Something To Write Home About

Confucius, he say "you want buy watch?"

2011-01-14T20:28:00.016+09:00

My trip to China broke comfortably into two parts. 5 days in Shanghai with Minori, staying in a 5 star hotel, eating in nice restaurants and generally enjoying a genteel city break, albeit in the middle of winter. The second part with Bob was much more of the backpack, random street food and hard beds in dorm rooms and sleeper trains. The perfect mix.

It only took a matter of hours for us to be ripped off by a taxi driver, despite repeated warnings from the Lonely Planet, people who’d been there before and signs in the airport and train stations. The trip should’ve cost us about 60 yuan, but it cost 400. I knew we were being scammed but I couldn’t prove it and I couldn’t join in the aggressive street theatre the driver insisted on performing when I questioned the price. It was irritating and not the best start but easy enough to laugh off when I worked out that we’d paid the same price for a taxi in Japan to get to the train station in the morning. It takes a special kind of tight-fistedness to happily pay a taxi fare in the morning and then rage about the same fare that evening. But it didn’t endear the local taxi drivers to us. From then on it was subway or foot.

Shanghai wasn’t what I expected, though writing this sentence I realise I’d struggle to say what I did expect. The little I knew about Shanghai in advance was from history and historical novels (such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s fantastic When We Were Orphans), never much help at preparing you for the modern reality. I’ll say rather that Shanghai was a disappointment. There was little of a sightseeing nature to do, especially with a bone-chilling Northerly blasting through the city, although the Yuyuan Gardens were beautiful and a welcome break from the hustlers on the street shouting “hello watch, hello bag”. It was only towards the end of the trip that I finally realised my answer to them should’ve been “hello, and don’t call me watch.”

We had some amazing food, though the service hovered between atrocious and ridiculous. In a highly recommended Thai restaurant us and the four tables around us sat back and watched in amusement as waiter after waiter brought the wrong food, the wrong drinks or, more frequently, part of an order. The table of five who managed to get nothing but a glass of coke despite repeated requests won the night.

We took a daytrip to Suzhou, home of some stunning UNESCO-approved gardens, quaint old streets and the worst tourist infrastructure I’ve ever witnessed. I can only assume the delegates from UNESCO didn’t arrive in Suzhou by train. We stepped out of the station to find ourselves on the wrong side of an impassable motorway, with no signs in any language and an army of incredibly loud people yelling “taxi? bus? tour guide?” in our faces. A combination of luck and inspired guessing of Chinese characters by Minori (it turns out Chinese and Japanese characters share the same relationship as say English and Finnish) and we caught a bus going in almost the right direction. Suzhou was a nice place to visit, but the stress caused by trying to guess translations and work out maps while being shouted at by people who wouldn’t take “look will you just fuck off, if I wanted a tour guide I wouldn’t have walked past the other 60 dicks shouting at me just to get to you” as an answer (trust me, I tried).

On the 27th Minori returned, not entirely unhappily, to Japan. She had a rougher time of it than me through a combination of racism both direct and indirect when they discovered she was Japanese and disapproving looks and comments when they thought she was Chinese but holding hands with me. Shanghai wasn’t for either of us.

I had a day by myself and went to Nanjing. I specifically saved this for after Minori’s departure as Nanjing was the site of the Nanjing Massacre during World War II. In 6 weeks Japanese soldiers killed 300’000 people, mostly civilians, particularly women and children, as well as embarking on a spree of rape, torture and pillage. As unwelcome as Minori was made to feel by some in Shanghai, her appearance in Nanjing wouldn’t have gone down at all well. The Memorial site and attached museum is a sombre and horrifying experience. I’ve never visited any of the sites of the Holocaust in Europe, but I imagine the atmosphere is similar. An initial courtyard of sculpture and bleak, black monuments leads you to a mass grave – an actual mass grave with actual victims bones still lying there. Beyond is a museum that pulls no punches when it comes to graphic description, hammering the point home or sheer volume of detail. I am a lover of history in general and Japanese history in particular, but after an hour I had to admit defeat an left without seeing the exhibition on Sino-Japanese relations from 1894 – 1945 or any of the countless testimonies by survivors. I was also driven out by the gift shop staff who adopted the same sales technique as their street counterparts, namely shouting “hello book? Hello sir you want book?” I did as it happens but being shouted at in the face is a sure-fire way to keep my wallet in my pocket.

The other highlight of Nanjing was the city walls which are generally intact and upon which you can walk. I won’t say more about this here as that is what the pictures are for. I also spent about 3 hours wandering around lost, mainly because the LP failed to point out that the whole North West quarter of the city is an army base and consequently all roads are closed to people like me.

Bob arrived and after a day unwinding and drinking in Shanghai, and a return trip to Nanjing, this time involving a cable car ride up an exposed mountain in the depths of winter (not our brightest idea ever), we caught the sleeper to Beijing. Unfortunately the nice man who sold me the tickets had failed to put us in the same cabin (4 berths, but we were next door to each other) so we spent a large part of the trip sitting in the corridor drinking whisky and playing cards. Needless to say we arrived in Beijing wrecked. Which was nice when we and our bags joined another half million people in attempting to ride the subway. How we ever got to the hostel I don’t know.

A former colleague of Bob’s, Jun-wei, was back home in Beijing and had offered to show us around. This turned out to be a bad idea, for a few reasons. The first was the sheer cold. The wind in Shanghai was bad enough, but in Beijing it was mental. While in Tiananmen Square I saw a metal bin, bolted into the ground, ripped clean from it’s moorings. Jun-wei took us past the President’s palace (apparently, all we could see were big walls, slogans and a quite dazzling array of military equipment. I dared Bob to ring the doorbell and run away. He didn’t. Chicken), Tiananmen Square (where security personnel completely lacking irony-awareness searched us for firearms before allowing us to enter), the Forbidden City (which was shit. Nothing more to say. Biggest over-hyped pile of wank ever) and various shopping streets. Oh, and the hotels. Jun-wei had an idiosyncratic guiding style. “That’s a hotel. And that’s a hotel. And that’s a hotel.” At lunchtime he said “we’re going to have lunch at this nice place, we can get traditional Beijing noodles.” So we followed him around and around in the cold until eventually, standing in the middle of an area full of food stalls, he said “so, what do you want to eat.” Cold and hungry we very nearly barbecued him. We took the earliest opportunity to ditch him and go back to the hostel in order to warm up and get ready for the evening, for it was Hogmanay.

Acting on a recommendation from one of the staff in the hostel we went to an area a few streets away which turned out to be one of the biggest night spots in Beijing (not that you’d know from the Lonely Planet which didn’t even mention it, another scuffle in my continuing battle with the LP). Fighting our way bravely through throngs of men saying “you want girly bar, pretty girls?” we found a bar called 31 that offered Spanish / Uigar music. We went in. It was nice. We stayed. The band played a few sets. They were great, generally Spanish-style music, covers of Manu Chao and even an Iberian-tinged Another Brick In The Wall. There was beer, dancing, an American guy and his Chinese wife joined us with a hookah of apple tobacco, Bob almost had an adventure and we toasted 2011 with Glenfiddich and fecking ice.

Next morning we returned to Houhai (the bar area) to see what it was like in the daylight. Turned out there was a massive lake in the middle which had frozen solid. Queue much wandering about on the ice saying “this is really cool” and running away when the ice cracked or creaked. We even found three fish frozen into the ice although we failed to find the hot pot restaurant we’d been told about. That night we watched Alien 3 in the hostel (they let us pick the film and it promptly scared the crap out of half of those watching with us).

January 2nd turned out to be the highlight of the trip, as we went to the Great Wall. Our original tour had been cancelled due to snow, so they hooked us up with a different route which was a perfect replacement. An hours drive from Beijing we were dropped in the middle of nowhere, just us and our guide. There were six other people at the start of the wall, and they were the last people we saw until the car picked us up again three hours later. The wall, needless to say, is a massive tourist destination and the main sections are hoaching with “hello souvenir hello?” but this section is not on the main tourist route. It was deserted. Just us, the wall and the mountains.

It was all original wall (it’s been rebuilt in the most popular places) which made walking a more interesting proposition. As Bob pointed out, Health and Safety would have closed it down. Hands were needed about as often as feet, looking down wasn’t always to be recommended and twice we actually had to scale sections of wall to continue. Going down our guide decided that paths were for wimps and took us down the steep mountain through the sharp gorse-type bushes. Which was less fun while we were doing it, but fun to have done. It was an amazing experience, walking over all that history, more than 2000 years old in sections, and stretching as far as we could see in both directions, silent, wild and seemingly abandoned. We returned to the hostel happy as Larry, however happy he is.

Next day was when we went to the Forbidden City. Waste of time.

That night we took the sleeper to Xi’an.

Another history high point, Xi’an is home to the Terracotta Warriors. We dumped our bags at the hostel which was seemingly still under construction and caught the bus. Winter is definitely the time to visit the warriors. Judging by the size of the car park, the number of ticket booths and the scale of the approach visitors must number millions every day. We froze, but we had the place relatively to ourselves. Nothing can prepare you for the scale. The first Qing Emperor really believed he could take it all with him and apparently built an entire underground city, of which the warriors are only the military aspect. Hardly any of it has been excavated, and even the warriors are largely still locked away underground. What has been unearthed and pieced back together is jaw-dropping. 3 pits, one housed in an actual aircraft hanger totalling over 6000 soldiers and horses. All ranks are represented and each soldier is unique from facial features to armour design. It is productivity on a scale with the pyramids and, like the pyramids, was carried out by slaves who were put to death in order to keep the secrets safe.

That night we hung out in the hostel bar, played pool with some locals and learned a cool dice game. The Tsingtao went down too well and soon we were incapable of exploring Xi’an anymore. Which was basically the end for me. The next day I took the train back to Shanghai and then flew home. Bob went south in search of pandas and warmth. If you want to know what happened next you’ll have to ask him.

China was immense, amazing, frustrating, and massive. Shanghai I have no desire to ever see again, but the rest of the country I will happily visit time after time. The people were welcoming and friendly, the food delicious and cheap, the hostels without exception great. Everyone local we spoke to said “come back in 5, 10, 20 years. We’re developing just now; we’re not ready yet.” That’s clear to see. China feels how I imagine Britain to have felt during the Industrial Revolution. Just travelling the hour from Shanghai to Beijing we saw enough residential development to house 50000 people. Everything is in flux, buildings knocked down, streets ripped up, new homes and shops and offices and subway stations and everywhere the feeling that China is going somewhere. But as they said, it’s not ready yet. The majority of the people are very poor. The average salary is 2000 yuan. Minori and I spent half of that on one dinner. The infrastructure isn’t there yet, you can't drink the water, you can’t trust the taxi drivers, there are pickpockets everywhere, but China wasn’t built in a day. The rate there are changing, I could go back in 5 years and not recognise a thing. Whether that’ll ultimately be a good thing or not, we’ll see. But I for one can’t wait.

Footnotes:

The two dudes in the first picture are Marx and Engels in Fuxing Park. For a very funny discussion of how to pronounce the name of that park please see Ross Noble Goes Global (hint: don't say it in a Yorkshire accent).

Don’t buy the Lonely Planet China, it’s shite.

If anyone cares, we stayed at the Jin Jiang Hotel and the Phoenix Hostel in Shanghai, the Drum Tower Hostel in Beijing and the Xianpiang Hostel in Xi’an. I’d recommend them all.

Teenage Dreams Are Hard To Beat

2010-04-18T11:46:00.002+09:00

What's this? A day off? And while it's sunny? Whatever next.

Yes, today (Sunday) is my first day off in weeks. I'm exhausted and plan on doing nothing today beyond listening to music, hanging up the washing and writing this. I may have a glass of wine later. Stranger things have happened.

I think I mentioned before, when not soapboxing about the election, that I was trying to start a band. That plan took a big step forward last night. The impetus to get moving came when my friend Nono annouced that he was quitting Jonny. He's the drummer and is leaving over what we both managed to translate as "differences" with the singer Mio. Still don't know what they are but May 23rd, the album launch party, will be his last gig. Initially I was a bit gutted by this news. I'm friends with both Nono and Mio and hanging out with them is a big part of why I enjoy their gigs so much, and I'm worried it won't be the same without Nono there. Also Jonny are really making waves now. They're playing all over the country, Tower Records financed their last EP, they've got a proper record deal. People are playing their music on podcasts like It Came From Japan without fans like me having to hassle them first.

Then I had an idea. A cunning plan in fact. Start a new band with Nono. He said he planned to get another band together immediately so we chatted for a while, tossing ideas around. Last night the two of us got together to see if we could jam together, and so he could give me "a level check" as he put it. It went fantastically. We played a couple of covers at the start, a bit of Weezer, Nirvana, Blur, the kind of things indie kids in their late twenties are likely to play together, then just started jamming, mixing styles - punk, metal, twee riffs, mid-range indie progressions - non stop for an hour. There's an unspoken understanding with musicians you have played with a lot - you know when the other is going to change something, get heavy, slow down, do a solo or sit back. Usually it takes a while to come together but, I guess because we have very similar musical backgrounds, it worked.

So we now have two options. Nono was also asked by a guy called Joe to join his band. They're meeting on the 27th. They already have a guitarist but Nono is going to ask them if I can join as well. If they say no, his plan is to nick the bass player (who he introduced anyway) and start another band with me. Then he mentioned singers. I'm not bothered about this, and very happy to have a fully instrumental band, but when he told me that Ragan had split up and the singer was free, I changed my mind. I love Ragan. Bob and I saw them when he was out here, and the singer is just amazing; full, sensual, jazz-like voice. She told me they were about to record an album. That was 18 months ago. I've been checking their website regularly but no change. Now I know why. I'm really hoping Joe says no and we can start a band with her. Trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying "can't you just forget Joe and call her?"

So options. Plans. Being in a rehearsal room after a gap of something like five years was so much fun. I spent a large part of my teenage years in my bedroom playing along to Nirvana, Bush, Pearl Jam, whatever I was into at the time. I still don't understand why I never did anything with music at uni. I got into creative writing and drama, which was great, but acting on stage never gave me the same feeling that being on stage with a guitar does. Rehearsals for plays could drag. Band practice never has. Now I'm nearing 30 and trying to restart my teenage dreams. Better late than never. I just wish when Nono said "can you write songs?" I hadn't said "sure, I've got loads of songs ready." A slight exaggeration. I have loads of riffs, I have chorus' and I have verses, and never the twain seem to meet. So, if this is going to work, my flat is going to have to become something of a Tin Pan Alley.

Party Political

2010-04-15T22:49:00.002+09:00

It's 11pm and I'm pretty damn tired. I haven't had a day off in a few weeks and although I only had to teach for a couple of hours today, it seemed massively stressful. Anyway I need sleep but can't, so I've decided to try and wait up for the first PM debate which will be aired on Radio 4 in some hours time. Part of me really wants to witness this possibly seminal moment in British political history, while another part of me just wants to read the next chapter of Milan Kundera's The Joke and pass out. Will it be like the night I woke Minori up and we watched Obama's Inaugural Address or will it be like the night I watched Deerhunter on TV and despite my best efforts fell asleep at around 3am?

All this in the future. What do I think of the campaigns so far?

Well Labour. Labour, Labour, Labour. I've only ever voted Labour in General Elections (I've voted other parties in Scottish / Local elections). I wasn't old enough in 1997 but was still caught up in the euphoria of the moment. However I remember Blair saying again and again that it would take more than on term to reverse the mess the Tories made of the country. Fair play I thought, and despite some reservations I gave him the benefit of the doubt in 2001. In 2005 I moved house and despite registering with my new council (Aberdeen City) 6 weeks before the deadline for election enrollment, I only received confirmation from the city the day after the election. Through laziness, incompetence or electioneering, I was disenfranchised in 2005. Probably just as well. I think I would've voted Labour again.

Part of my tie to Labour is tactics. I hate the Tories. I really fucking hate them. Now, when I see Cameron, Osbourne, any of them, real bile rises, I pump adrenaline and I want to lash out at something. These smug, ignorant, self-serving bastards are standing in the sidelines rubbing their dirty little hands over the power they can almost taste, the benefits they can pass on to their nearest and dearest and the damage they can cause to the country. My feelings towards them is what I imagine people felt when confronted by saboteurs during the cold war. Worthless little runts who's entire existence is bent on doing no good.

That isn't to say that Labour aren't like this. But at least Labour is coated in a layer of ideology that isn't just greed. I feel inclined to give people like Hilary Benn or Jon Cruddace the benefit of the doubt: maybe they did join the Labour Party to make Britain a better place. I cannot really bring myself to believe that anyone with a desire for public service, with a zeal to improve their country and countrymen would look at the Conservative Party and say "ah yes! They're the chaps for me."

My problem with Labour is different. They're just not up to the job. After 13 years, and especially since Brown took over, they remind me of the Yearbook Committee in my final year at school. No one knew what the fuck they were doing. We had some talks from people who seemed to have ideas and we latched onto them, ran with them. When people asked us what we were doing we waffled, we made it up, and no one told the same story as anyone else. By the time our exams came round everybody abandoned ship and the yearbook limped into existence much in the way that the Labour Manifesto did. Here's the best of our ideas. This is what all this work has led to. It's got a nice cover, and in years to come we may flick through it and say "god, what were we like." But no fucker was ever going to hire us based on that portfolio of work.

I remember having an argument with my friend Dan, back in uni (must've been 2001/2 ish). It was a late night, clubs closed, back at Dan's with a bottle of single malt and the remains of a smoked sausage supper argument. The topic was Blair's eventual retirement and Brown's take over. Dan is pretty old Labour. I, as detailed above, bought into New Labour (mainly because I was a centrist). The premise of argument: would Gordon Brown make a good PM. Dan was very much in favour. Brown was very much the brains of the partnership. He's old Labour at heart, but enough of a pragmatist to know that just following Kinnock and Smith gets you nowhere with the electorate. But his heart and, more importantly, his brains are in the right place. Therefore he'd make a great PM. [This, incidentally is me paraphrasing Dan massively, and with the benefit(?) of nearly ten years distance]. I agreed with him then and I still agree with that now. Brown is like Vince Cable. You want that brain in the government. Brown cancelled the Third World debt to the UK because it was an abomination. Why wouldn't you want him in government? Why? Well we can all see why. Because he's got all the grace and stage presence of a potato. A scene in Yes, Minister ran along these lines: in order to take your place upon the world stage, you must learn your lines, stay sober and appear plausible. Brown, as far as I know, has managed only one of these. And I said so to Dan at the time. This is not a man you want standing at the G8 representing the UK. You want him in an office doing something. The exact opposite of Blair. Blair you want attending a million press conferences - anything to keep him away from actual work. Dan said his personality shouldn't matter. He's right. I said it does matter. I'm right. You want Brown in the government, but not running the government.

Brown should've gone months ago. I argued many times that he should be replaced by Harriet Harman. Can you imagine these debates with her? Cameron and CameronLite, and Harman. All you need in the wake of the MPs expenses and the general feeling around the country that politicians are 'all the same' is Cameron, Clegg and Harman in a line and the caption "which of these politicians is not like the others?" But Brown hung in their, mainly due to Milliband not having a pair.

So he's there, and in a straight choice between him and the Lord Privy Toastrack (one for the Blackadder fans) I'd choose him. Only this time it doesn't seem to be a straight race. It is in Aberdeen North where it'll take a ridiculous swing to unseat Labour's Frank Doran and elect his nearest rival, recent university graduate and pimply lanky streak of piss Kristian Chapman, so my vote will disappear into the nothingness that is 'first past the post'. But though Brown may have lost, there is still the silver lining that Cameron may not have won, and that opens the possibility of all those smaller parties who, for obvious reasons, have a vested interest in changing the electoral system (which is in my top three most important policy issues along with immigration being a good thing and letting people with medical / educational knowledge and experience run the hospitals / schools) to get close enough to power to force parliament in the right (i.e. left) direction.

What the hell was that all about?

Well, Labour and the Tories are bust. The first decade of the 20th Century saw the demise of the Liberals and the emergence of Labour. The first decade of the 21st Century has almost certainly seen the demise of Labour, for a while at least, and there's a good chance that they could take the Tories with them. 'They're all the same' has become the battle cry not of the apathetic, but of the floating voter. That lot. The Westminster village. They're all the same. And they're ripping us off and letting the country go to hell in a hand-cart. Well balls to that, let's fire the lot of them. I predict the Greens, the Socialist, the Nationalists will all see a huge rise in their share of the vote. Turn out will not be the embarrassment many expect, just turn out for the main parties. Of course this won't make a difference to the balance of parliament, but then that's why so many of us are campaigning for a change in the electoral system. The Greens may take a larger share of the vote nationwide, but their ultimate goal is to see the election of Caroline Lucas as their first ever MP. In a system of, for example, PR, that ambition would almost certainly be greater. I want to vote Green but can't because the current system makes it impossible for parties without their own pet Lord Non-Dom to run a candidate in every constituency, and so no one is running in Aberdeen North.

Not that you'd know any of this from the media coverage. All this talk of a hung parliament and it's still only a three horse race. Not much coverage of the UKIP or the Green manifesto launches, coming as they did on the same day as larger 'more important' launches. Not only do we need to reform the electoral system, we need to reform the political media. Polly Toynbee said today, in relation to the debates, "I think the media is often incredibly unfair and it's not a bad idea, for once, to just let them talk." I agree Polly. But surely more than just the three. A democratic election is about voting for the person / party who most represents you. The media's job therefore is to present the choices to the nation. Present. Not filter. Compare the number of headlines on the BBC news website devoted to the two biggest parties and their manifesto launches, and the number devoted to the UKIP, Green or Communist manifestos (the latter of which, incidentally, must have a copywrite problem. Surely every time the Communist Party issues a manifesto, the estate of Karl Marx can sue?). I am very politically engaged and I am struggling to pick a party. I'm having to wade through pages of Labour / Tory / LibDem reportage to get close to an idea. We know from countless polls that most people in the country don't put in that kind of geekish time. They're going to vote Labour, Tory maybe LibDem thanks to the debates, or not at all. And that's a problem with the electoral system, and with the media. And that needs to be changed.

But tonight is the debate. Political theatre or extended party political? The political geek in me loves it and is waiting up for it. The other part of me wants Dan's ideals to come true: who gives a fuck if they are good communicators, photogenic and can answer questions for 90 minutes without punching a cameraman. Tell us your ideas, let us think about them, and then we'll let you know. After the Nixon Kennedy debate, those who watched on TV thought Kennedy had won, while those listening on radio thought Nixon had. I want my country to choose its next government based on policies, not on whose upper lip is the least sweaty.

Anecdotal Evidence.

2010-04-06T22:52:00.004+09:00

So it's official. Gordon Brown has given Lizzy the Last a month's notice and the election is hurtling towards us with all the charm of a Catholic priest dribbling his way towards an altar boy.

Politicians, Monarchs and Priests dismissed in one sentence. On with the news.

Not much been going on really. Working hard. Got some more students and my schedule is starting to resemble a work plan rather than a fixture list. Days off are rare but money isn't so much so I can't really complain. I can't, but I will.

Golden Week is approaching. Golden Week is 4 almost consecutive national holidays which are strung together to give people a week off. In Japan people are not allocated holidays. The government tells them that they will all - and I mean all - have a week off in May, a week off in August, and four days at New Year. No allowance to take as and when. That's it. You take your holidays when the civil service says and not when it is convenient for you - like at a time when the other 120 million people here aren't trying to book every hotel, train seat and inch of campsite in the country. I have this holiday because all my students have this holiday. I do not want it because I want to go away and not bring the rest of Japan with me. Getting away from it all is a sentiment with little basis in fact during Golden Week.

My plan was to go to Kyushu. Southernmost of the four main Japanese islands (i.e. not Okinawa) Kyushu has Nagasaki (history), Onsen (relaxation), Beaches (bikinis) and Fukuoka (great music scene). Kyushu will have these things all through Golden Week, but I will not experience them because I have car insurance and a tax bill to pay in May. "My path through life is strewn with cow-pats from the Devil's own satanic herd" as Aristotle wrote in the Poetics.

I have a few ideas up my sleeve (they're there because it's handy) including climbing, camping and going to Ikea in Osaka. This latter idea is filling me with much more excitement than is seemly and has reminded me that my thirtieth birthday is approaching. I have my own business, a wife and a tax bill. Now it seems I find Ikea a pleasant prospect. Next I'll be buying Coldplay albums and worrying about the guttering. I'd go to church and pray for deliverance if I didn't fear getting fiddled with.

To make up for it all I've been spending a fair bit of time in second-hand music shops buying things I either had and lost or really should've had all along. Today saw me collect Sleeper - Smart, Echobelly - On, We Are Urusei Yatsura by Urusei Yatsura (surprisingly) and one of an apparent series of Aerosmith Best Of's. This one is early stuff - Dream On, Sweet Emotion, Walk This Way - but not Toys In The Attic which I thought was on it. I have a nostalgic soft spot for Aerosmith. Not the Aerosmith of "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" (unfortunate title since if you remember being in Aerosmith, you weren't really there) but the dirty blues riffs of the early albums (those who have seen Dazed & Confused will know what I'm talking about). Aerosmith were the first band I ever saw live. Glasgow SECC in 1993 (I was 13) with me Dad. Supported by Vai (who I suppose were technically the first band I ever saw live but they were shit so let's leave it). It was the Get A Grip tour (Amazing and Crazy were the hit singles for all those teenage boys who remember Alicia Silverstone in her schoolgirl uniform in the videos) and it was great. Explosive stage show, massive mosh pit and tracks like "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" and "Love In An Elevator". Then they got shit and sentimental. Now Stephen Tyler's back in rehab so they may get good again. We'll see.

Final Aerosmith story before I move on. The first few years of Aerosmith's success they toured America almost non-stop. They were also continually high. Tyler is famed for tying coloured scarves to his microphone, which whip and fly around as he jerks about the stage. Turns out they were soaked in LSD so when he started to come down, he'd just suck on a scarf and off he'd go. Well for the entire tour they played exactly the same set. Same songs, same order, every night. One night, for a big show, they decided to switch things around. They had some new material to debut and thought it was time to move on. Normally they'd finish with Sweet Emotion - big emotion lighter-in-the-air climax - but they decided to open with that instead. Which they did. At the end of the song Tyler - high as a kite - said "Thank you, goodnight" left the stage, got in a limo and fucked off. End of gig.

Pete Doherty? You're not singing anymore.

Think I'm going to have to watch Almost Famous later.

That's about it I think. Novel's going well. Reached and breached 50000 words and the plot is starting to make sense to me as well as the couple of unlucky souls picked to be guinea pigs. Things have slowed down because I don't know nearly enough about Meiji Era history (1868-1912) but should be okay because they hide that information in books.

I'm pestering a friend into starting a band with me. So far he's reluctant because he is "too busy" and "already in a band" which just sounds like excuses to me. While I convince him I'm trying to figure out ways to get my electric guitar (turquoise Fender Jag-Stang designed but Kurt Cobain and modelled by bands as great as Urusei Yatsura, Bush and Camera Obscura (though that may just be a Jaguar, but it was the same colour as mine) and distortion pedal (purchased from a friend: both he and the pedal were used during the recording of Ganger's fantastic album "Hammock Style") out to Japan without paying more than it would cost to buy the guitar again out here. (Did you follow that sentence? No? Good). Also in the meantime I'm coming up with names. This has been a past-time of mine since primary school when I created a fictional band called Oblivion and designed logos and album covers and drew them all over my jotters and desks. I was going to call their first EP "Get Into Oblivion". Obviously I'm not going to do that now. Now I want to call a debut EP "I Preferred Their Early Stuff".

Going to nick a Radiohead thing and give you a themed chart:

1. Election Special - Monty Python
2. The Choices You've Made - The Delgados
3. Politik Kills - Manu Chao
4. Yes, It's Fucking Political - Skunk Anansie
5. Death Of A Party - Blur

I leave you now with the words of Aerosmith:

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away.

Yeah.

They don't write 'em like that anymore. Well Aerosmith don't anyway.

Peace. Out.

Like Ulysses With A Wonky Sat-Nav.

2010-02-21T10:57:00.002+09:00

What a start to the day. Wake at 10am with a stinking hangover, a nosebleed and a message from a former coworker responding to the insulting message you sent them at the back of two in the morning. To be fair, he had it coming. Still, at a time like this you need Marihiko Hara (free to download from his record label: http://www.zymogen.net/releases/zym016/ ) a perfect piece of ambient electronica with enough gentle arpeggios to soothe the head and enough clicks and beeps to get you moving.

And so I sit here, a broken man from an apparently broken society, listening to discordant pianos and insect chirps, looking at a chapter plan which is crying out to be written and freezing cold because the wife is on nightshift and so is fast asleep in the only room with heating.

The novel. Ups and downs. Edinburgh Review rejected an extract submission. I found out last October that they were planning a Japan special issue, and dutifully sent off the sections humourously and touchingly introducing the character Honda. They emailed back saying I was jumping the gun a little and to resubmit in February. I did so. They rejected it. Bit of a downer. Still, during one of my many train rides I had a series of startling revelations about where the book is going next, and how to tie two seemingly disparate strands together. One of the answers is the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. I'm basically going to claim that this war was started as a cover to allow certain people into certain places. I'm a little hazy on the details, but the path is there. I bought a book, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear to help me with research, and can't wait to get started. The problem is I have to get my character, Yuuji, through a tricky piece of plot exposition without it looking like I've crowbarred a piece of plot exposition in.

"I don't understand! What's going on?"

"Well, you see ..."

Works in Star Trek but not, I fear, in a serious attempt to trivialise important parts of Japanese history.

Talking of books and history as I was and you weren't, I've been reading The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. A very nasty part of WWII and of Japanese history in general, and one that has been shamefully swept under the carpet and denied. I won't go into details, but it's not a very nice read. I will however complain about Iris Chang's writing style, which is the most hyperbolic prose style in the world, ever. When you are talking about the systematic rape, torture and execution of civilians in a war which only ended 65 years ago, you don't need to keep describing it as 'the worst event in the history of the world, man and the universe, ever' (I'm paraphrasing, but only a little). We can see that. The facts speak for themselves. At one point she says her "aim is not to establish a quantitative record" before spending the next two pages listing statistics. It also doesn't help her claim to write an objective account of the Rape that she goes on and on about how her Chinese parents wouldn't let her forget or forgive the Japanese for what they did. She denies having a personal problem with the Japanese people, even going so far as to say that she's met some Japanese and they were very nice people. It's like a history of the Jewish Holocaust written by a particularly excitable writer to the Daily Mail letters page. The book itself, and the subject matter is hugely important and should be taught and discussed and apologised for. I just wish she'd handed her research over to someone who a) didn't have a personal axe to grind and b) wasn't a hack.

Anyway.

My own hack writing on Jonny will come out in Metropolis on February 26th www.metropolis.co.jp so hurry along and have a read. The editor Dan did a nice cut-job on my wandering sentences so it actually appears like I have some journalistic skill, so thanks Dan.

I'm trying to come up with an idea for the next piece. Jonny are easy because I know them personally and can ask them stuff and get the breaking news as it ... well ... breaks. Not so with some of the other bands I love out here, and the language doesn't help. They announce something on their website and I have to wait until Minori is around and not busy so she can translate it as "no news today". I really want to do a piece of Yuki Kawana www.myspace.com/ykkwn who sounds like Pavement if Pavement were a solo Japanese girl. Her album Secret Plans of a Special Artisan is in my Top 5 Greatest Albums of All Time and her song A Black Swallowtail would definitely be coming to my desert island. The problem is her album came out two years ago and she has no plans to do anything else. I know this because I cornered her after a Yucca gig (she plays keyboards in Yucca, who describe their sound as 'dreamy post-rock' www.myspace.com/yuccasounds ) and she said so. She also seemed surprised and a little frightened that this massive gaijin should a) know her and her music b) like it and c) be trying to engage her in conversation through the medium of drunk and dislocated Japanese. Journalistically, I have no angle.

Ditto Mothercoat.

I've also been listening to the Podcast by Song, by Toad www.songbytoad.com which Jon introduced me to. Based generally around the Scottish / UK indie and folk scenes but generally wandering around like Ulysses with a wonky sat-nav. Very funny, good music, enjoyable rambling style. A gin-soaked pod featuring sessions by people like The Pictish Trail and Meursault. Recent gems include advice on how to ruin romcoms in the cinema by waiting until the split second before the protagonists kiss and shouting "SAUSAGE TIME". Genius.

Well that's about it folks. The washing needs hanging, as does Dave Cameron and my former co-worker. And I need socks. My feet are freezing.

Procrastination's What You Need If You Want To Be A Record Reviewer.

2010-01-30T12:03:00.002+09:00

Hello folks of world. It's noon, I'm totally sober, though a little hepped up on caffeine, sitting at my desk with a travel article, an email and chapter three of the second section of my novel Dog Mountain open on various windows, but can't seem to focus properly on any of them, so thought it would be an idea to post something proper and non-ranty on here.

2010 has started well, and it already feels like being a good year. I've got some new students. A couple quit but they were the ones that were a bit of a hassle anyway, so no big deal. Monthly takings are slowly creeping up, especially since I've been taken on by the Nagoya YWCA, which isn't really my spiritual home, but you go where the money is.

Next Friday I take delivery of my first ever car. A Toyota Blit estate, white and massive. It's a very nice gift (kind of gift, I'm buying it but at a ridiculously cheap price) from my in-laws, who in turn inherited a car and now have one too many. Can't wait. Freedom. The back is big enough that I can actually put a futon in it and use it as a camper van, so my trips around the wilderness of Japan have received a huge boost. Of course I'll get a tent as well, since sleeping in the back of a car is never much fun, but it does provide a nice safety net if I can't find somewhere to pitch on a road trip. And there will be road trips, oh yes. First big plan is for May (Golden Week) when depending on the weather I will go North into the mountains or head south to the island of Shikoku for the best part of an enforced week off.

Writing's been going well. Got an article on the band Jonny into Metropolis magazine, the leading English language magazine in Tokyo, which both gets me into the heart of the foreign music press in Japan and introduces Jonny to a much wider audience. Also it pays, meaning I have now earned more money as a writer in Japan than I ever did in Scotland, which is a side-effect I never anticipated.

The novel is progressing slowly but well. I'm at something like 45000 words and not even halfway through the projected story, which is a miracle for me given my tendency to rush through plot. The outline is vague enough that I can wander but I took some advice from my friend Hamish's fantastic podcast DIY Book (available on itunes and www.hamishmacdonald.com ) and set out markers to hit at decent intervals. I even wrote a blurb to give me an overall picture to return to, like a touchstone. It's a bit Dan Brown, and certainly won't get anywhere near an actual back cover, but here it is for the curious:
Tomo has lost a day. He fell asleep on Monday and woke on Wednesday, covered in mud. What happened in between? His search for the answer will lead him into a conspiracy that involves his family, the government and Japanese mythology.

Meanwhile his flatmate Yuuji has been head-hunted for a job that is not all that it seems. Soon both men are out of their depths and heading for trouble.

Dog Mountain is a funny and moving story that deals with morality, metaphysics, mythology and the hardships facing a twenty-something in modern Japan.

As I said, not really going to sell many books, but it's job is just to keep me focused.

I'm still writing for www.gaijinpot.com and the articles are getting syndicated to www.japantoday.com where the crazy people live (seriously, check out some of the comments across the site) and I'm working on a project to build a highly-detailed travel website for Japan. Those that currently exist are either vague and out-of-date or run by travel agencies / bus companies etc. and are not depositories of unbiased information.

What else? I've got back into writing songs but really need at least one other person (ideally with a variety of drums and a decent voice) to turn it from pissing about in my living room to something I could perform. A variety of pedals would help as well. I've got various names in my head for if it ever gets that far - The Toasters is currently my favourite (and one for all the Battlestar Galactica fans). Jonny have promised me a support slot anytime I want. Proofreading Mio's lyrics, getting them on the BBC, into Metropolis and invited to the Saiko Music Showcase in Tokyo has made me very popular with the band. They gave me a "special thanks" in their recent EP Get Some Lack To Be Punky (I proofread the lyrics and I still don't know what that means) which was lovely and means I have fulfilled one High Fidelity-style dream and got into someone's liner notes. The EP's cracking by the way. Not sure if it's available online yet, but it was put out with Tower Records so I'd imagine their stores in the UK can get it sent over. If anyone wants, I can send copies from here. Just let me know.

Not much else I can think of. I'll copy Thom and finish with an update list:

Going to see: Do Make Say Think and maybe The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Listening to: at the moment The Good, The Bad and The Queen but generally the new Vampire Weekend album (couplet of the year: "In December, drinking Horchata / I'd look psychotic in a balaclava").

Reading: Anna Karenina, The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert and Tokyo Stories edited by Someone. Not been doing too much reading as I'm using my usual reading time to really get to grips with Japanese grammar. Theoretically I can conjugate properly now and do conditionals. Next is passives and actually being able to do it in conversation.

Watching: about to start Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.

I'm going to try and keep this up again (oo-er missus). One of the reasons I stopped, apart from just not having the time, is that I spent a large part of last year incredibly pissed off and stressed by work, and all I had to say was negative and sweary, so I didn't bother. Then I just got out of the habit. Life is better now, and shows signs of continuing in that trend. For those that believe in such things, according to Japanese astrology I have moved out of a 'winter' period where only bad things happen and begun a three year 'spring'. I pointed out to Minori (who told me this) that I met and married her in that 'bad period'. She pointed out that it's all a load of shite, which is fair enough.

Live long and prosper.

Unless you are Tony Blair, Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Kyle, a Tory or a Republican (especially one from Massachusets). If you are any of those, sod off and die.

Soapbox.

2010-01-26T21:57:00.002+09:00

Bloody hell. Look what I found down the back of the sofa. Has some fluff on it, and a few bits missing, but still working as far as I can tell.

Um.

It's always awkward starting again after an absence.

How have you been?

Oh, fine, fine. You?

Same old. How's what's his name?

He's fine.

It's a Tuesday night. I'm a bit tipsy from wine with dinner. I've been reading a lot of far left wing propaganda and coming to the conclusion that I was a bit too hasty about our comrades in the past. Most people become more right wing as they get older. Not me.

My experience of the Left before and during university were of smelly homeless people who turned out to be Scottish Socialist Party campaigners (true story: tramp outside a polling booth in 2001 with a flag and a "vote Socialist ya bass") and that combined with the appalling rhetoric that the Left still has pushed me to the political centre (I've got brains, so I can't go Right) with a New Labour vote in every election I've been eligible to vote in (which is a lot less that it should've been, thanks to either incompetence or deliberate disenfranchisement at the hands of Aberdeen City Council).

Then I moved to Japan. A RRRRRRight wing country (with rolled RRRRRRRRRs). There are two main parties here. The Centre Right DPJ and the Far Right LDP. On the Left we have the Communists (not allowed into meetings where there might be US diplomats) and the Socialist Party who amongst decent and sensible social policies have decided to include the "be nice to Kim Jong Il, our misunderstood Socialist ally" as a central plank in their manifesto. Planks. This in a country still demanding that North Korea hand over the corpses of those kidnapped a generation or two ago to teach North Korean spies to speak Japanese. Not exactly a way to win friends and influence voters.

What is he babbling about?

No idea.

No, that's it. Being here awoke something in me that I'd always labelled 'common sense' but which had in fact been 'an understanding of social justice'. What I hadn't properly understood until I saw the LDP government in action is that there are some people - quite a fucking lot of people actually - for whom social justice is a luxury item like Ferraris and Lear Jets. "Being nice to other people is something I do once I've finished being nice to myself." I began to realise that I had an 'ideology' - a term I've always hated: only idiots like Christians and Rangers fans have 'ideologies' - and that ideology, my ideology, was, in fact, socialist by nature.

Socialism, as I understand it, is the exact opposite of Capitalism because both are economic theories, not political ones. Capitalism, as the cunning name suggests, is an economy which has 'the creation and aquisition of capital' as its central pillar. Socialism is an economy which has 'society, i.e. people,' as its central pillar. 'Das Kapital' is a tool, a means to an end. Not an end in itself. Seems a no brainer to me. People or paper? Um .... people, please.

These two economic theories have become political theories because only politicians get to play with economies (okay, bankers do too, but there's no such thing as a Socialist banker, so there's no game to play) so you take your view of the world (should we use money to make money or use it to make everyone's life better?) and then find some friends, then use them to get you elected and then you put your theory into practice.

The problem, and this really is the problem in the UK as far as I can tell, is that everyone's got the same theory. They've all got the same idea, economically speaking: they've all got different ideas about who should and who shouldn't get a finger in the pie, but they all agree on the nature and filling of the pie. So who do you choose? You choose the ones you trust most. Or mistrust least. The ones you like the look of. They're all saying the same thing, so what do you have to go on? It's like walking down a dedicated restaurant street in a tourist hot spot. Every restaurant has a man in a mustache outside shouting "we sell food, lovely nourishing food. You look hungry, or at least willing to eat. Why not come in and stuff yourself." There's little to separate them beyond the superficial, so you go with your instinct or on past experience. "Last time I went with them I got sick. I couldn't stomach another course."

The point? I've found myself approaching the 2010 UK General Election looking for the first time at Real Far Left parties and thinking "you know, maybe you're not just a homeless wino with a flag. I mean, you are a homeless wino with a flag, but maybe you've got a point." Because none of the others have a fucking point. All they have are wine and flags. And at least the message of the Far Left is "here we stand, where we've always stood. Some capital will always be more equal than other capital, but we should at least acknowledge that, even though it may be the standard at the moment, some humans are not more equal than other humans".

That seems to me to fulfill the definition of a Socialist economy.

Now how do we make it happen?

You're Not All Apes Then?

2009-08-25T23:25:00.002+09:00

Sorry about that. Seem to have been sucked into a vortex where this blog didn't exist. I blame Facebook, Twitter (which I enjoyed for all of a week before realising that it was the Facebook status update window without the rest of Facebook) and the fact that my non-fiction rambling seems to have hit a faint chord - possibly a harmonic (an harmonic?) - in ex-pat in Japan internet world.

Um. So stuff has happened. People have been and gone. Writing has been written, much of it good. Some of it bloody awful (said in Tim Nice-But-Dim accent). And various bits and pieces published. Most gratifyingly the opening section of novel (imaginatively titled Dog Mountain) in new Scottish writing magazine Gutter. Which contains other stuff which is good as well as just me and the words what i wrote.

So. Politics. Apparently I'm getting more Left Wing (with capital letters) as I get older. Those who know me and used to date me may be surprised by this, but it seems to be true. I recently looked at the website of the Japan Socialist Party and thought "wow, I agree with much of that" although the "be nice to North Korea, our misunderstood neighbour" was a bit hard to swallow. Even sections of the Japan Communist Party manifesto seemed quite sensible (bear in mind, this is coming from a man who once said: yeah, I'll give Tony Blair the benefit of the doubt. Once bitten, twice shy. Three times a lady). Also, remember this is Japan where, to paraphrase Jonathan Miller in Beyond The Fringe: They have the Liberal Democratic Party, who are like our Conservative Party. In opposition they have the Democratic Party of Japan, who are like our Conservative Party. Left wing politics here is for the freak, the nutter or the second son who doesn't get to inherit Daddy's seat in Parliament.

Suits you Sir,

So I've been writing about Left Wing intellectuals, Right Wing Daddy's boys and Jazz and Protest in Japan in the 1960s. All part of my novel, and not in any way pleasurable. Honest, Guv.

But God we live in a sappy age. Radicalism is a toff throwing a bin through MacDonalds. How many G8+ protesters would actually, happily, stick a bamboo spear through a cop? I wouldn't, but I wish I had the balls to. They did, repeatedly, back then. And these people willingly, and without a moments hesitation, exposed their ears and their consciousness to Bob Dylan. Respect. Though zero out of ten for taste. For the Dylan. Spearing a Cop earns respect.

I've only seen the trailer, but if you're near a film festival, try and catch United Red Army. Shit it looks good. Can't wait to see it. Those fuckers, if they found you with a Che poster, would probably crucify you against it for not trying hard enough.

