Functions

It is not often that the guru and I go out of an evening, trying to save money and all that, and it is even rarer that we get invited out. But on Saturday night last weekend we did get an invitation to... a function.

Well, I say we but in actual fact it was I, and the good guru wasn't interested upon finding out what it was. Nor was I, really, to tell the truth, but I thought I had better go along as it might have been one of those occasions where I could 'meet' some people and possibly 'network', which apparently is a jolly important thing one must do. Especially important, if books are to believed, if one is an expat and therefore opportunities are limited by the small number of other expats in Tokyo. But 'meeting' some people and 'networking' is not that easy as it involves a lot of what is commonly known as 'small talk' but which is more correctly named 'talking bollocks to people you don't (want to) know for two hours'.

So this is how I found myself walking to the Agnes Hotel (cracking name, if you ask me) in the heart of Iidabashi on Saturday evening. I was off, I'm sure you're dying to know, to the Warwick University Graduates Alumni Function (I really can't think of another word to describe it) Tokyo 2004. Considering I only know one other warwick graduate in Tokyo (Brian, and he wasn't even invited! Well, he does return-to-sender anything that comes through his door from them) who wasn't going, you can maybe see why i wasn't filled with unbounded joy about going along. But there were two reasons for attending. One, curiosity, just who would be there? and two, it was only 1,500yen with a bar and free food. Well, 1,500 for as many glasses of red wine as I can get away with and some nosh besides, well, it has to be worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.

So, arriving at the lobby it was quite clear who would be attending, lots of Japanese people. Not surprising, I suppose, what with this being Japan, but I though perhaps one or two foreigners might be there, but on arriving, no. And not only were all of the attendees at this point Japanese, 90% of them were female - things suddenly looking up. Then I got 'small talking' to a lady by the name of Rena and realised that these females were a) really rather clever, they seemed to have gone to warwick for MAs and PhDs, but they were also b) loaded, as a further degree, especially at money grabbing warwick, does not come cheap for a native student, let alone an overseas one.

Uh oh, thought I, I can see where this evening is going to go, better start on the booze, which seemed very passable. So at this stage there was plenty of milling and not much else. The head mc chap, Jon Somethingorother, was nowhere to be found and on one seemed to be stepping into his shoes. So Rena and I continued to make 'small talk' - she is from Kanagawa prefecture, did her MA in Literature focussing on a bunch of Irish poets I've never heard of, graduating in '98. She did not live in Leamington or consider her top priorities whilst at warwick to drink too much, find a dealer, devise a new pub crawl route/drinking game/forfeit or get up to other student high jinks, so you can see our topics of conversation were pretty limited. Still, we managed to smile and chat and I managed not to anything wildly inappropriate, of which I am justifiably proud.

Just then, as if to save me from foot-in-mouth disease, a Japanese chap did the decent thing and stepped at last into Jon Somethingorother's shoes and do a welcome speech about half an hour after the function started. Then we had the curiously Japanese customs of the toast. Now I am all for toasts at weddings and birthdays and the like, but functions, hmmm. Also, if you are going to go to the bother of having a toast, well, then it is champagne, surely, or at least a drop of decent sparkling wine to get everyone in the mood? But in Japan, it seems, toasts are often made with lager...

So, put down your glass of quite pleasant plonk, fill a smallish glass with Kirin's best and shout "kampai" at everyone. Chink, chink etc [that is meant to be the sound of glasses touching lightly, not a derogatory remark about Chinese people]. All very odd, if you ask me, as beer at the same time as wine? No, I don't think so either (unless it's much later in the evening).

Then came the food, which was in the style of a buffet. Here we came up against the perennial problem of carrying the plate, holding the glass, eating the food and talking all at the same time. Luckily the hotel had cut the food into bite sized pieces that were only just too big to eat comfortably in one mouthfull, but only provided forks so you couldn't actually cut anything smaller. So, 'small talk', pop a piece of (very pleasant) roast pork in the mouth and chew, realise you have to answer a question so try to swallow, end up with tears in your eyes as a semi-masticted lump of meat forces it way down your throat, cough, splutter, look up and realise your conversation has walked off with a worried look in his eye.

Suave? That's me.

