What's he talking about?

"It is the vast majority of the people in the world against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world.

"What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength.

This was Hilary Benn talking about "terrorists" and the subsequent downgrading of the use of the term 'the war on terror' by the Blair administration.

Or was he talking about Blair, the neo-cons and the George W Bush...?

Anyway Apologies

I'm sorry, I haven't posted for a while, I just don't seem to have the time at the moment. Tonight is the first night in what feels like weeks (it is weeks) that I have been home at a reasonable hour (i.e. before 9pm), so blogging has fallen by the wayside. I will get back on that horse just as soon as I can, especially as the first week of May is all holiday, but it might all be a bit quiet until then.

Back but jet-lagged

So have returned from my international business jet set lifestyle trip to the UK but have been straight back into the office and am knackered. So, if it's ok with you, and even if it's not, I will not be writing usual post just yet.

But I should mention that I did play backgammon with the fatherly parental and he did whip my sorry a$$ something like 26-10, though even he had to admit that my dice did appear to be loaded against me. Oh well, good work there and better luck (for me) next time...

The comfort of women

Japan has a bit of a pesky little irritant that just won’t go away. No, not Krazy Kim this time, or gone-bad politicos, or corrupt business persons or even a dodgy building industry (though it does have all of these things to worry about). No, the little itch that Japan just can’t scratch is the Second World War.

Now it might seem odd that I am writing about this a mere 62 years after the jaunt ended, but to use a clichéd Americanism, Japan just can’t get any closure. The problem is, however, self inflicted (unlike the war) because Japan just can’t or won’t accept that they really did anything wrong. It was a war, you see, so anything goes (as in, now for a second tired cliché one paragraph, ‘all’s fair in love and war’ (and as far as I can tell Japan loved being at war (well, in the beginning when they were winning (I digress (and have used too many brackets now (darn))))). Now I have written in the past about certain things that happened in the war (or perhaps didn’t) like the Rape of Nanking and also the aftermath, such as the ongoing issues with Japanese PMs visiting Yasukuni Shrine to honour class A war criminals. But another issue has also never gone away, that of the alleged, so called, unverified, supposed ‘Comfort Women’.

The basic premise of this is simple, during the war the Japanese army forced many thousands of women to work as prostitutes but specifically to provide ‘comfort’ for Japanese soldiers stationed overseas in places like China and the Philippines. Now the government finds it very hard to deny this since former Imperial Army soldiers have come forward and said they did this, the forcible rounding up, and also in 1992 a number of documents were declassified showing that the army did indeed run official brothels. So now, it seems, the official line is that Japan accepts moral responsibility for this treatment, but not legal responsibility, and even that’s pushing it a bit as Silent Shinzo recently declaimed that there is ‘no proof’ of any of this. However the official way they argue it is this:

1. Even if the women were held against their will there was no law against it at the time
2. If it was illegal to force women to be prostitutes (and we’re not saying it was, see point 1), then the international laws you might be referring to didn’t apply in military-occupied territories
3. Even if we are caught out by 1 and 2 above, everything was settled at the end of the war so we have no case to answer

And this is what the courts in Japan have been saying for the last 62 years, or at least since people have been trying to sue the government. For example in 2000 the Tokyo District court threw out a case by 46 former alleged sex slaves when it decided that ‘crimes against humanity’ (on which the case was brought) as a concept did not exist in the 1940s, whilst a court in Hiroshima in 2001 threw out a case stating that coerced sex wasn’t illegal in the 1940s! The courts obviously didn’t know their history because apparently the notion of crimes against humanity goes all the way back to 1904, whilst in the first half of the twentieth century Japan signed up to no less than 4 international treaties outlawing the white slave trade, trafficking in women and the abolition of forced labour. So you’d think that they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, but still the government won’t make any reparations or, really, admit that it happened and say they are sorry.

Of course because Japan is a sovereign state you can’t actually sue it from the outside, so you can’t bring a case against the Japanese government in, say, America, you can only do that in Japan (and fair enough on that score). But as noted above the judiciary in Japan don’t look like they are about to go as far as admitting to anything anytime soon, even when it is pointed out that the basis on which some courts make their decisions are fundamentally incorrect.

The third defense of the government, about things being sorted after the war, is also erroneous, or at least open to attack. Apparently after the end of the pacific war the country was in a bit of a state so when it came to war reparations, mindful of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, MacArthur or whoever it was who took these decisions said, effectively, “aw c’mon, these little guys are whacked so no, you can’t have any of their money because right now they haven’t got any”. The important thing here, say prosecutors, is the ‘right now’ bit because, they argue, in 1945 that may well have been the case but in 2007, or even more likely in 1988 before the bubble burst, Japan has money to burn (OK, that happens now with soon-to-be-discovered prefectoral slush funds) and some of it should be going to those who were wringed in the past.

The article I have taken a lot of this from (from the Los Angeles Times section in the Yomiuri (it had to be a foreign newspaper as the Japanese press isn’t going to write anything balanced about this issue c.f. Yasukuni etc)) reckons that Japan will need to do something about this in the not too distant future as it is affecting relations with Asian neighbours and trading partners such as China, Korea and the Philippines, but personally I wouldn’t be holding my breath. Japan has far, far too much of a grip on the ‘Japan was the real victim’ stance with regard to WW2, mainly on account of the atomic bombings of the two cities. Whilst this was indeed a terrible and abhorrent thing, there is a collective, national blindness about what happened in the decade before August 1945 that led to the decision to drop the bombs. Therefore issues like Nanking, Yasukuni and Comfort women will run and run until there is no one left alive to champion them and then they’ll be quietly forgotten.

NB Anyone else feel that the government’s defense #2, the one about happening in occupied countries, is just a bit too close to Bush, extraordinary rendition and the hostages enemy combatants held in Guantanamo Bay for, ahem, comfort...?

But anyway...

Wouldn’t you just know it? Last week a letter arrived for me. It looked very plain and the envelope promised neither that I had won any yen nor that I was being asked to fork any out. And as no birthdays or anniversaries were due, so I was perplexed. On opening the envelope I was somewhat surprised to find an invitation to the Embassy to view cherry blossoms with the outgoing and newly arriving Consuls General (I think that’s the correct plural) on Tuesday 27th March. It was the proper thing, too, mostly printed but name handwritten. And this had come to the flat, not to the office, so it was obviously a personal, rather than a professional invitation (I think). Anyway the bugger is is that I will be flying to the UK on Monday 26th March and will therefore be unable to attend.

I RSVP’d as per the instructions and the women to whom I spoke seemed a little surprised. Then again I did say to her that, assuming that the reason Her Majesty’s government want to meet me was to recruit my services for a spot of cloak-and-dagger, I would be only too happy to visit the MI5 building in London next week instead of meeting my contact at the embassy. At that point she hung up, rather abruptly I thought, so I am still waiting for my ‘drop’ details in London, it will all be very hush-hush so I’ll probably have to wait a week or two until I can write about it, but rest assured I’ll keep everyone informed...

Happy thoughts

Am reading this book at the moment, as you can see from the sidebar, about the Vietnam War. The basic premise is simple – get a load of the old protagonists together, those responsible for the war rather than the foot soldiers, and get them to chinwag like that should have done 50 years ago and find out if they missed any opportunities to not have a war.

When I started reading this book I thought this was a fascinating premise and got into the book, but on reflection I think they are, to a greater or lesser extent, a bunch of fools. It’s easy not to have a war, you just don’t fight. When you’ve started you just say stop. I don’t know if I’m being too simplistic here, though I think I probably am, but surely it is easier not to have a war than it is to have one, especially if the two protagonists are separated by 5000 miles of ocean.

However the main current of the book is that the knowledge of each side about the other was, essentially, non-existent, and their ability to communicate with each other wasn’t a great deal better. If they’re going to talk about missing opportunities I feel it would be better to do it with wars that are yet possibly not to happen, such as the bellicose rantings of the US against, for example, Iran, rather than an opportunity that has been missed already, as in Vietnam. But perhaps that’s the point and that we should learn from our mistakes – if so I hope someone gives George Bush a copy of this book before it’s all too late.

Interestingly, in the Vietnam War, so the book says, the ‘intelligence’ community apparently were the ones to get it right, by basically saying, from a very early point, that the US was never going to win the war, not even close, their military strategies were doomed to failure and that they were fighting a completely different war than they thought they were. But the military were blind and deaf to this and kept shouting at various presidents to increase troop numbers until they had enough materiel to defeat the ‘enemy’ (though even knowing who the enemy was was quite tricky). I’m not sure about you, but this does sound suspiciously like what has happened for the last few years since 9/11 to me i.e. intelligence being twisted to be ‘fit for a purpose’ then the military going in, doing a job and then being totally unprepared for the aftermath, and then just shouting at everyone to provide more troops for a war that is increasingly unpopular at home. But, and this is big but, Iraq is not the new Vietnam, right...?

Rich Pickings

So, had a tricky week at work last week, hence no posting, but must admit the creative juices not flowing to freely either, which doesn’t help.

