene
Didn't I get enough shaking up?
Still I'm gonna miss you...
In a year or two I am supposed to go back to my 'real' career in Canada, a country that has a better future by most indicators, especially demographic and financial: Japan is old, without resources, and has moved its manufacturing off-shore.

So what's better about Toronto?
- I have an 'iron rice-bowl' there, if some future provincial government doesn't find a way to %$#@ teachers
- summer is livable; winter's not
- I have family there, who do not help to raise my kid unlike my J-mother-in-law
- I can buy a house bigger than I need, further out in a part of town I don't like
- parking is cheaper, for the cars I'll need to own
- I can read the menus, in the restaurants that cost more for much less
- I speak the same language, as its poorly spoken and unattractive residents

So what's better about Tokyo?
- everything else

5 comments:

  1. Go for a walk around any major station or department store in Tokyo. Look around at the people—ahem, women—they're fashion, figure and level of personal maintenance. Now imagine if you were to do this same exercise in Toronto...

    Rethinking your decision?

    Though everything is different if you have kids. If I had kids in Japan, with my current understanding of Japanese and Canadian education, I wouldn't want to put them through Japanese middle or high school (but elem. seems quite decent).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I only %$#@ my wife... when the kid sleeps early enough we're not exhausted, but the mind still needs eye-candy. It's depressing otherwise.

    I thought living in Brampton for a year was so much worse than Toronto, and it was pretty bad that anyone not overweight and wearing the shellacked blonde helmet of the 'burbs was under the age of consent, but Toronto downtown is not as much better as you'd hope.

    You don't have to be into Asian chicks' better skin, glossier hair, more lithe waists and narrower... eyes (but it helps) to find more beauty in Tokyo. There are not fewer than twice as many beautiful women in any age group and they keep those looks twice as long: that's four times the number for you N.Americans who weren't taught computations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Does it have to be Toronto? I swore that if McCain won we were moving to Vancouver (might as well have as effect as Obama has been).

    I used the same metrics when we moved back to the U.S. Pretty sure it's been a wash. I've enjoyed being near dear friends, the PNW is generally a fine place to live, but I do miss Tokyo the same way I miss our time in NYC.

    ReplyDelete
  4. No chance of getting back to Montreal, is there?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Montreal? Better than Toronto, but I'd have to start at a nothing wage again: less interesting than Tokyo and less money too.

    ReplyDelete