in the foothills

Commute (21) Careful!! Children

2007-01-06T20:28:00.000+09:00

A new old'un ... 'the hitchhiker'

2006-11-11T18:48:00.000+09:00

My favourite old'un, the 'Wheelbarrow Woman', has dropped off the face of the planet, perhaps permanently. However, she has been partly replaced in my thoughts by her body double. The doppleganger has almost the same physique as the 'Wheelbarrow Woman' (bent double like rice stalks in a typhoon), and the same gait. Alas, she has no wheelbarrow in which to sit and rest on her painfully slow journey to her sewing class. I pass her on the precarious riverbank road of a morning, and she's normally totally knackered. As you approach her from behind, she looks like a headless ghoul shuffling through the early morning fog that hangs low and heavy over these parts. What is even more startling is when this ghostly apparition turns, steps into the path of your car and waves a withered hand for you to stop. She then opens your passenger door, scrambles up into the front seat (no mean feat for a person shy of a hundred years by only about a dozen), and points where she wants you to take her. Wheezing heavily she thanks you unceasingly for stopping (even though you have absolutely no choice in the matter), and does her best not to bash her head on the dashboard.

Missing the Wheelbarrow Woman

2006-10-23T10:00:00.000+09:00

Back in the summer was the last time I saw the wheelbarrow woman. An extraordinary old'un whose back was paralysed in a permanent 90 degree bow - a lower-case 'r' of a woman, forced by her spine to stare intently at the ground at her feet rather than the fields and sky around her. These were my thoughts at that time.

She sits in her wheelbarrow fanning the flames of summer. She must be 90 give or take a decade. Ruddy of cheek and stooped of back. She sits there in her wheelbarrow hidden from view by a large straw hat. She breathes like a marathon runner collapsed at the finishing line. Shoulder-heaving gulps of air. I pass her most mornings, and some evenings, too. A rice farmer. In the evening she carries a torch. Just as well. In the pitch dark country lanes it is difficult to spot a tiny old woman sitting in a wheelbarrow. On a blind corner she often stops. We have had our fair share of near misses.

Beginning to wonder if we've had our last near miss. I fear she has pushed her final wheelbarrow.

Waiting for ... dough

2006-10-19T08:45:00.000+09:00

Four junior high school boys sitting on a bench. Killing time.
Spiky, tousled hair. Shirts hanging out. Big basketball sneakers with laces slack enough to trip them up. The odd punch and push. A lot of laughter. A maelstrom of mirth. But waiting for what?
A scuffle. A bag flung across the floor. A groan and a moan and a reluctant retrieval. More laughter. Flicks of the hair. Jutting of jaws. But still waiting. For girls?
Cracking suntans. Three buttons undone on their shirts. A snatch of pop song. Some drumming on the wooden slats of the bench. Youthful exuberance barely held in check. The wait goes on. Must be for girls.
Movement to their right. Their heads turn in unison. The elderly shopkeeper stoops. Then places yellow stickers on the crackling wrappers of pizza slices, azuki bean jam rolls, and assorted baked goodies. The stickers bear the best of tidings - 20% off!
The boys swing themselves off their perch. They're in there like a shot - the change in their pockets jangling. The wait is over. There's nowt like stale pastries.

Commute (20)

2006-09-29T09:51:00.000+09:00

Tokyo Rose - siren of the wartime airwaves

2006-09-28T12:48:00.000+09:00

Tokyo Rose died on September 26th, 2006. Or rather she didn't. The 90 year-old woman who died that day was Iva Toguri.

Her troubled tale is a sad one, a tale of racism, greed and hysteria, and you can read a summary of her life in The Times' obituary. Iva Toguri was the American woman arrested as the infamous Tokyo Rose, the seductive voice of Japanese World War 2 radio propaganda, a voice designed to make American troops go all wobbly at the knees. The fact that Tokyo Rose was a myth seemed not to bother the US authorities of the time, nor the slavering media pack, hot on the scent of a sensational scoop.
Tokyo Rose was found guilty, yet in spite of what appears an injust six year incarceration, Iva Toguri remained stoic to the end, refusing to criticize those who had hounded her. She was pardoned by the government of the country that she loved, the US, in the 1970s.

Her story has been told in great detail by Masayo Duus in Tokyo Rose: Orphan of the Pacific.

Iva Toguri's story is worth a read, if only to make you think about what actually constitutes treason in this day and age. What levels of work for the benefit of the enemy are acceptable for POWs in prison camps? What is collaboration?

Commute (19)

2006-09-21T14:13:00.000+09:00

Three shots fired across the Inland Sea

2006-09-19T11:28:00.000+09:00

The funeral was brief. It ended with three shots fired across the Inland Sea.

The POWs' return to the camp on Innoshima was easier, unburdened with the weight of the dead, and

our spirits were higher because of the civilized manner in which the Japanese had played their part in the affair.

I came across Terence Kelly's POW memoir Living with Japanese back in the UK. Elsewhere it has the more vivid title of By Hellship to Hiroshima.

I picked my way through it, rather than reading from cover to cover. Among the inevitably disturbing content of a Japanese POW camp memoir, other bits were there to be gleaned. Here are a few of them:

1. The myth bit: An altruistic fisherman once gave a lift across the water to a priest who wanted to get to Innoshima. Once he had set foot on the island, the priest (as they are wont to do in this country) transformed himself into 88 holy men and the island now has 88 temples (for a pilgrimage similar to the famous Shikoku one presumably).

2. The history bit: Innoshima was where the Murakami Pirates plied their trade. The Murakamis seem to be called the Murakami Navy by some sources and the Murakami Pirates by others. Perhaps they started out as pirates extorting money from all bar landlubbers and then had a mid-life crisis or something. Perhaps they preferred the crisp white uniforms? Anyway, Innoshima is, of course, playing on the "pirate potential" to boost tourism.

3. The rhyming slang bit: The POWs were visited at their camp on Innoshima by two Englishmen (accompanied by Japanese wives). They had been on Innoshima since World War 1, spoke fluent Japanese, and still had Cockney accents. Their visit , naturally, came as quite a surprise to the POWs. I wonder if their families are still there?

4. The cold rice bit: The Nippon Times of 1943 reported, for the morale of the nation, that

a rear gunner in a Japanese bomber who, having run out of ammunition, threw his lunch (a rice ball) at the attacking American fighter and brought it down.

The power of onigiri!

Wagamama ... Japanese food culture home and abroad

2006-09-12T16:19:00.000+09:00

Wagamama. What a great word! What resonance! A word that really gets the mouth working. One of those words that would feel right at home in many a language.

Wagamama, which basically means "selfish" in Japanese, is the name of the Japanese noodle chain that is taking Britain by storm. Stores opening all over the place. Taking a quick browse through the Wagamama website, I notice that the dishes' ingredients are described in a mixture of Japanese and English. Japanese food/cooking words now being bandied around in English include: teppan, yaki, udon, ramen, shiitake, soba and kamaboko.

As anybody who has spent any time in Japan knows, 90% of all conversation between Japanese nationals concerns food. On one lazy afternoon, I found all 5 terrestrial channels showing cooking programs. Not good news if you are a philistine in the kitchen. If you could delve deep into the "Japanese psyche" and find the one thing of which the Japanese are collectively most proud, I would wager (and a hefty amount too) it would be Japanese food. A few years ago, that faith in the supremacy of Japanese food would have raised a few eyebrows in the UK, and this unwithering faith used to piss me off something rotten. But, as shown by the Wagamama noodle chain, Japanese food has been gaining in popularity over the last few years and now appears to have slipped quietly into mainstream food culture in the UK.

Books on Japanese food (designed for use abroad) are no longer a rarity. One of the recent recipe success stories, specifically written for those not in Japan, is Harumi's Japanese cooking. We used it while back in Britain ... and there weren't too many complaints.

But if you are within Japan's borders, and are after a witty and informative read on Japanese food and cooking, then you can't go far wrong with my mate, John Ashburne's Lonely Planet book, World Food Japan. Cheap at half the price? Cheap at double the price? Take your pick.

A Dictionary of Japanese Food by a former colleague, Richard Hosking, is also another decent read on food culture in Japan.

Commute (18)

2006-08-02T09:57:00.000+09:00

Six steps in Japan - bloom bloom to boom boom

2006-07-26T09:22:00.000+09:00

咲 ... This is the single character that we chose to name our first child. It means to blossom or to bloom. 9 simple strokes. It reads "Saki". To celebrate our daughter's birth my sister gave us a book of Saki's greatest works.

Saki was the pen name of Hugh Hector Munro, a master story teller satirising Edwardian society. You can read his short story Tobermory, here. For an extensive online collection of his works visit this webpage. It is really worth the read.

Another Munro, Neil Gordon, was a Scottish doctor who lived in Japan in the first half of the 20th century. For the last part of his life he moved to Hokkaido and lived among the Ainu people in Nibutani, ministering to them spiritually and medicinally. He was influenced by shamanism. You can visit his house and see his Ainu collection in the bleak Nibutani (pack for cold weather). He published an anthropolgical study Ainu Creed and Cult.

Blind shaman women are known as itako. They gather in Aomori to commune with the dead. Check here for a quirky Japan death map including information on the grave of Jesus Christ in Aomori!

Jesus Christ the manga version. Described as a comedy and romance. Think they must have twisted the plotlines a little.

Short (but useful) English bios of the main comedy protagonists in Japan.

Japanese comedy ... don't you just love it?

2006-07-25T07:31:00.000+09:00

And who said it was all rubbish? Well, not all of it anyway. This lot courtesy of Youtube.

First up, brilliant comedy. Watch the last minute especially. An old man scaring the pants off some unsuspecting souls.

Talking of scaring the pants off people, this fits the foreign stereotypical take on Japanese humour (bizarre in the extreme) and puts a whole new slant on toilet humour. Takeshi Kitano is involved, weaving his familiar chaos.

And CTU's Tony Almeida (from the show 24) meets his match with a bit of traditional Japanese slapstick.

Hmmmmm. Click and enjoy!??

Pollack guts or marmalade on your toast, sir? Breakfast in Japan

2006-07-24T09:55:00.000+09:00

Awoke bleary eyed after a late night watching Japanese golfer, Tanihara's failed attempt at knocking the supreme Tiger Woods from his perch. On auto-pilot, I reached for the marmalade to spread on my doorstep of Yamazaki bread. The lid displayed some unfathomable Korean hangul with small English lettering beneath saying "salted pollack intestines". With visions of dead movie directors and their innards floating before me, I declined the marmalade/salted pollack guts (too early for cannibalism), and plumped for some ultra-sweet, pale Japanese honey. These days, I reckon most of the Japanese young are breakfasting on thick doorsteps of toast (usually with butter and sometimes with jam too if they are pushing the boat out) if they have anything with their milk or green tea at all. (A flawed survey with absolutely no mention of pollack intestines, salted or otherwise, of Japanese breakfast habits carried out in 2000 tells a slightly different story.) In the past it would have been rice and nutrition-packed miso soup (one of the best pick-me-ups possible at daybreak) cooked especially lovingly by mum. Last night's main meal leftovers, whether fishy, meaty or intestinal, would have been the accompaniment.

Learning Japanese - web help

2006-07-23T21:39:00.000+09:00

What with all the rain and all, some people may be hitting the books rather than the beaches. Studying Japanese is certainly getting more varied than in the old days. As a change from the books, three great websites that I've come across in the recent past (but admittedly spent little time using) are:

rikai.com for brushing up reading skills.

speedanki.com for great kanji study.

nihongo juku for reading and listening.

Wish these websites had been around 15 years ago to help smooth the pitholed road that I walked. Still stumbling now.

Japanese car insurance

2006-07-20T21:03:00.000+09:00

The crash was a shock, painful emotionally and psychologically rather than physically. My wife and son were the only two in our little black 600cc Suzuki. Two other cars were involved. The culprit (the words "stupid cow" were mentioned) rushing to get her daughter to juku (cram school) on time in her little silver Suzuki, and the other victims, a family in their little white Suzuki. A coming together of Suzukis. A grand total of 1800ccs of flimsy, metallic Suzuki engineering gathering together for the first time since the factory, like long lost siblings in a less than joyful reunion.