This week also there hasn’t been much going on to write home about, as it were. The results of the question posed in the last post, about Silent Shinzo’s apparent fall from grace were published in the Yomiuri, but such were the responses that I can’t really remember what they were on about (which isn’t good reportage, I realize, but there you go). Anyway from what I remember there were things like ‘he hasn’t had enough time yet so give him a chance’, also at least a couple of ‘well, what has he done?’ which kind of reflects what I was banging on about in the post, whilst I’m sure there was one ‘I just don’t like his ugly mug’, of which I heartily agree. Of course Silent Shinzo’s response to this was a furious verbal broadside against the print media in general and the Yomiuri in particular, where he savaged the inanity of the questioning and questioned the reliability and validity of the research undertaken. Or maybe not, but it is nice to speculate what he might have thought.

What we did you, yesterday, was go strawberry picking. The reason we did this was, ostensibly, to show the little ‘un that strawberries do not grow in plastic trays in supermarkets but are, in fact, part of living things called plants. So off we trooped to Konosu at 715 on Sunday morning. Now Konosu, for regular readers on this blog, might sound familiar, as indeed it should as it is the place where yours truly has been to get/renew my driving license (see here if you’re bored). I am beginning to think that Konosu may well be the centre of the universe as far as Saitama Prefecture is concerned, or at least the centre of Saitama. So anyway we get there at about 845am and go to this suspiciously small plastic greenhouse and ask a startled looking chap if we are in time. The reason we have to do this is this is a strange place – they only give out 40 tickets for fruit pickers and don’t take bookings, so if you get there and all tickets are gone then you are out of luck, bye! You may think this odd – me too, but don’t worry, it get odder.

We were in luck and safely procured three tickets but then, as the picking didn’t start until 10am, we had bugger all to do. Now luckily there was a playground thing and so the youngster could spend an hour clambering over, under, through and around things, mostly avoiding other bigger kids running amok, but not always. At the appointed hour we re-presented ourselves to startled looking chap, his visage hadn’t changed, at which point he asked us, and others, if we wouldn’t mind getting in number order according to the tickets. OK, this wouldn’t be too tricky unless he had given out random numbers, ah. So as we had 27, 29 and 32, this meant the youngster would be on his own in between random punters, but then, after a moment of milling, everybody ignored startled bloke anyway. And I thought these Japanese were meant to take rules seriously?

Now the picking could begin. But this was no ordinary picking, rather it was a strawberry eating experience. You went into the greenhouse, picked a strawberry off an obliging plant and then ate it. You had a small punnet in which to catch the strawberries as you cut them off the plant and also a small dish containing condensed milk, which you often eat with strawberries here, and that was it, off you go and eat for 30 minutes whilst, of course, paying for the pleasure. There was none of this collecting strawberries and taking them home to make a nice pie or, indeed, tart. Now I don’t know about you, but I have a threshold of how many strawberries with condensed milk I can eat at 10am on a Sunday morning, standing in an overly warm greenhouse in Konosu and it does not, I can confirm, take 30 minutes to reach that threshold. More like 10 minutes, and that was pushing it. The Guru also, I must add, felt likewise. The only person who might have wanted to stay and consume even more (but without the condensed milk) was the youngster. I don’t know if he came to realize that strawberries grow on plants, but he definitely did find out that all he had to do was follow a parent around and he would be given lots and lots of them to eat.

And that was about it. We went, we ate, we returned. They were very nice strawberries though.

The Abe issue

The Daily Yomiuri has, once a month, a readers’ write-in thing where they propose a theme and your average punter can write in and let loose their thoughts. Recently they have had such things as ‘what more can Japan do to encourage eco-friendliness in others so we don’t have to?’; ‘Just how many nukes should we drop on Krazy Kim’s People Mart?’; and a personal favourite ‘What avenues of whining should Japan now explore in an attempt to get a permanent seat on the UNSC?’. This month’s question is a little different, however. If memory served it is something like ‘Why has new-ish PM Shinzo Abe’s popularity gone down the tubes?’

Now I have thought long and hard about this over the past few minutes and I must admit to being at something of a loss. This might strike you as strange, but it is so. The reason I am at a loss might, however, also be the reason his popularity has gone down the tubes, as I can’t think of anything that Shizo has done since he became PM, so much so that I still can’t think of a decent, or indeed any, nickname for him, which I find just a little bit depressing.

So, he came to power after the Kool Kid Koizumi collected his P45 in September last year and, as far as I can remember, really hasn’t done anything. It almost seems as if Japan has gone to sleep with him at the helm. Reading through the archives of this blog, as I am wont to do on occasion when bored, I have come across posts about Krazy Kim, about dodgy architects, scandals a-plenty, succession issues, Yasukuni, takeovers and makeovers and all sorts of other things that happened with, to and by the Kid (read back, you’ll find them all in there (somewhere)), but since the autumn I really can’t think of too much that has gone on. OK, there was the cabinet minister that said women were essentially ‘birthing machines’ and that they were failing in their duty – he threatened to resign but Abe wouldn’t let him. That was interesting for about a day, but that’s about it.

It’s almost as if John Major has decided that being the most dull and boring politico in Britain wasn’t enough so he thought he’d branch out and give another legislature a go. But maybe, and here possibly is the point of all this, the Kool Kid has actually done what all politicians want to do but generally fail in the attempt: he changed the game (here in Japan), changed the political landscape. Recast the mindset of ‘the people’ (whoever we/they are). Redefined what it is to be a politico in Japan. Reinvented. Shifted. No longer are ‘the people’ going to be happy with a faceless, humourless, unmemorable grey suit. Now, because of the Kid, perhaps people want politicos who try and do stuff, who have opinions, who try to change the way things work (or don’t work), who say things like ‘oops, might have bungled that one a tad’ and who have, (shudder) some passion for the job.

The thing with the Kid was that he polarized opinion, he really was, it seems to me, either loved or hated. Now that might seem strange if you are reading this in the UK or US (or elsewhere, but I don’t know much about the politics of that country) as political parties, and political issues, often have the effect of polarizing opinion, but here in Japan consensus has often been the order of the day. This is perhaps because Japan has essentially had one political party in power since 1945 (the good ‘ole Liberal Democratic party, who are neither liberal nor democratic, natch) and also because harmony is/was paramount – in this sense harmony means collusion between big business and big politics to ensure people are told what to do and then do it, sort of like Stalin or Hitler’s command economy but with smiles, nicer cars and no gulags. But the Kid, with acts like going postal (privatizing the postal savings system), being principled (kicking out the dissenters in the party) and having the balls to fight (his back me or sack me the country at the last election, and they backed him), maybe something changed in Japanese politics which has, perhaps quite unexpectedly, changed something in the electorate.

So when Silent Shinzo (how about that one?) comes along, expecting everyone to slip back into their late-90s political acquiescence, he may be feeling just a tad miffed that people are asking him questions and expecting (as if?!) answers and action. I think there may be a lot of head scratching going on the Strip OL Shabu-shabu joints of Shinjuku as the old guard, the ones who breathed a sigh of relief when the Kid was as good as his word and retired in September, try and figure out how they can run a damned country with a lame duck PM and an increasingly irritating tendency from ‘the people’ to ask questions they shouldn’t and expect something approaching a reasonable, or at least reasonably believable but not necessarily true, answer.

Or I might be wrong, maybe they just don’t like his ugly mug, but I’d like to think that there’s a bit more to it than that.

Stuff

So a couple of things going on this week, well, in the last few weeks or so.

Well done

First up a welcome week for English sporting success, with both the cricket team beating a not-really-trying-Australia team and then the rugby boys beating a not-very-good-Scotland team. Well done there to both, but I suspect it will be harder against teams who are actually trying to play them (indeed I fear the Aussies want us to reach the final of the CB series so they can humiliate us all over again – but that’s perhaps just my jaded and cynical view of the whole thing). But hey, at least we’ve remembered how to play the oval ball game at last, and long may it continue (might even get out of our RWC pool now...)

Beans means ?

Then yesterday, Sunday 4th, was Setsubun-no-hi, a rough and ready translation of which is ‘Day of throwing beans at Ogres’. Now this may sound like great fun, and in a way it is, in a weird Japanese festival kind of way. Essentially on this day, which in the weird old Japanese calendar is the first day of the New Year and of spring as well (could be the Chinese new year?), it was a whole new start kind of thing. So what you had to do was get some beans (special anti-ogre beans one suspects) and then proceed to attack any ogres that might be living in your house (as far as I can see). Now in our flat we, unfortunately, did not have any ogres, or any lesser fairy-tale creatures either, more’s the pity, so we had to make do with dad in an unconvincing ogre mask.

This ‘ogre’ then attacked the Guru and youngster before being repelled with the aforementioned anti-ogre beans. These were chucked at the ‘ogre’ whilst chasing the beasty around the house and then out of the front door. The youngster was, however, all a bit nonplussed by these anti-ogre antics so was not particularly good with the bean throwing (and come to think of it had I known that beans held such effective ogre repelling qualities it would have made role playing with MERP and D&D a whole lot easier in my spotty youth). However the ‘ogre’ was dismissed from the house and then, surprisingly, we had to spend the following 20 minutes picking up little bits of crushed beans from all over the place.