What happened to these guys? A couple of members of the United Red Army, who hi-jacked a JAL flight and flew it to Korea, appeared on the news a few days ago. Where are the rest of them? Don't tell me that the baby boom generation, who embraced and grew Jazz, who destroyed the world and promised so much, are the same fuckers who run things now. The Beats. Please don't tell me Sir Alan Sugar was on the picket line. Please don't tell me Gordon Brown knew the LBJ chants. Is this why Obama holds such hope - not because he's black, or Liberal, or fucking clever, but because, simply, he's of a different generation? God, I hope not. But it does ring true with one thing all my Japanese friends have said about the state of this country and it's government: it's ok, they'll be dead soon. And then we can start this country again.

Well the election is on the 30th. You have the choice between the grandson of a former PM or the grandson of a former PM. Fucking hell. It's like Shogun meets Pop Idol. Please, somebody, somewhere, tell me there is still a Left here. Please tell me that somebody, somewhere, is stockpiling for the revolution that will throw the US Occupation force out (44000 troops who have been here since 1945 - and people ask when the US will leave Iraq and Afghanistan), will disband the Self Defence Forces and will ban anyone from standing for election in a constituency previously held by a member of their family. This country needs a young, charismatic, intelligent leader who can take control from the civil service and actually build a country based on the needs of the people, not the needs of Toyota et al. Not going to happen this time, but a serious change in party - the first serious shift in 50 years - would be a starting point. Come on Japan. Vote Minshuto. The DPJ are, at least, better than the fools currently in office.

Minshuto. Ganbatte ne.

Oh, how I wish I could vote here.

On The Hoof

2009-04-08T08:49:00.004+09:00

I'm not going to even bother apologising for the ridiculous gap between posts. Basically, I've been very busy at work, done little that may be of interest to you, dear reader, and have been using what free time and creativity I do have to work on my novel and to write travel articles for blog.gaijinpot.com

I won't post about work. It's boring for you to read and I'll end up saying things that my boss could find if she had enough sense to go looking. Enough said.

March 15th some colleagues and I went to the Tagata Jinja Matsuri, more commonly known as they Penis Festival. We spent the day drinking free sake, laughing at wooden penises, each other, drinking more free sake, doing karaoke and talking utter bollocks. It was a great day, made slightly better by the fact that it all takes place a few minutes from my flat and therefore I could roll home without too much awareness of my surroundings. Purrfick.

Last weekend saw a washed out Inuyama festival on the Saturday. The main highlight was catching up with Kei again, who I shamefully haven't seen since last year's festival. His daughter, Tea (pronounced Tay-ah, not like the drink) has grown a lot in a year and is now unbelievably cute.

Sunday, Minori, her sister Chiharu and I went to Nara by car. Nara was the first permanent Japanese capital about 1300 years ago, and many of the temples survive to this day. I'm going to write more about this on gaijinpot so I won't go into much detail here, just to say Nara is a really cool city and it has the largest Buddha in Japan contained within the largest wooden building in, I think, the world. Here are some photos for your delictation.

And that's pretty much it. I leave for work around 8am and get home around 9.30pm leaving not much time for anything else. I guess you'll see me when you see me.

On Time.

2009-02-18T07:11:00.003+09:00

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I've been meaning to update this for over a month now but, well, I seem to have reduced my blogging to facebook status updates and the odd email. I'm awake early this morning though and feel in the mood to set a waiting world at ease with news of me. The reason I'm awake is that there was a "small" earthquake in centred around Mino, which is not that far from here. I put small in inverted commas because a) any earthquake is bigger than I'd like it to be and b) anything that wakes me up at 6.47 is bigger than I'd like it to be.

So. News. Bong.

Minori and I are engaged. Yay. We decided a few months ago and my Gestapo-trained sister managed to get the information over Christmas which forced our hand a little with announcing it. We have no date planned, mainly because the paperwork involved is quite scary, but also because I'm in the middle of applying for a new visa to stay here and should that application be unsuccessful, I'll be out of here by the end of March. We're planning a party in Japan, one in Scotland (maybe two) and a honeymoon to an island in the Pacific with beaches, water, wooden cabins on stilts above the water and drinks with umbrellas.

Bong.

I started my new job in January. I'm mostly teaching children at various locations throughout Gifu. I have a car, the dashing Suzuki Alto:
It's like this but much dirtier. When driving it, I feel like Donkey Kong in MarioKart. I think you can tell a lot about your employers by the equipment they provide you with. I drive to community centres, temples, peoples houses and many kindergartens, basically anywhere the school can hire a room. The teaching is easy, the work mates generally good to work with and the visa sponsorship forthcoming, which is nice.

Bong.

I bought the following albums / EPs and they are all fantastic.
By The Fireside Day Of The Burning EP
Death Cab For Cutie Narrow Stairs
Eagleowl For The Thoughts You Never Had EP
The French Quarter We're Not French
Jaymay Autumn Fallin'
Seasick Steve I Started Out With Nothin And I've Still Got Most Of It Left
Scott McEwan Twilight EP (well I actually only bought the track We're All Gonna Die (Have Fun) because it's great and I wasn't too impressed with the rest of the EP)
Ten To Sen Ten To Sen

And I want to buy The Phantom Band, Aidan Moffat and the Best Ofs and the new De Rosa. Chemikal Underground are going to have a very good 2009 I think.

Bong.

On Kong

2008-12-31T11:35:00.006+09:00

So that was Christmas, and what did we do? Well, Minori and I met up with various family members in Hong Kong for a traditional Chinese Christmas on the beach with water buffalo. We were there for a very busy week so rather than delineate diary-like, I will give you, dear reader, the Match of the Day highlights and overview.

We were staying in Discovery Bay on Lantau Island. Discovery Bay is an ex-pat enclave that feels like a holiday resort rather than a residential area. English is spoken by all, and about 90% of the people are western. Generally, the only Chinese people you see are working in the shops (MacDonalds, Subway, pubs, restaurant, 7/11) or working as au pairs, carrying and pushing various western children around the island. It gave the place a slightly unreal feel - certainly not what I was expecting post 1997 - and a definite uncomfortable colonial atmosphere. Hong Kong's history - an insignificant fishing community turned British colony turned Chinese Special Administration Area - has given it a displaced air. Hong Kong island, with its neck-hurting billion-storey banks, wallet-busting hotels and arrogant bankers striding the streets also holds junk stalls weighed down by copies of Mao's Little Red Book, dynastic chess sets and mah jong tiles. Round the corner from M&S and H&M are noodle shacks and begging monks. On the mainland, Kowloon shows even more contrast - immediately next to the ferry port is Toys'R'Us, Prada, Gucchi, Chanel et al but as you walk north - symbolically closer to China - the colonialism falls off and by Mong Kok station you begin to feel like you're back in Asia, even if the cries of "Hello. Copy watch? You want copy watch? Hello?" do grate fast.

Minori and I spent a few days on Kowloon, visiting the Hong Kong Museum of History, which is impressive from the outside and wonderful inside. The architecture blends with the subject during the Hong Kong Story permanent exhibition in a way that pleasantly reminded me of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Full English signage tells the story of Hong Kong from geological beginnings to the hand over in 1997. The section on the Japanese occupation made for somber viewing, especially the short, graphic documentary, while the colours of the festivals section brightened us immensely. The French Revolution exhibition was a let down - a collection of portraits of the people involved with a paragraph narrating their story. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the details of the revolution will find nothing new here.

As a group we visited the Po Lin monastry with its hilltop Buddha, the world's tallest outdoor seated Buddha. The photos speak for themselves - impressively long cable car ride, beautiful views and a big Buddha.

The night views are either from The Peak, where Minori and I went to have dinner on her birthday, or from the boat ride. This ride, which we took on Christmas Eve, runs up and down the channel between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon and is definitely worth doing should you find yourself in Hong Kong after dark. The light show focuses upon buildings on both shores and lasts for about an hour and a half (hint: stand at the stern and you get uninterrutped views of both sides without being deafened by the music), and the bar provides drink (price included with your ticket - all you can drink) in worryingly large portions. I can't work out if my photos are blurred because of the swell or the spirits.

On The Branch.

2008-11-20T10:30:00.008+09:00

All good things come to those who wait and you, dear reader, have waited longer than most. I apologise for the exceptional delay in updating your curious mind. I wish I could say it was due to being overwhelmed by experience, to being snowed under by the positive reaction to the new website and to simply being too busy living my life to pause long enough to write about it. Unfortunately, were I to make those claims, I would be setting myself up for accusations of liardom. Life has, generally, been rising in the increasingly cold mornings, commuting, teaching increasingly fewer students, commuting home, eating and sleeping. Not the stuff blogs are made of. The website, for those who didn't follow the link, was still born. Almost immediately after emailing everyone I've ever met, and a few I haven't, the server crashed and has yet to recover. I am going to blame sheer undiluted interest for overwhelming the site and since you can't prove me wrong, I will sit smugly in my rightness.

So what has promted me to post now? Well, a combination of a zero attendance level for my first class (I don't mind them not coming, I just wish they'd tell me so I could show my solidarity) and the early completion of the piles of pointless paperwork I am obliged to pour over now the end of term is approaching has provided enough free time for me to tell you about last weekend. For it so happens, dear reader, that I have managed to squeeze some experience into the gaps between commuting and teaching.

Last weekend - Saturday to be precise - was the 2nd anniversary of Minori and my joint bid to escape singledom and since, for the first time in over a month, we had both weekend days free, we decided to venture north, into the highlands of Gifu and Nagano.

The plan pivoted on the hotel in Hirayu at which we stayed over my birthday in July. A beautiful little place, family run, with traditional rooms, each opening onto a private onsen, or hot spring bath. It is a touch pricey, but worth every yen. The service is impeccable and comes in full kimono. The food is local, simple, delicious and in such gargantuan portions that we were tempted to nap between courses. Having your own wooden onsen, filled with water naturally heated by the nearby volcanoes is one of life's greatest pleasures, especially when combined with beautiful views of autumn leaves and a fridge full of cold beer.

It was there we stayed Saturday night, but first we had to get there. Setting off at 5am, we drove the two hours along a deserted motorway to Matsumoto, the second city of Nagano Prefecture. Neither of us had been before, although my old Inuyama flatmate Darius had spent a reasonable amount of time there and gave it two Kiwi thumbs up. Matsumoto is most renowned for its castle, which is one of the four castles to have survived intact (the others being Inuyama, Hikone and Himeji), and which differs from the castle standard by being black, rather than the more prevalent white. The grounds of the castle were overrun by local children who had been drafted in to clear away the leaves. A great pity as, not only did the red and orange leaves look gorgeous blowing around and floating on the moat, but the children couldn't be relied upon to not shout, scream, run around and otherwise lessen the impact of the stunning castle. Worse than the children however, was the bus load of American OAPs who reached the castle at the same time as us. Loud, obnoxious, slow, culturally inconsiderate and generally infuriating to all trapped on the top floor as 40 of them blocked the narrow stairs creating a donut and KFC filled fire hazard, I guess these were the ones who abandoned the US the day Obama was elected citing "irreconcilable differences".

A problem I have with many castles in Japan is that the interiors have usually been converted into museums. Fine in itself, but it does mean you rarely get to see that castle as it would've been back in the day. Not so with Matsumoto. It was built with siege in mind and, although it was completed just as Japan entered the longest period of peace in its history and so never saw a days fighting, as you walk through the lower levels, you can imagine armoured samurai running from arrow slit to gun portal, while the battle is commanded from the floors above.

After the castle, we wandered around the old streets, had breakfast in a coffee shop that hadn't changed in over 150 years and which served delicious coffee, then returned to the car and sped east for the next port of call, Shin-Hodaka.

Shin-Hodaka (or Hotaka, depending on which sign you read) is the lowest station of a rope way that rises about 2300 metres into the northern Japan Alps and is famous throughout the country from stunning views and stomach churning drops. The churning I can vouch for, as the double-decker cable car swung wildly in the strong wind, but the view I will have to take on trust. The beautiful sunshine remained in Nagano while we crossed into Gifu and by the time we reached 2300 metres, it was difficult to see the ground beneath your feet. I walked around in the snow at the summit, and we ate eggs boiled in the natural springs, but there isn't much to do in a rope way station at the top of a fog-bound mountain, so we moved closer to sea level and, finding the time to be near 3pm, decided to check in.

The next morning, after sleeping deep and well, we ate a hearty breakfast while watching a current affairs TV show. The current Prime Minister of Japan, Aso Taro (or Asshole Taro, as one of my wittier students calls him), is doing his best to enter the record books as the shortest lived and most derided PM of all time. His response to the global financial crisis has been to offer "from the goodness of my own heart" a 1200 yen (about 60 quid) cash bonus to every adult (he's still not sure about foreigners - we pay tax, but we're probably not entitled to any kind of niceness). This stunning gesture of generosity and economic acumen was met with a collective "oh, don't be so fucking stupid" by the country. After having the idea he decided he would leave it up to the local councils to sort out the details involved in a massive tax rebate, which prompted the head of one council to call the PM "stupid and crazy", hardly stunning in the UK, where politicians now are using the murder of a child as a stick to beat each other, but in super-polite Japan, this is unheard of. At the same time, Aso has made a serious of "mis-speaks" of Bushian proportions that have included inventing new words and showing the world that he cannot read Japanese very well. This propelled him towards being a laughing-stock. What sealed it was his bid to be seen as a "man of the people" by claiming to drink in normal bars and eat in normal restaurants. When asked what his favourite izakaya food was he reeled off a list. The Sunday morning show took great delight in visiting numerous restaurants and bars in Tokyo and discovered that none of them sold the "everyday" food billionaire Aso Taro claims to have eaten. They did find one of the dishes in an exclusive members only club. Since the weekend he has managed to accuse all doctors in Japan of lacking common sense, and delivered a speech criticising the parents of kindergarten children to what he thought was a group of kindergarten teachers. Only, it was a group of parents who weren't to thrilled to be told that they "should be disciplined". The problem with George Bush was that, although we knew he was an imbecile, totally out of touch with reality and full of contempt for his fellow man, here was still an element of fear that if he chose to, he could destroy the world. Not so with Aso Taro who has been exposed as a rich, elitist, semi-literate buffoon of Boris Jonson proportions who could only have become PM by virtue of his grandfather having held that position and by not having to stand for election (Aso is Japan's 4th PM since the last general election in 2005).

Amused by the exploding of this goon, we sent off for Gujo Hachiman, a city in mid-Gifu. We took a small country road between that wound through the forests, stopping frequently to admire the autumn plumage. Autumn is without a doubt the most beautiful time in Japan, mainly because the blood red maple leaves are more dramatic and more prevalent than the soft pink cherry blossom of spring.

We arrived in Gujo to find the place in full festival swing. It was hoaching but as a bonus we saw a display of samurai firearms by a group recreationists in full armour at Gujo caslte. 400 year old rifles are painfully loud, and the smoke released by one volley obscured everything for a few minutes, but it brought to life what it must've been like inside a castle during battle. We walked through the old streets and ignored the dancers. Gujo is famous for traditional dancing which usually takes place all night during August, but this was a group of half-drunk locals stomping in the mud and even at the best of times dance isn't really my thing. We ate ramen and left.

The last stop before home were some caves near Gujo. Minori loves caves, and we've seen some very cool ones, but most caves are just holes in the ground, and the first here is no different. The best thing about it was this amusing sign:

The second cave had a twist - no lights. These caves were thought to have been home to ancient peoples and wind their way through the deep interior of the mountain. The old man at the entrance gave us a torch each, paused for effect, then handed us a third. "Just in case". It was weird being in the deep earth with only Minori and a torch for company. I had to keep the thought "what if the torches die?" from shouting too loudly in my head. Minori screamed when we found the family of neaderthals crouched in a display area. I kept an eye on the big spiders crawling above my head. The leaflet said it would take 30 minutes to reach the exit. We did it in 10.

Online.

2008-10-26T13:10:00.003+09:00

I know, another two weeks have gone by and not a word.

Work has been going well, the students and I have settled into each other (as it were) and are getting along fine. I have too many classes with just one student but there's nothing I can do about that as every one is busy. I'm in the middle of a five day weekend just now, which is nice. Thursday night I went out with about 20 of the students, ate a lot, drank even more and did some truly bad karaoke.

The other reason I haven't been posting (or doing anything really) is that Bob and I have been putting together www.somethingtothinkabout.co.uk I won't go into too much detail here (since I go into quite a lot of detail on the site) but, basically, the idea is that some people (anyone - you too) can write an article about current affairs / social issues / philosophy / politics etc and then move to the discussion board to ... well ... discuss it. There are six pieces up at the moment so come and join in. Just now it's all a bit British but we're looking for people from any country to talk about any issue - international or domestic - so if you want to write about your local council in Germany or the international ramifications of the credit crunch (which should be a cereal) then feel free. Come on in, the politics is lovely.

Right, the washing is done, the sun is out and there's an exhibition at the gallery I want to see, so I'm off outside. Bye.

On The Case, But Not The Ballot.

2008-10-11T16:54:00.005+09:00

And so Dear Reader, I find myself sitting, late on Saturday afternoon, enjoying the bracing breeze flowing through the flat, enjoying a fine glass of red, and enjoying The Thick of It courtesy of youtube.

Two weeks of work have ended and the nation is celebrating with a public holiday on Monday. They claim that it is "Sports Day", one of the many mad reasons the government give for having a day off, but I know that it's because it is my sister's 26th birthday. Happy birthday Sarah. You're old now. It's also the birthdays of Margaret Thatcher and Edwina Curry. Is 13 an unlucky number? Who can say.

Work, as Lenin said, is good. I'm teaching at Meijo University which, unlike the last one, Sugiyama, is a proper, co-ed, education-before-anything university. I have 30 students under my wing, mostly law and engineering post-grads 6 months away from the job market and in need of a decent level of English to ensure the sweet jobs with Toyota et al. Motivation is high, ability is high, intelligence is high. I teach five or six classes a day plus two or three 4o minute free conversation classes. The students are friendly, chatty and like beer. I think we're going to get on fine.

Last night I met up with Mike and Rachel, former colleagues, and went to see the mighty Jonny headline at Huck Finn's in Imaike. The support bands were unworthy of the name but Jonny premiered songs from their partially recorded second album and rocked the small but energetic crowd. I traded a copy of The Episodics EP for a CDR of the new songs and a baseball cap. I hate baseball caps and the people who wear baseball caps but a present is a present and thanks is a principle free zone. But if you don't play baseball, you shouldn't be wearing a baseball cap, redneck.

And that's been my life. I leave the flat at 7 in the AM and come home half eight at night. I listen to the BBC news podcast every morning and have been reading Murakami Haruki and Umberto Eco. I spend my free time trying to think of ways to change the world and trying to find someone to hire me as a political speech writer. I've been watching too much West Wing and want to be Toby. I'd love to be a politician myself but I've had too much fun in my life and too many people know it. I'll just have to keep living vicariously through the US election, TV and radio satire. Until the revolution comes ...

PS

I've just noticed that Scotland is fielding a James Morrison (I say "a" although it may be "the") against Norway tonight. If he scores, can we expect BBC Scotland to be using "Break on through to the other side" on the highlights show? This is the end. Another tournament, the end. Come on Scotland, light my fire. Keep your eyes on the goal and your hands off of the ball.

I'll get my coat.

On Yokohama

2008-09-28T08:36:00.004+09:00

As I mentioned in the last post, I had to spend some of this weekend in Tokyo for work reasons. I took advantage of the free shinkansen ticket to return to Yokohama and do some sightseeing. Bob, KJ and I went there a few weeks ago but we were rained out and spent all our time getting drunk in Chinatown. This time it was dry but the wind was so strong I thought a typhoon was coming.

I planned a walking tour that took me past all the sights I wanted to see, beginning with the Museum of Art in the Minato Mirai area, which is basically downtown Yokohama. The gallery itself is not that great. It is described as having an amazing collection of Dalis, Picassos and other modern classics. It has one of each in a small room. They are great, sure, but not worth the rather high entry fee by themselves. The trip was saved however by the exhibition of art inspired by The Tale of Genji. Genji is basically the first novel in the world. The first recorded mention of it is in 1008 (making this year 1000 years since someone mentioned in their diary that they were reading it) and is the story of a young prince who spends his time shagging as many women as he can fit into one day. I've read an abridged version of the book and enjoyed it thoroughly. It can be a bit heavy going (as all 1000 year old texts can) but very funny and movingly beautiful in places. The art inspired by the book is also very beautiful, a genre of Japanese art all by itself. The only problem I had was the only English offered was signs stating which scene in the book had inspired the painting. If you don't know the traditional Japanese names for each scene (which I don't) then they are meaningless. The audio guides that explain everything don't come in English. Of course they don't tell you this until you've paid your money and are inside the barriers. Then they put a small piece of paper on the wall that says, in font 10, "Japanese only". Everything looked great, I just have no idea what any of it was.

From the gallery I wandered through the streets to the Red Brick Warehouses. When Yokohama was forced to open as an international for 149 years ago, it had a population of about 60. It quickly became a busy port filled with people from all over the world, an unknown experience for Japan which had been closed for hundreds of years. Initially the foreigners were kept on a small island, but eventually they spread across the bay, draining and reclaiming land, and living up the Yamate mountain. The Red Brick Warehouses are, as you can see from the photos, 2 red brick warehouses. For a Brit, this is nothing unusual, but in Japan these are other-worldly. No one builds with brick here, because of the seismic activity (hence there being only two brick buildings here), and red brick had to be imported. These warehouses are all that remains of a once bustling port. If you read The Pure Land by Alan Spence (set in Nagasaki but the situation was almost identical) or Sir Ernest Satow's A Diplomat in Japan you'll get two excellent accounts of this world. Now they are filled with restaurants and shops but for me, head filled with Japanese history (I've just finished another tome), it was wonderful to see something physical to set beside all the words.

I walked through Yamashita Koen (park), an area of reclaimed land now a very green area next to the sea, and made my way to Yamate and Motomachi, the old residential areas. A few original buildings still stand, having managed to survive the 1923 earthquake, and a rebuilt Gaiety Theatre shows where the foreigners socialised of an evening. On the far side of the hill is the foreigner's cemetery. It started as the burial place for one of Commodore Perry's crew (Perry was the one who showed up off Yokohama in his black ships and demanded, at gunpoint, that Japan open its ports and begin trading. Yes, he was American). From some reason it was closed but the low wall allowed me a view down the hill. The first thing that struck me was the sheer number of different nationalities. Italians buried next to Americans next to Germans next to Brits. The next thing I noticed was the gravestone of one John Diack, "native of Aberdeen" who died here in 1900 at the age of 70. Once I finish writing this I'm going to see if I can find out anything about him online. There can't be that many Aberdonians that made it Japan during the 19th century, yet I already know of two (Diack, and Thomas Glover, subject of The Pure Land). Continuing down the hill I reaced Motomachi which is a lovely street filled with shops of all description, and reminded me more of an English seaside town than a major Japanese city. From here I caught the train back to Yokohama station and from there to my hotel in Tokyo.

Later I went to Shibuya and had a great few hours trawling second hand CD shop. I found a bunch of CDs by defunct Scottish band Urusei Yatsura for next to nothing which made me very happy as I've been trying to find them for ages without any luck. I also got Camera Talk by Flipper's Guitar, who were one of the most influential Japanese indie bands in the late '80s / early '90s (and in turn claim influence from Teenage Fanclub and The Pastels - someday I'm going to write an article about the intimate links between the Scottish and Japanese indie scenes, a still ongoing thing as I've just discovered that The Pastels are in the middle of recording with Tenniscoats).

In the evening I went to Shimokitazawa - where the cool kids hang out - and met Calum, one of the guys who did the CELTA in Edinburgh at the same time as me. A few jars and a good chat later and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep before work the next day.

Not much to say about Saturday at work. I met Nick (Aussie) and Kim (English), the other two teachers I'll be working with, and both seem very nice. The students look like a good bunch, mostly law or engineering students, although I do have a 70 year old Professor in one class, which should be interesting. I start teaching from 10am tomorrow morning so not much time to dwell on things. It's going to be a long day - I have to catch the first of 3 trains at 8.00 and I won't get home until after 8 at night. Still, at least I'm working again.

Above I mentioned photos. There are no photos as I've just discovered my camera is broken. Bollocks.

Postscript: I just googled "John Diack"+Yokohama+Aberdeen and the only hit was this post. Research on this subject may be slow.

On The Run

2008-09-19T11:36:00.004+09:00

We're awaiting a typhoon, and there's an eerie feel in the air. Typhoons rarely come this way, usually veering off east or west to hit Kyushu or Tokyo, so I'm a touch skeptical about exactly what to expect. For the last week my building has been swathed in scaffold and sheeting after someone decided that the walls needed a face-lift. The view from my desk has been reduced to grey sheeting and the odd builder, while the weather has looked permanently foggy. The builders seem to be taking the forecast seriously enough, as they've taken down the sheets, exposing our windows to the promised onslaught of wind and rain, and so I've once more got a view.

I'm in the final countdown of my 3 month enforced holiday. On the 26th - a week tomorrow - I go to Tokyo for a days orientation where they will tell me about Japan as if I'd never even heard of the country, and teach me how to teach when I've spent over 3 years teaching. I will also have to sit through the head of HR's rambling 45 minute story about a teacher who forgot his wallet and ran up a huge tab in a bar before trying to run off and who was then arrested. The shocking thing about all this, HR thinks, is that he didn't phone HR immediately and tell them that he had forgotten his wallet. Side-stepping the issue of the Japanese belief that a persons social behaviour falls under the canopy of company interest, the whole point of this story - all 45 minutes of it - is to say, "if you get arrested, phone us". Last time I sat through it, I had to struggle alternately between sleep and the urge to start asking ridiculous questions about which situations warranted a phone call and which didn't. This time, I'm tempted to drop the bombshell that while hiking around the coastline of Fukui, Bob and I were picked up by the cops.

Backstep. After Kirstin left, Bob and I decided to see a bit of the country and pretend to be hardy outdoors people. Filling two backpacks with food, clothes, two blue tarpaulins and a length of rope, he caught the bus to Tsuruga, on the Sea of Japan coast. Our plan was to walk around two or three headlands, wild camping, from Tsuruga to Obama. Yes, this was out pilgrimage to Obama.

We stepped off the bus and into torrential rain. We got lost for an hour and a half walking from the bus stop to the beach. We found tourist information and realised that there was no way we could walk to Obama in the 4 days we'd given ourselves. We started walking. The rain subsided. We were making about 4km an hour up and down some pretty steep hills and past some Bounty-ad beaches. There were no pavements and the many cement trucks that passed in either direction forced us to step off the road every few minutes. On the map, the road ended suddenly, then started up again on around the headland. We figured there must be tracks or something we could follow. We speculated about why the road should suddenly stop. We linked it to the cement trucks and figured they were still in the process of laying the road. As we reached the literal end of the road at 3.30ish, we decided to find a place to camp and call it a day. We were wet, sore, tired and the water looked so welcoming. About a mile from the end of the road a police car with lights flashing overtook us, turned and came back. In broken Japanese we explained what we were doing. They took our details and told us that we couldn't go around the headline. They explained that there was a campsite far down the west side of the headland - at least another days walking - and that we should go there. I asked if there was a bus. There wasn't. And so it came to pass that Bob and I, stiffling laughter, were bundled into the back of the police car and driven, first to the police station and then to the top of a mountain. "The campsite is 5km that way" they said, and drove off. Bob and I lost control and laughed harder than I've laughed in a long time. They clearly thought we were stupid, as the conversation of disbelief between the Sheriff and his Deputy upon discovering that this stupid foreigner in the back of their car taught in a university, showed. "Thank God they didn't ask to see our tent" I said, thinking of our tarpaulin and rope.

We eventually found the campsite and set up our tent. We swam in the wonderfully warm water across the bay from a factory, built an excellent fire upon which we cooked a very welcome tuna-pasta meal, got the whisky out and retreated into the tent as the rain started.
I won't go into detail about the horrors of the night but by dawn everything we owned was soaked, the tent had become a paddling pool and both of us were in more pain than we had been before bed. As we swam in the early light we realised that the factory wasn't a factory - it was a nuclear power station - and that the strangely hot pockets of water must be coolant. And thus we realised - the road didn't end. There are 3 more power stations on the top of the headland that are out of bounds and the police were coming to see why two foreigners with backpacks were making their way towards one of the most secured areas in Japan. Thank god they thought we were morons and not terrorists.

Thanks to the police we had covered a lot more distance than we expected and were only 17km from the next train station - our new destination if we had another night like the last. We would take a slow walk of some 8km and stay on a nice beach around the next headland. Here things turned bad - there was no beach, only concrete as far as the eye could see. Nowhere to camp, no restaurants, no convenience stores, nothing. Summer officially finished on August 31st and here, 3 days later, everyone had evacuated the area. We packed it in, caught the bus back to Tsuruga and the train home. It was horrible at the time - I had blisters, a million insect bites from our nights camping, and galloping sleep deprivation - but looking back now, it was something I'm glad we did. I've never laughed so much on a trip nor had as many anecdote-worthy experiences as on this trip with Bob.

Since then I've been lying low. Back to the studying. I hold of the first season and a half of The West Wing and I've been immersing myself in that. I got my Japanese driver's licence (I've been driving on an AA International Permit until now). I can't wait to get back to work though - having all this free time and no money is sending me crazy. I'm awaiting a typhoon as if it were a form of entertainment, which I suppose it is.

On Holiday

2008-08-29T11:25:00.009+09:00

It's late on Friday morning and I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating salami, French bread and boiled eggs and catching up on my podcast listening. A few days worth of BBC Newspods, a couple of episodes of Tom Robinson Introducing from 6Music and the latest Guardian Music Weekly. A few more myspace pages to check out and some utter dross skipped. Ideas to continue a few stories are bumping around my head but I've yet to open a word file. It'll come though.

Surfing around the BBC websites I discovered that on August 10th, thanks to Tom Robinson on 6Music, Jonny received their first outing on UK radio, with the song Pop Star. A year or so of hassling DJs to listen and play, and we finally have a result. 6Music is, I think you'll admit, not a bad start for breaking the UK. Tell your friends.

So the reason for todays excessive chilling and media catch-up is that Bob and KJ have gone West. Yesterday, after KJ changed her mind 20 times, they set off for Kyoto and this morning, assuming all has gone to plan, they are at Universal Studios in Osaka. I expect them back sometime tonight for KJ's last weekend in country. Activities have still to be finalised but we've got yakitori tomorrow night and yakiniku on Sunday. Indigestion and meat sweats here we come.

On Sunday night I squeezed into the world's smallest bus seat, elbowed the guy next to me into the window and settled down for a night of uncomfort. My plan of afternoon drinking followed by drinking litres of water worked remarkably well and I fell asleep almost instantly, waking every couple of hours when we pulled into a service station for a toilet stop. Arrival time was scheduled for 6.30 so I'd arranged to meet Bob and KJ at 7ish (they were going to the fish market), somehow or other though we arrived just after 5, leaving me a couple of hours of sitting on the floor of the subway station like a smelly homeless gaijin.

First stop was Nikko. In 766, Shodo Shonin established the first temple here. The first Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu was enshrined here upon his death and deification, as was his grandson, Iemitsu. It also contains the source of the saying "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" - it wasn't invented here but the carvings of the three monkeys made it famous. The weather wasn't that great, but it stayed dry which, for walking through forests and looking at temples, was useful. We also visited the villa Emperor Hirohito lived in during WWII and watched NHK (the Japanese BBC) make some kind of costume drama.

Due to all-night busing I crashed out at 9 and was up again in time for breakfast and a lift to the station from the monk-type guy running the place. The plan was to go to Yokohama and see what was left of the first Western settlements in the city and hang out in the biggest Chinatown in the world (outside China, although they would be called Chinese towns, not Chinatowns) unfortunately the weather had other ideas. We began by visiting the ramen museum, which isn't really a museum, more a collection of the 8 most popular ramen restaurants from around the country all collected in an indoor recreation of a 1958 district of Tokyo.
After walking for a while in the rain following the crap directions to the hostel, getting into a taxi and being met with blank looks from the driver, we finally checked in, dried off and set out for Chinatown. The rain meant we couldn't do much sightseeing so we wandered about Chinatown, drinking beer in various bars (including a Norwegian themed bar, somewhat bizarrely) and had a lovely dinner in a buffet restaurant. Drunk at midnight, we stottered home and crashed. Yokohama was fun but I need to go back and actually see the city. I have to go to Tokyo for work in a few weeks anyway, so I think I'll stop in on the way and be a tourist.

Our final destination was Kamakura, which was the capital of Japan from 1185 to 1333 and is famous for having the second biggest (but most beautiful apparently) Buddha in Japan. We got off the train one stop early and, stopping at a few temples on the way (and a cave full of massive spiders that scared the crap out of us, we walked the 3.5km over a few mountains to get there. Everyone else drove but we, proper pilgrims, took the mountain route. About 2km in, at the highest point, we spotted a small wooden sign saying "cafe'. Ah, refreshment! We found the most beautiful cafe-bar with terraces sprawled all over the summit. A plate of tacorice (they only had enough food for one plate) and a couple of beers later we climbed down and met the Buddha. There's not much to say beyond what the pictures show apart from to say that apparently it used to be inside but a huge tsunami in 1498 swept the building away but left the Buddha intact. Since then it's stood outside, exposed to the elements.

On A Brief Haiatus.

2008-08-24T13:50:00.003+09:00

A short post to explain why I'm not posting:

Bob and KJ are out visiting. Francis is also on town (although if I suggested he was here to see me rather than his beloved I would either be lying or endangering his relationship). Consequently I've been busy / away / drunk (delete as you'd expect). Tonight I'm off to Tokyo to join Bob and KJ before we go to Nikko, Yokohama and Kamakura. Expect a big post in a week or two. In the meantime I've just spent the last few hours giving my writing blog, The Watcher On The Quay, a damn good seeing to. I deleted everything, sorted out all the font problems that was plaguing it, deleted stuff that should never have been shown to the public (that space story is just shit, isn't it?) and put up a few more pieces, including my only published non-fiction article. It is now worth reading, if you haven't already. Click on the "Also by the author..." link to the right of this post.

One thing, please feel free to comment on them, even if you don't like them. I'm kind of writing in a vacuum out here and while my ego, in competition with my self-doubt, works as a good editor, I can only judge the value of something so far.

On A High Horse

2008-08-10T00:32:00.003+09:00

So, the Olympics are upon us. And while the idea of promoting peace by encouraging competition between nations, overwhelming displays of force and passive-aggressive drug taking is to be applauded (albeit slowly, with a cynical scowl and a sarcastic drawl of “oh, that’s just wonderful. Let’s celebrate international harmony in a country whose government kills in excess of 300 of its citizens a day”), one does wonder if Russia got the memo.

It does seem that Vladimir Putin stepped down as leader in order to pursue his real passion – a life size game of Risk. He left Medvyedvyedvyev to keep things ticking over – kill the odd journalist, keep an eye on the sports pages in case a Premiership team is up for grabs – donned his Napoleon hat and saddled up for an all-nighter. He’s starting well: retaking a country while everyone’s attention is elsewhere is always a good tactic. He is, however, breaking the cardinal rule: never start a land-war in Asia (that’s the cardinal rule in Risk, not the Cardinal Rule, which is an article of Papal Law dictated from within the Vatican stating that if a Cardinal finds a case where an altar boy has been left unmolested, he is to do something about it immediately).

George Bush’s response to Putin’s move has been typical. “You bastard” he was heard to say. “I only left for five minutes. I went to the toilet, got another beer and nipped over to China to see some fireworks. I come back and what do I find? You’ve gone back on all our agreements and now the board’s in a right mess.”

Putin, speaking through the hole in Medvyedvyedvyev’s face, said “What? What? I did nothing! That was mine. It’s always been mine. I’ve had guys there since forever.”

In Japan meanwhile, the news broadcasts are completely unaware that anything is happening in the world, distracted as they are by the possibility that some of their citizens may come back from China with bits of metal on ribbons for being the fastest / strongest / most aerodynamic person who could be bothered giving up their social life to pursue what is, in effect, a subsidised hobby.

The TV commentators surpassed themselves during the opening ceremony. Feeling they wouldn’t really be earning their money if they didn’t fill every available second with noise, the proceeded to “Ahhh!’ and “Ohhh!” their way through the whole shameful waste of money and natural resources like a bus tour of geriatrics on Guy Fawkes Night. Moments of televisual genius included “Look! It’s pink!”, “Are those people?” and “That’s amazing! That’s amazing! It’s paper!”

Rumours that the London 2012 delegation were seen with slack jaws, shaking their heads while muttering “We’re fucked. We’re so fucked.” have yet to be substantiated.

Britain proved they were still among the world’s elite though, as Caretaker Manager Gordon Brown was interview by Ian Rankin as part of the Edinburgh Book Festival. Desperately trying, and failing, to convince the British electorate that a man with a brain and a plan is better than a man with a PR consultant and a part-time bicycle used the festival of words to stretch his emotional rhetoric to previously unknown limits. Britain is “decent”, he said. “Decent and compassionate.” How far Britain has fallen from the Victorian / Empire times when “A man born an Englishman has won the lottery of life.” Now he is simply “decent”. How reassuring it will be for a Muslim … sorry, a “suspected terrorist” (suspected by the same police squad who gunned down a Brazilian running for a train thinking he has a suicide bomber, gunned down a Scotsman with a table leg for being an Irishman with a shotgun and who have different procedures for investigating a murder depending on whether the victim is white or black (in the former, investigate until you find the guilty party. In the second case, don’t) … how reassuring it must be to know that he is being held for 42 days in a decent and compassionate country.

Brown’s message seems to be “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if you screw your eyes up real tight, click your heels together three times and say ‘there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home’ then you can almost see a Britain that isn’t broke”. Dave Cameron, standing next to his newly recovered bicycle with a sawn-off shotgun and a pit bull, said “Britain is broken. It is broken and it needs fixed. Brown has shown that he can’t fix it, therefore trust us. Give us the job of fixing Britain. New Labour has no ideas. New Labour has no strength. New Labour has no belief. To fix Britain you need the right stuff. You need the right ideas, the strength and the belief. You need the right tools. And you won’t find bigger tools than us in the whole country.”

And finally, the award for most unbelievable statement of the month goes to Senator Carl Levin. In his opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the Situation in Iraq he raised the doubtful intelligence that, due to oil revenues and the soaring oil price, Iraq has a massive financial surplus. Senator Levin was astounded to discover that, rather than use this money to rebuild their country following the illegal invasion of US led coalition troops in 2003, the Iraqi government was relying on US taxpayers to foot the bill.

I quote from Levin’s own webpage at http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=295684

“During my recent trip to Iraq [paid for by whom?], just before the latest outbreak of violence, a senior U.S. military officer told me that when he asked an Iraqi official, “Why is it that we’re using our U.S. dollars to pay your people to clean up your towns instead of using your funds?”, the Iraqi replied, “As long as you are willing to pay for the clean-up, why should we do it?”"

How dare he? What balls these Iraqi’s have! America liberated them from the Great Dictator, Saddam Hussein. They liberated them from their water supply and their electricity. They liberated them from having to make decision about whom they sell our oil to and they liberated them from the hassle of being able to walk to the shops and buy some food. And how do the ungrateful Iraqi’s repay them? They refuse to pay for it all! They seem to think that since America caused all the problems, that America should fix all the problems. I mean … jeez!

The intelligent and erudite senator continues:

“American taxpayers are spending vast sums on reconstruction efforts. For example, the U.S. has spent at least $27.6 billion to date on major infrastructure projects, job training, education and training and equipping of the Iraqi Security Forces. On the other hand, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Iraqi Government budgeted $6.2 billion for its capital budget in 2006 but spent less than a quarter of it. As of August 31, 2007, the Iraqi Government had spent somewhere between 4.4 percent (according to the GAO) and 24 percent (according to the White House) of its $10.1 billion capital budget for 2007. As of last Thursday, the U.S. government is paying the salaries of almost 100,000 Iraqis who are working on reconstruction.

To add insult to injury, in addition to spending tens of billions of U.S. dollars on reconstruction, American taxpayers are also paying three to four dollars a gallon on gas here at home, much of which originates in the Middle East, including Iraq. The Iraqi government seems content to sit by, build up surpluses and let Americans reconstruct their country and foot the bill. But the American people surely aren’t content with that, and the Bush administration shouldn’t be either.”

To add insult to injury!?! Listen, you invaded them. You ripped apart anything that looked like an infrastructure in the vain hope of finding weapons of mass destruction that you'd repeatedly been told weren't there. Now you have to put it all back together again because being the most powerful nation in the world means that you cannot simply through your toys out of the pram and expect someone else to pick them up.

American tax payers are paying three to four dollars a gallon (what is that, about 20p?) because your government’s reckless and short-sighted actions have not only driven up demand but have drastically endangered supplies in that region (in the meantime making your government and their friends very, very rich) and if the American people aren’t content with that they have three options: 1) put up and shut up (somehow I can't see this being adopted) 2) vote democrat in November (please, oh please please please) or 3) get organised, storm the corridors of power and have another revolution. Regime change seems a popular pastime.

If you really want the Iraqis to pay for the rebuilding of their own country, get the fuck out of the way and let them get on with it, and take all the American companies who were given the construction contracts before the war had even begun and are making a fortune out of this mess. Carl Levin, you are a fucktard. In the name of all things sensible in this world, shut up and never speak again.

That was the news.

I’m going for a lie down.

On This Day

2008-07-31T07:34:00.002+09:00

Other than being the date of my birth, July 31st has seen some important (though often unhappy) moments in history. Here's the highlights (from wikipedia):

30 BC - Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.

781 - The oldest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).

1498 - On his third voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to discover the island of Trinidad.

1588 - The Spanish Armada is spotted off the coast of England.

1703 - Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.

1856 - Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.

1917 - The Third Battle of Ypres starts in Flanders.

1919 - German national assembly adopts the Weimar constitution (to come into force on August 14)

1932 - The NSDAP wins more than 38% of the vote in German elections.

1936 - The International Olympic Committee announces that the 1940 Summer Olympics will to be held in Tokyo. However, the games are given back to the IOC after the Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out, and are eventually cancelled altogether because of World War II.

1941 - Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

1948 - At Idlewild Field in New York, New York International Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) is dedicated.

1951 - Japan Airlines is established.

1954 - First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition led by Ardito Desio.

1970 - Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.

1975 - In Detroit, Michigan, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing.

2006 - Fidel Castro hands over power temporarily to brother Raúl Castro. This leads to a celebration in Little Havana [La Pequeña Habana in Spanish], Miami, Florida, where many Cuban Americans participated.

2007 - Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end at midnight.

Births
1143 - Emperor Nijo of Japan (d. 1165)
1883 - Fred Quimby, American film producer (d. 1965)
1912 - Milton Friedman, American economist, Nobel laureate (d. 2006)
1944 - Jonathan Dimbleby, British journalist and television presenter
1962 - Wesley Snipes, American actor
1963 - Fatboy Slim, British musician
1965 - J. K. Rowling, British writer

Deaths
1886 - Franz Liszt, Hungarian composer (b. 1811)
1953 - Robert Taft, U.S. Senator from Ohio and Presidential candidate (b. 1889)
1966 - Bud Powell, American jazz pianist (b. 1924)

UK Number One Album: Queen – The Game
UK Number One Single: Odyssey – Use it up and wear it out

On Tour

2008-07-30T07:53:00.011+09:00

Monday morning found us swearing at the alarm clock. Some vague time between dark and light we packed the car with bags of stuff, put Portishead on the stereo and pointed the Mini north. After half an hour of energetic swearing at bad Aichi drivers we finally made it to the motorway, moved into the fast lane and put our collective foot down.

Motorway's in this area are generally underground. The Japanese attitude to mountains, when one of them inconveniently sits where a road should be, is to drill straight through it. Not a clever idea in a country that could run it's entire electricity supply on seismic energy. My planned drive through the beautiful Gifu countryside was therefore reduced to looking at various shades and hues of cement.
Obviously tunnels don't last forever (although 11km does feel like forever) so in between we were blessed with the wonderful experience of driving rain and high winds. There was a typhoon somewhere offshore and it had sent out waves of climactic grumpiness across the country. All in all, we weren't off to a great start.
Our first stop was Shirakawa-go, a preserved village of gassho-zukuri houses. As you can see from the pictures, these are large farmhouses with thatched roofs. The area is a Unesco World Heritage site and is, quite rightly, one of the most famous tourist attractions in this area. We were a tad worried that this fame would mean that the place was swarming with Granny Bus Tours but we hoped that the combination of biblical rain and the early hour would keep the hunch-backed purple-haired hordes at bay.
The village is a beautiful place and well worth a visit. It rests in a valley, astride a wide and fast river. There are numerous paths meandering their way between the houses and rice fields. Some of the larger houses are museums and, if you cross an old man's palm with silver, you can see inside. The one we went into was set up as it would've been when in use as a family home, including shrine, sitting room and gift shop. Upstairs contained a display of farming equipment and silk worms, and the view from the window was stunning. I was also amazed to discover that these buildings are put together without nail or screw. Everything is held together by it's own weight and by homemade rope. Once I learned this I then began to notice beams bending at worrying angles, frayed knots and uneven loads. Time to go back outside.
We climbed to the top of a nearby hill where the castle use to stand in order to survey the realm and take photos. Unfortunately our arrival at the summit coincided with a bus spewing it's Septegenarian contents onto the view point and hand-rubbing gift shop staff launching themselves on anyone carrying a camera. One of these helpful money-grabbing harpies grabbed my camera from me and herded us onto the "best photo spot", dumped a huge and very ugly wooden board with the date in front of us and then took an absolutely hideous photo. I thanked her, deleted it, moved Minori to a much better position, hid the board and took the picture again, this time without me in it.At these famous sights, you can't move for signs telling you where to take your photo from. Whenever I visit these places it always amuses me to think that every Japanese person who has been there has exactly the same photo as every other. Minori is even more scathing about it than I, and has taken to calling them "The Queen's View" after the ridiculous signs that litter Royal Deeside in Scotland.

Back through the tunnels we left the motorway and, whizzing through Takayama, another famous place but which we've both been to, stopped at some frankly disappointing caves. After the caves in Yamanashi we were looking forward to some amazing sights. Unfortunately all we found were limestone deposits that looked a bit like people and an unwarranted Y1000 entry fee.
From here we continued in the general direction of our hotel but, since it was too early check in, we decided to stop at a waterfall. Apparently it is quite a famous waterfall but I have no idea what it is called and since Minori is at work I can't ask her, therefore it will just be referred to as The Waterfall. The drive there was wonderful. The weather was changing for the better and the road was based on various Bond films, allowing me to bomb down the mountainside taking a series of hairpins inches from the cliff edge while wishing that the roof of the Mini was a Union Jack rather than just black. Minori was nervous.
And so it was that, having exhausted all the sights between Takayama and Hirayu, we arrived at our hotel. Minori had discovered this hotel by reading the interweb. Some of the rooms had en suite hot springs, while others simply had access to private hot springs in the building. We had booked the latter due to the expense (a standard room is more the £100 per person, and if you want a bath you have to pad around the corridors in your yukata and slippers) but when we arrived we were told that since one of the en suite rooms was free, they had upgraded us at no extra cost. The room consisted of bedroom, dining room, bathroom and onsen, which was open to the elements, but only at angels where no one can see in. For the first time in my life I had a bath in my hotel room that not only could two of us lie out in and still have space, but that was filled (and continuously being refilled) by water that had, until very recently, been bubbling away beneath the ground and was carrying heat transmitted directly from liquid hot magma [said with Dr. Evil finger at mouth].
Apart from a break for dinner - all traditional food, locally produced or caught, served in our room by various women in kimono - we spent the entire time in our onsen. It's not often you get what is considered one of the greatest luxuries in Japan for such a cheap price and we were damn well going to get the most out of it. Lounging around half in the bath (it was seriously hot and neither of us could stand more than a few minutes submerged without having cardiac issues) and drinking the gorgeous Kiwi Pinot Noir I'd picked up in Gifu before we left, while the cool evening breeze flitted between the screens has to go down as one of the best experiences of my life. I need to become a multi-millionaire just so I can live like this every day.
Grudgingly we left in the morning after the biggest breakfast I've ever seen in my life, again served in our room by the Kimono-ed women. We were heading to Kamikouchi which is part of the Chubu-Sangaku National Park and is therefore closed to cars however the bus left from next to the hotel. At 8.30 the queue was already so long that instead of the 1 bus every 30 minutes, they seemed to be rounding up every free vehicle in the district and filling it to the gunnels with tourists. Luckily we only had to wait about 5 minutes before being herded aboard (great family groups of up to 15 people were determined that they should all travel together, which let the pair of us skip the queue and take up little room).
Mountain climbing - apart from by religious pilgrims - is a relatively new pastime in Japan. Until a hundred or so years ago most people took the - some would say sensible - view that, just being there is not sufficient reason for people to try to kill themselves while attempting to stand on top of the scenery. In 1888, while Glasgow was putting together it's best football team, the Church of England sent Rev. Walter Weston to Japan on a "Convert The Heathen" mission. It seems that Weston spent most of his time climbing and is best remembered as the man who coined the term "Japan Alps" which is still, rather oddly, used to this day to describe the mountain ranges in Central Japan. In 1896 he published "Mountaineering and Exploring in the Japanese Alps" and in 1937 Emperor Hirohito proclaimed him a National Treasure.
Since this time, mountain climbing has caught on, to the point that I feel able to rewrite the Robert M. Pirsig epigram. The original, in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." In Japan it should read: "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you and the thousand others bring there or the Zen you can buy in the multitude of souvenir shops littering the once pristine peaks." No one can piss all over nature quite like the Japanese tourist industry.
I'm going to get all righteous and angry if I write about the old women wearing the most irritating bells to scare off any bears stupid enough to have missed the sound and smell of thousands of geriatrics queuing up at the 'photo point's or the twats who brought 3 year olds on a 5km hike through a mountain range and then got angry because the unnecessary fruit of their loins wanted to be carried after marching a brave 500 metres and who then cried upon discovering Daddy would rather smoke and throw his fag ends into the lake than attend to their pressing needs. Nor am I going to mention the school girl whose reaction to seeing a family of monkeys was to scream then immediately phone her friends to tell them at extreme decibels of the monkeys who, unsurprisingly, had got a little freaked out by this display from further down the evolutionary scale and fucked off into the trees depriving the rest of us of a rare glimpse of monkeys in the wild. And I'm certainly not going to rant about the middle-aged cunt whose response to being on the other side of a HUGE river when toddlers were trying to skim stones was to lob rocks back at them while shouting "HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?"

I do not play well with others.

A plan formed in my head, and one that I intend following through next summer, ideally with my father: there are camping areas and hiking huts dotted around the range. The crowds walk, as we did, on the flat paths around the two main lakes in the valley but, since the hotels are expensive and the last bus is at 6pm, few venture into the mountains. I was already trying to work out how long it would take to hike across the peaks when an old man stopped me to practice his English. Once we'd ascertained that he'd never heard of Scotland but that it had mountains, he told me that when he was in his twenties he had crossed this very range in just under a week and that it ranked as one of his greatest memories. I quizzed him, thought some more and then, when we returned to the bus terminal, bought a kind of Ordance Survey map of the area. This looks like hard but very rewarding work and has jumped to the top of the "things I want to do in Japan" list (especially since we had done the private onsen the night before).
By clever planning we managed to avoid the busiest routes and spent much of the day walking by ourselves. Whenever we met the bus tours they were going in the opposite direction so we didn't have to put up with much. We stopped for lunch at a secluded spot beside the river where I tried to bathe my feet. Despite the average temperature in this area being 40C at the moment, it seems someone forgot to tell the water. I shouldn't be surprised that melt water fresh of the mountain is cold, but I was. Still, there's nothing better for tired feet than a short sharp shock. Tough love.
In all we walked for about 5 hours and, despite the impression I may have given above, I loved every minute. It was tired and happy that we boarded the bus back to town, climbed into the car and set off home.
The two days were a birthday present from Minori and through great planning on her part and a lot of luck everything was perfect. Gifu is at the heart of Japan and I do think it really is the heart of this country. It has everything and never fails to surprise and delight me. The guide books treat Gifu as a day trip destination, somewhere with nice mountains, a few hot springs and old villages but frankly too far from Tokyo or Kyoto to be worth the effort. It is from here that Japan was unified, that the shogunate was formed and that the Japanese spirit was forged and maintained in the face of unthinking industrialisation seeping from Tokyo. To be able to see so much of this wonderful area at all is amazing, but to spend two uninterrupted days walking, driving and bathing in pure Japan was an unforgettable birthday present.

On My Death Bed

2008-07-26T13:39:00.004+09:00

Something's seriously not right. I've been dizzy for three days now. Thursday I woke up, stood up and fell over. I repeated this activity enough times to learn that it wasn't much fun, threw up, and called in sick. That's right. I have 5 days work over the entire 3.5 month enforced summer holiday and I got sick right in the middle.

I'm back now. I took Thursday off, stopped throwing up, and came back yesterday. I'm still doing the getting dizzy thing and every so often have to use various items of furniture to keep me vaguely vertical but once I'm sitting, I can teach just as well as ever. Except for kids. I give them crayons and then zone out. It's better for all concerned. Also today is the last day of my 5 (4) days work, so I'm repeating "you can do it, only X more hours to go" to myself, occasionally out loud. No idea what caused any of this. I'm going to assume it was dehydration brought on by the stupid (it hit 40!) weather because this is something I can understand and deal with. Minori's helpful "maybe it's a brain aneurysm" (actually "brain nandake ... um ... [mimed blood vessel filling like a balloon then exploding]") aside, the only other explanation is unrefrigerated mayo on my pasta salad packed lunch. So, to use US Foreign Policy as my guide, it must either be the fault of the Japanese (their climate) or the Italians (they discovered pasta). One of these groups owes me for loss of earnings and the humiliation caused by stumbling off the train like a drunk at 10am while still clearly going to work.

Obviously work isn't that busy. I'm supposed to be teaching just now but a student who was described as "difficult ... it's hard to explain. She's just ... difficult" has so far shown herself to be rather easy to teach by not showing up. She's only 15 minutes late which means she'll probably turn up any second, but I decided to use this unexpected extra time to do something useful, and there's nothing more useful than describing each second as it passes.

I like this school. I've got my own classroom with floor to ceiling windows overlooking one of Gifu's main thoroughfares, although this can be a little disconcerting since anyone passing can peer in and marvel at the mess on the whiteboard that passes for one of my explanations. However the sheer number of pretty girls in various items of skimpy summer wear that pass more than makes up for this. In the classroom I have plants, a desk which is too low to get my legs under, the oldest mac desktop I've ever seen in my life and a huge oak table with matching chairs that I really want to steal for my flat but which I can't fit into my laptop case or up my shirt. On the pin board is a Calvin and Hobbes strip and an Irish flag made out of some kind of cheap lego rip-off.

I'm listening to the Guardian's Music Weekly podcast (which is great if you haven't heard it) and updating my list of myspace pages to check out. I'm on a big "find new music" (which really means "find music that everyone else has known about for sometime but which has so far passed me by") kick which is going very well - I've recently found Blood Red Shoes and have fallen in love, check them out - and one day soon I will devote an entire post to reviews of various bands so that you can all reap the benefits of my research. If anyone is enjoying anything musical at the moment, please let me know so that I too can join the party.

Monday and Tuesday Minori and I are off on travels. First we go to Shirakawa-go, an olde stylee village, then on to some hot spring place in the mountains of Nagano where we shall stay in an ancient hotel with private hot spring baths and local food. The next day we will to Kamikochi, which is a national park or something which is on one of these mad Japanese lists of the top ten most beautiful spots and therefore will be hoaching with old people and children, but will be a shit-sight cooler (in both meanings) than Komaki and far more picturesque. This is all by way of celebrating me surviving being 27 without becoming a famous rock star / actor and dying young, gifted and black. In other words, it's me birthday on Thursday. I will also be celebrating by posting a quite interesting "On this day" list that shows that, in addition to my birth, some horrific things have happened on July 31st over the millenia. One to watch for.

The 31st is also J. K. Rowling's birthday, and I would like to open the "What would you get J. K. for her birthday?" comment competition. Answers to the usual places.

Ok. Difficult student didn't show up and it is now time for my next lesson, which is a kids class. Now, where did I put those crayons?

On The Road

2008-07-12T18:24:00.010+09:00

Baseball really is a pointless sport. I mean, it must be more boring then even cricket (although it does have the advantage over cricket of only lasting one day). We sat and watched very well paid grown men throw balls badly or fail to hit badly thrown balls for three and a half hours. Then I came home and was violently ill because of ballgame hot dogs. Even the cheerleaders weren't that great. Load of bollocks. Give me 90 minutes of extremely well paid men chasing a leather ball around and failing to score a single goal any day.

Last weekend, when we went to Okazaki, I related the history I posted here to Rachel and Jen, possibly at greater length. When we arrived at Okazaki I produced my newly acquired cheapo compass and quickly found east, the direction of the castle. Jen sighed and said she felt she was on holiday with her uncle. I relate this by way of an introduction, because Minori and I took a trip on Saturday and I'm going to relay it to you with full history, whistles, bells and four-part harmony. This is Uncle Iain, filling your brains with things you didn't really need to know.

Last post I mentioned the Tokaido road. During the Edo Period (1600 - 1868), the Bakufu (Shogun's military government) were based in Edo (now Tokyo). The Emperor (merely a figurehead, before 1868 the Emperor hadn't had any real power for around a thousand years) resided in Kyoto. Two roads were created linking the two great cities. The Tokaido followed the south coast while the second road, the Nakasendo took a northern route, generally around but sometimes over, the mountains.

One of the ways the Shogun insured loyalty amongst his Lords (daimyos) after defeating many of them in battle was the hostage system. A Daimyo's family were required to live in Edo at the Daimyo's expense but the Daimyo was only required to be present at court every second year. The alternate year he was to live in his domain, also at his expense. There were two main results of this policy. Firstly, the Daimyo who was tempted to ferment rebellion had to weigh up the likely success of any action with the certain knowledge that, the second news reached Edo of any treason, his family would be relieved of their heads. Secondly, he couldn't put together much of an army since all his funds were spent on keeping two very expensive homes, one in the fashionable capital where strength depended on reputation and reputation depended on ready cash.

Since there was a constant stream of Daimyos and their entourages trooping back and forth from Edo, these roads became rather busy and, since the distances were sometimes great, post town grew up around inns. Traders flocked there, those in need of work came seeking and a large section of the Japanese population became dependent on the roads.

Magome, in Aichi, and Tsumago over the border in Nagano, were two very successful and important post towns. With the Meiji Restoration in the latter half of the 19th Century came railways and more roads. The roads, and the Nakasendo particularly, became neglected and began to fall apart. The Tokaido faired better and is now the Kyoto - Tokyo Shinkansen line. Post World War Two, historical preservation societies began to spring up and so it is that now, in 2008, these 400 year old towns still stand, almost unchanged.

These two towns, Magome and Tsumago are famous examples and are within a couple of hours drive from here, so off we went. We reached Magome first, sitting high in the hills. There isn't much to Magome other than the old road, so I'll let the photos explain.
It is possible to follow the old road from Magome to Tsumago for 7.7km of winding up-and-down road but the heat and the having to walk back again to pick up the car put us off. We're going to go back in Autumn and do it properly. On the road we did manage to find the Odaki and Medaki waterfalls, where we rested for a while in the shade, being pleasantly sprayed by the falls.
So we reached Tsumago, which is much the same as Magome except much bigger, much busier and, by now, much much hotter. It peaked at 37C while we were there, which is just unnecessary.
A nice little jaunt into the country, although my favourite bits were the bits spent in the car with the air con on full. Bliss.

Yesterday, Minori took me to the hair salon where her friend works. I still haven't mastered enough Japanese to get a decent haircut (I haven't worked out how to get one in English either, come to think of it) so we figured a combination of her friend's talents, Minori's translations
and some magazines would allow me to get a respectable and much needed haircut. First thing I learned is that salons are where all the beautiful girls hang out. There are parts of Japanese society that you need someone to escort you through, and this is one of them. Oh, lovely girls.
I got the full treatment including head and shoulder massage and came out with a J-boy-spiky-waxed-do that isn't half bad. I'd show you a picture but it's 8am, I slept with the
wax in, and now I look like a manga character. Not pretty.

We came home, blessed the man who invented moving air and spent the afternoon watching Heroes.

On Memories

2008-07-07T21:45:00.003+09:00

Lest We Forget:

www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/7490142.stm

On Okazaki

2008-07-07T15:52:00.008+09:00

Being at your desk 9 hours a day when you only actually teach for an hour and twenty minutes and, since it's the end of term and all we're doing is playing review games, those two lessons require the bare minimum of preparation, you find you have a lot of time to waste.

Consequently, today I have:
1. Printed out a list of all the kanji and vocabulary required to pass the next level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) in December and discovered that I know a lot of it but can't really piece much of it together into anything meaningful. As usually happens in my life, it turns out that recall is excellent but interaction is limited. Still I have six months and gaps of umemployment in which to rectify this.
2. Learned 12 new kanji, all their readings and common compounds.
3. Played roulette with my fellow (bored) teachers.
4. Read some of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (someone please make him the Education Minister) and discovered that I had known enough about Darwinism to be right in all those arguments with the superstitious ... I'm sorry, I mean religious ... but that, as always, there is more to learn and that the extra is fascinating. Yet again I wish I had infinite time and resources so I could go back to uni and study this stuff properly.
5. Run out of things to do and so have decided to update the blog (not that I don't enjoy it, but the computers at work run Japanese Windows (mado XP - sorry, Japanese language joke) and Blogger gets confused by people being in one country and wanting to use the language of a different country, therefore it takes more time and the odd trip to the dictionary).

Saturday I had the job interview I mentioned at the end of the last post. It was interesting but they are looking for a 5 - 10 year commitment and it's almost entirely children I'd be teaching so I don't think I'll take it if they offer (I haven't heard, and since I utilised quite a lot of honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if the didn't give it to me). Afterwards I decided to go on a day trip and so, pausing in Nagoya long enough to pick up Rachel and Jen, caught the train to Okazaki.
Okazaki is about half an hour south of Nagoya and was once the main city in this area. What is now Aichi prefecture was once Owari and a bit of Mino (the other bit joined Hida and became Gifu) and Okazaki was the castle town. It was here that Tokugawa Ieyasu was born. Japan suffered hundreds of years of Civil War, until Oda Nobunaga (from Gifu) tentatively unified Japan (i.e. beat everyone else) but he only ruled for 6 years before being assassinated. Be was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (also from this area). He was challenged by Tokugawa Ieyasu and at first a stalemate was reached around Komaki (where I now live). Eventually, at the battle of Sekigahara (also near here) in 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu was victorious and proclaimed himself Shogun (Shogun is a hereditary title within the Minamoto family, of which he was a descendant. Nobunaga and Hideyoshi could never call themselves Shogun). After the seige of Osaka Castle in 1616 Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa family until 1868 when the Emperor was restored and Japan opened up to the world.
So Okazaki has a long and proud history. The castle was originally built in 1455 and, although the Shogunate based themselves in Edo (Tokyo), it was their spiritual home. The Tokaido Road connecting Tokyo and Kyoto ran through Okazaki and the city grew rapidly, and it became an important station on the road. It was demolished however in 1873-1874 leaving only the moat and the stone base it sat on. In 1959 it was restored exactly as it had originally stood.
I've seen most of the castles in this area but I'd never made it to this one which, since I'm learning a lot about Japanese history, keeps cropping up in my reading. I didn't pick the best day for the trip however. The temperature was over 30 and the humidity just stupid. The ten minutes walk from the station nearly killed me and, if I hadn't remembered a towel and my deodorant, would've killed everyone in the castle as well. I took some lovely photos, as you can see and we walked around the grounds after touring the castle. The clock you can see is just weird. Tokugawa Ieyasu was deified upon his death. His family ruled Japan for over 250 years. Every half hour this, possibly the most important man in Japanese history, comes out in a funny Noh mask, and does a little dance. Can you buy clocks of Churchill or Cromwell that do this? I want one.
On the grounds there is also a museum where they let you play with samurai stuff (except the swords don't come out of the sheaths, bah).
Saturday night, the Americans had arranged a 4th (on the 5th) of July dinner and piss up. We started off in the Nagoya Hilton in the bar on the 28th floor where it was happy hour. Actually, backtrack a bit. Jen, Rachel and I went to Red Rock for a couple of pints prior to meeting the others. Running a bit late and it being very hot, we jumped into a taxi. I got in first, sat in the middle. Rachel got in next to me on the left. Jen got in on the right. Doors closed. The driver turned around, looked at me, then at each of the two girls, then back at me. "Hilton Hotel please" I said. He looked at me. "Hilton. Fast!". He looked at the two girls, winked at me. "I understand!" he said. He skipped 3 red lights and went the wrong way down a one way street. We couldn't stop laughing for more time than was seemly.
When happy hour finished we went to Tarafuku, apparently a famous Japanese restaurant serving Atarashi Tabemono (Japanese Nouveau Cuisine). It was ok but the menus were all in Japanese and either the handwriting was bad or I was too drunk to read it properly, but we ended up just saying "do you have ..." and ordering when they said yes. From thence to karaoke where I sang stuff, and I'm sure I was good. At 2ish I went back to Mike's flat to make good use of his sofa. I woke at 6 and went home. Sunday I didn't do much apart from watch the most amazing thunderstorm I've ever seen. One thunder clap lasted nearly 30 minutes and I had the pleasure of seeing a fork hit the pylon and then my lights go out. That was cool. Also the twat who lives down the street and owns the massive and LOUD motorbike was out cruising when the storm started and came home looking like Cousin It from The Addams Family after being flushed by some particularly mean school bullies. I laughed. He saw me. I laughed and pointed.