The insurance, too, was a shock and painful to boot. Bashing your forehead against an unyielding wall for several days tends to cause pain. Resistance to impassivity is difficult to maintain. Your forehead hurts, but the wall appears not to have suffered any damage. In fact, a week later it manages to speak in the same dispassionate tones that it was using on day one. The wall doesn't give a monkey's.

The insurance logic is warped, and you just get a sneaky suspicion that the insurance companies are all in cahoots. In Japan, it seems, blame is shared pretty much no matter what. The insurance companies put their heads together and come up with a percentage share of blame for each of the parties involved. The police wash their hands of the affair. So, even if you are not to blame, you usually get hit with a percentage of the costs, and therefore all the problems with working out whether to pay out of your own pocket, or let your insurance company cover it and see your premiums rise spectacularly for the following year. If you want complete absolution then you can take on the insurance company yourself, but this is not good for your health. They have constructed an elaborate set of hurdles that you need to clear before you get anywhere near a glimpse of the finish line. It just ain't worth it ... and don't they know it.

We're pretty sure that we were 0% to blame for the accident. The silver Suzuki pulled out, gung-ho fashion, onto a main road and hit the unsuspecting white Suzuki. Hi-ho-gung-ho silver then careered across the centre of the road into our blameless, black Suzuki and my wife and son. The humans were thankfully unharmed which is more than can be said for the vehicles. Externally our car had the equivalent to a few bruises, a broken nose, displaced cheekbone and a bit of blood, but under the surface the damage was fairly extensive (internal bleeding of a serious nature). Total damages come to more than half the cost of the car.

Coughing up ourselves when we feel blameless goes against the grain, but the forehead is hurting too much to keep nutting that wall. AIU is our insurance company. Here is the full version of an interesting interview with an associate company of AIU that have started an insurance service in English for foreigners in Japan. The guy who set it up answers a frequently asked question,

Are there some differences in insurance practices between Japan and the West?

One area of difference is probably third party compensation. If you are in a crash, even if you are the one crashed into, you are still liable for a certain amount. You have to take responsibility. Foreigners might find it hard to understand why they are responsible when they get hit. However, the law says that because your vehicle was also moving, you have to be liable for 5% or 10% or whatever.

So like it or lump it, we'll be taking part of the blame. Perhaps its our fault anyway. An academic study has shown that if you have a dark colored car, you are more likely to be passively involved in a collision. Do what they do in Japan - buy white or silver!

The Meeting (aka Time Theft or ennui nipponica)

2006-07-14T13:09:00.000+09:00

We sleep, we snooze, we slumber; we kip, we catnap and we take forty winks - sometimes even more. We certainly don't listen. There would be no point in that. The meeting is an extraordinary event. The Chair reads in a bland, soporific monotone - sometimes for several hours or more. In our shut-eyed torpor, some of us sigh gently, some scratch languidly behind an earlobe or up a nose cavity; some find contentment with a bout of throaty mucus juggling, others resort to the common and garden snore. On one memorable occasion, the most senior party present snored so spectacularly loudly that he succeeded in completely drowning out the Chair's monotone. Nobody had the heart, or the balls, to wake the venerable fellow, and the meeting continued ad nauseam to the accompaniment of those unusual backing vocals.

Finger on Tokyo's pulse

2006-07-07T09:00:00.000+09:00

Summer heat getting to you? Then perhaps the ice bar in Tokyo is for you. Tables, counters, chairs, glasses, and just about everything else is made from ice. The whole place is kept at a bone chilling -5 degrees. It's not cheap, and reservations are in 45 minute slots, but its a cool way to escape the humidity. Tokyo has a whole host of bars, with plenty of quirks amongst them. For an interesting selection of them visit Watashi to Tokyo blog and the unique Tokyo restaurant section. Right now, this blog is one of my favorite reads on the net. A Japanese person with their finger on the pulse of Tokyo.
For all you want to know about restaurants, bars and nightlife in Hiroshima, you can't get much better than the Get Hiroshima webpages. Hiroshima doesn't pretend to be Tokyo. No ice bars here. But plenty of unpretentious places to cool down and quench that thirst after a hard day's work.

Larry King's missile

2006-07-06T09:15:00.000+09:00

The news is dominated by North Korea's missile tests. (Perhaps one of these dazzling chaps gave the order.) The trajectory of the missiles took them closer to Russia than to Japan, but it is Japan that most commentators see as most vulnerable in this situation. Japan are shouting loudest - sanctions imposed immediately. South Korea's hands are tied. It has put too much effort into creating closer relations to blow it all in one shot. The United States is worried - long range missiles could reach Alaska. But it is China that may well have the the most influential hand if any deal is to be made in the diplomatic sphere.

Television and newspaper analysis is in overdrive. In the U.S. studios, to me it all seemed bluster and empty rhetoric. After all it is a long way away. A bunch of clever people sitting round tables playing at international relations. That was until a very wrinkled Larry King asked, "So what do we do if they launch a missile into the centre of Tokyo?"

That woke me up.

The reply, by the way, was that it would warrant a "serious response".

The Japan Times' perspective
CNN's take on it
The People's daily in China report
The Korea Herald article
The BBC has this to say

Depressing, grisly crimes

2006-07-04T16:57:00.000+09:00

Wherever you go, if you trawl the newspapers or keep an eye on television news, I guess you'll come across depressing crimes aplenty. In my early days in Japan, it seemed that a murder wasn't really a murder unless it involved a body being chopped up into small pieces before disposal (usually in a variety of unimaginative ways). I remember thinking that I'd arrived in a very odd country. Every murder seemed to be one of these barabara satsujin jiken (ばらばら殺人事件). People were forever coming across body parts - when out for a stroll in the woods, when fishing, and it was a time when it wasn't too wise to use train station lockers if my memory serves.
These days you hardly ever hear about a barabara satsujin jiken, but other grisly, depressing crimes abound. Right now the murder/arson seems to be an everyday occurrence. They're so frequent that it does make you wonder if the idea pops into some poor soul's head when watching the news. The murder/suicide (usually with young children as murder victims) is depressingly familiar, too. And what is it with this spate of imprisonment of young women (不法監禁) in the homes of what must be very warped blokes? The crimes seem to come in bunches, as if one crime is the catalyst for a series of copycat crimes.
Depressing and grisly crimes, indeed, but with a different twist from the depressing and grisly crimes back in the UK.

Commute (17) Rice

2006-06-28T17:17:00.000+09:00

Great tits, shame about the ...

2006-06-26T22:18:00.000+09:00

stray cat strut. (Apologies for schoolboy humour).

June 18:
I didn't want to get emotionally involved. But now I am. We have a nest of great tits in the back garden. Well, hopefully we still do. I woke this morning with shrieks coming from the garden. My wife was hopping around in distress, "the birds, the birds". The bird box, given to all children at elementary school out here in the Japanese countryside, lay partly split in the dirt. On the ground were about five baby great tits and the ants were starting to tuck in. My wife flicked as many ants off as possible, and thrust the living birds back into the box. The one dead baby I buried under the rose bush. The parent (mother presumably) has been in there a long time, presumably feasting frenziedly on ants.

Prime suspect is a stray tabby that struts (while baby birds fret) his hour upon our stage. I fear we haven't heard the last of him.

June 22:
Surviving baby great tits doing fine, as far as we can tell. Parents flying in and out of bird box with tasty morsels every day. We are on full moggy watch.

June 26:
Cats are very agile! Commotion in our house as large white feline caught three quarters of its way up the bird house pole. Wife shrieks and makes a bolt for the door. Daughters make violent shooshing noises. I throw something large and heavy in the vicinity and the cat slinks away (with serious attitude mind you, and a look akin to giving me the middle finger) to wait for another day.

Survival of the fittest. Where do our loyalties lie? Not as simple as it might at first seem.

Our family were up in arms when a neighbour, Old man Sato, tried to get rid of the young stray cats in the neighbourhood with a long pole, caveman grunts, and brute force. Now those same stray cats face our wrath, and missiles, simply for doing what they are hard-wired to do.

Darwinism in the back garden. Hoping fervently that the young great tits fly the nest soon. Judging by the size of their food parcels today it can't be long.

Japan football team ... not as great as its goalkeeper's ego

2006-06-24T21:18:00.000+09:00

"I made some saves but it didn't appear to help us change the tide of the match and I don't think we were able to get over giving up the equalizer at the end of the first half. On a personal level I feel I have done everything that has been asked of me but I can't do everything on my own."

So said Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, Japan's goalkeeper in the World Cup. This quote really bothered me. Kawaguchi really bothers me, and has done since he first set foot on the Japanese football scene.

In the early days he was all hair flicks and gel (anyone spot the jealousy of a bald man, here?). Always the last man off the pitch, so that he got significant camera time. His gestures were exaggerated. The trademark wince of pain to show just how much he cared. The concentrated stare to show just how much he ... well, concentrated. Everything he did was designed for the cameras, like the ekiden relay runners who insist on falling over in exhaustion after they've run their leg, just to make sure everyone knows they have given their all. Kawaguchi made everyone know that he had given his all. Every wince. Every stare. Every flick of the hair. It was designed to tell a story. The story of a man with an incredible ego.

Unfortunately he hasn't grown up in the intervening years.

"... I can't do everything on my own."

Now who would you normally hear saying that? A harried mother at the end of her tether berating a family of World Cup watching couch potatoes? A boss snarling at incompetent underlings in the office? Or a person with an inflated ego belittling his comrades?

What Kawaguchi is basically saying here is that he is wonderful and the rest of the Japan team are just not up to scratch. He might have something with the latter half of that assessment - Japan were clearly outclassed in Germany. But he is by no means wonderful. A wonderful goalkeeper would not have been third choice for Portsmouth when they were a second-tier club. Nor would a wonderful goalkeeper have been released by them. A wonderful goalkeeper wouldn't have flapped awfully at the cross that led to Australia's equalizing goal, the goal that led directly to the change in Japan's fortunes in this World Cup.

Yes, he did make some fine saves, including a penalty save against Croatia. But he also screwed up on a number of occasions. He, like the rest of his teammates, just weren't up to the job. Simple as that. He was quite right about not being able to do everything on his own. He contributed significantly to Japan's World Cup demise with help from the rest of his teammates.

It's a fair cop?

2006-06-16T16:23:00.000+09:00

"I was fairly flying along the expressway at about 140 when the cops pulled me over. The cop's eyes rolled when he saw I was a foreigner. He spoke at me apprehensively in Japanese. I smiled and said, 'nihongo tabemasen (I don't eat Japanese)'. The cop groaned and with visions of mounting paperwork (in English!) he let me continue on my way."

Cue large guffaws, slaps of the thigh, and pats on the back. How cleverly deceitful this foreign resident (fluent in Japanese) had been.

This was the first story I heard about Japanese police. Since then there have been many more.

Those in uniform stand out. They make an easy target for criticism. But sometimes you can't help noticing that the uniform changes the human for the worse. It's the power. Isn't it? Whether it is a strutting football referee, officious security guards at a rock concert, parking attendants with new punitive powers (click here for The Times' man's take on this), or the police. Don't those shiny buttons and those epaulettes, along with their peaked hats, go to their heads just a little bit more than they should?

I don't want to get into a Japanese police bashing thing here (they've always been great with me!), but a couple of disturbing articles caught my eye in the news about recent police (in)activity. The first, from the other correspondent of The Times, is the tale of an unsolved (a rarity in Japan ... but this rarity is not necessarily something to gloat about) crime. Knocking on 15 years ago, the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was murdered. The statute of limitations in Japan is 15 years. Read here for one or two unpleasant nuances in the police records of this case that suggest the murderer can't have been Japanese.

The second is the case of a Hiroshima bar owner, of Peruvian descent, subjected to incarceration and a grilling over a number of days. You can read his story here. When I read this, visions of Haruki Murakami's interrogation scene in Dance, Dance, Dance popped into my head. The two cops, Bookish and Fisherman, try to force an admission of guilt and a signature out of the hero. Scenes like this are why Amnesty is so worried about Japan's high crime clear-up rate.

Commute (16) Egrets ... rice field sentinels

2006-06-14T17:30:00.000+09:00

Click the picture and the egret line-up should become clearer.

Japan v Australia ... no sweat

2006-06-12T21:47:00.000+09:00

Tonight sees Japan's first match in the World Cup. Their opponents are Australia, a bunch of dirty cloggers if the Japanese Football Association chief's words are to be believed (maybe he has seen Lucas Neill in action for Blackburn this season). The hype on the TV here has been quite amazing. All sorts of shows with all sorts of pundits giving all sorts of opinions, all sorts of advice, and all sorts of "interesting" anecdotes. One ex-pro, the intensely annoying Yomiuri Verdy player of yore, Kitazawa (long of hair, short of legs and talent), explained to the Japanese populace that one of the main problems the Japanese players would face was when the shirt-swapping took place at the end of a match. This is no problem within the borders of Japan, apparently, but international matches can be a bit of a problem because them there foreigners pong a bit.

So can Zico's sweet-scented Blue Samurai overcome the dirty (in more ways than one) Aussies tonight?

My money is on a draw. But watch out for the shirt-swapping etiquette. Which of the Japanese players will be brave enough to don an Aussie shirt at the end of the game?

Hiroshima earthquake

2006-06-12T12:10:00.000+09:00

A rude awakening at 5:01 this morning. A shake of the earth beneath us, a rattle of the shoji windows, and a roll over in the futon. The quake lasted a little longer than I expected, and I was fairly lucid this time. A quick checklist went through my head. Do I need to get up? Do I need to get the kids? Will we all fit under the kitchen table? Before I had got myself vertical the rumbling had subsided and I went back to sleep.

Not sure if it is just me, but all these quakes seem to hit in the early morning. My first experience of one was in 1989, my first year in Japan. Waken early in the morning by shaking paper doors, head fuzzy from an interrupted sleep, and fresh from England, my fear was from thinking there was a burglar stuck in my cupboards. Slowly the realisation dawned. My first trembler. The big Kobe disaster in '95 was early morning, too. As night turns into dawn, it's as if the earth is groaning at having to face a new day. Can't I have just a few more hours of sleep, please?

This one measured about 5 on the Japanese scale. And when they hit, you never know whether the epicentre is local, or whether the big one has hit Tokyo. They say Hiroshima gets a "biggy" every fifty years or so. In the 1905 quake, eleven died; two perished in 1949; and in 2001 one old lady in Kure died. Last night's quake took no lives, but once again a reminder of the power in the bowels of the earth, particularly here in a country where four tectonic plates meet.

Commute (15)

2006-06-02T09:07:00.000+09:00

Frogs, football, and dead rice farmers

2006-06-01T09:12:00.000+09:00

The morning comes, and, for once a dream I remember.

We are at a wake. The dead man is a local rice farmer. His son is motioning to the distant hills - to the boundaries of prime rice land that he now owns. I am the only foreigner in a Japanese sea of wizened, sun-dried farming faces. The congregation are barefoot in the slimy mud of the paddies. We raise One Cup Ozeki sake pots in a salute to the dead man. A massive frog sits and watches. It craps a miniature football. This surprises nobody. Then its jaw distends astoundingly, like a trap door opening, and an official World Cup football is belched into the paddy. This gets everyone's attention. Not wanting his father's solemn occasion to be usurped by a frog, albeit an unusually talented one, the son starts to read out the old man's last will and testament. I am bequeathed the contents of his wine cellar - the finest collection of reds to be found outside of Europe.

Mmmmm. What can it all mean?

The Benz Man

2006-05-29T18:06:00.000+09:00

It's a black, shiny, low-slung Merecedes-Benz S600 with dark windows and sleek, ever-so-comfortable-looking upholstery. The owner is also expensively upholstered, from head to toe, in shiny black - possibly to match his motor, but probably to hide a middle-age waistline. He is also low-slung, short and squat, his chassis low to the ground. He looks as if he would take corners well. No problems in the ice, nor in high winds.

The Benz man lives in a crappy house, in vehicular terms the equivalent of a Skoda, circa 1985. In addition to this property, he has just lucked out in the public housing lottery and has moved his wife and daughters into a small prefectural run apartment. This housing is a step down even from the Skoda. I don't know why they moved. There's no divorce in the air - they all get on famously. Maybe he just needs more space. But for what?

The Benz man works in construction, or to be exact, destruction. He knocks down buildings for a living. He shouldn't really be driving a Mercedes-Benz S600, tinted windows or no tinted windows.

The other day a local teacher and I saw the Benz man. The teacher asked him about his wheels.

"Nanbo (How much)?" he asked.

Benz man replied, quick as a flash, that the teacher could have it for 5 million yen cash. The teacher laughed and said he wasn't in the market for a car. His eco-friendly Prius would do him just fine; and he had just added alloy wheels to "supe it up" a bit.
Benz man smiled, well, more of a smirk really, and said,

"Is that so?"

The teacher's a persistent bloke, though, and none too sensitive to the subtleties of body language. He's not a man to give up easily.

"When you bought it - nanbo?" he persevered.

Benz man eyed him for a moment, figured he couldn't be arsed with a half-hour conversation with the local maths-meister, and spat out,

"13 million new".

Our eyes widened. The teacher recovered his poise first,

"You been doing something bad?"

There was a gleam in Benz man's eyes. He gave a knowing, slow-motion, cartoon nod of the head. He might as well have winked. Then he smiled a smile as wide and squat as his S600, slipped into drive, and effortlessly purred off into the night.

R.I.P. Kayano Shigeru - Ainu leader

2006-05-19T10:13:00.000+09:00

On May 6, in a small town in Hokkaido, a 79-year-old man died. Nothing unusual in that. But the man himself was rather unusual in many ways. Kayano Shigeru, a man known by some as the "Ainu Mandela", spent his life promoting the cause of the Ainu people and its language in the largely hostile environment of mainstream Japan.

For many minorities and minority languages, having a charismatic leader is a real boon. Kayano was certainly that (and it should be said that he was not without his critics - even in Ainu circles). He had a high profile, becoming the first Ainu to win a place in the Japanese Diet (Government). His was the voice that spoke the Ainu language for the first time in government session, and therefore, perhaps more than any other in recent times, he served to remind people that Japan is not the homogeneous nation that former Prime Minister Nakasone promoted. Whether the Ainu people can find a worthy successor is a moot point.

Kayano's voice lives on in recordings; it is his resonant tones you can still hear at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. He has also left a wealth of books and other written materials. His memoir "Our Land was a Forest" is highly readable, and in Hokkaido there is always the Nibutani Ainu Shiryoukan (that bears his name) to visit.

But now it is up to others to champion the cause of the Ainu people in Japan. Many have been doing so for a long time. Below are a few links to interesting Ainu-related websites.

The Ainu Museum

The Foundation for Research and Promotion of Ainu Culture

Ainu language lessons on the radio

A bibiography of Ainu language and culture

Ainu - English wordlist

Commute (14) rice paddies primed and ready

2006-05-18T13:58:00.000+09:00

Taken on a dreary day in the lovely valley just down the road. Sadly, every year, a few more of the valley's paddies disappear to be replaced by apartment blocks.

It's raining Gobi sand

2006-05-16T16:50:00.000+09:00

Sand deposits from China and Mongolia seem ever more frequent in Hiroshima. Apparently desertification is the cause. The effect is dirty cars, dirty washing, gritty teeth, eye irritation, reduced visibility and dodgy photos. This "atmospheric" shot of the torii gate at Miyajima was taken through a veil of Gobi desert sand. Unfortunately, from the peak of Mt. Misen, we couldn't make out even the nearest islands in the magnificent Setonaikai (Inland Sea) chain.

The Yomiuri newspaper reports that March to May is the season. The snows have melted and the westerly winds whip up. At least we don't get it as bad as Beijing where 300,000 tons of sand fell on the capital in two days in April.

Ironically, China and Japan are currently at odds over legitimate export of sand for use in concrete production. The Mainichi reports that Chinese sand is high quality and cheap, and therefore much in demand in concrete-loving Japan. But, China have pulled the plug on export deals.

The Chinese move has rattled concrete producers in Western Japan in particular because they have switched to Chinese sand after sand extraction along the Setonaikai Sea became difficult. Thus, they are now working hard to devise alternative plans, such as making sand by crushing gravel and increasing domestic sand extraction.

One alternative plan could be to sit, wait, and look to the heavens. It's raining Chinese sand in the Setonaikai this year - and in record quantities.

Japan's World Cup squad

2006-05-16T11:49:00.000+09:00

Only one surprise in Zico's Japanese squad for the World Cup. Maki makes the plane, Kubo doesn't. You've got to feel sorry for Kubo, but ever since I wrote glowingly about his eccentricities here, he hasn't been able to hit a barn door from a couple of paces. Can Maki do any better? Doubtful. But he does get around the pitch, and looks up for it. On occasions recently, Kubo has looked like a forlorn puppy that has lost his bone. Maki must have nicked it.

Japanese takarakuji lotteries

2006-05-15T12:05:00.001+09:00

Every three minutes (on average) someone in Japan lands a 100,000 dollar plus prize in one of the lotteries.

The serious punters really do their homework, carefully choosing how and where they purchase their tickets. Rumour has it that the best ticket booth in the country is in Tokyo at the Nishi Ginza Depato Chansu Senta - window number 1! You can wait up to two hours in line there when, if you took a couple of steps to your right to window 2, you would be served immmediately. (In Hiroshima City, the lottery booth near the Tatemachi streetcar stop (on the corner) always has a long line for the Jumbo takarakuji due to a big winning ticket sold there in the past.)

Gleaned from the weekend newspaper, vital information for all lottery players. The winners of large sums of money in the Japanese lottery were asked just how they did it - what they paid special attention to when they purchased their winning tickets. Take note! In order of popularity, these were the answers they gave.

1. Ticket booths which have had previous big winners.
2. A balance between buying batches of tickets with successive numbers and random number batches.
3. Ticket booth's atmosphere.
4. The date of purchase.
5. The ticket booth seller.
6. The amount of money spent, or the number of tickets.
7. The direction the ticket booth was facing.
8. The number of the ticket booth window.
9. The time of day.
10. Fortune telling.
11. The clothes they wore when making the purchase.

What do the big winners do with their money?

According to the paper, 42% save it and 26% pay off debts.

There was no mention of the remaining 32%. Pursuing a path of hedonism presumably.

Tomato-jiisan

2006-05-12T10:11:00.000+09:00

They all call him Tomato-jiisan (Old Tomato Man), the kids around here. He lives alone in a ramshackle house on the corner of the housing estate. Coming across him for the first time is a disturbing experience, even in daylight. Picture a sort of post-apocalyptic form, bent beyond recognition, looming out of the smoking rubble. His eyes do spectacular, other-worldly things; and his teeth defy description. He has tremendous amounts of hair, sprouting in clumps just above the ears, and his face is stubbled like a newly-harvested rice paddy. Burnt by the sun, and presumably life itself, he cuts a harrowing figure. He rides a sky-blue tricycle from time to time with the debris of a decade sitting in its basket.

I always say hello when our paths cross; he grins and murmurs neighbourly greetings in return. I didn't even know the local children called him Tomato-jiisan, let alone the reason why. Yesterday I found out.

My son, along with the other leaders of the children's groups in the near vicinity, accompanied a teacher from school to visit Tomato-jiisan. They knocked on his door, and waited for his wild visage to appear. They then bowed deeply and made their apologies, taking collective responsibility for the crimes committed against an old man by local kids. These crimes included calling him Tomato-jiisan, and ringing his doorbell and scarpering (cherry-knocking we called it in my day, but its known as pingu-pongu dashu in Japanese) over a period of five years. Tomato-jiisan had grown tired of the taunts of kids, and had been worn down by answering his door to phantom visitors over half a decade. He had called the local school to complain and they had sprung into action.

You might think it was good that the school took an interest in the welfare of one of the older folk. After all, it can't be pleasant to live on your own, and have all and sundry mocking your very existence. Those sentiments entered my head too. Five years is a long time to yank anyone's chain, let alone an old man's. But why had the old fella been singled out for such treatment? And what I wanted to know more than anything, was why the local kids called him Tomato-jiisan in the first place.