The youngster was happier, however, when he got up after a nap to find a train in the living room. He has a bit of a thing about trains, as does any 1 and 3/4 year old, as far as I am aware, and has books about them, models of them and probably dreams about them as well. Anyway a few weeks ago, or maybe a month, we bought a new oven/microwave thing that came in a big box. Since it was delivered the box has remained in the living room as the youngster’s Best Toy Ever ™ and the parent’s Most Annoying Big Box in the Living Room ™. Anyway for weeks I have been looking at said box and thinking, and saying, I must make a train out of that box, so yesterday I finally pulled my finger out and did the business. I must admit that it gave me a huge dose of fatherly feeling to actually make something that he plays with. My art skills, being a ‘bit shite actually’ are in fact perfect for impressing not-quite-two year olds and so he was most happy with his new train. It was modelled badly on a Kodama shinkansen, for those of you sad enough to want to know.


Our living room yesterday afternoon


The food of hot, p3rvy $ex...

Ok, you hear about chocolate being the food of love, or maybe strawberries & cream, asparagus or even oysters and powered rhino horn. But they, I’m afraid, are but a chaste peck on the cheek compared to Shabu-shabu, the padded black leather fetish dungeon of the culinary world.

Now for those of you not in Japan you may wonder what I am on about, but that’s surely been the case for the last four years, so no change there. Shabu-shabu is a type of dish that Japanese do very well, D-I-Y food. Japanese, it seems to me, love food that you go to a restaurant for but then proceed to actually cook yourself, for example okonomiyaki, kushiage and yakiniku to name but three. This, it seems, negates the real need to have a restaurant, but I guess Japanese hate washing up, hence their desire to go out. Shabu-shabu works like this – get a bit round pot of boiling water, take some wafer thin slices or raw beef, dunk beef in water for few moments (holding with chopsticks all the while), dunk now cooked beef in assortment of condiments (pepper, raw egg, candle wax), then eat. The shabu-shabu-ness of it comes from the motion of swishing the beef in the water.

OK, so far so not that odd or depraved. But it was in the 1990s that Shabu-shabu became, in Japan, a byword for smut with the notoriety of the No Pants Shabu-shabu restaurants in Shinjuku. The premise was simple. Same basic restaurant but with two key differences; one, mirrored floors and; two, waitresses not in kimono but in very short skirts and nothing to keep out the drafts. These became the talking point as they did not cater, as you might suspect, for the lower end of society, but it seemed predominantly for the ministry of finance and other government mandarins (actually you might have suspected that more...). A few dodgy deals, one or two intrepid reporters and the blag was blown.

But now we have a new phenomenon – the OL Strip Shabu-shabu. An OL, should you be wondering, is an Office Lady. They wear kind of crap corporate uniforms and until recently we employed to make tea and be groped on trains. But Women’s Lib finally arrived and so the mean old government made it illegal for the salaryman to manhandle these young ladies on the subway, thereby increasing the sexual frustration of every salaryman over the age of 40.

So OL Strip Shabu-shabu has now arrived. As you can see from this news article the basic idea is again simple – as you shabu you thin slices of beef you can ask you waitress to strip off. Great, your own personal floor show whilst you eat you dinner. You can, it seems, even ask the waitress to then dress up in another costume from, one assumes, the ‘side order’ menu.

But what makes me really wonder is, why Shabu-shabu? What is it about thin slices of beef that make men want to ‘get down on it’? I mean there’s no No Pants Okonomiyaki, no Strip Yakitori, so why Shabu-shabu? This, I suspect, is one of the unfathomable idiosyncrasies of Japan that I keep reading about in travel books...

Feedback

Just to pass on a few choice quotes from a letter I received this morning:

"It is a very useful introduction"

"The literature review is relevant an extensive. Presenting a framework for literature review and explaining the relevant terms and concepts is very useful."

"[investigation] Sample is excellently explained"

"Data presentation is detailed, and reflects an understanding of the issues involved."

"The conclusions are well linked to the study."

"This assignment [dissertation] is an excellent piece of work" (particularly proud of that one)

"The author has a deep understanding of the issues involved, and the effort to engage them in the backdrop of international literature and practices is commendable. Very well done!"

And my personal favourite...

"We write to offer our warmest congratulations on achieving your Masters degree with distinction..."

OK, it's subject to external marking, which won't be complete for about three months, but as the first and second internal markers both gave over 70%, which is an 'A', I'm quietly confident that the 'with distinction' bit will remain.

Quite chuffed about this.

Movie of fairy vacance life

Now I know that everyone who blogs in or about Japan does this eventually and just so I don’t buck the trend, here’s mine. Yup, it’s the Japlish post. Now you may have spotted the link over on the right for Engrish.com, which is a whole website devoted to it, and indeed it is a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture, that of their extraordinary ability to mangle the English language.

The title of this post is from a Japanese advertisement that came through the door this evening as one of those pieces of unwanted junk mail that appear on an almost daily basis. Can you guess what it is promoting? Go on, have a guess...

Well done for those of you who managed to figure out that yes, it is the tag line for a new block of apartments that are being built on the other side of Kawaguchi station, as can be seen from the photo below.



And just in case you wanted to see the back of the flyer...



I mean, what the ****? And what’s the ‘No Cinema, No Life’ bit for as well? The flats won’t have a cinema in them!

Now I work for an English school and have a pretty good handle on the English language and its uses (even if my typing leaves a lot to be desired (that’s why this blog is full of typos, not because of my ability, honest)), but I am well and truly stumped about a) how someone could possible come up with it b) what it could ever possible mean and c) how on earth I could even begin to explain what is wrong with it. Seems to me that some marketing bod probably said, after a long toke, “let’s play Cheddar Gorge and use the results to form the basis of our next advertising campaign” (for those of you who don’t know how to play Cheddar Gorge, firstly shame on you and secondly visit I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue immediately!).

Anyway it is an amazing ability, the Japanese have, this utter un-mastery of English. I figure that the company building these flats probably have a bit of cash, as do the people advertising them, so surely it wouldn’t be beyind the wit of someone to say “hey, do you think this makes any sense at all?”. Or perhaps I’m coming at it from totally the wrong angle. Maybe the original tagline was something like ‘Apartments in Kawaguchi: Quite a Nice Place to Live’ and the advertising bod said “hey, that’s no good; it makes sense, throw this trash out and give me some non sequiturs! Show me the nonsense! Etc” or something like that.

But everywhere you go, as you can see from the Engrish.com website, you get this weird and wonderful use of English. Vending machines are fertile ground, especially cigarette machines with their legends extolling you to ‘enjoy happy smoke life in harmony’. Another I especially liked was for the SMBC bank, who have the pleasure of holding my well earned wages for a few hours on pay day (before the Guru spirits the lot away into hidden (from me) savings accounts (and this is a good thing else I would spend the money, possible enjoying a happy smoke life, who knows?)). Anyway one of their campaigns, when we got back here in 2002 and joined the bank, was based on the tagline One’s Next..., which in itself isn’t too bad, except their pension planning brochure was entitled One’s Next Life, for which I’m sure you’ll agree, you probably don’t need a pension for.

The common excuse for all of this is that having a bit of English is cool and as most people, except perplexed foreigners, can’t read it and even if they could they wouldn’t understand it, it therefore doesn’t have to make sense. But that just seems a bit too pat and a bit too lame to me. Then again I suppose plenty of westerners go around with Kanji tattoos for girl power or other such nonsense that it is a two way thing. (aside, two stories about tattoos I like. One, from Chris who used to be in Japan and set up the excellent kanji learning site KanjiSite, he was amazed how many requests he got from people wanting to know specific kanji so they could get tattoos done, his favourite was from an American chap from one of the rectangular, mid-western states who wanted the specific kanji for carburettor so he could have it tattooed, probably on his forehead. And second, from a football (that’s association soccer) email I get, a teenager in Argentina is suing a tattooist as the tattooist, a supporter of the River Plate team didn’t, as the chap wanted, do a great big logo of Boca Juniors (the chap’s personal team and huge rival of River Plate) on his back. No, he tattooed a picture of an enormous penis. The chap only found out when he got home and proudly displayed his back to his parents...)

Anyway, I’ve often wondered how I’d be able to get a story about tattooing the kanji for carburettor onto an American chap into this blog – I can sleep easily tonight.

Burn Kawaguchi burn, taking down steeltown

Ok, I know it doesn’t scan quite as well as the original, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

So yes, Kawaguchi was on fire on Saturday night. I don’t mean that in a figurative sense, I mean that in a real, literal, Kawaguchi was a-burnin’ at the weekend. Now this may seem odd, and indeed it was. At about 9pm on Saturday evening we were getting to that ‘bedtime story’ kind of time when we heard a few sirens going off. Now this is not an unusual thing as we live on a main road and so quite often we get fire engines and ambulances going past. The young ‘un got a noisy fire engine toy from a grand parent for Christmas so he is quite into them and so the Guru thought ‘ah, good learning experience here) and took the little fella to the window for a peek. And what did she see? Not one engine but a whole host, certainly more than one would normally shake a stick at, and they seemed to be congregating around this area...