"Bring me your tired
your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free..."

Happy 4th of July

On Random

2008-07-03T20:03:00.004+09:00

Minori's watching a Japanese film with no subtitles and too many mushy bits so I'm hiding in the spare room re-reading the internet and listening to The Bugle podcast. If you don't know The Bugle then I laugh at your empty life. The Bugle is, I admit, published (apparently this is the correct verb to use with podcasts, I checked) by The Times, the former respected newspaper of London, now reduced to nothing more than The Sun without the red banner and a different set of tits (would the real Dave Cameron please feck off) by its arse of an owner Rupert "Can I Buy The Monopolies Commission Please?" Murdoch (reread this sentence to remember out where it started), but, it is written by and stars Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver, the official surrealist satirists on the planet. Therefore it is genius. Check it out.

There have been developments at work. After an extended fight, HR has apologised as much as they ever will for behaving badly and, since I feel my point has been made, I have accepted their offer of continued employment. I have some holiday cover work at a school in Gifu and I've applied to be a camp leader (not like Peter Mandelson) for 4 days in the mountains in Nagano and another 4 days in Gunma so hopefully I can make it to September without selling a kidney (do you think anyone would believe "one careful owner"?).

The second years finished on Wednesday so each of my 4 classes had a party. I left the students in charge of the details and so they decided that since my birthday is during the holidays, they should throw me a birthday party (well, 4 birthday parties). This basically consisted of them eating cake, talking to each other in Japanese and asking me how much money I make and is my girlfriend cute. I did get a bottle of sake, a can of beer (a theme?) and a decorated whiteboard saying "Iain love" which is either a beautiful sentiment expressed via the medium of bad grammar or a tennis score. The first years finish next Wednesday and are under the illusion that their end of term party is reliant on them not using one word of Japanese during class.

Tomorrow I'm off to Gifu to check out a school where I have been half offered the opportunity to run my own school, an offer I probably won't take since it involves teaching mostly brats ... sorry, I mean children ... and a time commitment that may run to a large number of years. Then I'm meeting my colleagues + 1 for drinks, food and karaoke. It's all go.

On Screen

2008-06-29T15:02:00.003+09:00

I just rented the first 3 episodes of Heroes. As always with these TV shows, I managed to miss it when it was on TV and I'm now catching up with the rest of the world. So, as I say, I just rented DVD 1. There are 11. If I don't post for a while, you know why.

On Anger

2008-06-29T07:48:00.002+09:00

Hi, my name's Iain. You may remember me from such posts as ...

Yeah, sorry it's been a while. It's not through laziness or neglect though, I just haven't actually been doing anything besides working and studying.

The rain it raineth every day, hence this being referred to as "they rainy season". If a Japanese person ever tells you that they have 4 seasons here, they are lying. They have six: Spring, Rainy, Summer, Typhoon, Autumn and Winter. I only like two of them. This isn't one of them. Every weekend for the past few weeks I've been cowering indoors wondering when the bullets of rain will finally break through the roof and making plans for an ark with two of every single malt and a big room for poo.

Consequently I haven't gone anywhere (Hikone was on the list for this weekend but I wanted to see the gardens so we'll wait) but I have got through a lot of DVDs and jammed a lot of vocab into my head.

Speaking of DVDs, I had a fight in a shop which was a lot of fun. Japan is region 2, as are Europe and the Middle East. This is great as it means I can watch my DVDs and rental ones on my laptop without any problem. The screens not the biggest though, so a few weeks ago we set off to buy a player. Got a nice one, not too expensive, not too cheap, and took it home to discover that it didn't play any of my DVDs. Turns out the Japanese government forces manufacturers to put something in the machines so they only play discs made in Japan. Protectionist bastards. So back we go to be confronted by this little twat who says (in Japanese, obviously) "Everyone knows they only play Japanese DVDs so you're not getting your money back". I pointed out, calmly at first, that the box said it played region 2, with nothing mentioned about made in Japan. He shrugged and said everyone knew so they didn't need to put it on the box. I pointed out that neither I nor Minori had known this so he was wrong and would he please give us our money back. No he said. Now, as many of you know, politeness is a very important thing in Japan, as are not showing too much of your emotions or causing a scene. I know this, and I also know that some people will do almost anything to avoid a scene. Since I have no problems with causing a scene, I felt I could use this to our advantage. As my voice began rising, and my gestures getting more aggressive, sweat started pouring from his forehead. Once he realised I wasn't going to leave the store without my cash he scurried off and returned promptly with our cash and a warning never to shop there again. We assured him that his ability as a salesman had already confirmed us in the opinion that we would never return.

The postscript to this story is that we decided to buy a shitty second hand player just to watch rentals on, got this thing for about 10 quid and, it turns out that, since it was made in China, it will happily play both UK and Japanese DVDs. I am victorious.

Work hasn't been as much fun of late. Term is coming to an end and Rachel and I both applied to have our contracts renewed. 3 weeks ago she received an email saying that she would be kept on in the same job with a salary increase. I received nothing. Finally, on Friday, I bumped into my boss on the subway who, after some coaxing, admitted that if I was to get a new contract it would be at a different university. I asked why. Turns out HR have decided that they want only women working in the women's colleges. Since I am not a woman, I have to go. They decided this weeks ago and were too scared to tell me. I'm not surprised. I'm fucking livid. They finally sent me an email saying that "because of current circumstances" I couldn't stay where I am and they offered me a new contract at a different university for less money (note Rachel's salary increase) and it wouldn't start until the end of September, leaving me out of work for nearly 3 months. If this was the UK I would be suing them for sexual discrimination but things are different here and so that path isn't open to me. Consequently I'm now in the market for another job.

And that has pretty much taken up all my time and energy, hence not posting. Term finishes July 9th and we're going to see the baseball on the 11th. After that I have a week's work at a school in Gifu covering someone's holiday and then who knows? I was hoping to use this summer break to do some serious traveling, but unless I get a contract sorted ASAP, I'm going to lying low and not spending pennies.

On Stage

2008-06-10T08:36:00.003+09:00

That was a good weekend. Jen, Mike, Rachel (fellow teachers) and I went to see the great Jonny support some Swedish band called Dreamboy (I know, shit name). They were playing a cupboard in Tsurumai called K. D. Japon, which looks like a hunting cabin. Inside it has a bar, a floor and a rickety balcony. There’s no stage, only a space three people deep between the microphones and the bar.

The first band on were called Folt. They were ok in a typical Japanese rock way – loud guitars, lots of energy, perfect harmonies and far too much showing off (for a band that owe a lot to Green Day, they really didn’t need that many pedals. Nor did the bass player need to change the sound every third note. Like a man who can belch “To be or not to be”, we admire the effort put in, but we’d rather not have to witness the display) and perfect harmonies. We discussed this afterwards and reached the conclusion that they must get taught how to sing at school, thus, they all sing the same. It really is impossible to tell one voice from another (most Japanese people I’ve asked can only do it if they know the singers) and this, combined with the fret-wanking, removes any hint of soul or heart in the music. So, as I said, Folt were ok.

There was no sign of Dreamboy at this point, and people were beginning to think that Mike and I were in the band. We decided that if they didn’t show, we would pretend to be them and do a rendition of My Lovely Horse from Father Ted (the Ted version, not the Divine Comedy version) before smashing the equipment and asking for phone numbers. Unfortunately they appeared during the next band who were:

The Morrisingles (I think: I’m translating phonetically) who would make an amazing post-rock band if (again) they’d get their singer to shut up or do something interesting with his voice. Like a psychedelic Sigur Ros, they played beautiful atmospheric rock and then this androgynous hippy twat would open his mouth and sing like a stoned Will Young over the top. Needless to say the instrumentals got applauded much more.

On came Jonny. This was the first time I’d seen them since I returned. In the interim they’ve released a second single (the fantastic Cranberry / Pop Star EP. I’ll send it to people if they send me money) and are on the verge of recording a second full-length album. They only played five songs but blew the roof off. They had us all laughing when Mio began rambling into the microphone and the guitarist Shinoda, getting bored, started singing the next song, doing a really bad impression of Mio. They had a stand-in bassist for the night (I think, I never did get a decent explanation) who looked like the bastard child of Mick Jagger and Jarvis Cocker after having swallowed a big bag of naughty sweeties. New song Fine Man is a cracker, and they played Radio, my favourite, which warmed the heart of my cockles. My three companions were suitably impressed, and are newly minted Jonny fans.

Dreamboy took to the … I was going to say stage but I guess “took to the area of floor reserved for bands” is more accurate. Geeky Swedes in tight trousers and deck shoes, Harry Potter glasses and dodgy hair-dos playing Weezer rock with the witty-yet-down-to-earth lyrics and the tight harmonies and pop-punk riffs. They went down very well, got 2 encores and sold a lot of CDs (I bought one. It’s good. Thom, you would definitely like this).

Afterwards we got chatting with the band and a plan was hatched to get some food so Dreamboy and their translators, Jonny, a few Folts and us took over an izakaya where we convinced the other customers that these guys were major rock stars. Then a discussion began about whether or not the singer really was Spiderman (he looks a lot like Tobey Mcguire). Finally someone suggested karaoke.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to karaoke with professional musicians. If not, let me give you some advice: don’t. It’s just humiliating. They did pitch perfect four-part harmony on Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Still we tried, and had a big sing-a-long to Where Is My Mind?

Unable to answer, Mike and I slipped out and headed for the station. Only someone had moved the station. In its place they’d put a park and some houses. We wandered in the rain until at about 5 o’clock, when we finally hailed a taxi. Mike let me crash on his floor where I awoke at 8.30, still pissed and with hair like Christopher Lloyd. Of course I didn’t realise this until I got home and worked out why everyone had been staring at me on the train. Rock n Roll man.

On My Bike

2008-06-04T10:17:00.002+09:00

Saturday we ventured to Nagoya. Not a big trip, but since I make the journey every day at the height of rush hour, the thought of doing the trip in my own free time didn’t appeal. However Minori wanted to shop and both of us wanted to go to Nagoya castle so off we set.

The castle wasn’t that great, and I certainly have no great desire to ever go again (that was my second time), but nearby is the Nagoya Noh Theatre. Noh I know next to nothing about, beyond it being a type of theatre involving masks and music. We looked around the small museum, which meant little to me, but I watched a video of a Noh play and became intrigued. It turned out that in July they have a performance for those who, like me, know nothing but wouldn’t mind a bit more education and need English audio guides. Minori doesn’t seem too enthused but she’ll come with me to act as a translator / cultural buffer and learn a little bit more about her own country.

I then watched her shop (I mean I watched her buying things in various shops, not I looked after the shop she owns, since she doesn’t own a shop. Being a nurse.). The only highlight was a trip to HMV where I purchased the new Portishead album, which is, obviously, stunning, although Machine Gun is taking its time to grow on me.

Sunday began with my Japanese class. Now that I’m off on Sundays, I can attend the Y400-a-month (about £2) classes in Inuyama that I couldn’t go to for the two years I lived there. They aren’t the best since the teachers are volunteers: you get a different teacher every week and some of them know next to nothing about teaching. Now, they say nurses and doctors make the worst patients and chefs make the worst diners, but language teachers tend to make the best language students because we can see what the teacher is trying to do, can understand where they are going and sympathise with them. However it does make us the worst critics when they are bad. One teacher is totally unaware of the idea of language grading – the idea that you speak to a student in words and grammatical forms they will have met and understand rather than prattling on nineteen to the dozen as if they were native speakers. I’ve had a few weeks of these teachers by myself, since the beginner’s class is massive, but the higher levels are empty. Fortunately, on Sunday, they decided that 6 students should be moved up from the class below mine. 4 Chinese girls, a Filipino girl and a bloke from Peru, each of varying Japanese ability – some better than me, some worse – joined me, and suddenly the lessons didn’t seem such hard work now that I had others to share the burden of answering questions and asking for clarification.

We had a good laugh for an hour and forty-five, discussing presents we’d given and received (the grammatical structure we were studying was “W wa X ni Y o Z” for those who know Japanese: watashi wa okaa-san ni hana o agemasu”). I relaxed a lot and was able to speak much more, and started stringing sentences together. I’m still a long way from being conversational, but I can at least make myself understood, even if I can’t always understand the reply (I bought the wrong textbook, and I managed to explain to the staff in the bookshop that I’d bought the wrong level and wanted to change it for the correct one, and it worked perfectly. Sounds smug, but I’m not very good at languages and that was, like, a major victory for me).

After class I went to the gym. I’ve lost a fair bit of weight since I returned here (a combination of diet and sauna-like-heat once I’m in my suit – now I understand why the man from Del Monte said “yes” to linen) but apart from the odd bit of cycling when it doesn’t rain on my day off, I haven’t had the chance to develop the ripped surfer’s body I so clearly deserve. Since the gym is next door to the school, I’ve started going straight after. I overdid it on the shoulder-muscle machine thingy and now really struggle to put my jacket on (which doesn’t help the sauna thing, because it’s such a hassle to put on that I am loath to take it off) but my biceps are rippling and my waistline must’ve shrunk by at least a millimetre.

Both of the above feed into a plan I’m formulating. My contract finishes on July 11th and (although it’s not confirmed, I’ve been told not to worry) my next contract will begin around the 14th of September. This means I’m out of work for 2 months. Bob and Kirstin are coming from the end of August (such an august end to the month) to the beginning of September (sorry, can’t think of a pun). Ergo I have five weeks between finishing work and friends arriving. I’ve been trying desperately to find work for this period (from five weeks to the whole two months) but summer schools don’t seem to exist here. I had one interview at a school in Gifu. They loved me but aren’t sure whether they need anyone, which isn’t helpful. Long whine short, I may be unemployed over the summer. If I’m unemployed I will, obviously, be paying out and not taking in, therefore my whirlwind social life of drinks on a Friday with my colleagues and playing football with a 5 year old every few weeks will be severely curtailed. Thus I will have to lie low. So (how many ways can I find to say “therefore” without resorting to the thesaurus) I am formulating a plan whereby I will spend no money beyond what is necessary by staying home and studying the old nihongo and going to the gym / cycling / jogging / doing push-ups in the flat to the Rocky soundtrack. By next term I will be buff and fluent.

Alternatively, if anyone fancies donating money to the “Let Iain Sleep On The Sofa In The Afternoon And Drink Beer That’s Not Made From Soya And Wine That Doesn’t Come From Utah Fund” (or the LISOTSITAADBTNMFSAWTDCFUF for short) I take all major currencies, especially the Yen (although not the US Dollar – I’m desperate, not stupid).

Minori said I should get a tent and a gas stove and go cycling across Japan for the summer. Such a romantic idea. If my bike wasn’t made before the dawn of talking pictures, I would. I have dreams of cycling around Shikoku and doing the 88 shrine pilgrimage. Riding the Tokkaido or the Nakasendo. Of course I may have misunderstood. When I looked up what she said in my dictionary, it said, “If you don’t have a job, you can get on your bike.”

On The Weekend

2008-05-25T12:09:00.003+09:00

First stop on the tourist trail was Koyama Kannon, a shrine on a small hill in the middle of the river about ten minutes from Minori’s parents house. Apparently it just used to be a small hill, but when they made the dam near Yaotsu, the area was flooded, and the shrine became in island. It is much like every other shrine so I spent most of my time playing with the camera. Minori got cornered by an old man intent on telling her that the day before a snake was hanging from the tree above the shrine, Jungle Book-like. Quite interesting in itself (and yet another example of the bloody snakes in this country encroaching on my life) but didn’t really warrant the 8 times he told the story and the enforced tour of the route the snake took when it finally got bored and pissed off.

This is a Tengu. Tengu are mischievous spirits that over time have had an image rebranding and become protective. In Minokamo stands Mt. Tengu, which is covered in these statues and also is the site of a temple that was in full service when we were there. It was a bit eerie, and reminded me of the Temple of Doom.

This is an ancient burial site near our flat. When the archaeologists went at it, they unearthed a huge amount of pottery, hence the red replicas around the hill. I wasn't allowed to climb it, which was disappointing as the top was the site of ceremonies and sacrifices.

Not much has been happening, hence the gallery.

On My Life

2008-05-15T10:14:00.002+09:00

I’d like to begin – and since it’s my blog, I don’t see why I shouldn’t – by thanking Bob for his kind comment. If you haven’t read it, he says that the further I get from him, the funnier I become. I nice sentiment – one is always glad to be found witty (excuse me, I’ve been reading The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, for which much thanks Dan) – although it did lead to the thought that if distance makes me funny, then maybe time will make me readable. If you extend the sentiment then maybe I’ll become the important writer I feel I should be, after death. It seems a shame though. I do so want to be asked by some knuckle-dragger who thinks John Grisham is a writer: “Where do you get your ideas from?” (Phillip Pullman’s answer, relayed to me by, I believe, Kirstin Smith: “From www.ideas.com of course”). I also wouldn’t mind getting a nice advance and blowing it all on the Med on wine and Galloise while being secretive about the Magnificent Octopus I’m not writing. (Writer at a party: “I’m writing a novel.” Peter Cook: “Neither am I”). I can live in hope, and die in expectation. You can’t take it with you, they never tire of informing us, but you sure as hell can leave it behind for others to marvel over.

Speaking of Galloise, it’s almost a year (June) since I gave up smoking. Go me.

I feel I should give the flat a proper description (read: I can’t be arsed putting new batteries in the camera). The building contains only four flats in a 2-up 2-down formation (Italian football tactics). As you look at the front, we are top left. Below us are some people. Next to us are some other people. Below them are yet more people with a Grandmother I’ve seen getting into her car. We haven’t met the neighbours yet. Our door is on the ground floor but as you step through, you are instantly met with a cupboard and some stairs. The stairs generally go up although late at night, after an evening tipple, they can be tricky customers. The stairs, like a good short story, twist at the end. To the left is the toilet. To the right, the shower room. Straight-ahead you step into the Dining-Kitchen.

A brief word about Japanese flats: they are advertised in the following way 1DK (1 bedroom, Dining-Kitchen), 2LDK (2 bedrooms and a Living-room-Dining-Kitchen). Ours is a 3DK – technically 3 bedrooms and a Dining-Kitchen – no living room. However the DK is unusually big in this flat, and we have converted (converted he says, like each room wasn’t just an empty box anyway) one of the bedrooms into a living room.

So you step into the DK. Left of you, along the same wall (the door is in the corner) are fridge, sink, cooker and cupboards. On the left wall is a big, south-facing window, in front of which is our new pine dining table at which I’m currently sitting drinking a cold beer and a warm-ish Glenfiddich. On the right wall is the door into the spare bedroom (now decked out with desk, drawers, books and a Scotland flag). Ahead are two doors. The right leads into our bedroom – it’s Japanese style with tatami (straw) mats on the floor, built-in cupboards and no bloody air-con. The other door leads to the living room. In here, naturally, we have our sofa, TV, etc. This room has air-con (praise be) and the doors onto the balcony. The balcony is the only let down in the flat: the sides are so high, and the base so narrow, that if you were to sit down, your face would be inches away from the plastic. Yes, plastic. When I step onto the balcony it creaks like Gordon Brown’s mouth when he tries to smile. And it’s just as scary.

The walls are all white; the floors – tatami apart – are all wood. The windows are big so the flat is full of light (well, during the day it is, at night we harness the power of the atom). We’re five minutes from Tagata-Jinja, the Penis (really it’s male fertility but penis sounds funnier) Temple, which is opposite the train station. There are many restaurants, a bar (not very good, we’ve already had an argument about cold red wine) and an alcohol warehouse (where I bought the Glenfiddich). In the other direction is a 7-11, the post office, an Italian restaurant and a Brazilian place which is a yellow and blue warehouse that could be a supermarket, a shopping centre or (translating with my knowledge of two words in Portuguese (Thanks and Beer)) a laundrette you could wash an aeroplane in. This weekend I intend to take my new ancient bicycle on an exploration of the further surroundings. There must be a decent bar around here somewhere.

Work has posed no significant problems apart from a lack of pay between July and September. However I may have an interview for a conversation school (when I say “may”: we’ve exchanged emails, I’ve sent a CV and a photo, they like me and want to talk to me at all the times I’m busy) that will give me temporary work over the summer (don’t worry Bob, the dates are imprinted on my brain). Basically, I teach 6 classes a day. 2 first-year classes of 15 each, and 4 second-year classes ranging between 12 and 16 per class. I teach the same groups every day, for 40 minutes a piece. The downside of this is I have to see them every day. The upside is that each year-group gets taught the same thing at the same pace ergo, I only have to prepare 2 lessons a day.

For those that know what such terms mean, the brightest, most fluent and talkative student is, generously, low pre-intermediate. The rest are what we EFL teachers call “retards”. A retard, in EFL terms, is someone who, regardless of how long and how hard they study, will never, ever, learn the language to even a basic conversational level. In Sociology they are called the “lowest-common-denominator”. In Geography, they are called Glaswegians. However, they are all rich (it’s an expensive private university) Japanese girls of a certain age (18-20) studying how to kill time before they marry a (rich) man Daddy will approve of. Regrets? No. Happy as a pig who, having blown out all the candles on his birthday cake and wished for a big field full of shit, woke up the next morning to find that, not only had his wish come true, but he’d been given some lady pigs to share it with? Oh yes, yes, yes.

Quotes from Andy Zaltzman:

“When you think of all the doctors the NHS have stolen from overseas, I think most illegal immigrants only come here to see their local GP.”

“I accept that [aeroplanes] will probably be kept airborne by the tried and tested methods of statistics, witchcraft, luck and Zeus-defying arrogance or, as they’re collectively known, physics.”

“We seem to think that most foreigners are only doing the jobs that we Brits don’t want to do ourselves, like clean toilets, capture strawberries, and score 20 goals a season in the Premier League.”

As they used to say at the end of Count Duckula:

“Good Night out there, whatever you are”

On Golden Week

2008-05-08T16:00:00.007+09:00

Last day of the holidays. I’m sitting in our living room looking out the balcony doors across the shortish orchard in front of our flat. Minori is preparing herself for a return to work after over a year of idleness. I’m playing games on the laptop and flicking through my new cookbook, Harumi’s Japanese Cooking by Harumi Kurihara (the Japanese Delia Smith according to the quote from The Scotsman on the front cover).