Well, it appears that unlike most of the gentle older folk around here, Tomato-jiisan was not a fan of children from day one. And, on one fine evening five years ago, with the sun low in the sky, and the echoes of youthful laughter bouncing off the council housing walls, he lost his rag. Local folklore has it down as a completely unprovoked attack. A moment of pure madness. With wild banshee cries and flying spittle, and the help of a large stock of overripe tomatoes conveniently to hand, he took advantage of the high ground on which his house is situated. Defying his age, the old man pelted the children with unerring accuracy. The kids below didn't stand a chance. Like rabbits caught in headlights, mesmerized by the windmilling arms and spinning eyes, they stood rooted to the spot. They were, to a child, cut down in a hail of soft, red, tomato flesh.

Thus, five years ago, the old fruit flinger on the corner of the estate became known as Tomato-jiisan, and a five-year period of slow, stealthy revenge began.

Tomato-jiisan. Sinner or sinned against?

Part of me says - sinner, definitely sinner. The tomato terrorist got off pretty lightly with a daft moniker and a few fruitless (pun intended) trips to his front door.

But part of me says - sinned against. An old bloke, all alone in life. Perhaps it's our community that has failed him. You've got to feel sorry for him.

Commute (13)

2006-05-10T17:12:00.000+09:00

7-11 Heist: A thousand bucks, and make it snappy!

2006-05-08T17:13:00.000+09:00

Most drop in for their bento, a few riceballs, or for a can of hot, sweet coffee. Others prefer a quick butchers' at the scantily clad babes in the glossy mags by the window. But the other day, in the early hours, a young man walked into a local Seven-Eleven convenience store carrying what is thought to be a shotgun, and walked out again carrying what was thought to be about 100,000 yen.

Most unusual for around here. The 800 yen an hour workers didn't put up a struggle - thank goodness - and there were no injuries. The security camera caught the man in the act, and the photo of the menacing masked raider was released to the public.

A wedding in Hiroshima

2006-05-07T18:23:00.000+09:00

We sat in our finery, separated from view by a concertina partition that had seen better days. Us and them. Our side was providing the groom; the lot we couldn't see yet were supplying one blushing bride. To my right sat an old relative. Back ramrod straight, a medal pinned on his left breast. It was hot. Children fidgeted, adults made polite talk, we all wiped at the sweat forming on our brows.

The wedding hall organiser made his entrance, all stiff and ever-so-humble. His bony face wore a complacent, self-satisfied look, and the rest of him wore a mourning suit. With a nod and a flourish, he drew back the partition. We, in all our sweaty glory, were revealed to the other side, and they in turn were revealed to us. In their seat of honour, at the front, the bride looked bashful - and very hidden - in her traditional white costume. In our seat of honour sat no-one. Whoops! The organiser's hollow cheeks took on the reddish hue of the celebratory carpet. The smug, self-confident features concertinaed rudely out of shape. He bowed ever-so-humbly low, nose almost to the floor, and made repeated moshiwakegozaimasen apologies to us. Hastily he closed the concertina partition, and hurried out of the room.

Some giggled, some laughed, and one or two even guffawed. The closed partition could no longer fulfill its separating function. Two halves had become whole. We were as one. The tension, along with the organiser's cool veneer, had been cracked wide open.

Ten seconds later the hapless fellow returned, with a bemused looking groom tightly in his grasp. The partition was re-opened, and we were re-united visually with those we had already joined through laughter.

It was a good wedding.

Commute (12) rape blossom

2006-05-01T15:55:00.000+09:00

Minamata - 50 years on

2006-05-01T14:39:00.000+09:00

Today in Minamata, a Kumamoto port town and a name synonymous with tragedy, they marked the fiftieth anniversary of "official recognition" of the appalling mercury-poisoning disaster. This notorious pollution case disgraced not only the company that dumped the waste, but the government too. Basically, the facts are that the Chisso Corporation dumped industrial waste into the sea. The waste contaminated fish, and the fish were eaten by locals. The methyl mercury entered the human system and destroyed the central nervous system of the brain. Some amazing photos were taken by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Smith showing the plight of Minamata victims to the world. This is a photo of one of their photos. It shows cross-sections of three brains. The lower brain is healthy. The middle brain is from an eight year old girl who died two years and nine months after contracting "Minamata disease". The top picture shows the brain of a seven-year-old boy - his brain gradually eroded by the mercury over a period of four years. As far as disasters go, this was about as shameful as it gets. Man, money, and political power, combining with devastating effect.

Japanese dialects and Hiroshima-ben

2006-04-27T14:13:00.000+09:00

Between the ages of nine and fourteen I lived in Plymouth, England. I spoke like most Plymothians did - with an inadvertent love for the letter 'r', unhurried speech, and lengthened vowels. I thought nothing of shopkeepers greeting me with "Awwwrrrrright my luvvverrr", nor of them taking a full ten seconds to get from the first syllable to the last; and no local would be seen dead uttering the standard (grockle) question, "Where is it?" - Plymothians used the far superior "Where's it to?"

I had little inkling at that time that people from other parts of the world might find this speech odd, or country-bumpkinish, or that it could become the subject of fun or derision.

I moved to Gloucestershire when I was fourteen. On my first day at a new school, I entered my classroom with new-boy nerves. I kept my head low, surreptitiously surveying my new, black-blazered classmates. The bearded teacher called the register. The boys answered, "Here", in turn. Nothing unusual or out-of-the-ordinary. When my name was called I did likewise, yet somehow I was unable to shorten my vowels or strangle that 'r'. "Heeerrrre", I said. The teacher looked up from his register with (what I now take to be) a benevolent smile on his face; in unison my new classmates gleefully chorused an excruciatingly elongated, "OOOO-AARRRRR, OOOO-AARRRRR!"

I lost my Plymouth r's, my elongated vowels, and my slower speech pretty quickly - and with it my Plymothian identity. Moving does that to you when you're a child.

Here in Japan, there are a wealth of dialects, stretching from the far north to the islands way down south.

My children lived for five years in Kyoto. They spoke their Japanese with the flavourings of a Kyoto dialect (Kyoto-ben). Everything was ika-haru (I'll go) and ika-hen (I won't go). They were full of okini (thanks) in the shops, and were welcomed home by neighbours with okaeriyasu (welcome home).

Then, after those five years, we moved to the countryside of Hiroshima. My children started to speak a mixture of Kyoto-ben and Hiroshima-ben. It was an interesting few months linguistically, and probably a pretty strange mix for Japanese to listen to. Now, they speak exclusively Hiroshima-ben; they're all buchi and jaken, and the linguistic influences of Kyoto are long forgotten.

I have a pretty firm grasp, now, of what people from various parts of Britain think of accents and dialects from other parts of the country. But, despite being here in Japan for a fair few years, I am still pretty shaky on which dialects are the subject of derision, which are held in somewhat higher esteem, and which, if any, are revered. Of course, we all know what the Osakans think of the Tokyoites and their speech patterns (and vice versa), but what do they feel about Hiroshima-ben? What do people in Kagoshima think about those up north? Is Kyoto-ben really the bee's knees? To find out, take a peek at the following maps. Standard Japanese is spoken here; the most pleasant dialects are here; and the shockers are here!

Although disparaged in many parts of Japan, I have a soft spot for Hiroshima-ben. It is rough and ready, and earthy; fit for the izakaya, the factory floor, or the fields. It also equates somewhat in my mind with Plymouth and the way people speak there. Hiroshima and Plymouth - both with naval port histories, located on the south-west periphery of their mainlands, and with dialects that those in the capitals sneer at.

For a taster of the frustrations a Hiroshima guy feels about this kind of attitude (and some Hiroshima dialect examples), then visit Kaz's website. For a standard Japanese to male Hiroshima-ben translator, this is a bit of a laugh. If you want the female version, it is here. And for a pretty good summary of the finest dialect of them all, then move your mouse over these words and click once.

As the above translator says, 日本の一番ええ方言は広島弁じゃ。

Commute (11) Koinobori

2006-04-25T18:11:00.000+09:00

Only a gentle breeze today, but the sky was blue. Not as many koinobori flying as I had expected - testament to an aging population, perhaps.

Flying carp and death by loudspeaker

2006-04-23T21:01:00.000+09:00

This evening a trip down the road to the in-laws for eight-year-old Hiroshi's birthday barbeque. First we erected the magnificent koinobori pole. Atsushi scraped out the hole with his fingers. I spotted a mukade (dangerous buggers with a venomous sting) and warned him. He shrugged and dug his fingers further into the hole without a care in the world. I waited for the shriek of pain. None came. After a fair bit of hassle we attached the carp themselves. The wind blew obligingly and the carp danced merrily 30 feet in the air. They were full of vim and vigour. A good sign.

We ate around the barbeque. The evening was cold, as was a lot of the food. For a culture that prides itself on cuisine, I can never understand why temperature doesn't seem to enter the equation. While we ate our cold food, a notice came booming out over the local community loudspeaker system. It reminded me of a tinny announcement at an English country fair declaring the winner of the raffle, but there was no winner in this raffle. A local resident, Mr Fujisawa, aged 60, had passed away. Details of his wake and funeral arrangements, all with a slight echo over the tannoy, were relayed to everyone within a five mile radius. We continued to eat our charcoal-grilled fare.

Hiroshi's grandparents (no relation to my children) were there. The grandfather cornered me, and with a face full of shishamo fish and wonky teeth, told me how Japan was going down the pan - no safety any more. Kids being kidnapped and murdered and all the news was bad. One of his grandchildren told him his manner of speaking was "frightening". I think she meant the contents of his mouth rather than the contents of his moan, but I can't be sure. Unabashed he continued.

When he'd gone to England, the customs officers (knowing all the Japanese in his day were law-abiding) let all the Japanese through without a word, but stopped all the Spanish. My daughter interrupted him in mid-flow and told him she was pretty sure we'd all heard this story before. We had. I wondered if I should "have a word" with my daughter about her cheek, but we had all heard about those slippery Spaniards at least four times previously, and what's more he had sprayed roughly half of his shishamo over me during our conversation, so I didn't really have the heart to give her an earful. The grandfather doesn't get much respect, but then he does speak with his mouth full.

We moved inside and continued to eat and drink. The cake was great. We sang "Happy Birthday" in English. I had brought Guinness. Cans with the widget, so that when you pour it comes out like draught. I think they're pretty darn good. My sister-in-law thought it tasted of soy sauce, and my brother-in-law failed to pass comment. No more deliveries of "the Black stuff" for them.

Hiroshi enjoyed his birthday. We did too. I hope his grandfather can say likewise. The Fujisawa's, on the other hand, had an altogether different kind of ceremony to mark on April 23.

Adoration

2006-04-19T09:17:00.000+09:00

Stopped by a red light. Fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Window down to enjoy the cooling evening breeze. Music on.

Out of the local shop come a young, wavy-haired father with trousers at half-mast, and his delightful seven-year-old daughter. Contentment is etched on their faces. They chatter, waiting for the "little green man" to let them cross the road. As they cross the father bends low and says something into his daughter's ear. At once she raises her arm aloft, walking confidently in the knowledge that this small arm, held perfectly vertically, will repel all oncoming vehicles. On reaching the safety of the pavement, she looks up adoringly into her father's face; he looks down adoringly, at the four 500ml cans of Kirin Lager beer nestling in his shopping bag.

Neighbourhood spring colours

2006-04-17T17:57:00.000+09:00

Took a 30 minute stroll around the neighbourhood with my daughter and snapped a selection of the spring flowers. It really is a fantastic time of year for walking and being in the countryside. Hope that spring doesn't disappear on us too quickly this year. Summer seems to arrive earlier every year. Click this link for a set of photos on flickr.

Bathing with slugs

2006-04-14T15:17:00.000+09:00

If you live in Japan, chances are you have bathed with bodies of varying shapes and sizes. People are not shy in their bathing habits. No hiding those C-section (or even more spectacular) surgical scars, here. Beer bellies, love handles, pendulous breasts, and balls that dangle to the cold, stone floor. They're all on show. No one gives a monkey's. If you have a weird body, are aching to loose it from the confines of clothing, and don't want to risk derision whilst you're at it, then a Japanese hot spring is the place for you.

An onsen is a fantastic place. If the waters are particularly potent, then their soothing effects penetrate deep into your fibre, right down to your very core. Muscles relax, blood pumps, pores open, aches dissolve and cares melt away. You just sit and marvel at the process. Mineral deposits on the walls and floors provide their own version of modern art. Post-bathe your skin feels smooth and silky. You feel reborn.

This area is not the creme-de-la-creme for onsen. For the top notch pools you need to go far north to Hokkaido; to the real mountains in the centre of Japan where the monkeys also like to bathe (see some great photos here); or down south to Kyushu. Around here, one of the better onsen is at Kimita. A sign proudly lays claim to being second best onsen in the Chugoku and Shikoku area. The waters at Kimita weave their magic every time, rendering me helpless to the web of sleep. Yano onsen in Joge used to have the same effect.

Alas, we get to the onsen infrequently.

Tonight, I shared my plastic bath in a dingy bathroom, not with monkeys, nor with soothing minerals, but with two slender slugs. They inched their translucent way across the ceiling as I stared up at them. When I could stand the entertainment no longer, I picked them off the ceiling, opened the window, and gave them a satisfying flick out into the night.

Commute (10) bamboo sway

2006-04-13T12:59:00.000+09:00

Touring Tokyo

2006-04-04T18:12:00.000+09:00

When visitors come to Japan I get to do things I don't normally do. At the weekend, eight of us (3 big and 5 small) took a Hato Bus Cityrama Afternoon Tour around Tokyo. It was great.

Leaving Hamamatsucho bus depot armed with onigiri and sushi, the three-and-a-half-hour trip took in Tokyo Tower, the Diet Building, the Imperial Palace, Asakusa, and ended up in Ginza.
The guide was an oldish fella who did a lovely line in self-deprecatory quips about Tokyo, Japan, and himself. He spoke quietly but smoothly, and his knowledge was extensive. His patter was so easy on the ear, and he was so likeable, that it felt like listening to your grandfather telling tales of yore. He had stunningly good English, but, for the sake of Japanese authenticity, he steadfastly refused to use any articles, definite or indefinite.

I learned more on that bus tour about Japanese history (and in a far more entertaining manner) than I have from any books.
It was all pretty good stuff, although perhaps the highlight was breathing in the Asakusa incense (wafting in the middle of the photo) in the knowledge that my brainpower was mysteriously improving by the second.

Thoroughly recommended.

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

2006-03-28T10:31:00.000+09:00

Finally got round to reading Kafka on the Shore by Murakami Haruki. This link takes you to his official website complete with haunting music, cityscapes and black cats.

The book I have is a small, slippery paperback version that I picked up at the airport. I've managed to snap it's spinal chord and I fear it's not long for this world. The cover design is by Chip Kidd who sounds like a character in one of Murakami's novels. The print is very small, a factor that put me off reading it for a month. I'm now on page 359 out of 489 and am totally hooked.

In fact, I was gripped by the start of a novel for the first time in a long while. I like the parallel narratives, and am enjoying the way Murakami takes you on a journey through Japan, a journey to places I have been and seen. Much of the journey is spent in the countryside. Reading it in English, but being set in Japan, I feel as if it has been written for me and those like me - those with a fair knowledge of Japan as a setting, but who interpret Japan in the English tongue. It doesn't feel unnatural in the slightest to me, to be reading this Japanese novel in English.

I think that a lot of the credit for this must go to the translator, Philip Gabriel. The novel reads very smoothly. (You can read a short interview with him here). Every now and again, I find myself guessing at what the original version of the Japanese novel said, especially in parts of the dialogue. David Mitchell, ex-Hiroshima novelist, criticizes a homogeneity in tone among the cast in his review in The Guardian. He also felt the Americanization would annoy some non-Americophones citing "Jeez Louise!" as an example. I'm certainly no Americophone, but the only part of the English version that jarred so far for me, was when one of the characters asked for his rice to be "super-sized". But having said that, in a novel with characters like Colonel Sanders and Johnnie Walker popping up, it doesn't seem so strange for the text to be McDonaldized.

So far, I reckon both Murakami and Gabriel have really hit the mark in this novel. Hoping that the last 130 pages don't disappoint.

Commute (9) Spring is in the air

2006-03-24T15:05:00.000+09:00

Little did I realise it before snapping the photo, but my wife tells me these flowers are known as "Ooinu no fuguri". Unfortunately, this translates as "Big Dog's Bollocks". Not quite what I had in mind when I took the photo of these delicate meadow flowers.

Graduation

2006-03-23T13:04:00.000+09:00

With the Rising Sun flag as a backdrop, and not a Union Jack to be seen, the sixth graders walked in to a rousing rendition of Land of Hope and Glory. Shivering parents beamed with pride. The odd tear was wiped from the corner of an eye.

All graduating students received a certificate in what was an impeccably choreographed ceremony. There was lots of bowing. Lots of standing up, and sitting down again, too. You can get seriously dizzy at one of these events. The younger students all chanted a message to the graduating classes, and the graduating classes replied in a similar vein.

The speeches were mercifully short. It was music that was at the forefront of the morning. A mini-slideshow of baby pictures was shown to the accompaniment of a current pop song. We had Mascagni's Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, and there was the national anthem, kimigayo, of course. This is always an interesting couple of minutes as kimigayo arouses violent passions in many people. Glancing surreptitiously around the room it's possible to identify among the apolitical masses the staunch nationalists, and the communists, too.

I'm not a fan of formal gatherings, and if truth be told, Japanese formal gatherings in particular. But a ceremony to mark the graduation of your child makes you pause to reflect on life. It was all very moving. I sat there, like many around me I'm sure, gawking at just how quickly my daughter has grown, and wondering just where the last six years had gone.

The most moving moment of all came at the end when the graduating classes turned around to stand face-to-face with the younger students. Then, as one, they sang the school song with a gusto that brought a lump to your throat. The education system in Japan takes a lot of flak, especially from the likes of me, but there's no doubt that our local elementary school has done my daughter proud.

Yoronotaki

2006-03-22T09:49:00.000+09:00

Yoronotaki was my first experience of an izakaya in Japan. Known as "You're in a taxi" by the linguistically challenged foreign community in Hiroshima, I remember it as being a bit grimy, wooden, full of wonderful kanji (and shouting cooks), and cheap Sapporo beer in big bottles. Early forays into Japanese cuisine included ebi chilli sauce, German potato, jaga butter, mixed pizza, and fried potatoes. We had a lot of drunken fun (and potatoes) in "You're in a taxi".

Getting on for two decades after that first experience, I found myself in my local Yoronotaki with some friends for some food and rather fewer beers than in the old days. I resisted the temptation to order the old favourites despite them being etched in my mind. Top of the picks this time was the fried burdock sticks.

Yoronotaki was named after a waterfall in Gifu Prefecture. The waterfall is known as the waterfall of filial piety. (The kanji characters in the logo at the top are support - old age - waterfall). The owner of the izakaya chain liked the elements of filial piety and diligence that went into the story of the waterfall, and felt that they were the elements required to make his business succeed.

This is the story that enchanted him so much:

In Mino, in the eighth century, there lived a poor family. The son of the old couple was a woodcutter, and he loved his parents dearly. One day, he went deep into the mountains and came upon a waterfall. Thinking of his father's love for a wee drop of the hard stuff, he wished that the water were sake. While thinking this filially pious thought, he slipped and fell, and knocked himself unconscious. When he came to, he scooped up some of the water from the falls to revive him. Miraculously it tasted of rather fine sake. He took some home with him, and he and his father could be heard throughout the neighbourhood laughing with glee. Word spread and soon reached the ears of the Emperor who was so impressed with the events that he named the waterfall Yoronotaki.

Not entirely sure what the moral of this story is, but, filial piety and a good drop of sake go a long way in this country.

The Shitmen have Cometh … paying homage to the kumitori men

2006-03-16T10:42:00.000+09:00

A summer scene in a country household:

"They’re here. Close the windows upstairs. Quick!"
"You do the windows in the tatami room, hurry!"
"Close the back door. And kids, don’t forget to close the vents at the top of the windows, too."

The family busied themselves shutting out the outside world. It was a hot, humid summer day, but it was paramount to stop the air from coming in for the next ten minutes. The boy came crashing downstairs with a grin on his face.

"Just in time."

The family converged on the kitchen. They heard the crunch of the boots on the gravel path outside. They heard the hose being dragged across the ground, banging against the flimsy metal gate. They heard the man remove the manhole cover and lean it against the air-conditioning unit. They heard his chirpy call.

"Ready."

He had already inserted the nozzle of the ribbed, thick hose into the pit. The mechanism on the lorry roared into life and then settled into a gentle chugging sound. Outside the kitchen door, the family could hear the activity. They tried to block out visions of the process. All except the boy that is. He looked at the rest of the family. They were all so squeamish.

"Sounds just like he's slurping up the last bits of a McDonald’s shake with a straw."

The smell hit them. Pungent and putrid. Noses were pinched. Eyes watered. Oh, boy, the shitmen have cometh.

The shitmen (kumitori men) are just about the most courteous people I have ever met. They take customer service to new levels. Whether on the phone, or in your backyard pumping out your fetid cesspit, they are politeness personified. They appear oblivious to the smell, a smell so extraordinarily tangible that you could cut it with a knife. Their insouciance is no mean feat. They seem like a real genuine bunch of guys, too, not in the least awkward about the nature of their job. I’m not sure I could be so well-mannered if I was the one pumping other people's shit.

Outside the noises abated. The kumitori men had finished. A knock on the door. A cheerful young face. It was the young father of a boy in my daughter’s class. He was a cool-looking guy with a goatee and a gentle smile. Not quite what you'd expect for someone who, well, kind of "shovels" shit for a living.

"Six thousand four hundred yen, please," he said pleasantly.

Japan/Kauai links

2006-03-12T11:33:00.000+09:00

With the whipping wind and snow flurries here in northern Hiroshima, Hawaii is but a distant memory.

A quick nose on google to check links between Kauai and Japan resulted in more than two million hits.

Here’s a quick sample from the first page covering the dangerous, the historical, the environmental, a gigantic seal, Aloha shirts and the Japanese bureaucracy.

Report of a missile test off this part of the Kauai coast: A joint project carried out this week by the US Missile Defence Agency and Japan’s Defence Agency. (Hope they enjoyed the view).

For information on Japanese internment on Kauai during the war (and archaeological research conducted this week) see this article.

Gooney birds fly into Kauai (by plane!) and researchers from Japan and the US join forces in a project to save them. Read about it here.

And finally, a large number of the early Japanese to emigrate to Kauai were from Oshima, in Yamaguchi. Suo-Oshima is now a sister city of Kauai (a smart move by the Japanese bureaucrat that came up with that plan), and workers at the local town office wear Aloha shirts in the summer months while filing their paperwork in triplicate. The Hawaiian spirit only goes so far though, as the office workers have declined to use Kauai's official hanko (seal) as, being carved from monkeypod, it weighs in at 180 kilograms and may just be a little too hard to handle. You can see it in this photo.

Puff the Magic Dragon

2006-03-04T18:45:00.000+09:00

"Puff the Magic Dragon,
Lived by the sea,
And frolicked in the autumn mist,
In a land called Hanalei"

So goes the song. This is a view across the Hanalei Bay in Kauai, Hawaii. You can see Puff's brown eyes at the end of the outcrop. This island and the other Hawaiian islands have a big connection with Japan, and particularly Hiroshima. A large proportion of the Japanese immigrants who headed out here to work the plantations came from the Hiroshima area. You are much more likely to meet a Taniguchi here in Kauai than a Makanui.

Old Man Sato and the lug nut wrench mugging: a tale of neighbourly love

2006-02-28T15:12:00.000+09:00

Ever been hit in the head with a solid metal lug nut wrench?

No?

Not recommended.

Old Man Sato was the assailant. I am sure he is a nice man, but he is best avoided whenever possible.

Old Man Sato is a neighbour who says little. He never utters more than five or six words, and he has a preference for two or three. Usually he foregoes words entirely, conveying his meaning with grunts and bullish gestures. He has a magnificent head of hair and he appears to be the same solid width the entire length of his body. His ankles are the size of his calves; his calves the size of his thighs; his thighs merge seamlessly into his waist; and his waist flows smoothly to his head, via chest, shoulders and neck, with hardly a smidgeon of contour change. It's as if he's been fashioned from hardwood (possibly two short planks of it), by an inexpert carpenter, with a few cuts and chisel marks here and there in a vain attempt to create some semblance of human proportions.