Odd, we thought, and then for some reason I thought I’d have a look out onto the river and, low and behold, the river bank was on fire!

For those who have never been in japan in winter I should mention that winters here are very dry indeed, so the grass and reeds on the riverbank become very brittle and easily flammable, a bit like kindling, so in a way it not that much of a surprise that some bright spark might accidentally start a fire. Anyway this was quite a conflagration and at one point seemed to stretch about 100 meters from side to side, and luckily, being on the 7th floor we got a jolly good view, as the photo below shows...



OK, doesn’t really do it justice, but it is all on fire. The fire engine chappies did their darnedest to get to the flames, but I must admit that it did take them a while as they had to get over the levee/bank bit and then past all the sports pitches and finally to the fire itself. But got there they did and once on site made short work of the inferno. How it started can only be pure speculation, but it is a popular place for fisher folk to try and poison themselves by catching swimming turds from the river, and also there are a few homeless souls (or fisher folk who have forgotten how to get home), or indeed it could be young hoodlums and their high jinks (like burning homeless people to death, as seems a reasonably popular pastime amongst the more deranged/crazed/disaffected yoof’). Anyway it was lucky the fire was there and not, say, in my apartment, juding by the time it actually took to get there. But it was good practice as the following day (Sunday, if you’re not paying attention), in exactly the same place, was...

Kawaguchi Fire Persons Training and Demonstration Day

No really, which means, of course, that the fire that really happened was actually about 12 hours early and was meant to be part of the Sunday jollity.

But seriously, folks, Sunday was the local fire brigades’ deomstration day. We kind of half remembered this from last year and again thought it would be a jolly good wheeze to take the young ‘un down to enjoy the show, after all it is only 5 minutes away, involves loud fire engines, gets us all out in the fresh air and contains the possibility of a helicopter being included for free (and the youngster loves helicopters at the moment). So at about 855 we can see the fields have been set up and long line of fire engines are in a sort of scramble mode on one of the riverbank access roads. We wonder when things are going to start, but as 9am passes by and nothing happens, the business of breakfast takes over. The same thing happens around 955, but this time, as the more likely hour of 10am looms do we do anything about getting ready? Of course not, so when the sirens start blaring at exactly 10am, we are thrown into a frenzy of ‘get him changed! Where are his gloves? Sort out the pushchair! I said it would start at 10am but who listens to me! Etc’. But we get out of the front door in a world record 1 minute 35 seconds and , as I mentioned it was all quite close, we get there in time.

‘In time’ for what? is a question that might be asked. Well. There were lots of fire engines and lots of hoses spraying a lot of river water into the air. There were mocked up buildings surrounded by, I guess, earthquake style debris and detritus, from which ‘injured’ people had to be rescued. There were also other buildings that were torched so the firefighters could strut their stuff and dowse the flames. This last bit was quite impressive, but less so for those who had been witness to the real thing the evening before. They also had those long extendable ladder things and rescued a ‘person’ from a tallish building that only about 27 floors lower than the new tower blocks they are building here at the moment, so no need to worry (much) for those new residents. You can get a feeling about the whole thing from these photos below (click for bigger photos).




The main thing was the youngster thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, he seemed to and he did wave to the fire engines and ambulances that went past, which is always a good sign. I am glad to report that the chaps coped very well with all the drills and everything went off with nary a hitch, though I must admit I was slightly worried about what might have happened if, say, a major fire had broken out in Omiya whilst all these engines were on the riverbank as there were a lot of them and not just from Kawaguchi but from all over southern Saitama. But this was just idle speculation as nothing of the sort happened, I’m glad to say

This week’s out-of-touch politician award...

...goes to Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa (well known for commonsense approach to politics). There is a potential bill being debated at the moment, known snappily as the White-collar work-hour exemption bill, which as far as I can tell, would exempt office workers from the standard 8 hour day (meaning they could be forced to work much longer hours) and also stop them from being entitled to overtime pay (meaning they wouldn’t get paid for it). Mr Nakagawa apparently complained on a news programme on NHK last weekend that “salaried workers and their families, who should welcome the white-collar exemption system, were opposed to it [so it can’t be submitted]”.

Now call me crazy, but a bill that might mean that I work longer hours for which overtime payments have been abolished, hmm, let me think about it...Hey, sounds like a swell idea, where can I sign up?

Idiot.

December

December was a busy month, as might have been alluded to in a previous post, and as it is for everyone who has one (a December, I mean, though for some they are busier than for others, I suspect. Anyway). So at the start of the month I headed back to Blighty for a good friend’s wedding. Richard, who had once had the dubious honour of being my best man, got hitched to Lorna, his sweetheart of the past couple of years. I went solo on this trip, for a couple of reasons, one was the expense, which we decided was too great for what was quite a short trip back (and we will be going back in August 2007 for my cousin’s wedding, all things being equal (like being given time off from work, not guaranteed by any means now), and also because this was a ‘no kids’ wedding. This was the first time I had come across one of these, though according to friends they are much the common thing nowadays. Personally, this bothers me. When the Guru and I had the UK leg of our wedding in 2002 it would never have occurred to me to have a ‘no kids’ wedding, what’s the point? If you want your friends there, you invite them. If they have kids, along they come too. It’s simple. But not, apparently. But OK, if that’s what people do nowadays, fair enough, but what about if you are flying 5,000miles to see your mates and have no chance of arranging baby sitting facilities as you don’t live in the country? Tough, is the answer, it seems to me. And, for those who can arranging babysitters, not only do they have to buy presents for the happy couple, but fork out for a sitter as well (which in London, is eight quid an hour, according to the friends I was staying with. 8 quid! So for them, from 2pm to midnight, the cost was going to be something like 70quid! Outrageous that it costs that much and outrageous that they should have to pay because of this ‘no kids’ rule – it kind of p*ssed me off, this ‘no kids’ thing, as you might suspect from this rant. But really)

Anyway I was back for a week and managed to fill my time most responsibly. We had a big family Christmas about 3 weeks early, this not just for my benefit but also for my cousin who lives in Hungary, who was over with his Romanian wife for the weekend. That was jolly good fun, as one might expect from this kind of thing. Then I got to treat Golf-playing-Brother-and Family’s house like a hotel for a few days whilst I spent time visiting old school friends in Fleet. This again was most pleasant as I got to meet lots the (quite recently) arrived children of my friends, and of course my nephew Charlie. I fact one of the over-riding themes of the trip was kids; firstly mine, in that I didn’t get to see him for about 10 days and at times it was really difficult, and other people’s kids, which were everywhere (except the wedding, of course) and made me miss the youngster even more. But everyone seems to be having, or had, them. As I said all my old school friends in Fleet were kidded up with one, if not two, whilst the old university friends in London I stayed with had one with number two due in March. As I said, everywhere, but then again I suppose we are of an age where these things are happening. In London I also met up with an old work colleague who moved back to the UK earlier in ’06. He was doing well in that he had finally left the company and was now free-lancing, which in time honoured tradition meant he was living with his parents and not, technically, doing any work. “That will change” he said, ‘but not too soon’ I thought. But anyway good luck to him in his IT endeavours.

The wedding itself was held at the English Speaking Union, which is at Dartmouth House in the heart of Mayfair. It was, as these things tend to be, a rather drunken affair. I seemed to spend all of my time talking to people, some of whom I hadn’t seen since the end of sixth form, so only about 15 years ago, which made me feel exceptionally old, as I mentioned in a past post last year (but I can’t remember where – think I might be getting old…) The same of it was that (apart from the family not being there to enjoy it with me) I didn’t really get much of a chance to talk to the bride or groom as they were doing the bride and groom thing, which seemed to involve being nice to parents and worrying about stuff. I think I might have said ‘hello’ and ‘awfully nice to meet you’ to Lorna, as it was the first time I had met said lady, but I think that was about it (though of course I may have said an awful lot more, but due to the rigours of alcohol and jet lag, I might have forgotten (this has happened before), but no one mentioned anything to me the next day, which is always a good sign).

Last but not least I picked up presents from various family members to do my best Santa impression and ferry loot from one side of the world to the other. I’m glad to say that, on knowing I was coming alone and that I would therefore be traveling light, my family did their level best to send me rocketing over the luggage limit on Virgin (to whom I once again doff my cap). Suffice it to say I went to the UK with once smallish case at under 10kgs (including presents for all them), but returned with my original bag as hand luggage and a new case twice the size of mine and a whisker under the 23kgs limit (and that was with leaving a present for me behind!). And last of all, on getting back and lugging all this stuff half way across the world, I got back to find the lift in the apartment building was being repaired so I had to drag everything up six floors to finally get home. (oh, and I lost the backgammon this year in a strangely disappointing series).

Christmas

Was something I enjoyed with the Guru and the Youngster on, and this night come as a surprise, December 25th, as unlike some I don’t have to work (though the bit of work from getting back from the UK to finishing for the holiday was hellishly busy, possibly on account of a promotion that has somehow seen me end up as principal. Don’t ask me how.) Anyway my last day was Saturday 23rd and then it was a frenzy of shopping, eating and drinking, not necessarily in that order, until, well, today really. For Christmas day we awoke early-ish, I think the youngster did us the honour of sleeping in until at least 630am (not because it was Christmas, it is just his time of arising). Breakfast was followed by presents and, as is traditional, the young ‘un had a huge pile, the guru had an impressive pile and I had, well, pitiful in comparison does spring to mind (of course this was my fault as I had not told anyone what I wanted – I didn’t think that was the point...) anyway the youngster got, in no particular order, a Mr Potato Head, a puzzle, lots of books and DVDs, a noisy fire engine, a toy helicopter (his favourite word at the moment is he-buta, which is his attempt at this obviously tricky word) and a load of other stuff as well.

Then it was to the park to run around a bit and climb up and then slide down the slide. This was in order to tire the little fella’ out a bit as he goes a bit stir crazy if he doesn’t burn off a few kilowatts a day.





(I know I don’t, as a rule, put photos of him of the blog anymore, but it’s Christmas (or was) so a special exception can be made).Then it was back home for yours truly to cook the Christmas lunch. This was, I must admit, done with a certain panache and aplomb, with the three of us sitting down to a veritable feast at 2 o’clock. There was, however, a slight cock-up – the plan of using up a bit of the youngster’s energy worked so well that as we sat down to eat the excitement of the whole day got to him and, no longer able to contain himself, he fell asleep, as you can see from the two photos below:





And so we ate in peace and quiet, which is always nice, mainly as it is so uncommon, and then spent the rest of the day feeling bloated. We even had a Hollywood blockbuster to watch (Pirates of the Caribbean, I think), but as I had already seen this on the plane to the UK (and didn’t think that much of it) I only had half an eye on it. (In fact all of the three films I watched going to the UK were sequels: Pirates etc 2, Mission Impossible 3 and X-Men 3, all of which weren’t that much kop at all. I saw Cars on the way back, which was better, but I wasn’t exactly bowled over with the choice).

Boxing day it rained all day, so we just sat around eating and drinking again. All this lead to the New Year, which for Japanese involves a shit load of cleaning. Japanese don’t do spring cleaning, they do new year cleaning, which makes sense I suppose as the weather is usually nice and it is a grand idea to start the new year with a clean house. That this cleaning took three whole days, for an apartment the size of ours, doesn’t really bear thinking about. But we managed it and for ringing in 2007 we had the cleanest apartment in Japan (I am willing to bet). The night itself was a low key affair, as they tend to be when you have kids, I suspect. After which we went to spend a couple of days with the Guru’s folks to let them look after the youngster for a few hours each day so we didn’t have to! This was pleasant and I got to do what always makes me feel it’s new year and watch the Hakone Ekiden (kind of like a long distance relay race from Tokyo to Mt Fuji and back for university athletics teams (men only) over January 1st and 2nd, very traditional and always makes me feel the new year has begun, especially if I watch it at the Guru’s folk’s place).

And that was about it. More shopping was to be done, including a couple of new suits and a new oven, more visits to the park and the riverbank to use up that energy (so successful was this that on a couple of occasions the little ‘un actually fell asleep around 7pm, giving us a couple of evenings together for the first time in ages. We watched more films in the last week than we have in the past two years!) And so tomorrow it’s officially back to work, though I did have two days last week, but I don’t feel they count as today is a national holiday. Great!

About football

So, as alluded to in the last post, which being over a month ago I am sure most have forgotten (I had until I read it again), recently I went to a footy match. This was the first time I had been to a J-League 1 match (the equivalent of the English Premiership (in terms of, well, being the number one league in the country, but in terms of money it is well down, but in terms of excitement and lack of play acting, it is far, far ahead)) before, but I had been to see football (that is, Association Football, rather than Rugby Football or Aussie Rules) in the past, a World Cup qualifier no less, in 1997 I think, when Japan played the UAE. But no, this was the first league match.

So what prompted you? I hear you muse. Simple really, I got a pair of free tickets so thought ‘what the heck, may as well use them!’ the free tickets came about because, strangley, the old NEC laptop disintegrated. When we bought the new one the deal with the shop was that if we changed to NTT for our broadband connection, at no extra cost, they would give us 20,000 yen’s worth of points at the selfsame shop, and as NTT sponsor one of the teams we watched, for some reason they decided to throw in a pair of freebie footy tickets into the bargain. And they even gave a choice of which games you wanted to watch. Great.

So Steve and I duly made our way to Saitama Stadium 2002, where I ahd been before to play 5-a-side footy many years ago (I even wrote about it somewhere in this blog, but I don’t remember where so sorry, no link). Now if you remember, when I wrote that post, the home team was Urawa Reds – they are still mainly the home team and play most of their games there, but they are sponsored by Mitsubishi (I think), so it was not them. Oh no, we went to see Omiya Ardija. Omiya is a big city brother of Urawa but has a pretty rubbish footy team, though having said that they are in J-1, something they could not claim a couple of years ago, and it does add a little spice to the derby games. (And no, by the way, neither Steve nor I have any idea what an Ardija is – it might be a rodent of sorts, apparently, but no one we asked knew either).

Now once, when I lived in London, I went to a premiership game. I, for al my faults, am a supporter of Middlesbrough, mainly for the simple reason that I was born there. In London I have a chum who is a Chelsea supporter (for the simple reason that he was born in Fulham). He often got tickets for games and surprisingly it was quite easy to come by tickets to watch ‘Boro as they weren’t, and aren’t, one of your sought after draws. When we went to that game we met in a pub in Fulham and I was under strict instructions not to wear anything that might incriminate me as in some way a Middlesbrough fan as I might get lynched – we were to sit in the Chelsea stands after all. The walk to Stamford Bridge was through the streets of west London and was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. It was threatening, tense and oppressive, and that was just the walk to the bar. Inside the ground there was a hostility I have not encountered anywhere else, especially when, in the 90th minute, a Chelsea defender deliberately handled the ball in the area and Alan Boksic (I think) completed the penalty and tied the game at 2-2. The walk back wasn’t too pleasant either. It was not the sort of atmosphere I would ever want to take a family to enjoy, there were police a-plenty so I don’t think anything would have kicked off, but you just don’t know and the attitude of the police didn’t exactly make the afternoon any better. Worse probably, but then I suppose they have been dealing with this every Saturday afternoon for years.

Now I know that the Japanese have a very different take on these things, and reports from England hooligans fans after the 2002 World Cup was friendly and efficient staff and stewards at the games, but I wondered how things might have changed in 4 years. The good news was not a lot. We got to the station about 30 minutes before kick off and had about a 2km stroll to the stadium. Plenty of other fans were strolling with us and, like my experience in London, plenty were draped in flags and other tribal insignia. But everyone was really happy. The atmosphere was more like, well, for want of a better comparision, that everyone was off to watch a rugby match rather than a football match. And there was not one policeman to be seen, in fact the only uniform we saw between the station and the stadium was three chaps directing pedestrians across an extremely un-busy that crossed the route at an inopportune point at about two-thirds distance.

The stadium was as big and impressive as I remembered it, but this time I got to see the inside as well, which was nice. On the inside it was jolly big, but as we were watching Omiya Ardija vs. Kashima Antlers (a team with a storied past but now on leaner times), it wasn’t exactly full (the attendance was, I think, about 12,000 in a place that could hold well over 40,000). Now as we had freebie tickets we were in the ‘unreserved’ section, which meant, again astoundingly to anyone who’s been to a football match in England, anyone could sit where they wanted and opposing fans could intermingle with impunity. And they did. The hardcore fans occupy opposing ends behind the goals, as can be seen from this photo (after Kashima scored)



But everywhere else is far more relaxed – it’s almost as if the people have paid money to come along and actually watch the game, rather than fight or hurl abuse at people not from the same town as them. Or something. But that is not to say that there wasn’t an atmosphere in the place. Oh no, there was plenty of that, with both sets of hardcore fans doing there bit for chanting and singing. But again for the rest of us it was all pleasantly low key. The hard core fans were fascinating to watch as they represented a microcosm of Japanese culture (he pontificates, donning an in-no-way-deserved anthropological hat). If you look at this photo you’ll see a bunch of guys standing at the bottom facing towards the terraces:



These guys are the organizers. They are paid members of the club and it is their job to gee everyone up by organizing a constant stream of chanting, singing and flag waving. They didn’t watch the game except for a corner-of-the-eye job to make sure the chants were appropriate for the action. They shouted, heckled, cajoled, whipped and generally made the hard core follow their lead. In Japan, you see, you mustn’t do spontaneity, individuality is a no-no; if you want to support a team you must do what the team supporter’s manager says you do. This happens at baseball games as well, even at high school games apparently (according to Steve, who has attended a few at his school), and volleyball and basketball as well, I don’t doubt. It is a reflection of society as a whole, that to take part you must join in with everyone else. If you want to chant at a footy match you stand behind the goal and do it there with the hardcore – no one around us chanted in any way during the game. Interestingly the one game, as far as I am aware, that doesn’t follow this pattern is rugby. Certainly all the games I’ve been to, and more that I’ve watched on TV, none have had this hardcore organizer element to make sure everyone is, literally, singing from the same page.