After that I 'small talked' with a chap who graduated 27 yrs ago after blagging his way into the university and basically cheating whilst he was there. Nice work. He was quite an interesting bloke, but had a tendency to spit Roy Hattersley style when he got excited. And then when he realised I wasn't a scientist, lost interest in chatting to me - or maybe that was another piece of pork...

Then I at last noticed a couple of foreigners at the function. So, wanting a decent conversation (thought the Japanese people I spoke to spoke excellent English, far better than my Japanese, but then again, thay had been to uni in the UK so it should be good). Anyway we were soon back into the 'people with deep pockets' syndrome as this couple, and a married couple they were, were on the real expat deal, shipped out by their companies. So he was a managing director of something to do with the Japanese/asian arm of one of the big accountancy firms, whilst she had recently departed from her position in an international law office. Clever people, obviously, who have done jolly well for themselves. The real expat deal means astronomical salaries, a large pad in Azabu Juban (where we went to the matsuri in August), nannies to look after their two kids, etc and associated wad. Me jealous? not really, though chip on shoulder did develop just a teensy bit. But they were nice people who really like being in Japan and who, like me, weren't really sure about going along to the function but did out of a sense of curiosity (I don't think they needed to worry about the whole open bar/1,500 yen thing - oh how the other half live). And interestingly he graduated at the same time as me, but I never knew him for two very good reasons. One, he lived in Coventry in years 2 and 3, very odd, and two, he did maths. Oh well. So we chatted and 'small talked' and it wasn't too bad as at least we could try and remember pub crawl routes, bands we saw in the union (radiohead and the manics before they were famous), all whilst desperately trying to think of people that might be a common link. It was not to be.

And with that, I buggered off home. There was one other Brit there, but he was a bit weird, so the less said about him the better, don't know why, just slighty creepy and sinister in an Alistair Sims kind of way.

Am I glad I went? I suppose so, it was interesting in its own way. Will I go again if the Warwick Graduates TokyoAlumni Steering Committee organise anything ? Well now, that depends on the toasts.

where to start...?

...is always a tricky one. The advice usually given is to start in the middle and then go back to the start to finish off, or something like that. But that doesn't work if your not exactly sure where the middle is going either and you haven't even thought about the ending.

So today it was an exceptionally gray and wet day, in fact it almost seemed like a day in blighty, with low cloud and persistent drizzle, interspersed with buckets of very heavy rain, which was at least a little diverting. This was apt, the grayness not the diverting rain, as seemed to sum up my outlook at the moment, mainly on account of finishing the book that I wrote about last week, Alex Kerr's Japan is a Totally F**ked Concept. I have now realised the wisdom of reading books about countries when you are far, far away from the country that the book is about, preferably never to return. It is a big mistake to read a book slagging off the country you are living in, especially if a) you aren't leaving for the foreseeable b) you agree with most of what the book says and c) your partner, who is from said country, does not agree at all. This is not a recipe for a sunny visage and a spring in the step.

Then, to make matters worse, you troop off to the virgin cinema in 'trendy' Roppongi Hills to watch 'The Fog of War' which though very, very interesting, is also a wee bit depressing about the state of human nature and our inability to learn from past mistakes. If you haven't seen it, then I would highly recommend it: 2 hours of interviews, contemporary footage and anecdotes from Robert McNamara, the US Defence Secretary during the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam and the like. Fascinating, but not exactly laugh a minute stuff. Also it was Roppongi Hills, which as you well know is not my favourite place in the whole of Japan.

This, though, made me smile this week, or perhaps it was last week, I can't really remember. The Japanese, like most people, like a jolly good opinion poll to brighten up their morning daily. Current hot topics in these opinion polls are such normal things like how much you dislike the prime minister (even though he cried in Brazil when all the expats cheered him for 5 minutes), how much you hate North Korea (especially now that Krazy Kim seems to be warming up his nukes for no apparent reason - hey! When did he ever need one?) and how dangerous Japan has become. This poll that I saw was on this last topic. Part of it was all about the breakdown of Japanese family life, the increase in violent crime, especially by younger and younger children and the fracturing of society. Good news on this point, by the by, as Kaio won the Autumn Sumo basho, which finished yesterday in Tokyo. He beat Mongolian grappler Asashoryu to claim the Emperor's Cup, the first Japanese to do so for...for, well quite a long time as I can't remember the last native to do it. Asashoryu fell to something like a 9-6 record, which is pretty dismal for a yokozuna - so smies all around in the Japan Sumo Association as Japan reasserts itself as a force to be reckoned with.

