Who the fuck is Danny Choo?
In a moment of depression I started thinking about Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that genre of animation that tries to gesture at grand things, grander than its art, grander than its scope. NGE has never touched me on an emotional level and I wondered what it was that was so untranslatable, in its heart of hearts fundamentally alien to my experience. In the way that mental trains translate themselves, I started thinking about the blogs Neojapanlisme (entertaining but not really all that informative) and Danny Choo’s blog “Cutlure Japan”.
I had heard of this man’s shenanigans on the internet via friend of mine, tying to explain the Caramelldansen meme, pointing to a video where he danced to it in a Stormtrooper costume somewhere in Tokyo. I dismissed him, as a Japan-fanboy — whatever, uninteresting.
But again, in a bout of depression my mind wandered back here, in a blog post called:
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
A corny title — still, I sat through it, having no better alternative. It is at every turn, surprising and humbling. This man, who I had previously dismissed as a obsessive fanboy (which he is, I still judge), delineates the difficult course of his life: starting as a foster child (whose parents were both alive) in London, thoroughly bullied and isolated, found something tender, alluring, and nourishing in the idea of Japan — going on to document his incredible, tremendous tenacity and ambition. It seems like he should have given up his dream ten times over — and the fact his present success (self made TV host, influential blogger, etc, etc, etc) touched me in that way that finding worthy human lives makes you feel glad you be alive. God, this man was SO self-driven. Here is a section from the post, about how Danny conceived of the 24-hour day:
The pie is divided into three – each piece is 8 hours. Presuming that you work 8 hours and sleep for 8 hours then you have 8 hours remaining which is one slice of the pie. I then start to cut up the remaining piece.
The 8 remaining hours is needed for things like personal hygiene, nourishment intake, health care (very important), cleaning, commuting and other chores which are important in life but generally don’t contribute a whole lot to your career or personal development.If you subtract the time needed for all the above from the final piece of the pie then all you would have left each day is 4-ish hours which you need to use on spending with friends/loved ones, entertainment/recreation and personal development – learning a new subject, beefing up current skills, researching etc.
Now imagine that you spent more than 8 hours at work. In order to do the other stuff, you would either have to sleep less or start to drop some of the other stuff. Some folks with long work hours drop “personal development” which I consider to be crucial to the development of an employee’s life, career and well being.
Outside of work and sleep, if you are not getting your 8 hours then perhaps its time do something about it? Could it be the lack of your 8 hours that your Japanese studying is always put on the back burner?
Go ahead, read the post. It is not so much (in my mind) about Japan as it is about how to pursue something with dogged determination… the kind of determination I often don’t see, even in a place like MIT.
Anyway, this was a utterly humbling experience, even to something I would still consider an utter dork.