So anyway, we watched the game and the Antlers scored in less than 30 seconds from the kick off to get, as it were, the ball rolling, and never looked back. The final score was 0-3 to the visitors, but it was a bit of a mid-table nothing game as neither team was in danger of winning the league or being relegated (for the record the league winners were, in fact, our old pals Urawa Reds, who were pipped at the post in 2005 but were not to be denied this season). The atmosphere was pleasant and positive and there were plenty of families in attendance. This might also be due to the fact that tickets are dirt cheap. I know ours we freebies, but the regular price is only something like a tenner, if that, so a family of four can watch a game for comfortably less than 50 quid, which is what I might have to pay if I wanted to watch a reprise of the Chelsea-Boro match by myself this season.

Anyway, here are some more photos, next up will be my trip to the Uk and then Christmas (were about a month behind, I reckon, with these posts, but will try to get as much written in the next week or so whilst I am on my Christmas and new year hols)

Spirit of Zico? No wonder Ardija lost...


Interesting spelling there...


And from one English football hooligan...


...to another

Exams and the like

Well I know it has been a while, but things have been just a tad busy recently so posting has been a bit of luxury I haven’t been able to afford. But now, Sunday afternoon, rest of the family napping, the scoreboard from Brisbane ticking over on Cricinfo (and what depressing reading it is, seems that plan A has been adopted for the first test. This worked at Lord’s in 2005, but I’m not convinced it will work here.), and a spare 5 minutes after reading briefly perusing thr reports from England v South Africa from last night, I find a bit of time on the old hands so thought ‘how better to use the time than waffle on and post something on the blog?’. So here you go. You can tel that having less time to post hasn’t done anything to stop the verbal diarrhoea, more’s the pity.

So many things have come up in the past few weeks that it is wonder where to start. About three weeks ago I saw an article in the paper mentioning that the 2006 Kimono exam had taken place and not a few people had taken it. This was to the basis of a post all about Japanese and exam taking, to which they are addicted, but this has now passed (the post, not the addition), but in a nutshell, risking repeating myself as I go, the Japanese love taking exams. But then again, on reflection, I don’t think they do, but they love having benchmarks on which to judge themselves and exams are a good way of doing this. They are also a good way of making money, according Alex Kerr and his book Demons and Dogs, which I talked about a couple of years ago. It’s all to do with Amukudari (which I think is how you spell it) apparently. This essentially means something like ‘descent from heaven’ or something, and is a practice where govt. bureaucrats, on retiring, take exceptionally well paid jobs in the private sector, for not a lot of work, in the hope that there presence will confer benefits on the company or organization they join. The best example of this is the construction industry, especially bridge builders who are currently going through a massive bid-rigging scandal. The premise is that local govt. chap retires and joins Bridge Builder A, he then calls his old office where he was a bigwig and asks what’s in the pipeline. He gets the info, along with info, illegally, on what other firms are bidding. He then calls up more firms and together the collude to ensure that one of them gets the contract at an inflated price. Then a couple of months later the same process happens but this time Bridge Builder B gets the contract. Throughout this the local govt. johnnies claim big salaries and even bigger bonuses for making a phone call or to and defrauding the local taxpayers. This has been going on for time immemorial, but now the locals are getting restive and those responsible are being called to account, which can only be a good thing (thought I feel sure that if they stopped all the corruption in Japan the entire country would grind to a halt).

Those canny amongst you will have notice a couple of things here. One, this has nothing to do with exams, and you’d be right but we’ll get there, and two, I said I wasn’t going to write about it, but I’m on a roll now so here we go.

The exam thing happens, apparently, when one of these Amukudari chaps joins an organization, like the Kimono promoters or whatever they are. Now with the construction industry it is easy to see where the money might be made, as above, but with kimono, or aerobics, things are a little trickier. So some bright spark, a while ago, came up with a cunning plan, that of exam and preparation courses. The idea evolves into a system where you can’t be a teacher of a subject unless you have taken and passed an exam in it. Now I’m all for this for things like schooling, as teachers have know what they are doing, but for Kimono it seems a bit much. The example Alex Kerr uses is aerobics – here there are apparently two certificates you need, they are not legal requirements, but their influence is such that sports centres won’t take on instructors without one, but the rub is that as neither is a legal requirement it is not clear which one you should havem so instructors in the end have to take both, but to take each exam, which ask essentially the same thing, you must take an expensive preparation course. All this cash, of course, goes to the organization in question – essentially a license to print money.

Another example is, oddly hairdressing. A colleague’s Japanese husband in a hairdresser and in the fullness of time he wants to open his own salon. Now the fact that he has to pass a test in hairdressing is fair enough, I wouldn’t particularly want someone with no basic skills attacking my head with a pair of scissors, however for this chap to open his own shop he not only has to prove that he has worked in another shop for 3 years (sort of like indentured service, or something) but he also has to take a long and expansive course in ‘how to open your own hairdressing salon’ before he will be granted a license to open his shop. If he doesn’t get the license he won’t get planning/opening permission from the local town authorities. Now seems to me that if you want to open your own place then fair enough off you go. If you can’t cut hair properly you’ll go out of business, so better make sure you can do it properly, but to have to pay for all these courses and tests and things just seems, well, like someone else wants a bit of cash and is taking the piss.

The upshot of this, of course, is that there are exams for absolutely everything you could ever want to do in Japan. As I said for some things I can understand this, like schooling, or martial arts, where you might hurt someone if you muck up a move. But I really don’t get it for things like putting Kimono on, or performing tea ceremonies, hence the article mentioned at the top caught my eye. To make life more difficult, of course, most of these exams are only once a year and so if you miss the date due to illness or some unforeseen circumstance, then you are b*ggered for another year. To rate your Japanese for example, everyone takes the govt. organized Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I did it once when I first came to Japan, and this is only held on the first Sunday in December, no retakes, no extenuating circumstances. Imagine if you had to get a grade to get a job but had a cold that day, as people often do in December, you’d be, well b*ggered. Now I know that this argument can be applied to the UK for things like school exams, which are always in June, and fair enough, but a direct comparison to the JPLT would be something like the TOEIC exam, a very popular English language exam in Japan. This is not run by any Japanese agency, so no Amukudari (though I bet there’s one or two in there from the Ministry of Education), no mandatory expensive preparation course, (you can study at home), and best of all the exams are held something like every two months.

Other stuff that has gone on include the retirement of Kyokushuzan from the ranks of Sumo. Kyok was my guy, mainly as when he joined the top division he was the first Mongolian to do so, at about the same time as my first arrival in Japan. This meant that as we were both outsiders, my support was sent his way. He often remarked on this in post-bout interviews, stating that he would never have been able to progress so far without the knowledge I was rooting for him. Although as he always said this is Mongolian the translation often became a bit garbled and in the press was reported something like ‘I was very happy to win’. But that’s ok, I knew what he was really saying.

Also, you may be wondering quite why I have time, on a Sunday afternoon, to post. ‘Shouldn’t you be studying?’ is, I suspect, your first thought. Well the good news on that score is that the dissertation is finished, as of yesterday (though I might go and give once more once over whilst the house is quiet). All printed, proof read and inserted into a folder and ready to be sent off, all 120 pages or 21,000 words of it. Thank goodness for that, is about the best I can come up with. I won’t know what to do with my Sundays from now on, but blogging is a possibility as this blog has been going about as long as I have been studying. Anyway that’s enough for now.

Next time I will regale you with stories, and photos, of Japanese professional football, but I’m not sure when that will be as I am off back to Blighty next Saturday for visits and weddings, so see some of you then, I feel sure.

Plan A (part 2)

Seems the RFU might have fallen upon the same strategy in England's defence of the Webb Ellis trophy...

Plan A

+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++

ECB Strategy unit issues the following advisory to Duncan Fletcher (coach) and Andrew Flintoff (captain) of England Ashes Tour Party 2006/7.

1. Lull dumb Aussies into false sense of security by being strategically thrashed by any non test-status team.

***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***

Implementation of Plan A worked perfectly. Australian cricketing professionals and public alike stunned by abject captulation by our boys to third rate bunch of sheep shaggers and Presidents. Note: have word with Andrew Strauss, appears to not understand current tactical thinking - half century may lead to suspicions of competence by Australian authorities.

Where are we?