I digress. So this back to this poll and its main subject. The headline for the poll was something like 'Japanese Fear Increase in Foreign Crime!' Or to put it another way, your average Japanese person on the Kawaguchi omnibus is worried about the increasing number or crimes committed by foreigners in Japan, especially, it seems violent crimes perpatrated by evil Chinese gangsters and their terrible rackets (noisy people obviously, ho ho ho). Now, as a student doing an MBA, all of my assignments involve first person research, in which views of others need to be sought. So, all the books tell me, you have to be very careful when framing questions so that you don't introduce bias, or leading questions or try to put words into people's mouths. So imagine my surprise, as the saying goes, when the question that the poll was based on translated roughly like 'Are you worried about crimes being committed by foreigners who have over stayed their visas and are now residing illegally in Japan?' Surely the answer to that question, if asked of anyone in any country about illegal immigrants would be yes, but here it was trumpted all over the front pages as if it was some kind of revelation.

What made me smile even more was that further into the article it sheepishly revealed that whilst the total number of crimes committed by foreigners is going up, as a proportion of all crime it is going down. Also, violent crimes by foreigners are going down as well, the only real growth area, as it were, are for visa infringements, such as over staying your visa, and these generally for students studying Japanese - ok, they are mostly Chinese, apparently , so at least something was accurate in the report. Nothing like an unbiased free press to stir up intelligent debate, although coming from the UK, with its tabloid trash, I'm hardly one to talk really.

On the plant front, continuing good news from the chilli plants. We have now had a total of three chills, two of which I have eaten and can confirm that they were, indeed, green chillis. And they weren't too bad, reasonably hot and spicy, but not eye wateringly so. One certainly livened up a pot of bog standard tomato-y pasta sauce the other week, so well done the chilli plants.

The olive tree continues to grow apace and is now over a metre tall, which is most impressive indeed. No olives yet, but they will come in time, I am quite sure of that. Actually, last week I sneaked off the top shoots to slow it down for the winter, but already it has sprouted three new shoots around the cutting and shows no sigh of slowing. Today the balcony, tomorrow the world!

And the rosemary, much of which has died due to the same strange thing that decimated the mint, is now doing ok. There is only really one plant left, but it is the oldest and the biggest and also has new shoots a-sprouting so hopefully it will see the winter through.

But RIP for the coffee tree, which went brown and died in about 3 days. This after it was doing so well and had recovered from its little white bug(ger) attack. Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to contiune to buy my mocha...

Hmmm

Finding it difficult to know what to write tonight. The main probelm is the book I'm reading at the moment - Alex Kerr's Dog and Demons: The fall of modern Japan. This is a fascinating book and well worth a read, especially to anyone living in Japan. The gist of it is that, essentially, Japan is f****d - too much concrete, too much destruction, too much debt, too little thinking and not nearly enough caring.

But how true is this of the rest of the world? Are they fingers that can only be pointed at Japan? How much do people care in Europe, America or Australasia?

I'm not sure how much I agree with all of what he has to say, but I am in total agreement about Japan and its love affair with concrete. Japan is fast on the way to becomming an exceedingly ugly place, paved in concrete and then covered in billboards and neon. The 'not enough caring' comes from everyman on the Kawaguchi omnibus, as it doesn't seem to matter that these things happen and few Japanese people seem to speak out about it (that I know or have heard about, I hasten to add). Though perhaps Kawaguchi is a tricky place to choose as from our windows we can see a massive expanse of greenery along the riverbank, both grass and trees, which is one of the main reasons we live where we do (it isn't the 1' 30" journey to work, I can tell you). But I can't believe that very many people in Tokyo and the surrounding Kanto plain get such a view. Our old apartment in Chiba had a car park outside (which was hidden by bamboo trees, which were very nice and Japanesey, until the carpark owner cut them down for no apparent reason) and a road, nothing much to see there, and I don't think it is any better for the majority.

But of course we are living (and choosing to at that) in a megalopolis over 12 million people (in Tokyo, not including Saitama, Chiba and south to Yokohama) so how much more can one expect? And the trains run on time, and no one is likely to mug me, let alone shoot me accidentally during a drug war standoff - OK, too much Fox News Syndrome there, but you get the point.

Maybe that's the problem with the book, too much negativity. