Entries this day: Palestine_vs_Tokyo do_today dream

Palestine vs Tokyo

10:30am JST Saturday 19 November 2005

I have lived in Tokyo for basically two years.  I love the trains;
they are always on time

I love the level of customer service I receive in convenience
stores.  The clerk runs to the register when I walk up with my
purchase.

If I could describe the underlying framework of Japanese society in a
word, I would choose "ordered."  Everything has a place.  Every step
has a sequence.

Japanese seem to wait for the green crosswalk light, regardless of
traffic.


I recently spent some time in Jerusalem, the largest city in the West
Bank, an Israeli-occupied territory of Palestine.

In the Old City of Jerusalem, markets, restaurants and churches fill
different sections called "quarters."  The Jewish quarter has clean
sidewalks and streets, smartly dressed happy children with trees and
playground equipment.  Restaurants where a falafel pita costs 10 NIS.

The Palestinian quarter brims with crowds, sometimes to the point of
not being able to move.  Vending carts for socks, candy, toys,
fruits, nuts, vegetables, pitas, falafels, pomegrantate juice 

Souvenir shops feature prices that seem to change by the minute,
according to how much the customer wants to leave.  I personally was
offered an embroidered bag that went from 15 NIS to 10 NIS to 5 NIS
without me actually saying anything.


THE WALL
THE WALL
THE WALL
THE WALL

In a classic example of Divide and Conquer, the Separation Barrier
separates families from land, friends from each other, and generally
halts the flow of people and the economy.

Between Jerusalem and Ramallah, a city about 18 kilometers (11 miles)
to the north, is a checkpoint called Qalandia.

This checkpoint blocks the highway between Ramallah and Jerusalem,
which would make the trip take about 15 minutes by car.  However, the
checkpoint makes it a 45 minute trip from Jerusalem to Ramallah.

Basically, there is a barrier on the highway, through which vehicles
may not pass.  As a result, to go from Jerusalem to Ramallah, everyone
must get out of the vehicle (taxi or bus, unless someone has a friend
to drive their personal car away) walk 100 meters past guards and
through a one way gate, then secure another vehicle to go the
remaining 5 minutes to Ramallah.

To get from Ramallah to Jerusalem, everyone must get out of the
vehicle, walk 50 meters, go through a one way gate, through a metal
detector, show passport or ID to the soldiers, and then the remaining
50 meters to secure another vehicle on the other side.


EAST vs WEST
EAST vs WEST
EAST vs WEST
EAST vs WEST

In East Jerusalem neighborhoods, the streets are filled with rubbish.
The city service of garbage removal simply does not exist.  The residents

Things that shouldn't be normal:
   grenade destruction
   cow carcasses
   rubbish non-collection
   checkpoints
   gunfights in refugee camp at night
BETHLEHEM CHECKPOINT
CPOINT near mt of Olives
   soundbombs to break up crowds
   
Things that are different and okay that way:
   men holding hands in streets
   women holding hands in streets
   men and women never touching in streets
   falafels everywhere
   no queues; just mobs
   paying for taxis by handing money up and getting change back
   poor customer service
   sweet drinks

Hey Rob - find the list you already brainstormed.  Write to Jason to
ask about picture usage in a fundraiser.  Ask him the name of the
valley of the mount of olives.

Great places: Faisal hostel

Cool valley: Mt of Olives

picking olives

Brainstormed ideas:

Population / geography / distances
offers to stay in people's homes
food
food/money handling and bags
Pal Vision
Sweets
fashion
water shortage in Nablus
refugee camp
landscape
walls and towers
graffitti
happy people despite the wack
patient people
customer service
helpful pedestrians

Wall construction
east vs west jerusalem
neither side is budging
stone slinging
hit by a stone
heard gunshots in Balata
memorial posters in Nablus old city
fake grenade
closure from Nablus to Jerusalem after Israelis were killed
Bil'in 3 times
Bil'in is like a dance
Olive harvest 2 days
Old city Jerusalem
Old city Nablus
West jerusalem market
Joe's scar
Jews running
sound bombing crowd near Damascus
bloody nose jew
confusion
Ramadan
Ede
ISM training
people Rochelle, Serena, Joe, et. al.
Qalandia
Wall
checkpoints
flying checkpoints
racial profiling
white privledge
markets
taxis
time lost

do today

1:42pm JST Saturday 19 November 2005

To do today:

1. * take a nap

2. * write to Kellie about getting TJ Bike back

3. * check things to do list online

4. * clean up a bit around here

Bigger scale list:

1. Write about differences between Tokyo and Palestine

2. See Jennifer

3. Write maps logic

4. Get TJ Bike

5. go to Hakone with Hitomi

6. ride TJ Bike to Cheerful Dancing Fellows meeting in Atami

7. get ready for Peace Boat

dream

6:02pm JST Saturday 19 November 2005

passenger in a car down a fantastically steep hill about 45 degrees and straight as an arrow, allowing cars to go exceptionally fast, and with a really long level braking area at the bottom. Traffic was crowded, but going at least 150 miles per hour. The woman driving wanted to reach her client from India in time to show him a hurricane that was coming toward his location. I looked up and confirmed that clouds looked like they were going from right to left over the freeway and that a huge dark cloud-storm was over on the right and ahead of us. If we hurry, we just might make it.

We had to stop at a JR train station, which happened to be Motosumiyoshi, within scrambling distance of the next station, all within a wooded area like a campground. I clambored over to the next station, Musashikosugi and found I needed to get to the other side of the tracks and climbed through some playground equipment and ran through the porch area to the other side of the building and then across the parking lot where I looked over to my left over the building and noticed rain was being wiped down out of the clouds by a woman with a long squeegy. She was cleaning up after the storm and essentially squishing all the rain out of the clouds into harmless sheets of rain.

Later, on a passenger bus filled with a variety of passengers, we were all surprised to hear and see what could have been fireworks, but was raining down firey rocks. We couldn't tell if they were a man-made weapon or asteroids from outer space. We yelled, "drive faster!!" to the bus driver who promptly did so, but the firey rain kept coming down. The bus driver sought a garage type thing for protection, and finally found one in front of a mall. I opened the door and jumped off first, except for the toddler who jumped off like a cat right when the door is opened. I whooshed him back on the bus with an announcement, "the baby is back on the bus!" and closed the door.

Ran through to the back room of the mall and out the back door to try and get photographs of the craziness. I ended up walking out along a chain link fence and realized I wasn't close enough to a roof that I could run back in time if a fire shower happened right over me. I decided not to worry about such details and then was surprised to see smoke ball appearing in a bush across the road from me; it appeared people were shooting weapons from inside the bushes! I took a few pictures, but was having trouble with the zoom; it was zoomed all the way out, but the pictures still looked too far zoomed in.

Some soldier types started to come my way, herding everyone out of the area and warning me to keep my gun in front of me where they could see it. I was like, "I have no weapon," and held my camera up for them to see. They ignored me again for the moment and I kept taking pictures over my shoulder of the bush smoke. Then I noticed there was some kind of activity like one of the firestorms happening behind where the soldiers were coming from. They seemed oblivous to it, as if they knew what it was (or were just completely unaware of it) and continued to process people to cleanse them of the toxins they may have received in the recent chaos. The soldiers were having people strip and then be sprayed down with hoses and then stand on some sort of carpet to check for any more toxins. The carpet was beige with a sorta quilted checkerboard pattern of thin and thick pile. The thick parts had shorter pile on the edges and looked therefore like rounded square lumps.