Saturday I rose with an intense pain in my skull caused by a visit to the local yakiniku followed by a variety of powerful drinks in Red Rock (for those who remember, Akane still works there but promises to be gone by the end of the summer). I was supposed to go to Minori’s parents’ house to help her father load our furniture into his van. As I dragged my battered corpse towards the shower, the phone rang. Minori’s father had already loaded the van by himself and there was really no need for me to go. A few hours extra sleep really set me up for carrying everything into the flat and then building various shelving and kitchen units in the 31-degree heat. The rest of the day passed in a flurry of shopping, drinking beer and saying things like “should that go there or in here?” and “shit, we forgot to buy…” and “Christ it’s hot!” In the evening the 50 kilos of stuff we sent from Edinburgh arrived and thus it was that we were reunited with all our winter clothes on the hottest day of the year so far. I got a lot of books though and all my Japanese study stuff.

On Sunday the Japanese class I’ve been promising to go to since I arrived was cancelled because of Golden Week so, instead, I went hill walking. Gohoudaki is a small mountain covered in waterfalls and red bridges. We had both been at the start of April but Minori is having back problems and didn’t want to climb so we had only gone to the first bridge (see the “Smell The Pun” post). Borrowing her car and a very detailed road map I, amazingly, found my way there without getting lost. I was really looking forward to getting into the hills and doing some exercise and it started well, and I got some nice photos, but after about 15 minutes I realised I was at the top. Disappointed I began my descent, wondering if there were any other places I could walk. A few more photos on the way down and then, suddenly, as I stepped onto a small bridge, something caught my eye. Before I registered what it was, I found that some survival instinct had forced me back a few metres. Making it’s way from the edge of the stream onto the bridge, about half a metre from where my foot had been, was a 2 metre long Aodashi, a poisonous (but not deadly, though I didn’t know this at the time – and there are deadly ones here) snake. As we had reached the bridge at the same time, it reared up in the famous “You got a problem, mate?” snake pose, fangs bared, ready to bite.

Metaphorically, I filled my shorts.

The snake slithered off into the woods and the elderly couple I’d met at the top caught up with me:

“Ok?”
“Snake. Big. Snake.”
“Did it bite you?”
“No.”
“Ok then. Bye bye.”

I very, very quickly reached the bottom and the safety of wide, paved roads. I abandoned all thoughts of further walking, got into the car, put the Bob Marley on and bombed back to civilisation.

Monday and Tuesday were days off because of the aforementioned Golden Week. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as it isn’t really a week, rather 3 national holidays in quick succession. It begins on the 29th April with Showa Day. I think it’s the day the last Emperor, Hirohito, died, but it may be his birthday (the period of his reign is known as Showa. We are now in Heisei). Then, on the 5th (this year – it moves around a bit depending on where the weekend isn’t) it’s Constitution Day (don’t know) and then Children’s Day. (I know I should find out what these days are about but we don’t have interweb in the flat yet and so wikipedia is a trip to the office away). They call it a week because some lucky sods manage to wangle a full week off. We only get the actual days (which in itself is a blessing – at Nova, these were the busiest days and the earliest starts).

Monday therefore, I rose late to discover a downpour. I had arranged to meet my colleagues in the park for a spot of football, ultimate Frisbee, sweating and hyperventilating but, unfortunately, that was out. I went into Nagoya anyway in order to solve the internet problem only to discover that the Yahoo BB shop had closed down in the year I was away and hadn’t left a forwarding address. I drank a beer, climbed the TV Tower (that makes Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Sapporo towers I’ve been up. They like their towers here), bought the aforementioned cookbook and a copy of last week’s Guardian Weekly and then went to the international shop and bought smoked duck, salami, olives, red wine and whisky for the barbecue that evening. (Bourgeois? Me?)

Barbecue you say? But you mention inclement weather ending your trip to the park?

That’s right. Minori’s Dad comes from the “I said we were having a barbecue and nothing as pathetic as some water is going to stop me” school of barbecues. The fact that they have a huge covered area for the 5 family cars in lue of a garage made his determination more practical and, sure enough, we had a wonderful barbecue while torrential rain battered the roof, drowning out all conversation, and typhoon-like winds stole anything not nailed down. It was just like home.

About 11pm Minori’s sister announced that she wanted to do something. Minori suggested we play pool. I was, a little worse for wear, bundled into the car. Soon I found myself drunkenly teaching pool to two beautiful Japanese girls while a pool hall of Brazilian men seethed with envy.

At least they did in my head.

After that I embarrassed myself at karaoke. I was so drunk I actually attempted Aqualung’s Strange and Beautiful. Now that is inebriated. I have discovered that my best bet at karaoke is Arctic Monkeys “I Bet You Look Like A Chav On The Dancefloor” (or whatever it’s called) which doesn’t say much for me but says even less for the Arctic Monkeys.

Strangely we didn’t do much on Tuesday.

The flat’s coming together. We bought a simply stunning spice rack, darling (all my “great rack” jokes fell of deaf ears) and our utensils hang nicely (missus). The furniture I built hasn’t fallen down and neither have the pictures I hung. I bought two photos of Fuji when we were at Kawaguchiko – one a sunset reflected in one of the five lakes, the other a snow scene taken from the air, with a white forest and the blood red tori (shrine gate) in the water below a capped Fuji – that have been expertly framed (with only a minimal amount of swearing) and now take pride of place in the living room and bedroom respectively. All that’s left is the kitchen table (delivered on Saturday), a desk and a bookshelf, and at last we will be complete as people. And all without an Ikea anywhere in sight.

Music I’ve found and like:
www.myspace.com/liflostinfound
www.myspace.com/lovepsychedelicous
www.myspace.com/polymyth
www.myspace.com/oranjapan
www.myspace.com/bloodredshoes

On Yamanashi

2008-04-30T19:52:00.007+09:00

Two Sundays ago, Minori and I whiled away the day looking for flats in and around Komaki. Komaki is a city about halfway between Inuyama and Nagoya. It’s also a mid-point for my work and Minori’s new job in a hospital in Kasugai.

The first couple of flats we saw were either dark and damp (an experience that living in Edinburgh has taught us not to repeat), underneath a motorway flyover or somewhere that we weren’t allowed to rent because I am a) a foreigner or b) a possible Yakuza member (the fact that Yakuza are notoriously right wing and have a faction that makes the BNP look like to Tories (which isn’t hard) seemed to have escaped the racist muppet of a landlord). Eventually we found two we really liked. The first in Komaki centre, a one-minute walk from the train station, with a massive balcony perfect for evening drinks in the summer, a loft and two bedrooms. The second in Tagata-jinja (the site of the infamous Penis Festival blog fans) which is in the middle of nowhere, a 15 minute walk from the station but with 3 bedrooms and a huge kitchen with big, south-facing windows. After much discussion we opted for the second.

We get the keys on Thursday so today (being a national holiday and one which, for the first time in my life, I get) went shopping for kitchen accoutrements (God bless the 100 yen shop) and furniture. I have just bought the first kitchen table of my life and feel suitable grown up and skint. Thursday and Friday, while I’m slaving away over hot students, Minori and her mother will move all our lighter possessions to the flat and then on Saturday, her father and I will move the big stuff.

As much as I’ve loved living with her family (and I have, they’re great and Japanese home cooking is fantastic, as my reduced waistline will testify), leaving the house at 6.30am and not returning until after 8pm every day is starting to get a bit boring. I get a lot of reading done but my life Monday to Friday is centred around sleeping, being jammed onto a commuter train (you know those pictures you see of Japanese trains at rush hour, people squashed against the window like proverbial sardines, men on the platform literally pushing people onto the train when there cannot possibly be any more space? That’s my mornings and evenings) and teaching. It’s not exactly how I imagined being 27 would be when I was a child (where are the flying cars and teleports dammit?). As much as staying here has helped my Japanese (well my listening anyway, and Haru has taught me the kind of words 5 year old boys like saying again and again, loudly, at embarrassing moments) and has made the first few weeks in Japan slide by smoothly, I can’t wait to move. My commute will be halved, the train will be quieter (as I avoid all major stations) and I will be able to sleep until the decedent hour of 7am and still be at my desk by 8.30 (though why I have to be there when my first class isn’t until 10.50 is still something we’re discussing).

So the days shopping done, Minori and I are sitting in the driveway basking in the 23 degree heat, drinking beer and wine respectively, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. Haru is threatening to kick his football ever closer to my laptop in a vain attempt to get me to play with him. The carp flags flying in advance of Children’s Day on May 5th are fluttering in the slight breeze and the smell of stale urine from the family dog who is literally on his last legs fills my nostrils. I feel it’s time to begin recounting our adventures from last weekend.

Friday night, after being ejaculated from the train and scraped off the platform by Minori, we set off for Yamanashi prefecture. Yamanashi is the area directly north of Mount Fuji and site of the 5 lakes of Fuji. Minori’s parents go camping there once or twice a year and this time they invited Minori and I along. They had left in the afternoon with Haru so Minori and I were driving ourselves and would rendezvous at the campsite around midnight.

I was a little disappointed to be driving at night as we would be passing the Japanese Alps but I would see nothing. The alternative however was to leave first thing in the morning and both of us preferred waking up already there than starting our short holiday with a four hour drive. An hour into the journey I asked, as way of making conversation, if my International Driving Permit was in Minori’s bag (where it had been the previous weekend) or in the glove box. “You’ve got it” was the reply. I didn’t. Neither did she. I shrugged. My British licence was in my wallet and if anything happened the permit could be got and shown without much hassle. But no. I hadn’t counted on the Japanese government and their ability to be harshly punitive towards mild breaches of Beauraeucratic codes while allowing much more serious things to go unpunished (if Japan has an “Incitement to Racial Violence” law then it isn’t being used, but more on that later). Apparently, if the police caught me driving without my International Permit actually on my person (I assume within the car would be acceptable and that I don’t have to drive clutching it in one sweaty hand) then I would be banned from driving in Japan indefinitely.

Minori took over the driving. I listened to old editions of The Now Show and ranted about fascistic intrusions into the lives of tax paying citizens. I’d just found out that most towns have loudspeakers that announce when it is 5 o’clock and therefore time for all children to go home. How many countries in the world have, in peacetime, a curfew for children that is followed voluntarily and without complaint. Minori seemed surprised that anyone would question the governments right to dictate what time children should return home and eat. Just as well it never happened in Britain. Can you imagine if the government had tried that and then put John Prescott in charge. The alarm would have been going off every ten minutes.

We awoke the next morning to low lying mist, a severe threat of rain and temperatures just above zero. Fuji was nowhere in sight but it was cold enough that the cherry blossom hadn’t yet fallen and the lake itself (Kawaguchiko) was beautiful. The campsite was misnamed. It was a stretch of dirt between the road and the lake that had been roped into numbered areas big enough for a tent, a car and the usual detritus of camping. There were fifteen spaces and only one tent. Ours.
After a traditional Japanese breakfast of rice, sausages, salad, asparagus, bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic, bits of pork, sweetcorn soup and coffee, Minori and I took a meander along the lake shore in the direction of a fishing competition that was very noisily taking place. Fishing here seems to be an excuse to show off how fast your speed boat can go rather than anything to do with catching fish. Finding little of interest we walked inland and uphill. Minori, despite having come here every year as a child and teenager, had never actually walked around the town. Thus it was that we got totally lost and found a peaceful little temple halfway up the hill. We returned as the rain came on to discover her parents and Haru getting into their leviathan-sized Toyota van. Off we set to visit a reconstructed (as most things in Japan are: thanks MacArthur) traditional village and a bat cave. That’s a bat cave, not the bat cave.

As they say, a picture says a thousand words and since I’m not a student with a word count to reach, I see no reason to bother with a thousand words. The only things worth noting are:
1. That although the village was “traditional”, no one seemed to know when this style of house would have been the norm.
2. Inside one house was full samurai armour which people could try on. I was too big and thus have no photos of me decked out like a massive blond samurai. They did let me play with a real (though blunt) sword. I made lightsaber sounds.

In 1707, a parasitic volcano on the shoulder of Fuji (it’s the bump you see in some of the pictures later), erupted and the lava that flowed out created what’s now called Aokigahara Jukai. Basically, a sea of lava hardened and a forest grew on top. It’s one of those weird places in the word where compasses don’t work and people come to kill themselves. It’s also, as a result of how it was formed, home to a massive network of caves and tunnels.
The bat cave is one of them. Not for the claustrophobic, it starts like a big underground room but gets progressively smaller until we were forced to crawl and wriggle our way through. I say we; Haru, being 5 years old and about 2 feet high just walked, occasionally bumping his hard hat on the ceiling. I, being over 6 feet tall, was in severe danger of getting stuck. The rocks inside were amazing, and resparked a vague wish I’ve had over the years to learn more about geology. You can actually see where the lava was flowing. There are ripples in it, tide marks, and this is in rock.
Someone, Bill Bryson I think, pointed out that rock is the true historian of the world, the record and teacher of what has happened to this planet over the preceding millions of years. When I win the lottery and become a perpetual student, this will be my sixth degree (after the two I already have, Philosophy, History and Japanese).

After lunch (and who was hungry after that breakfast?) we went to the aquarium, which contained only the kind of fish you would find in your average supermarket apart from these fascinating things (whose name I’ve forgotten) who eat dead skin. Apparently they are used (quite cunningly) to treat things like Athlete’s Foot. I stuck my hand in the water and now have perfectly smooth cuticles.

The evening was much more eventful than the afternoon. We dined in Minori’s parent’s favourite restaurant, which is a traditional affair. The floor is all tatami (straw) mats with a hole dug around which the diners sit. Inside this hole is a metal trough into which the staff shovel white hot coals. You then barbecue sticks of meat or fish or whatever. The building and restaurant were once in Takayama city in Gifu Prefecture (where I’m now living and writing) but were moved – bricks and menu – to Kawaguchiko. The food was delicious although I experience a first: I was handed a stick, impaled on which was a fish. A moving fish. A still-living fish. I was handed this living fish with the instructions “wait until it’s dead or the meat will get flaky and fall into the fire”. How do you know when a fish with a spike up it has actually died? Like all living things with a wooden spike inserted through it’s length, the fish tried to move as little as possible. Eventually however, the gaps between spasms became longer, I became hungrier and my carnivorous instincts took over. On the heat it went. It’s skin crackled. It’s eyes exploded. It jerked a final time. It tasted fantastic.
After dinner came the highlight of the weekend for me. In the near-enough-to-two-years-that-I’m-going-to-call-it-two-years that I spent in Japan, the one thing I really regretted not doing was going to an onsen. An onsen, usually, is a bath-house built above a natural hot spring – something with which Japan is particularly well endowed, being such a volcanic hotspot - although sometimes they just heat the water by the magic of electricity. This was a natural one, and a beautiful outside one. The main reason I never went is that onsens are notorious for their rules. Every guide book features a page or two on what to do and, more importantly, what not to do at an onsen. Fear of putting my foot into the middle of a faux pas and the language issue kept me away.

It was decided that we would all go to the onsen, my second first of the day (after cooking a live fish). This, in turn, led to my third first of the day. Onsens are strictly segregated by sex because you bathe sans clothes. In the nip. Tackle out. My third first: the first time I have been naked with my girlfriend’s father. I had a towel the size of a face cloth to cover my modesty (although, really, it only covered a portion of my … portion) but still, it was a tad awkward.

The onsen was wonderful though and, regardless of the awkward moments (Haru shouting "look at Iain's willy" was a particular high point), I now know the routine. I've rarely felt so relaxed in my life than I was for the five minutes sitting in 50C water under the stars, and the ensuing beer tasted sweet, and relaxed the parts onsens cannot reach. My ambition now is to fulfill the cliche and go to an outdoor onsen while it's snowing. Bliss.
Sunday we were met with a surprise - sunshine and Fuji. We'd almost forgotten it was supposed to be there when suddenly a fecking great volcano appeared. How they could've hidden something that big in clouds I'll never know but one minute the far shore was a haze of dirty white fluff, the next the horizon was filled with the familiar cone.
Minori and I set off ourselves as I wanted to see two more famous caves. The first, a massive lava cave, was something of a disappointment especially since the lighting they'd installed for safety stopped you from seeing anything other than the roped off pathway. We walked the 30 minutes through the forest to the next cave, which, although not as good as the bat cave, was far superior to the lava cave - the ice cave. This featured stupidly huge icicles and a hole that apparently you could follow to an island off Tokyo.

While walking back through the forest we discussed the high suicide rate in the forest, and in Japan in general. A spate of suicides has been in the news recently since some helpful soul let people know that mixing the most common brands of bathroom and kitchen cleaners releases a highly poisonous gas which leads to an almost instant death. In one case 90 people had to be evacuated from a building after an over-zealous teenager mixed litres of the stuff. We glanced around as it is not uncommon to find bodies lying or swinging near the path. We saw nothing, but when I picked up a piece of litter someone had dropped, cursing them for destroying nature, Minori noticed that it was a receipt for a length of rope. Chilling.
We stopped for lunch at a French restaurant which served only pasta and Carlsberg. It had French flags everywhere and was called Quatre Saisons hence calling it a French restaurant but that's where the similarity ended. Sarkozy would've been fuming, while Berlusconi would've laughed. I just complained that the red wine was kept chilled (why, oh, why do they do that here? Who told them that red wine should be served at 4C? And who told them that Beaujolais Nouveau was nice?). My best Japanese sentence just now is "Do you keep the red wine in the fridge? Really? (with sarcastic intonation) In that case I'll have the beer."
A stunning drive over the mountain tops with more views of the traditionally shy Fuji (who was giving the world full frontals that day) and we reached Mount Minobu, which is only accessible by cable car. I say only, you can walk there but since there is no real path and the mountain has a steeper gradient than John Cleese, only the mad or religious would bother. Talking of religion, the place has an interesting history, which I won't explain here. Rather I will point you in the ever helpful direction of Wikipedia: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichiren_Daishonin for the full gen.
After that it was home in enough daylight to take these photos of the Alps (still don't know why they use the European name. It's on all the road signs) and pass out exhausted.
With that story concluded I'll take my leave. I can only apologise should a gap occur in the blog. We don't have internet in the new flat and unless I can steal it, I probably won't be able to post for a week or so. I'll just leave you with news that once more FC Gifu threw away a 2:1 lead and lost 4:2. I didn't go, thank God, but hopefully they'll fare better next time. Ganbatte.

On Football

2008-04-19T23:13:00.002+09:00

FC Gifu 2. Yokohama FC 3. My first trip to the Nagaragawa stadium wasn’t the joyous event I had hoped. We drove – me at the wheel, Minori at the map providing wildly inaccurate directions and pointless advice – through the beautiful Gifu countryside and eventually found the stadium. I bought a scarf which is very nice and footbally but is designed for Japanese fans and therefore, when I wear it, it looks like a bar towel draped over my shoulders. Minori bought a bottle of tea, some sushi and a fashion magazine (this is all inside the ground). I accused her of not entering into the spirit of things.
We took our seats and instantly the local TV camera was trained on me as the camera assistant shouted “look, look: a foreigner. Film him.” They did but I have no idea if it was ever broadcast. I hope so as I was wearing my cool shades, my Japan football top and sucking my stomach in as far as I could.
Football in Japan is not like football in Scotland. No, that’s not true: the actual football, being second division, is very much like Scottish first division (being the second actual division) football. I saw more people kicking air than in an entire performance of Riverdance. There was more huffing and puffing than in the whole of the Three Little Pigs. And there were more shots wide of the target than the last time I tried to come up with a witty and insightful analogy. Seriously, one guy actually dropped the ball while taking a throw in. The referee awarded Gifu a free kick. Then he changed his mind and gave it to Yokohama. Yokohama’s first goal was an own goal of such stunningly stupid proportions, it makes you want to run out and pay £13 million for Emile Heskey: midfielder, who has come back to defend, watches spellbound as the slow looping shot bounces off the crossbar, drops gently onto the top of his boot, and trickles over the line into the goal.
But watching football in Japan is not like watching football in Scotland. I was surrounded by grandmothers with picnics. One woman actually brought proper plates, cutlery and a camping gas burner in order to reheat and eat the curry and rice she’d brought in tightly sealed Tupperware. Three rows down, a woman breastfed her months old baby. There was an obscene amount of beer being bandied about (I say obscene because I was driving and therefore couldn’t touch a drop). But the weirdest thing, and a thing I will never get used to – nay, will never try and get used to – is applauding the other team when they score. Applauding the other team when they score with the last kick of the ball in the 3 minutes of stoppage time and beat you 2-3. Applauding them for beating you when you led twice, when their first goal was the aforementioned own goal, when their star Brazilian defender got away with decking a player off the ball because the referee “didn’t see it”.
It was shit. It was shockingly amateur. From the ball-boys who kept a constant level of 3 balls on the pitch at any given moment to the TV crew who managed to trip the Yokohama winger with a camera cable to the Gifu defence who firmly believe that turning your back on a player and trying to block the shot beats tackling him every time, I had so many things to shout about, I nearly lost my voice. Even the songs were pathetic: “FC Gifu da ne” (FC Gifu, isn’t it?) versus “Yokohama” (repeat to fade) aren’t even in the same sport as “There’s only 2 Andy Gorams” or “He’s fat, he’s Scouse, he’s probably robbed your house: Wayne Rooney”

Minori’s mother asked, “How was it?” “Great” I said. “Really good. I’m going to try and go to the next home game.” “But,” said Minori, “you complained throughout the game. You stamped your feet. You threw your water bottle into the ground. You swore loudly and frequently. You called Gifu ‘a bunch of amateurs’ and ‘a bunch of fucking wasters’. You told me repeatedly that your Granny could've scored that. You said you were going to demand back the price of your ticket and the price of your scarf. You didn't enjoy any of it.” “I know,” I replied. “That’s what football’s all about. You don't watch football to enjoy yourself. You watch football because you like being miserable."

Smell The Pun.

2008-04-19T08:16:00.002+09:00

The Bridge On The River Kawaii.

On Yaotsu

2008-04-13T21:00:00.007+09:00

Part One:

Yaotsu is a small town of about 13000 people tucked away in the south of Gifu, not doing any one any harm. Sitting in a steep valley, old, ramshackle houses stand next to new apartment blocks. The Kiso River, wide and fast, runs through the centre, spanned by high bridges. The cherry blossom is in full bloom just now, adding pink and white sprays to the luscious green. It has a festival in April, the local delicacy is eel and Minori’s grandmother lives there. It was also the birthplace of a man called Sugihara Chiune in 1900.

His father demanded that Sugihara become a doctor but Sugihara wanted to study English. To placate his father he sat the medical entry exam but turned in a blank answer sheet. This didn’t placate his father who cut off his money. Desperate to continue his education, he heard that the Foreign Ministry would pay for students to study abroad. He sat the entrance exam, passed, and was sent to China to study Russian.

After some time spent at the embassy in Finland, he became the Japanese consul in Lithuania in 1938 with a brief to keep an eye on the Soviets. War broke out, Japan allied with Germany, and Sugihara became very busy.

In July 1940 the Japanese consulate was visited by a large group of mostly Polish and Lithuanian Jews fleeing Hitler. They had exit visas that allowed them to travel through Russia, who were on the point of invading Lithuania, and they wanted transit visas through Japan so they could escape. They were refugees with little money. Some had entry visas to America and Australia but many didn’t. Sugihara contacted his government who refused visas to anyone who didn’t meet the visa requirements. He ignored his governments’ stance and took it upon himself to issue the visas. In all he issued over 1500 visas which, since children travelled on their parents visa, meant that somewhere between 5000 and 6000 Jews escaped via the Trans-Siberian Railway and then through Japan.

The war ended, Sugihara spent a couple of years in a POW camp and was then allowed to return home where the government “suggested” that he resign. Many of the survivors who had escaped on Sugihara’s visas settled in Israel and then began trying to find the man who had saved their lives. In 1985 the Israeli government honoured him as “Righteous Among Nations” and he died in 1986.

In Yaotsu now there stands the Hill of Humanity, an entire hill dedicated to the memory of this magnificent man. You drive up a winding road through cherry trees, marvelling at the view of the town below. At the top is a memorial hall with exhibits, photos, a reproduction of his office and a moving film detailing the story. Across the road is a beautiful park with a musical fountain at the centre. It’s a stunning and peaceful place, a fitting epitaph for such a man.

The feeling you get from visiting is strange, a kind of flipside to the Anne Frank House. Although both have the stomach churning reminder of the Jewish Holocaust (and the photos here pull no punches), the Sugihara Memorial has a sweeter aftertaste – 6000 lives were saved by this one man. It brings a tear to the eye and warmth to the heart.

Part Two:

As mentioned above there is a festival in April and Minori’s grandmother lives there. I held off posting about Yaotsu because I knew we would be going to the festival, which we did today.

Mostly the photos speak for themselves however I feel I should elucidate a few points.
The day began with lunch at the grandmother’s for all but Minori’s Dad, who was lying on the sofa swearing that he’d never touch another drop. We had a traditional festival lunch and I sat in the corner desperately trying not to make a faux pas and being climbed on by Haru. Lunch done we walked into town and went to the festival site to see the Danjiri (see the On Matsuri post) and meet Minori’s uncle who was involved in the whole thing. When I say involved, what I mean is this: at 1pm he was totally spannered, wearing traditional garb, standing on a blue sheet under a tree and drinking. He introduced me to his friends who proceeded to pour sake down my throat, shout random English words at me and tell me to marry Minori as soon as possible. They also told me that they loved Canada. Minori’s mother captured the whole thing on film and once I work out the technology, I’ll make it available for all to laugh at.

And to predict the question from most of my male friends, the girl in the photos who isn't Minori is Minroi's younger sister. Her name is Chiharu, she is 23 and single. Shall I pencil you in for a visit?

On Life

2008-04-12T16:45:00.004+09:00

There are four of us. An Englishman, a Canadian, an American and myself, a Scot. Our mission, which, for varying reasons, we chose to accept, is to teach English to the girls at Sugiyama University. I say girls for it is a women-only college which specialises in training Elementary School teachers. Where the male teachers train is information that, as yet, hasn’t been divulged to me, though I would guess the girls know. We teach them English and teach them how to teach English since, from 2011, the study of English will be compulsory in all Elementary Schools in Japan. Another stage in the cultural hegemony of the English speakers is complete.
I have an office and, therefore, feel important. I arranged my desk. Put my stationary in this drawer, teaching materials in this one and miscellany in the bottom drawer. I played some music and checked my emails. I planned a few lessons. I stared out of the window at the cherry blossom. I checked my watch. I seemed to have exhausted the possibilities of having an office.
The next day I took my study materials with me and reviewed 72 kanji. I now feel confident that I can write the date and tell people that there is a cultivated field at the top of the mountain. I felt confident / bored enough to attempt surrealism in Japanese. Suddenly the forest was inside the mountain, the woman was made of bamboo and today was the tea day of the cow’s flesh month of the river year. I feel progress is being made.
My commute is a round trip of 3 hours, most of which is spent in a variety of strange positions focused around having my face pressed against the glass, my feet at a “6 o’clock” alignment and the ring of a hand-strap gently bouncing off my forehead with the rhythmic movements of the train. On a few occasions however I have been lucky enough to have a seat and, to avoid having to look at the lower half of the salaryman standing mere inches in front of me, have launched myself into a reading campaign with vigour, enthusiasm and, above all else, a concentration that limits the scope of my vision to the printed page in front of me and not the pinstriped nether-regions of Toyota’s finest. Thus I have, in addition to continuing my historical studies and my forays into Japanese linguistic creativity, read Mishima Yukio’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and Murakami Ryu’s Piercing. The former is a mediocre book written by one of Japan’s greatest literary talents and weirdest sons which is interesting mainly for the thought that someone read the book, adapted it into a screenplay and decided that the part of the mentally-challenged, socially-inadequate, immature and physically unremarkable Japanese sailor is a part ideally suited for Kris Kristofferson. They always said Hollywood was the Cereal City – full of fruits, nuts and flakes – and this is another nail in an already well-nailed coffin.
The latter novella (making the print bigger to make the length appear to be value for money is only an acceptable tactic if you are a student falling remarkably short of a word limit, it should not be a publishing tool) is up to Murakami Ryu’s usual high standard and a huge improvement on the disappointing In The Miso Soup. For those that don’t know, Murakami started out (as a writer – he has also been the drummer in a successful rock band, a film director and has presented his own chat show) as a sort of Japanese Irvine Welsh with his shocking debut Almost Transparent Blue before moving into more Tarantino areas with often extreme violence, morally-repugnant-yet-very-likeable-and-sympathetic characters, pop culture references and more sex and tension than inside the average teenage boys brain. His best is still Coin Locker Babies but this is a worthy addition to the canon.
I started reading Murakami Haruki’s Sputnik Sweetheart this morning but at 10 pages I feel it’s too early to judge at this stage.

In other cultural news I have, today, purchased tickets to see the next home game of FC Gifu, my local and, until Celtic finally send Gordon Strachan to a club more suited to his talents (like a working man’s social club) and replace him with David Moyes, my new favourite team. The fact that they play in green and white has made this switch easier. The fact that they are in their first season as a professional team and are currently floating around the middle of the second (and last) division I find to be strangely more comforting than knowing that Celtic will finish second in the top division with not so much as a silver sovereign ring to show for their season. To complete the switch of allegiance, the next home game will be against Yokohama, Nakamura Shunsuke’s old club. Last week they drew 1 – 1 with the team at the top of the table and, the season only being 6 games old, I have high hopes for them. Gifu Ganbatte.*

Those who are lucky enough to receive the odd email (and, as I’m sure you would agree, they are odd) will be aware that I went to Tokyo last Sunday and Monday for training. Little of note happened. Most of the art galleries and museums I wanted to visit were closed and Tokyo Tower contained more slowly moving grannies than a village post office on pension day when a foreigner has been sited in the area. I took some photos of the Tokyo vista (which, interestingly, has less holes in it than Windows Vista and is easier to find your way around) and I present them here in my new exhibition cunningly titled “Photos of Tokyo Taken From The Tokyo Tower”.
One last thing on the subject: this year marks the 50th anniversary of the building of Tokyo Tower. It was built in 1958 (obviously) as the focal point of the post war rebuilding of Tokyo (which was totally annihilated in 3 years of fire bombing – a little known fact but more people died and more damage was done in Tokyo by conventional bombing than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. It just took longer) and there is a wonderful Japanese film called Always which takes place in the area around the tower as it is being built. It is a wonderfully scripted low-budget (it almost looks like a TV movie) film that is both one of the saddest and most heart-warming pieces I’ve seen in a long time. Emotionally it is like a bitter-sweet It’s A Wonderful Life (in other words the ending isn’t as happy or so full of closure) but it concerns a few families in the neighbourhood rather than just one man. A great family movie and one worth checking out.

On that note, folks of world, I will end. It is late afternoon. Today is Haru’s (Minori’s nephew) 5th birthday and there is a huge ice cream cake and a crate of beer with my name on it. It’s weird that they sell beer called Iain here, but very welcoming. We have just returned from playing football (for which read: Haru has been kicking the ball as hard as he can in any direction and I have been going to get it), we put together his new train set and christened it by feeding part of the track through the station and running an electric toy shinkansen over a platform crowded with Lego men (for a daily commuter it was a very cathartic and satisfying moment) and then, as an excuse to rest, I came and finished this post. I have just been hit up-side the head with a wooden sword and that, as much as anything else, seems a good reason to stop.

*Note: after posting the blog I checked todays football results. FC Gifu beat Fukuoka 5 - 1 away and are now second in the table by 2 points but the teams behind us play tomorrow.

On Matsuri

2008-04-06T06:26:00.004+09:00

Inuyama in springtime is one of the most beautiful places in the world. On Matsuri (festival) day it becomes heavenly. The old road leading to the foot of the castle, already home to some of the oldest surviving houses in the area, is lined with sakura (cherry blossom), at this time just beginning to fall, floating down like pink snow. Food vendors stretch into the distance, the smells of yakisoba and okonomiyaki mixing with candyfloss and chips. Huge cool boxes filled with iced water hold inviting cans of beer and bottles of tea. It’s 26 degrees, there isn’t a cloud in sight, and the streets are packed.

The town is split into districts and each district has a team. This teams job is to build, maintain and, when the festival comes around, push the massive danjiri through the streets. Danjiri are tall wooden floats, gorgeously decorated, and topped with working marionettes. Inside children play traditional music on flutes and drums. Pushing them isn’t easy as they weigh a few tonnes but push them they do, from their garages to the castle where they are lined up and each performs a puppet show. The crowds flock round, photographing everything, eating anything, hiding from the sun in shrines and doorways.

The castle itself is stunning. The foreground – red toris, dog guardian statues, hundreds of little shrines – is framed by an explosion of sakura, surely one of the most concentrated growths in Japan. Flags and banners are hoisted to fill any available space. Above it all stands the oldest original castle in Japan, it’s black and white tower impressing itself on everything. The castle is a tourist attraction now, but on a day like this it is easy to imagine the Daimyo (Lord) residing inside with his samurai retainers, looking down on the people celebrating the end of winter, the start of a new year and the beauty of their country. This is Japan at its best. This is what we came for, and it doesn’t get any better than this.

On History

2008-04-04T07:42:00.002+09:00

I hate jet lag. I really hate jet lag. I mean, I guess I’m not alone in this and that you’re far from surprised by that statement, but right now, at 1.57am, I feel it’s something that needs to be said.

After an epic journey from Glasgow to Nagoya via Dubai I arrived at Centrair at the back of 5 on Wednesday evening and was met by Minori, her mother, her sister Chiharu and her nephew, Haru. After about 24 hours travelling and not talking to anyone besides the odd stewardess it was so nice to be met by such a welcoming group, although I was so tired that any Japanese I was able to say lay in a molten gooey mess somewhere behind my deeply glazed eyes. I wasn’t too tired however to do the boyfriendly thing and notice Minori’s new haircut and the fact that she had lost weight. Brownie points immediately upon landing. Go me.
Being picked up also meant I didn’t have to spend a couple of hours on the train and could just veg out in the back of the car with seaweed and rice snacks and a couple of beers and complain about being treated like a criminal by Japanese immigration who photographed and finger-printed me. The government, in its senile wisdom (someone asked me the other day “what do the Japanese do with their old people?” To which I answered “They let them run the country.”), has adopted the American screening system wholesale, totally unchanged, despite the American government admitting that the system is seriously flawed and has no effect whatsoever on international terrorism. They also seem to have totally ignored the fact that every, and I mean every, act of terrorism committed on Japanese soil has been carried out by Japanese nationals, who aren’t fingerprinted or photographed.
So I was driven back to Minori’s house whereupon I crashed out and slept the sleep of a man whose carbon footprint is still freshly imprinted across most of the northern hemisphere. Until 4am, of course, at which point I was wider-awake than I have ever been in my life. I read for a bit (I’m reviewing my knowledge of Japanese history in preparation for further study. I’ve read up to just before the Meiji Restoration (1868) but have never been able to find a decent book that continues from their which wasn’t written by an American whose father / grandfather died in the Pacific War and who had, shall we say, an agenda to grind. But now I have (A Modern History of Japan From Tokugawa Times To The Present by Andrew Gordon), and luckily it recaps the Tokugawa period so I don’t have to trawl too far through the flotsam and Jetsons of my brain), did some paperwork in advance of going to the City Office / Bank / phone shop and then ironed every item of clothing I possess. That brought me to about 7am.
I won’t bore you with the details of a day spent registering as an alien, opening accounts and getting phones but needless to say there was lots of waiting, lots of faffing and some ramen for lunch. In the end it all got done and at about 4.30pm I closed my eyes for 40 winks (what a stupid expression, 40 winks. Who the hell winks while they’re sleeping, let alone counts the instances?).
Which brings me to 1.57am. It’s dark, everyone’s asleep and I fear I’ve missed dinner.

What’s it like to be back? It pretty much as I remember, which is not that surprising really. Every so often I point at something and say “I’d forgotten about that” but generally the only problem has been reacquainting myself with the idea that I’m massive.
Comparing how I feel this time with how I felt the first time I arrived in Japan, the difference is astounding. We walked into a ramen shop, ordered and ate without me even really thinking about it. I can fill in most sections on the forms without having to ask what each and every kanji means. The little things that so quickly trip a person up in a new country or a new language are less of a hassle this time. Although saying that, I couldn’t have organised my National Health Insurance without Minori to translate and negotiate. As phone calls and faxes whizzed between Minokamo City Office and my head office in Tokyo, I just stood by until I was handed a card saying I was covered and then got back into the car.
I had one moment of “bloody hell, I’m in Japan” but mostly I don’t really think it’s struck me that I’m here yet. The fact that I’ve either been asleep or dozy for most of the 36 hours since I arrived have probably contribute to that feeling.

So. Plans. In the immediate future there’s Inuyama festival on Saturday followed by a trip to Hakkenden, scene of much drinking, eating, hilarity and lusting over waitresses the last time I was here. Today I think we’re heading into Nagoya. There are a few things I need to pick up and I wouldn’t mind getting a look at my new work place. Sunday I’m leaving about 12ish to go to Tokyo where I have training all day Monday. I’ll have a few hours free Sunday afternoon / evening in Tokyo so I’m trying to decide what to do with them. Choices so far include Tokyo Tower, Yokohama or a baseball game. Now, since it’s 2.39am, I’m going to try and get back to sleep so that I can do a decent impression of a human being come sunrise. Wish me luck.

5.24. Well, that didn’t work. I have, however, read much about the Meiji Restoration and the Civil War that led to it. I’m slowly creating a list of questions for further study and I’m beginning to get the feeling that once I’ve read all the books I have, I’m going to have done the equivalent reading to a Masters in Japanese History. I wonder if I can do one of those as a distance course. Another scroll in the cap.
It’s strange thinking about the motivations behind the movements in Japanese history, as they tend to be so different from the west. They never really had a liberal movement here like we did in Europe. The revolution was based on the idea that the ruling elite were corrupt and were destroying Japan, but there was little question that there should be a ruling elite. For a Westerner such as I, you have to constantly rethink your reactions to events and decisions. People that would be monsters in a Euro-American setting can be heroes in Japan, and vice versa, because every shed of philosophy and ideology that informs the quality decision “Is X good or bad?” is different. For example, in Europe, the divine right of Kings and the hierarchy that fed on it was overthrown long ago as a serious doctrine and replaced with a more egalitarian view of humanity (however slowly it was put into practice) and this view informs our quality judgements about history. Both sides in the Civil War seem unworthy of sympathy from a Liberal Western standpoint because one is fighting to retain the feudal warrior system – rule by might – while the other is seeking to restore the Emperor – descended from gods, leader by divine right – and turf out the barbarian foreigners.
Gordon sets out some of the core ideas of the Tokugawa period (1600 – 1868): “First, hierarchy is natural and just.” A categorical statement true for every society at some point in its history but crucially one that was held by both sides in the Civil War (think about the English Civil War – divine right of kings versus rule by the people) and is never in question.
“Second, selfless service and accepting one’s place within a hierarchical society are great virtues.” This is ideology from 1600 but anyone who has experience of the Japanese business and social environments will recognise that this is still the case. “The nail that sticks out will be hammered down” as the saying goes. The revolution never sought to overthrow the hierarchy. The hierarchy is what’s most valuable. The revolution was about purifying the hierarchy, about restoring the hierarchy and all value judgements about the protagonists and the events must be viewed through this filter.
My point being that it’s a lesson worth learning that the very thought processes you go through when reaching a value judgement (X is good) are shaped and driven not by some objective form of “good” or “bad” but by history and society. This is why we travel; this is why we welcome cultural exchange. Not only because we meet interesting people and see interesting things and eat interesting foods that we never would’ve at home, but because of what we learn about ourselves. Reading Japanese history doesn’t just teach me about the history of Japan, it allows an insight into what’s going on in my head when I say “China should get out of Tibet” or “Fingerprinting innocent people is wrong.” Value judgements should always be questioned because they are based upon historical indoctrination. These judgements are necessary and good (see) but must never be dogmatically followed whether it be “God is Great” or “All animals are equal”. The value of these judgements lies in their surviving scrutiny, withstanding doubt and falsification, not in a belief that “these truths are found to be self-evident”.
Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” I believe he wasn’t writing that history is something to escape, as others have written, but rather that history casts a veil over our thoughts that we are often unaware of. Joyce always picked his words with great care. His character, Stephen Dedalus*, wants to wake up, to cast off the veil, to see clearly, to think outside the confines of a socio-historical psychology. He wants to view the world, not as an Irishman with his thought processes dyed with Irish history, Irish religion, Irish society, but simply as a man, as a true cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.

* Dedalus was the father of Icarus. They were imprisoned together, made their wings together and escaped together but whereas Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell, Dedalus didn’t – his escape was successful.

In The Beginning ...

2008-03-27T18:29:00.004+09:00

I'm going to do things properly this time.

The mantra, the motto, the final words said, over the shoulder, as the door opens on every reincarnation.

I'm going to do things properly this time.

The last blog about Japan, about me, though I look back at the pages with much nostalgia, was haphazard. Slapdash. There was no coherency to the thing, which I, as the perennial performer, wanted but couldn’t hold onto. Often, like a giant’s garden fence, vast gaps were left between posts. Sometimes it was because I had no wish to bare myself to readers on a particular subject. Occasionally, some event or emotion left me speechless, unable or unwilling to forge phrases. Usually it was because I was drunk and rambling, venting verbiage onto the web with little care for the consequences.

I'm going to do things properly this time.

I want this to be more a travel memoir than a diary. I want this to be both useful and thoughtful. I want this to be a regular publication, a transmission from the East for which you, Dear Reader, tune in. I want this to be more than cheap narcissism, more than an excuse to talk about me and my life on a forum that, for better or worse, limits call and response to the odd comment from the amused or angered. With all the modesty I can muster, I want this to be something to write home about.

The last time I was here, I had a friend called Francis. We came out on the same flight, lived near each other, drank together, ate together, experienced Japan together. When I left he gave me a copy of Francis Bacon’s Of Empire with an inscription to the effect that it contained words from a far more erudite and intelligent Francis than he. He wasn’t wrong:

TRAVEL, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen, in the country where they go; what acquaintances they are to seek; what exercises, or discipline, the place yieldeth. For else, young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen, but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered, than observation. Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use.
The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities, and towns, and so the heavens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; libraries; colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities; armories; arsenals; magazines; exchanges; burses; warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable, in the places where they go. After all which, the tutors, or servants, ought to make diligent inquiry.
As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to be neglected. If you will have a young man to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather much, this you must do. First, as was said, he must have some entrance into the language before he goeth. Then he must have such a servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was likewise said. Let him carry with him also, some card or book, describing the country where he travelleth; which will be a good key to his inquiry. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay long, in one city or town; more or less as the place deserveth, but not long; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town, to another; which is a great adamant of acquaintance. Let him sequester himself, from the company of his countrymen, and diet in such places, where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth. Let him, upon his removes from one place to another, procure recommendation to some person of quality, residing in the place whither he removeth; that he may use his favor, in those things he desireth to see or know. Thus he may abridge his travel, with much profit.
As for the acquaintance, which is to be sought in travel; that which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance with the secretaries and employed men of ambassadors: for so in travelling in one country, he shall suck the experience of many. Let him also see, and visit, eminent persons in all kinds, which are of great name abroad; that he may be able to tell, how the life agreeth with the fame. For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided. They are commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and words. And let a man beware, how he keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome persons; for they will engage him into their own quarrels. When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the countries, where he hath travelled, altogether behind him; but maintain a correspondence by letters, with those of his acquaintance, which are of most worth. And let his travel appear rather in his discourse, than his apparel or gesture; and in his discourse, let him be rather advised in his answers, than forward to tell stories; and let it appear that he doth not change his country manners, for those of foreign parts; but only prick in some flowers, of that he hath learned abroad, into the customs of his own country.

And Francis said "Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use." And they were. And it was good.