Museums Heal the Soul

There’s way too much fucking noise in the world. We get noise from the Internet, apps, social media… it’s literally destroying the gray matter in our minds and making us absolutely miserable. So I’m seeking new modes of navigating this increasingly digital world. And that’s by going more analogue. Getting away from screens and into spaces where I can see physical stuff from history, artists, and creatives from all walks of life. Since I live in one of the most vibrant metropolitan areas in the world, I thought I’d start digging into the cultural exhibits on display with my free time instead of wading through muck and garbage online for entertainment and intellectual stimulation.

Main Story: Garuto Pass = Infinite Browsing

This will start with museums and wind around a bit to an odd conclusion, so I hope I’m able to write it out in a way that makes sense.

Halee found something called the Tokyo Garuto Pass, which is a museum pass that, for 20 bucks or so, let’s you visit about 100 museums in Tokyo (and a few in Saitama and Chiba) for free or a reduced fee (usually 1-5 dollars off the cost of regular admission). The pass is only good for two months, so you have to act on it in a timely manner.

We bought ours near the start of my summer holiday. Halee isn’t working for a bit, so the holiday seemed like the best time to get the most bang for the buck. It’s been a bit challenging to start because Tokyo is experiencing the hottest summer months ever recorded (stop me if you’ve heard this before), often pushing triple digits in Fahrenheit and 40 degrees Celsius. Walking around in the heat did cause me to feel very ill a few times, mostly dehydration, but once inside the cool comfort of the museums, it has been a lovely time.

To start, we went to the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Tokyo. It’s those to things because the company that sponsors the museum started back in the 1800s to import— wait for it— tobacco and salt. In the salt floor, you can see the different crystalline structures under microscopes, find out where and how salt is extracted, and see massive blocks of salt and salt sculptures from around the world. Yes, that may sound incredibly boring, because at the end of the day, you are looking at salt, but what really blew me away was the history of getting salt in Japan. See, Japan has to import most of its salt because it has no salt mines or quarries, and getting salt from the seawater is actually quite complicated. Seeing the elaborate concentration and evaporation systems the salt-hungry ancestors put together was truly baffling: I’m always borderline incredulous at how people worked together to figure all this shit out. Absolutely nutty!

We also visited the museum-rich expanse that is Ueno Park to see some modern art and European art. Fun fact: Rodin’s Thinker is in the sculpture garden outside the entrance of the European Art Museum in Ueno. Fun! While the European art museum was very lovely to see, the modern art museum allowed us to see their featured exhibition on do-it-yourself (DIY) and what that meant for various artists they commissioned for the exhibit. One woman made stamps from everyday objects, another made a building material, another stitched small pieces of art onto dress shirts and polo shirts, and another recorded the homes of homeless people outside of Osaka and how they cobbled together their shelters and amenities.

Everything there was pretty amazing: I was really impressed by how people repurposed different tools and materials to make something new and exciting, something that brought value back to the seemingly “dead” objects they were working with. I’m not sure why that excited me, but it really got my imagination stirred up and working into overdrive. I’ve not felt very inspired lately in life, but visiting these museums has allowed me to tap into the creativity and wonder these artists channeled to express their own desires to create.

I remember when a recruiter from Ohio State University called me to chat and potentially convince me to apply. He mentioned a scene from a movie where someone is asked whether they wanted to create or destroy, and I said that I would want to create. I think that’s also part of the appeal of engineering to me at that time: The idea that my work could make something to benefit others. Either way, thinking about that now, I realize that I stopped making things because I wanted to make them. I’ve been making things for extrinsic reasons, and while I can definitely workhorse my way through such tasks, I think the lack of an outlet for myself has finally caught up to me.

But it’s not just museums that have lifted my spirits: I’ve been lucky enough to find stories of people who are eschewing passive consumption and disengagement to be more engaged and thoughtful to turn their thoughts and ideas into actions and items.

Take, for example, the YouTube creator Noodle. He does a lot of videos on gaming, particularly car-based gaming, but his style and creativity are something I really like. He dabbles quite a bit in mixed media, combining physical props and illustrations into digital spaces while also mixing audio to artificially create certain audio aesthetics, such as old radio and TV transmissions. The vibes, in my humble opinion, are impeccable.

But what really inspires me watching this guy is that when he has a goofy idea to make something that would, for no other reason, entertain himself and be cool, he goes for it. The above video is a prime example of him cooking up an interesting idea and just going for it. He learns new skills, talks about it with others, collaborates, builds, and sees where it goes. This internet radio station he created, SexFM, was originally made so he could stream his own custom radio station in the game Pacific Drive. It ballooned into a bizarre world with lore, characters, real-world funding, and honest-to-god listeners.

This video, combined with my visit to the museum and the different artist takes on DIY, has really got my noodle… noodling? It’s giving me hits of inspiration and, dare I say, bravery to just try and make weird shit for the sake of making it.

Part of this is taking shape in small ways, like a coffee journal where I keep record of different cafes and coffee shops that I visit, glue in some stickers or business cards, and snap a photo on our Instax camera to capture the memory of the visit.

I’m really hoping that embracing the ethos of creating for creating’s sake, while focusing on the process of creation, can help to start filling in the cracks I’ve been noticing in my day-to-day life.

Good Thing: Birds of Prey

Not too long ago, I saw what looked like a hawk perched on the railing a few feet down our outside hallway on my way out. I mentioned it off-handed to Halee, and we both noted how it was pretty interesting to see an urban hawk. Fast forward to July, and we started seeing these birds more and more. A kindly Japanese neighbor pointed them out to us one day, noting that one was the mother, one was the father, and one was the juvenile (not a chick; he looked pretty grown and like its parents). Since then, we’ve been keeping an eye out for these birds and an ear out for their song. I never considered what the sone of a hawk might be, but these have a particularly pleasant tune.

Turns out they’re Japanese Sparrowhawks, which typically hunt for smaller birds and rodents. We have little brown birds that are everywhere, so I suppose it was a matter of time before these hawks realized that our apartment complex was ripe for the picking. Granted, it scared away the brown birds, but now we’re seeing new types of birds fly in to take their place.

The Sparrowhawks have this lovely zig-zag patter on their belly and wings, and they like to chill and survey the environment. Often, the mother and child will hang together in a tree while the father perches on a rail on one of the floors of the apartment building. It’s been pretty nice to try to spot them everyday and check out what they’re up to. Sometimes, we can see them with freshly caught prey in one of their talons, drifting away to eat them up. This would also explain why our floor was getting lots of random feathers on the walkway. Seeing nature in action is pretty neat!

Miscellaneous Media

I recently saw the movie Kneecap from 2024, which is a fictionalized account of the formation of the Irish hip-hop group of the same name. If you haven’t heard of them, their main thrust is that they sing in Irish, and this had lead to a popularization of the language in Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is great to see. I like the film because it shows the trials and tribulations of language revitalization (I’m teaching a class on this in the Fall, so my eyes are peeled specifically for shit like this) in a modern context. It’s just an amazingly well-done film. If you can find it, I’d highly recommend watching it.

I also finished a couple of books. The first was Sea People by Christina Thompson, which looks at the origins of the Polynesian people, how Europeans figured they got there, how natives feel they got there, and a pretty awesome deep-dive into the various modern expeditions looking to recreate ancient wayfaring methods. It introduced me to the MVP of Polynesia, Tupaia, and it really paints the area with an immense sense of wonder and awe. The other book was Algospeak by Adam Aleksic. In it, Aleksic looks at how the Internet is changing language by examining specific terms, ways of speaking, and phrases popularized by TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Since I’m fairly online and a linguist myself, I already knew about 80% of what was in this book, but the 20% I didn’t was fun to learn about, especially the distinction between ballroom culture and drag culture and how a lot of terms associated with “Internet language” or “Gen Z language” is really just taken from these subcultures. It’s not surprising: Most language innovation we get is taken from either A) teenage girls or B) black culture in America. If you’re curious about how the Internet is changing language it’s a worthwhile read; it goes at a pretty steady clip and is very easy to understand.

I’ve also been playing Cult of the Lamb with Halee quite a bit. It’s nice, but we’re stuck on a boss and I’m getting a bit impatient (mainly because a new building material in locked until we put this guy six feet under). I also played through and beat the Lies of P DLC, Overture. It was very frustrating at first, because the game teaches you to parry/perfect guard, so timing your blocks is key. But then you get to the DLC and the first skill check is for dodging, which is oftentimes actively discouraged in the base game. It was a bit disorienting, to say the least, but I got through it all. I’m a bit conflicted about the choice for the final boss, but everything else about it was pretty amazing. What an underdog of a game!

And hey, don’t hesitate to reach out after you read this! I love hearing from you all, so feel free to send me a quick message if you liked anything or found something particularly interesting. It’s always a pleasure to see people engage with my writing!