I rarely see Old Man Sato. Some evenings he can be seen out for an evening stride, moving at military pace with a staff in one hand, a torch in the other. The only other time he appears is when someone is in distress. He's a good Samaritan. When the front wheel of our car went into the open ditch that runs the length of our road (carrying the community’s used bath, sink and washing-machine water), he appeared out of thin air to help. The car had already been jacked up eighty percent of the way, but he insisted on taking over and completing the job. He gripped the heavy lug nut wrench tightly, and, with a few violent jerks the car was raised surprisingly quickly. But, in his moment of triumph, the lug nut wrench slipped, shooting upwards in an arc, going with the flow of his alarming momentum and, with all the precision of a seasoned mugger, clouted me square in the forehead. Old Man Sato didn't bat an eyelid. I checked mine to see if they were still attached.

Thus, I became rather wary of Old Man Sato.

And so it was with a heavy heart (and a few muffled expletives) that I accepted his help the following winter. A heavy snowfall had buckled the metal legs of our carport. I was clearing away the snow from the roof and trying to assess the damage. Old Man Sato arrived and helped to clear the snow with massive, violent thrusting movements of a shovel across the top of the roof. He succeeded not only in clearing vast quantities of snow, but also in ripping the plastic roof completely away from its moorings on the metal frame, rendering it useless. At the end of the snow clearing he grunted, satisfied with his work, and I, glancing towards the flapping plastic and twisted metal, thanked him for his help through gritted teeth.

A few days later I was out in front of the house when a familiar, thick-set figure came striding purposefully up the road towards me. It was Old Man Sato. He was holding a plastic bag from which he pulled a myoga, Japanese ginger. He emitted a guttural chuckle and a grunt, and thrust it into my hand. He chuckled and grunted some more. His hand returned to the bag, his stubby Cuban-cigar fingers clamped round another myoga, and with further primeval 'uggghhs' he handed it over. In all, he gave me four myoga, and he took as much pleasure in giving the fourth as he had with the first. I thanked him, anxiously.

I took the myoga inside and handed them to my wife.

"Oh, lovely," she said. "Who are they from?"

"Old Man Sato," I replied hesitantly.

She peered at me carefully, inspecting me for any remaining signs of sanity. Then she took the myoga, and put them carefully to one side, out of harm's way.

There they remained for a couple of weeks, sitting ominously like unexploded grenades.

We never got round to eating them. And one day they were no longer there.

Commute (8) Reinforcements

2006-02-28T14:05:00.000+09:00

Driving the back lanes to work

2006-02-24T10:24:00.000+09:00

I have an eight mile commute to work. There are two sets of traffic lights to negotiate. It takes about 15 minutes from home to work if I rush, but it’s more fun to meander a bit. I don’t think there can be many better commutes possible. Often, I take the back lanes that wind their way through rice fields and the woods. Some of the lanes pass through farmyards, the road splitting the farm in half. Here you're alone, unaccompanied by anyone or anything bar farmyard smells and noises. The animals themselves are phantoms. You get the occasional glimpse, but they are severely cooped up compared with back home. The cows get to stretch their legs every now and again but they don’t get to roam free. Their commute from work to home is a few paces. Even these pigs seem to get more space. But porkers aside, it’s mainly cows around here. Locally produced milk is good, and the beef from down the road in Jinseki is as juicy and tender as it is famous (in the area).

Of course, most of the farming around here is of rice. Ricefields fill the valleys, and the valleys are hemmed in by wooded hillside. Irrigation is provided by a series of ponds. The ponds, when low, have the tell-tale signs of man’s creation. They are concrete basins. But when they are full, the water meets the roots of the trees at their edge. No man-made evidence is on show, and they really are quite beautiful. On a bright morning (or a light evening), it's uplifting when you turn a bend in the road and see the sun on the water. The world looks good in reflection.

Commute (7) fog 'n poles

2006-02-22T10:06:00.000+09:00

More Alice than Kafka?

2006-02-21T09:52:00.000+09:00

Kafka or Alice? Whose world am I in?

In moments of torment, and there can be quite a few, this question can cross the mind of a grumpy foreigner (let's call him Guy Gynn) as he sups his beer after a day in the Japanese workplace.

The obvious answer to the question would of course be "neither", but the obvious is not what you always hear, or for that matter what Guy always feels.

It's not unusual for Guy's answer to be an unequivocal "Alice's". The comparison, after all, has been made many times. Everything around him can seem removed from Guy's own reality, with his status seemingly dependent on which side of the mushroom he eats. A little nibble on this side and his status grows; a chomp on the other, and he positively withers. At times, in meetings, he is certainly at the Tea Party along with the Hatter, the March Hare, and the rest of the ensemble, making "decisions" that ultimately have no meaning. All authority is held by the Queen of Hearts. Anxious looks at the clock are met with despair. Time has stood still. The interminable meeting shows no sign of coming to an end. It is always 6 o'clock. Poor Guy.

When things are getting pretty bad and paranoia really sets in, Guy's answer may change to "Kafka's". Things look sinister. He is ill at ease, perplexed, lonely, and feels threatened. The Tea Party has taken on the nightmarish hue of The Trial. All the characters in all the scenes are grey and shadowy. Not knowing what is going on, who is in charge, or to whom he can appeal, Guy is passive and accepting. He can do nothing. The treadmill is moving and he is on it. An inexorable slide to a place from which he can't escape. He awaits the inevitable. He can run, but he can't hide. He has become, as you can see, very, very paranoid. Poor, poor Guy.

If you felt things couldn't get any worse for Guy, then you were wrong. Every now and again the answer to the original question "Kafka or Alice: Whose world am I in?" turns out to be "both". Guy leads a schizophrenic existence oscillating between the two worlds. One minute he is merely befuddled, jumping through hoops (or hitting hedgehogs through them with flamingo mallets) at the behest of the Queen of Hearts; the next he is in a Kafkaesque struggle with an invisible enemy, punching thin air in a state of wild exasperation. Which world is he in? Kafka's or Alice's? Poor, poor, poor Guy. He really has lost it.

Of course, Guy lives in neither of these worlds. It's just that, on occasions, it doesn't half seem like he does.

Commute (6) Just when it seemed like spring ...

2006-02-20T10:16:00.000+09:00

Murder in Miyoshi

2006-02-16T12:46:00.000+09:00

In a small country town in Hiroshima prefecture, a murder. When I heard I expected to hear snippets of information spreading like wildfire - in the shops, on the radio, on local TV, in the paper, and on the lips of all and sundry. But the response has been subdued. Yes, it was on the radio. Yes, it warranted a rather small article in the local paper, but it hasn't been sensationalised. This surprised me in a smallish country town. It would have been all the talk in a similar-sized town in Britain, especially when the victim (a woman in her fifties) had been found stabbed upward of thirty times in the chest and head. It must have been a frenzied attack. Perhaps it didn't cause such a stir because the apparent killer (a taxi driver in his sixties) turned up at the police station an hour or so after the crime, and admitted everything. Drunk, and angry, he had called at the woman's house to claim back money she owed. Just in case she refused, he had taken a kitchen knife along with him.

Commute (5) a bleak sweep of the Egawa

2006-02-15T17:07:00.000+09:00

'Mad-dog' Kubo, Pretty Boy, or the Sushi Bomber?

2006-02-11T16:01:00.000+09:00

Good news for Japan’s World Cup bid – Tatsuhiko ‘Mad-dog’ Kubo is back from injury. Out injured for eighteen months with a herniated disc (“even pissing was painful”), he makes a welcome return in the friendly games leading up to the WC. Can he solve Japan’s problems in attack? See how he fared here.

Kubo is a rangy, left-footed striker who has a better eye for goal than any of Japan’s other strikers. He is also clearly far more of a loose cannon than the rest of them. Yanagisawa looks great, a pretty boy with a heart-breaking smile. Unfortunately ladies (or gents), he appears to be a passion-free zone. He plays with the verve of one of his fur coats. Takahara (the 'sushi-bomber') just doesn’t cut it. He looks tough with his shaved head, but the sushi-bomber’s fuse is rarely lit. Oguro and the other pretenders are still a bit raw.

Kubo plays for the Yokohama F Marinos team, but in his early days he played for our very own Hiroshima SanFrecce. He is also a bit of a wild scamp, some say with enough screws loose to bring the whole house down.

Rumour has it that Kubo first showed off his screwball nature at a disciplinary hearing. He was up on a charge, having been red-carded in unusual circumstances. The disciplinary committee chairman asked him to confirm that he had jogged 20 yards to the touchline and then proceeded to push the assistant referee. Kubo said that this was quite untrue. The chairman, flourishing an official document no doubt, repeated the charge. Kubo stuck to his guns insisting the report was incorrect. When pressed for his version of events, Kubo raised a few eyebrows when he insisted it was in fact 50 yards and not 20; that he most certainly had not jogged, he had sprinted; and that he had not pushed the assistant referee, he had punched his lights out.

Apocryphal or not, this story catapulted Kubo to the top of my list of players to watch in Japan.

'Mad-dog' has wispy facial hair – not really a fashion statement, it’s more as if he doesn’t quite trust himself with a razor. Watch out for his mad, staring eyes, his hangdog expression, and if you are an assistant referee, his right hook at the World Cup in the summer.

Watch out Germany! 'Mad-dog' Kubo is hopefully coming your way.

Big bad boys ... but are yakuza numbers dwindling?

2006-02-10T12:59:00.000+09:00

A report in a Japanese newspaper says that the number of yakuza members has dwindled. Down for the first time in ten years, in fact.

Yakuza presence appears to be comparatively light in Hiroshima. On occasions, you can see some sharp suits and darker-than-dark sunglasses prowling downtown. I seem to remember there was a shooting at the train station donkey's years ago; and about a dozen years ago (perhaps more), some mafia bigwig was shot in the city's streets. As a consequence, the building in which I worked had armed riot police stationed at each entrance. A known yakuza lived in a penthouse at the top. The riot police were there to protect him.

Seems very odd. The authorities have stats on their numbers. They have addresses for the organisations. (The Hiroshima city branch has just shy of 300 members and its headquarters is in Nihoshin-Machi, Minami-Ku. It is the fourteenth largest group in Japan). And on occasion the police are sent to protect them.

The members do get pulled in for questioning a fair bit. Processions of yakuza presenting themselves at the local courthouse were a feature in the early 90's. My commute in those days regularly included sightings of large men in garish clothing, with obsequious (but very large) henchmen in tow. They seemed to be having a bit of a laugh, acting out an already known plotline. This complacency seemed to confirm the historically cosy relationship between authorities and crime syndicates.

The numbers are down, but only by comparatively few. No end to the status quo just yet, me thinks.

For an entertaining yet ultimately depressing read about a foreigner's life with the yakuza, try Tokyo Underworld. For thorough research, I'd recommend Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, and for an eclectic mix of stories from the seedy side of life in Japan, you can't go far wrong with Speed Tribes.

Rights for all sexes?

2006-02-08T11:02:00.000+09:00

This article (click here) caught my eye the other day. A male-to-female transsexual in Gifu, Japan, was not permitted to register officially as a woman because she has children that were born before she had the sex change. Apparently, the law is in place to protect children who would be "confused" if a parent officially tried to "register a gender change". Hmmm. I doubt the registration would add to their confusion.

It caught my eye because, coincidentally, I had just been reading an article by Rod Liddle in The Spectator. He mentioned that the Birmingham University Christian Union had had their bank account frozen by the university authorities for two reasons. First it wanted to admit only Christians to its membership (shock horror!), and second its publicity recommended the CU to “men and women”, therefore discriminating against “transsexual or transgendered people”. Liddle was dumbfounded by the “lunatics” having so much control that failing to advertise to “sexual weirdos” resulted in punitive action.

So, rather differing attitudes of the respective authorities to the human rights of the transsexuals. Of course, in the Japanese case, there is the added complication of the human rights of the children involved.

I wondered what my three children would think if I declared I wanted to become a woman and told them I was booked in for surgery on Monday. I think they would take it pretty hard. They carry enough burden as it is in a small country town with a father who is, by definition, a weirdo, because he is not from these shores. My son wishes his mates didn’t comment (however gently) about his large nose holes, his self-perceived prominent ears (surely a Japanese trait – a prerequisite for NHK presenters, is it not?) and he dislikes his long eyelashes immensely. He’d rather look as hard as nails like a prop-forward.

Not so long ago here in Japan, I worked for a year with a woman who had previously been a man. At my workplace, I must admit, we waited with bated breath to meet her. I had never knowingly met a transsexual person, and I’m pretty sure most of my colleagues hadn’t either. I imagined a strapping, broad-shouldered woman, who could hold her own on the rugby field - a sort of 'butch' Dame Edna.

The suits that matter debated hotly about which toilets she would be using, the men’s or the women’s. Obviously it was the women’s, but many of the enlightened top-brass just couldn’t get their heads round the idea. Would there be complaints from other women? Using the men's wouldn't solve the problem. Cue sharp intakes of breath, choreographed sucking sounds, and mumbles of "komaru naaaaa". Life can’t be easy if you are trapped inside a body with the wrong appendages. And I doubt it gets a lot easier once you’ve taken the plunge to actually have “cut and paste” surgery. You're different, and in many people's eyes being different basically makes you a "weirdo".

To my shame, when she arrived, she pretty much fitted my stereotype (bar the Dame Edna bit). She was a powerful, six-footer and counting, with shoulders any man would be proud of. You’d have been relieved to see her lined up as lock-forward in your side of the scrum. But, she was definitely a woman, and confident and comfortable in her Mark-II body.

Her lover came with her. Her lover was a woman, and their relationship was therefore lesbian. But get this, they had been lovers for many years. In their early days they'd had a heterosexual relationship (him being a he and she being a she). Talk about an enduring, extraordinary love. These two loved each other so much that the gender didn’t matter. The girlfriend had been able to overcome any "confusion" she may have felt, although it can't have been straightforward.

Life can’t be simple for transsexuals, but it can’t be a picnic for their loved ones, either. Especially if they still spend their lunchtimes in school playgrounds.

(By the way, Liberty, the human rights museum in Osaka has reopened and it is well worth a visit. One of the dozen or so themes it covers is about sexual minorities in Japan)

Commute (4)

2006-02-08T09:38:00.000+09:00

Kyoto station ... did I see an eyesore?

2006-02-07T14:51:00.000+09:00

I had some time to kill the other day in Kyoto station. This is a snap from the outside. The building arouses passions, especially from long-term residents. The argument against the huge structure of glass and steel is that it's so un-Kyoto, that it just doesn't fit. It's too high and imposing and detracts from the Kyoto-ness of Kyoto. It has helped to open further the floodgates of crass, modern architecture in a once beautiful city of low, wooden buildings. The argument for the building - that it is an architectural masterpiece, and a big improvement on the last one. It's the twenty-first century and Kyoto should move on. If Kyoto Tower (the eyesore reflected in the photo) was permitted, then why on earth not Kyoto Station?

I'd love as much of old Kyoto to be preserved as possible. It's disappearing pretty fast. On the road I used to live, the old machiya houses are being replaced by convenience stores. I think that's a great shame. But Kyoto Station itself, I'm not so sure about. I thought that I'd naturally come out in opposition to the building which was opened in 1997. However, once you're inside, the sheer size of the place is awesome. Stairways to heaven. Escalators too. A cathedral of glass and metal. Some of the artwork is a bit dodgy, but it's robust enough to stand up to the elements. And the elements are certainly part of the station building. That is one of the things I think I liked about the place. You're not sure if you are inside or outside, and for the indecisive chap that I am, that is rather appealing.

Not all the modern art is dodgy. I reckon some of it is pretty good. I rather liked this piece in the photo.

But highlight of an hour to kill at the station is not the 700 yen cup of Earl Gray in the English Tea Shop, but the overhead walkway. A futuristic tunnel that takes you along the heights of the building itself.

From there you can look out across Kyoto to the north, taking in one eyesore from another, as many long-term Kyoto residents would put it.

Commute (3) cold here, again

2006-02-06T13:34:00.000+09:00

Our boys took one hell of a beating

2006-02-06T11:57:00.001+09:00

On Sunday our under-11 football team headed in from the sticks to take on the big city teams in the prefectural finals. This photo shows the very formal nature of the closing ceremony at Hiroshima Stadium. Mercifully the speeches were short.

The local Chugoku Shinbun newspaper covered the competition. Leading up to the tournament they published pictures of the eight teams that had qualified for the finals with accompanying blurb. Seven of the teams were immaculately kitted out, arms folded, intense stares to a man. They looked formidable. One team was ragged - a jumbled assortment of uniforms, arms hanging loosely by their sides, staring somewhere off into the middle distance. That team was ours.

The blurb for seven of the teams talked of never-give-up attitudes, training regimes, experience in previous competitions, and using a combination of teamwork, covering, speed, and skill to aim for ultimate victory. One team talked of snow hampering training, but they would try hard. Their motto was, “Work hard at study and sports, and take care of your friends!” The opposition must have been quaking in their size-4 boots. As I read, I must admit my quaking was of the fatherly pride variety. We would show those city slickers a thing or two.

Parents gathered in clusters in the old Hiroshima Stadium with its peeling paintwork and impossibly small seats (all spectators should bring one buttock only, please). The teams marched into the stadium. Seven teams marched in time, well-drilled, in straight lines. Our team sort of lurched its way in like a drunken snake. With the players staring around them, seemingly in awe of the size of the stadium, all pretence of a "march" was soon abandoned. A sergeant-major would have had a fit.

The stadium brought back memories for me of the dawn of professional football in Japan in the early nineties. Wonderful memories of a missed Gary Lineker penalty, an international match in the Asian games between Hong Kong and Uzbekistan (official attendance 2500, actual attendance 43 including players and coaching staff), and of a long-haired Czech playing for the local Hiroshima San Frecce team who, in a fit of pique, got his foot wedged tight in an advertising hoarding after kicking a hole in it. When he realized what an arse he looked, he panicked, lost his balance and fell. Eventually he was rescued but minus his boot. I was reminded of a scene from “Jaws”. The San Frecce crowd looked on in breathless wonder at the exotic entertainment.

Sunday was, of course, a far more important event for me than any of these distant memories. My son, Yuji, was one of the boys in from the country. Here he is (looking so small) limbering up before kick-off in an effort to shake off the "drunken snake" hangover.

To cut a long story short, on the day, experience, covering, speed and skill were somewhat superior to our mantra of “taking care of your friends” and we got thumped 7-0. As the result became more obvious with every passing second, the spectators in our group took to gentle self-deprecation.

“It’s too warm”, said a smiling mum as the icy wind whipped around our ankles. “If we’d had three foot of snow the city kids wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Look at our lads. Attention spans of a bunch of monkeys down on a recce from the mountains.”

“Just as well we didn’t win. The Championship final is in Yamaguchi. And some of us don’t have passports.”

Vanquished in the prefectural finals, but this ragged bunch are still North Hiroshima Champions.

Damned with the faintest of faint praise

2006-02-01T09:29:00.000+09:00

Tatemae and honne are often the bane of a foreigner's life in Japan. Working out what a person really means or really feels can be an excruciating, and often fruitless, experience. Often, it really isn't worth the bother.

If you didn't click the link above, basically tatemae is "what is said", whereas honne is "what is intended." Tatemae is sugar-coated candy, sweet untruths - or little white lies, if you prefer. Honne is the bitter pill, or the cold, hard facts. Honne can be the words that cut you to the quick.

These two concepts are often portrayed as uniquely Japanese, but of course they're not. They occur extensively around the world in varying degrees. The English are pretty good at softening the blow with little white lies, but perhaps even better at cutting to the quick. Tatemae is to honne what an English "you haven't changed a bit" is to a sotto voce "God, hasn't he aged!"; or "I've had a lovely evening" is to Groucho Marx's pithy "... but this wasn't it."

This tatemae honne dichotomy sprang to mind when I read a marvellous end of term email assignment from a student. It made me reach for my "English Dictionary of Japanese Ways of Thinking" (not for the faint-hearted). It says this about these "Japanese ways":

"Much to the dismay of Westerners ... the Japanese use these two forms of communication and occasionally switch from tatemae to honne, or vice versa, depending on the context of the situation. Therefore, skilled negotiators are expected to determine, by the tone of voice and other nonverbal clues, the depth and subtlety of the other party's intentions."

I'm not sure if my student was employing honne, tatemae, or a mixture of both. "Depth" possibly, but "subtlety"? Surely not.

These are the wonderful words in the closing message of his mail:

This lesson was very simply awful, but interesting.
Best wishes,
Kenji

The Big Smoke

2006-01-29T21:36:00.000+09:00

Over the weekend I swapped the crisp, clear air of the Hiroshima countryside for the smog, grime and filth of the nation's capital. When in Tokyo, you feel that breathing may actually be detrimental to your health. Pores become clogged, fingernails gather dirt at an alarming rate, and you feel as if you're a 60-a-day Benson & Hedges man.

But I love visiting the capital. From the Hiroshima countryside it is a journey of 414 miles by air. It takes just over an hour but it is as close to time travel as I have experienced. The countryside you leave behind is, without doubt, still marooned somewhere in the 20th century - arrive in Tokyo and you find yourself firmly in the 21st. You leave as an exotic curiosity to all those around you, and arrive as anonymous as any other face in the crowd.

On a Tokyo trip, I can play at being a tourist - an oft-forgotten luxury in a country in which I have spent almost half my life. On my last trip I visited Yasukuni Shrine at dusk. In the half-light it is as powerfully atmospheric and eerie as it is controversial. This time I was taken to Tokyo's Twin Towers, otherwise known as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Buildings.

Planned in the "financial bubble", and completed after it had burst, rumour has it that the buildings' electricity bills alone are bleeding the city dry. Just looking up at the South Tower is enough to make a hick from the country dizzy. Look down and, well, the whole world starts spinning.

The views from the 45th floor are wonderful and I highly recommend a trip.

It is another world in Tokyo - inhabited by a completely different race of people. Tokyo is more than two hundred times larger than the small country town in which I live. Tokyo is neon, noise and bustle. Miyoshi has the odd patch of neon, I guess; for noise we have to make do with the primordial screeching of rogue cats on heat. But bustle? We don't go in for that in any shape or form.

Not many Tokyoites would want to spend too much time here, what with the restaurant choices being limited to ramen or ramen. But many of the locals don't care too much for the big smoke either - one young woman, born and bred here in the sticks, said she wouldn't give the time of day to any man from Tokyo, "They all speak funny and they're so effeminate. Give me a real Hiroshima man anyday."

In Tokyo, I feel like a country bumpkin chewing on his stem of straw. I stare around me at the throngs of people, stare upwards at shiny buildings that go on for ever, and just stare. In Tokyo, the shoe is on the other foot. I do the staring, and nobody pays a blind bit of notice to me. It's great for a change.

Roads to nowhere

2006-01-23T14:28:00.000+09:00

Driving with three locals through the countryside the other day, it was interesting to listen to their conversation.

At ease in each other’s company, they would talk about local matters, often triggered by something seen from the car window - the new athletic stadium that we passed, the newly-opened road, and a rather forlorn looking housing estate with the majority of plots standing empty.

The stadium could only be half glimpsed from the road. It looked rather magnificent, though we couldn’t see the track itself. The driver said the track hadn’t actually been built yet. Unfortunately, the stands had been positioned so badly that it was now impossible to make the track big enough to reach the desired proportions.

I was gobsmacked. The "magnificent" new athletic stadium would therefore be downgraded in the national classifying system, presumably only attracting meets that incorporate the 83 metre sprint, the not-very-long jump, and the hop, skip and err, that's it.

The new road is a beauty. It looks smooth and shiny. Its tarmac surface glistens like the sheen of sweat on an Olympic sprinter. It cuts a swathe through the trees to … to … well, to nowhere really. It is deserted. “Anybody know why that road was built?” asks the guy in the front passenger seat. “It’s a carbon-copy of the one just down the road. I don't understand.”