So on Friday last week the little ‘un finally reached the ripe old age of 18 months, so I figure it is about time to take stock, look back and see how we got here, or something like that. So in no particular order, this is what he, and I suppose we, have achieved in the last year and a half:

He has grown from a promising 3.23 kgs to a much larger 10.99kgs, and from 51cm to 81.9cm (that’s a foot, but still under 5 foot so he can join the club)
He has spent two weeks in hospital with a dodgy oesophagus, but this now seems to be working just fine
He can now not only walk forwards without bumping into too many things, but he can also walk backwards (though bumping into more things)
He can help get himself dressed and undressed, a marked improvement
He can now deal with water being splashed on his face, which for some reason took what seems like an awfully long time
He has a full mouth of teeth, head of hair, hand of fingers and foot of toes. Indeed all appendages seem present and correct
He knows when he is doing something he shouldn’t, but still does it anyway, like trying to play with the computer or with daddies CDs
He gets excited by trains, though worryingly not cars at the moment
We have a first year book of his that is full to the brim of advice, wishes, photos and information we have already forgotten
We have realised that taking videos is important, not for now, but for much later. We know this as neither I nor the Guru can really remember what he was like at 3 months old, so now we take more footage to remind us of him now
You really can sit for an hour at lunchtime talking about kids to your colleagues, but only those with kids themselves
He can identify a whole bunch of animals, though saying their names is tricky
His favourites are elephants, snakes and cows
Masie, Teletubbies and Baby Shakespeare videos rock!
Pulling as many books as possible off the bookshelves is FUN
I spend all day every day at work wishing I was at home with him and the Guru, so we’d better win the lottery damn soon
Climbing is good
No, climbing is dangerous!
He doesn’t put everything he finds in his mouth anymore
He can feed himself, just about, and choose things he wants to eat and drink and, more importantly, have a pretty good stab at letting us know what they are
For some reason he loves cookbooks
Brushing teeth isn’t usually too big a chore (not compared to colleagues kids, apparently)
Crayons and drawing paper are cool (as was one of the sliding doors before we stopped him)
He is really good at copying mum and dad’s routines
He loves getting the brush and pretending the sweep up
He will happily sleep through the night but will wake everyone up at 630am because if he’s up, we should be as well
He has had two haircuts in his life
Things that are quite warm he will point at from afar and shout atchee!, or hot!, but things that are really hot he will silently walk up to and touch
Atchee! (hot) sounds very like oishi! (delicious) when he says them, making mealtimes a bit of a lottery to know what he is going on about
Most of the words he says are Japanese, but he understands words in Japanese or English that are thrown at him. The few English words he says are apple, banana and mama
He likes mud and muddy puddles
He is not so keen on asparagus
But marmite toast is a great way to start the day (though not as good as pancakes or French toast, apparently)
The balcony is a source of unparalleled mystery
Stickers are great
There is very little left in any drawer below a height of three feet
He smiles all the time
I am the luckiest dad alive

To you it’s a potato, to me it’s a potato, but to Sir Walter bloody Raleigh...

So on Saturday we did something that was quintessentially both Japanese and autumnal, and luckily it involved mud. The Japanese, you see, are really, at heart, all sons and daughters of the soil. If you listen to any Enka song (enka = original Japanese pop music, or maybe folk music. Maybe folk/pop music. Not sure about this one, but it is very 50s, I suppose, but without Elvis style pelvic thrusts, but with men in bad suits, women in kimono and a lot of heartfelt wailing. It is also phenomenally popular and was the reason for karaoke. I digress). So, if you listen to any, or pretty much any, enka song it will be about a wistful longing to jack in the salaryman lifestyle and return to the ancestral rice fields of Toyama, or other such rurally depopulated for very good reasons place, and retake the reins of the rice/shiitake/sea cucumber farm, or whatever you do to take control of one. No one really does this, of course, because being a farmer is bloody hard work and is, like most things in life, better left to the professionals, so come Monday morning the salaryman is back selling flood insurance to the selfsame rice farmers because it is what he is good at. So that’s enka.

Anyway part of the Japanese psyche is this desire to return to the soil (not in the literal sense of being buried in it, but to till it), but as most people don’t do it, mainly, as mentioned, because it is hard work, they kind of give it a go in spring, when little kids (and adults too) go off and plant rice er, saplings? Sprouts? Little baby rice plants at least, for a couple of hours until they realise that it is back-breaking work and best left to the professionals (whereupon the professional farmer, who is a darned sight cleverer than the dumb townies, gets out his Acme rice planter and lets the machinery get on with it). But in autumn, much like harvests everywhere across the world, everyone gets the urge to pull things out of the ground, which is what we did.

Now Japan and the Japanese are quite big on potatoes. They like to chip them, and bake them, and do the usual things that you do with potatoes – however the humble spud will never replace rice as the staple accompaniment to every meal. But sweet potatoes, now they are a different kettle of fish (to use an unrelated metaphor). Sweet potatoes, or satsuma-imo, (yes that is Satsuma as in the place and type of orange and no I don’t know why a potato should be named after it as they certainly aren’t orange but they may originally have come from Kagoshima where Satsuma is so that might have something to do with it) are big in Japan, in a literal and a metaphorical sense, and apparently pulling them out of the ground in October creates a massive nostalgia trip for everyone as it is what you used to do as a kid. So on Saturday morning we embarked on a trip to Asakadai, to the north of Kawaguchi, to do just that.

Now if you, or indeed I, think of potato farms you think large rolling fields, big machinery to pull the goods from the ground and generally things on an oversized scale. But this is Japan and unless you go to Hokkaido, or possible Toyama, farms can be quite small scale. Indeed they can be in the middle of a town, like Asakadai. So it is a 10am start there so about an 830 start for us as although it isn’t that far, there is a change of trains and a spell on the Musashino line which, in very un-Japanese fashion, only has a train about once every 10 minutes! Very poor service, that. Also there is a bus to catch as the farm isn’t very near the station (though only about 15 minutes walk away, as we found on the way back). This particular jaunt has been organized by a local (I think) group that organizes things for kids to do and so is aimed at those from 0 to 2 years old, though quite what a 1 month old kid would want to do in a potato field is beyond me). On getting the bus it was obvious that this was the bus for the potato picking as there were lots of parents and sprogs, all looking eager.

The farm was owned by Mr & Mrs Watanabe, they had a nice old farmhouse and a bit of land surrounding it. They also had another bit of land over the road. Another bit behind the apartment block to the left. And the right. And some more bits round the corner. And so on. They probably had enough land for a large, rolling field, but it was spread over the whole of Saitama prefecture, so the average size of one of his fields was about the size of a large garden. All very odd. Anyway we go there and there are about 30 families, with kids and as this is being arranged through the community centre, and as we have some of the community centre ladies there, we have to do some songs. I didn’t know any of the songs we do, though I did recognize one tune, but every single other person not only knew the words but also all the actions that went with them. All very confusing for your poor reporter – it felt a bit like trying to learn bon-odori dancing that I wrote about somewhere, but this time all the kids knew what to do as well. Stil it was fun. Then we had a little play about pulling sweet potatoes out of the ground. Typical thing, big potato, won’t come out, need extra help to pull, so audience participation is de rigeur. So, 30 families, one foreigner, you work out the odds of me being dragged to the front.

That’s correct. Ladbrokes would not give you odds as it is a sure fire guarantee, more likely to happen that an England one-day batting collapse. Luckily no photographic evidence exists as I was holding the camera, but for some reason, known only to Japanese, I had to put a cat mask on and help pull the recalcitrant sweet potato whilst the young ‘un looked on bemused..

Then we strolled about 10 minutes to field 42a to pull up the sweet potatoes. In typically organized Japanese fashion not only had the irritating stuff like undergrowth been pushed back, but little plot had been marked with chalk dust so you knew you were getting five plants. Now this being a field you expect a bit of mud, so most people, knowing this, would not a) wear trainers or b) well at least not their best ones. But no, most people did so we had the odd sight of adults tying plastic bags over their shoes and around their ankles to protect their designer footwear from the brown stuff. Me? I just wore a pair of old boots and got on with it. And get on with it we did. On our little plot of five plants we found a veritable treasure trove of medium to large sized sweet potatoes. I must admit that it was quite therapeutic, in a get your hands a bit dirty sort of way, mostly as you never get to get muddy in Tokyo. The little ‘un, on the other hand, wasn’t really interested in the whole potato thing at all, but he was into pouring mud over himself and everything around him, which was fun. It wasn’t so much fun for the little girl next to us, who was into finding potatoes. She didn’t find the mud thing a problem, but their 5 plants yielded only a few small spuds, nothing like the half-a-hundredweight that we yanked out, so we donated a whole load to her, which made mum happy but you could see the little girl was far more into the pulling, which she didn’t get to do. Oh well.

And that was about it. Back to the farmhouse for baked sweet potatoes and hand washing, which was fine, and a bit of a picnic. And then, for some reason, they gave us a bag of ordinary potatoes as a kind of souvenir. Not really sure about that, though they were tasty on Saturday evening.

But there you go, fun on the farm. Pity I don’t actually like sweet potatoes...

Teeth

Had the at-the-back-totally-wrong-angle-tooth out last night. Dentist told me it would take about 50 minutes. Over two hours later I finally left the surgery. Am in a reasonable amount of pain, mainly from, I think, the muscle strain of keeping my mouth open all that time and him pushing down so hard on my lower jaw for leverage. Had plenty of anaesthetic, which was good, but even that couldn’t hide the times when, getting a bit of tooth out, he twisted and twisted until the piece snapped off. Back next Monday to have the stitches out, but fair play to the bloke, he called here earlier this evening to check I was ok. But now he wants to be my friend and go out drinking.

Bit of an overreaction

OK, I know we’re all a bit unhappy that the Kool Kid has gone and been replaced by [think of nickname] Shinzo Abe, but I do feel that Krazy Kim is taking it just a little bit too far, don’t you? I mean OK, you’re upset, maybe the Kid didn’t pop over to Pyongyang to say goodbye, but that doesn’t really seem to be much of a reason to start letting off nuclear devices, now does it?

As I say, I think Krazy Kim is just smarting because no one told him that the Kid had gone, not even the Kid himself, probably, so he’s just a little pissed by this so decided to throw some of his toys out of his pram. Hope he doesn’t through them quite as far as Tokyo, or indeed anywhere else in Japan, as that could cause one or two tensions. Of course the fact the eyes of the world have been drawn away from North Korea to the Middle East (most bits of it) probably doesn’t help [aside, hey, here’s a really annoying thing – I’m using Japanese Word to type this, which is fine, but every time I highlight something, or use the spell checker, it works but then decides that I am indeed stupid to be using Japanese Word to type in English so decides to go back to a much more useful script like Japanese. If anyone knows how to stop it doing that in xp, I’d be most grateful].

Otherwise it has been quite quiet in Japan, considering we have a new PM. Although he has said that he’s not going to do anything about the ropey old constitution, especially with regard to the imperial succession (note – I had a bit of a dig about the whole female succession thing last post and suggested that Japan was a bit behind. Whilst this is still true I then found out that Spain has a similar policy, so just goes to show that people are dumb all over the world) which caused a bit of a stir. He also said, though I haven’t seen it in the papers, that the plan to make English a compulsory primary school lesson was going to be axed as Japanese kids need to learn Japanese. I can see some sense in the second bit of that, but don’t understand what it has to do with the first bit – I mean, if that were true, best get rid of all subjects except for Japanese history, language, literature and patriotic citizenship lessons for kindergarten kids and upwards. Dimwits, the lot of ‘em.

Talking of dimwits, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara was in the news this week (Ishihara is great if you like racist, misogynist and other ~ist politicians, but he is also great if you want stuff to write about in a blog). In past Ishihara has come up with such gems as ‘watch out, if the big one hits Tokyo the rioting and looting will only be done by foreigners, so kick them out [nb he used the term ‘sangokujin’, rather than ‘gaikokujin’, which is to ‘foreigner’ what n**ger is to those of African-American descent i.e. rather insulting]; on the rape of Nanking by Japanese soldiers “They say we made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a lie made up by the Chinese”; and I have a strong suspicion he was the infamous one who said that birthrate would go up if the footy world cup came to Japan because the foreign fans would rape all the Japanese women they found (but I might be wrong in attributing that one to him, though someone did say it).

Anyway a year or two ago he passed a resolution that stated that all teachers at public (i.e. state run) schools, from primary through to high school, must stand and face the hinomaru, otherwise known as the flag of Japan, and sing Kimigayo, the national anthem, during school ceremonies. If the teachers failed to do this they could be reprimanded and sacked. This was, it appears, to make them better citizens, more patriotic and something else as well. So this was passed and not surprisingly a bunch of teachers didn’t do what they were told and were then reprimanded and/or sacked. But in an unusually un-Japanese move the teachers complained about it and took the Tokyo Government to court. Even more unusually, they won. Last week the Tokyo District court of somethingorother found that the rule passed by Ishihara was unconstitutional and that people cannot be forced to sing the national anthem if they don’t want to. Naturally this first of all really surprised Ishihara as I suspect he had paid awful lot of mon...[snip: we would prefer not to publish libelous comments on this blog – rude, yes; libelous, no] and secondly he was really pissed off about it, naturally, so has decided to appeal the ruling (at least I think he has, he was certainly mulling it). But for heaven’s sakes you shouldn’t be forcing people to do this – you can create a just and civilized society so that its citizens might be proud and want to sing the national anthem, but as soon as you start telling people they have to, well, best call Krazy Kim for some advice.

Oh, and found this link over at Ippoippo – if you haven’t seen it it is the interview Bill Clinton did on Fox News where he gets a little angry. So nice to a) hear an intelligent American (ex)president speak and b) for said intelligent American to have a right go at Fox. Enjoy.

Back in the saddle

OK, we are, as the title says, back in the saddle. The old NEC laptop has been replaced by a new NEC laptop, which some might say is only courting disaster (and a certain part of me thinks the same way) but it is new and seems to work so far, since last Sunday, and came with the added bonus that the internet was up and running with a few clicks of the mouse (we were both expecting lengthy phone calls to Guatemala in order to get it going, but no, just a simple “do you have an existing provider?” and from there it was simple).

So, quite a lot has happened since I was last able to post. Various people have had birthdays, for a start, including me and golf-playing-brother, so well done there. The Kool Kid has finally departed from Prime Ministry and has been replaced by the rather dull and dreary Shinzo Abe, who looks very much like the 50 odd PMs who came before The Kid (i.e. grey, boring, accountant-like). But, interestingly (if you like these sorts of things) he is the first Japanese PM to be born after the end of WWII, which makes him one of the baby boomers that are causing all the problems for the pension systems (hope he’s paid his premiums…). Anyway he says he wants to continue with The Kids’ reforms and, even, speed them up, which would be good to see. I hope he does something interesting soon as I have got to think of a nickname for him (i.e. Koizumi = The Kool Kid; Mori = The Fuckwit and; Hashimoto = The Bryan Ferry of Japanese Politics (which I agree isn’t a snappy nickname, but hey, there you go)) and it hasn’t been easy so far, and calling him The Accountant is just too lazy (and could apply to most of the working ale population). Nevertheless he’s here to stay, apparently, though no news of when we’re meant to be having an election – not for a while as, thinking about it, The Kid had one this year over the postal dispute thing that I wrote about somewhere.

Another thing you might have seen is that one of the Japanese royal family dropped a sprog within the last month. This was big news as it had lots to do with the succession. Now personally I am something of a republican – no, I’m everything of a republican unless royal families go the way of the Dutch, or maybe Belgians, where the royals all cycle around and are generally normal people. When they start to get ideas above their station, like having people bow at them and all that nonsense, let alone taking my hard earned yen, or pounds, and then just being given it for no good reason (give it back to me, I say), then my goat begins to be got. But when you throw in a good dose of misogyny, as the Japanese do, they can all go the way of the Dodo for all I care. But I’m writing about then so there must be something there. Anyway the problem was no male heirs were being born and under Japanese law, or the constitution, or more likely some old tosspot in the Imperial Household Agency, women are not allowed to ascend to the imperial throne as they might sully it, much in the same way as women are not allowed to enter the sumo dojo. This was a vexing question as although the crown prince was a man, his progeny was the princess Aiko, definitely a girl, so when it came down to it, how was she going to be able to rule the heavens and earth, or whatever it is the emperor rules? The Kid was going to have a committee look at it but then the crown princes’ brother’s wife got pregnant and everyone held their breath for 10 months (it is one month longer in Japan – they’re special, you know). But luckily for everyone concerned the brother, who has a 70s porn star moustache, and his lovely wife, had a boy! Thank goodness for that, everyone said, as now we don’t have to address any difficult questions of equality, gender bias or any other nineteenth century concepts we don’t like and have managed to avoid for the last 100 years (goodness it has been a while since I let the bile rise). So now, I think, the succession goes the crown prince, then the brother, then the brother’s son. If I was princess Aiko I’d sue.

Naturally there have been a few scandals over the past few weeks. One of the better ones was the Gifu Prefecture government who made their very own slush fund, as you do, from the very tax revenue that should probably have been paid to the royal family. Anyway after a while they realized that even by bloated Japanese standards they had skimmed off quite a large amount of cash, so much so that they couldn’t spend it all, even if they went to the swankiest of restaurants and the most expensive of foreign ‘fact-finding’ holidays work tours. But then, to really piss off the people of Gifu, when the fraud office started sniffing around the slush fund some of the members took bundles of cash and threw them in the incinerator! What bastards! I mean ‘appropriating’ other people’s money is one thing, but burning it when you get found out…

Otherwise there has been the usually spate of parents killing their kids then committing suicide; parents killing their kids then bottling out of suicide; kids killing their parents and not even thinking about suicide; and more unusually a crack down on drink driving. This was because of a couple of particularly nasty crashes, including one where a drunk driver lamed into a family’s SUV so hard it pushed the SUV off a bridge, whereupon three children drowned as their parents struggled in vain to release them from the car. The drunk driver was apprehended even though he tried to drive off. In fact traffic accidents have been in the news very much recently, none more so than our very own Kawaguchi, where a not-drunk driver, whilst adjusting his car stereo, managed to run into a group of 30 kindergarten kids and their teachers who were walking to a park, killing two little girls and putting 16 others into hospital. Tragic stuff. Anyway it seems to be being taken a little bit more seriously now, which can only be good.

As for this bit of the clan, things are ok except both the young ‘un and the Guru both have colds at the moment and are generally under the weather (and as the weather is bad, it makes it doubly worse). The young ‘un’s vocabulary is increasing all the time, his latest favourite word is atsui, or atchee as he pronounces it, which is the Japanese word for hot – this sounds good and most of the time it is as he points to quite hot things, like the hot tap in the bath, and says this repeatedly. However for really hot things, like the grill on the cooker, he will say ‘atchee’ once and then go and try and touch the hot thing, rather defeating the purpose of the self administered warning. Oh well, kids eh?