The housing estate has some colourful, but somewhat plastic-looking, homes.

The houses themselves look welcoming, but the area around them does not. The estate has been there for several years now. Large signboards shout the message that the empty plots (plus the mandatory colourful, but somewhat plastic-looking, house) can be purchased for roughly 25 million yen (125,000 pounds) – and each house has its own hot spring thrown in for good measure.

But nobody's rushing to splash the cash, not even for the soothing forty degree waters, and the empty plots remain empty.

In his well-written tale of doom, Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan, Alex Kerr laments what has happened to the land in Japan. It makes for depressing reading if you are planning to stay and live in Japan (Kerr has left). I recommend it if you too have left Japan.

If you are still here and value your Japanese friends or family, then the book can be the cause of much heartache.

Japanese spouses or friends quite rightly get a bit pissed off when cross-examined: Why are all the mountains planted with industrial cedar? Why are all the riverbanks enmeshed in concrete? Why is there no town planning? Why are old buildings, historical sights, and beautiful vistas not adequately protected? Why, indeed, are there so many beautiful roads to nowhere?

Golf in the hills

2006-01-21T20:15:00.000+09:00

There are roughly 2500 golf courses in Japan. The photo shows a playing partner negotiating the snow at the 148 yard 4th of one of them.

For the last five years, an average of a hundred courses have gone bankrupt every year. I asked the local maths teacher if this course had suffered the same fate. He laughed and answered, "Several times."

One of the previous owners had done prison time for his part in the financial shenanigans and he is attached to one of the more unsavoury elements of Japanese society. Lots of golf courses are connected with the yakuza - after all, golf clubs involve real estate, construction, and finance ... the holy trinity of the organised crime world.

Golf club memberships in Japan can be bought and sold in much the same way as stocks and shares. At their peak fifteen or so years ago, memberships at exclusive clubs cost several hundred million yen. Now they are worth just a fraction. My playing partners all had their fingers burnt, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Golf takes a long time in Japan. We teed off at about 10am and the winning putt was holed at just before 5pm. That's far too long, but I was the only one in our foursome who thought so. It was fun though.

We stopped for lunch at the halfway point, and drank some beer and sake to ward off the cold, which meant the tee shots on the back nine were a little wayward.

The course had no escalators, no train rides to take players from green to clubhouse, and our golf buggy wasn't even remote controlled - we had to drive ourselves. The shame of it.

The financial cloud that hangs over many courses has a wonderfully thick silver lining for the average Joe - my round of golf cost me just 5000 yen (about 25 quid), a sum that was almost unthinkable a few years ago.

Commute (2) red-hatted Ojizosama

2006-01-20T17:56:00.000+09:00

Tense, nervous headache ... exams are upon us

2006-01-18T17:26:00.000+09:00

Reach for your medication – it’s silly season again. Entrance exams are around the corner, and entrance exams are big news, big business, and big bother.

Last year, the news was all about burgeoning sales of Kit-Kats. By eating these evil, waist-expanding chocolate bars, good luck was sure to come your way. Why? Because in local parlance the beloved two-fingered bar is rendered “kitto katsu”. And in Japanese, this means something akin to “You are sure to win”.

Digression warning: All foreigners have their own favourite stories of Japanese pronunciation of English. Mine is the story of the man in an English class who revealed he'd had "cockrash" at the weekend. The English teacher, astounded, asked him to repeat himself. He insisted he'd had "cockrash". The teacher then advised him that in North America it was better to use the term "jock itch", and, turning to the class, asked them all to repeat after her - "jock itch". She was met with a large chorus of very satisfying "jock itch". Only later did she realise that the student had been in a car crash.

This year's big news is about the introduction of an English listening element to the university entrance exam. This morning’s NHK news featured a special section all about this and we were treated to some interesting pronunciation. The presenters "did their best" to show how it should be done by both greeting us, and signing off, in English. The words were fine, but the sounds were not.

I have a feeling this was deliberate. I’d wager that the hosts’ English is pretty close to top notch. To work for NHK, you must have had to score well in entrance exams, as well as be pretty bright. Why the faux-awkward pronunciation? Who knows? Harmony? Not wanting to put off too many viewers? Another trite reason?

The NHK show introduced a new electronic gadget to help students negotiate their new hurdle – the need to actually understand spoken English. Some sort of glorified tape recorder I think. No price was mentioned, but the new entrance exam was described as a great business opportunity. And boy is business booming when it comes to entrance exams.

Take cram schools as an example. They run on “entrance examination” fuel. There are reportedly fifty thousand or so cram schools in the country and it is a ten trillion yen business. Ten trillion yen! The mind boggles.

Here's another. Rumour has it that some popular Japanese universities make as much as thirty-five million dollars from their entrance exams. Not yen, not lira, but thirty-five million bucks.

So exams are big news and big business, and for the students and their parents they are obviously big bother.

But spare a thought for those that make the exams. They are sworn to secrecy, are reduced to speaking in hushed tones, and creep around surreptitiously in small groups with collars raised. They glance nervously over their shoulders which sag with their heavy burden. These poor creatures have spent a large amount of the year in clandestine meetings dotting i's and crossing t's. They then change their minds, deciding to cross the i's and dot the t's. Next they argue over whether the changes made in the last meeting should be reversed. This continues ad nauseam.

Why is the burden so great for these modern day heroes?

Well, precisely because the entrance exams are big news, big business and big bother.

The single biggest crime that can be committed at this time of year is to dot your t's when it should have been your i's. If mistakes are found in entrance exam questions then the world knows about it. There is uproar, and the press, the bean-counters and the students' parents want to know why - they want their pound of flesh. The perpetrators of this heinous crime are duly hung and drawn by their employers, before being wheeled out for the ritual quartering by the waiting media.

Spare a thought for whoever is next for the dreaded drop, disembowlment, and chop.

And all in public too!

Tondo time

2006-01-15T16:53:00.000+09:00

Early January sees communities all over Japan setting fire to pyramids of bamboo. Neighbours gather and build the bonfire, and then New Year decorations, children's calligraphy, and hopes and wishes for the year are attached to the structure.

Then the whole thing is set ablaze.

The heat is intense and sake is heated in the hollowed out branches of bamboo. Sparks fly. Burn holes appear in clothing.

Mochi (rice cakes) are squeezed into the split ends of thin bamboo branches and roasted over the embers. More sake is drunk from cups fashioned from the bamboo itself.

Then the feast begins. Coals from the tondo fire are moved into a series of barbeques. Hands get burnt.

This year my family ate roasted wild boar caught by the locals. An old guy of few words remarked drily, "It should taste good - it ate enough of my rice before we caught it!"

The Land of Milk and Honey

2006-01-14T18:18:00.000+09:00

Don’t listen to foreign blokes who’ve had too much imo shochu, (or tequila) when you’ve had a Glenlivet or two yourself. If you do, you’ll find out the following:

(1) the whereabouts of the fabled “Land of Milk and Honey” (not Israel, but apparently somewhere in Hesaka, in the East of Hiroshima)

(2) a vast array of Australian cultural terminology

(3) more home truths than you bargained for

and

(4) that you are the proud owner of an expensive flat-screen TV of surprisingly ample proportions

Most of the Western ex-pats in Japan tend to find themselves drinking or eating in enclaves – some more than others. I was once asked in a job interview in Kyoto, by a fearsome Korean woman, why it was that all Westerners needed to hang out together rather than to assimilate into the Japanese lifestyle as she had done. The question caught me off-guard and I think I replied that I felt I had assimilated pretty well and spent a lot of time with Japanese friends.

This answer was, of course, not entirely true, as I now know the whereabouts of the “Land of Milk and Honey”, a vast array of Australian cultural terminology, home truths aplenty, and I also have a magical Sharp Aquos flat-screen TV arriving tomorrow. Ahhh, bliss!

Commute (1) A cold and frosty morning

2006-01-12T18:29:00.000+09:00

What the kids are reading in the Japanese countryside - manga vs the fantasy novel

2006-01-12T09:36:00.000+09:00

We don't get too many pygmies out here in the hills surrounding Miyoshi - the odd wild boar, a few raccoon dogs, plenty of snakes and even the occasional bear-sighting, but no pygmies to date. Yet it was pygmies that woke my daughter last night, leading us to exchange beds at around midnight.

After freezing the soles of my feet on our wooden (is it really wood? ... but it's so thin) flooring, I picked my way across the fantasy novel-strewn floor of my daughter's bedroom and found the warm haven of a recently vacated bed. I turned off the light and was assailed by a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars. It took me by surprise. I turned on the light and had a closer look around my daughter's room. Fantasy novels everywhere.

The fantasy novels are not to blame for the pygmies - that was a re-run of an old Ally McBeal episode that she caught a few minutes of - but her world is populated by strange creatures and peoples created by the authors of the books she reads. She used to read a lot of manga, all the rage overseas now - but manga is old hat in our neck of the woods. What she and a lot of her fellow Japanese sixth grade classmates are really into are fantasy novels.

Don't get me wrong, manga is still extremely popular, but top of the lending list at the local library (an oasis of sophistication in a down-to-earth country town) is a fantasy novel series. And here's the thing - you would think that with all the expertise that goes into creating manga-worlds that these fantasy novels would be the preserve of Japanese authors, but that's not the case. The top of the favourites list in our corner of Miyoshi are works translated into Japanese from the pens of Emily Rodda from Australia, Darren Shan (a 33 year-old Londoner), Kai Meyer (a German), Dianne Wynn Jones and Philip Pullman (the UK writers), and Christopher Paolini (an absurdly young American).

The manga is of course the perfect book for the ancient Japanese art of "tachiyomi". The word basically means to stand and read. In bookstores all over the country, you can find lines of people reading manga from cover to cover, thereby saving them the trouble of forking out their hard-earned yen. Reading a manga does not take all day. However, my daughter has taken the art of "tachiyomi" to new levels.

Last Saturday she read the final installment of the latest fantasy series "tachiyomi" style in the local bookstore. While she was reading I went off to do some of my own fantasizing over the flat screen TVs. Forty minutes later I returned to find her on page 85. After buying the groceries and the beer she was nearly halfway. I went home and left my wife with her. An hour or so later I called up to find out that she was still standing strong and on page 270. "Not long to go, come and get us." I did and was met by a red-eyed, blinking child with aching feet and a mind full of dragons.

Manga versus the fantasy novel. It is a tough one to call. Recent trends see manga as a growing export and the fantasy novel a growing import. My daughter says that manga are good but she prefers to read about "dragons and stuff" and apparently Japanese authors don't seem to write about them.

Snow ... a test post

2006-01-11T12:08:00.000+09:00

This is a picture of the snowfall in the foothills of Miyoshi, in the Bihoku area of Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. I took it from an upstairs window two weeks ago. Snow in Japan is big news both here and abroad.

Trawling the world's press to see how it reports on all things Japan-related is a habit of mine. Often quirky and stereotypical, you'll usually find news on stunning new toilet-technologies, or feats of work-related stamina, or solo adventurers camping in the craters of active volcanoes. However, the latest Japan news from England centres on the more serious effects of the large snowfall on the Japan Sea side of the country. I even had an email from a friend in Wales asking if I was under four metres of snow. I'm not.

I checked out the BBC website yesterday for Japan related news and most of the reporting about the snow problems appeared sane and well balanced, certainly compared to some of the English language news sources here in Japan. Many of these tended to be of the tragic-yet-dramatic variety - "Elderly Woman Trapped in Heavy Snow Freezes to Death" (this was alongside the snappy headlines "Man Stabbed Parents Because They Wouldn't Drink His Miso Soup" and "Pin-up Queen Finds Range Of Emotions While Playing Robot").

The BBC had a slideshow of "snowfall in Japan" pictures. It can be seen here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4592056.stm

I suppose I was not altogether surprised to see the first slide showing Mt. Fuji and the second a geisha - a clear reminder to all English readers that this was Japan and not Bolton that we were talking about. The more prosaic pictures are in slides three, four and five. They tell their own story. Some people up north are having a really tough time.

Here in the foothills in Bihoku we had our fair share of snow and did our fair share of shovelling. Biceps are bulging in our neighbourhood. The snow came before Christmas, and despite having none since the turn of the year, it seems to have no intention of leaving us.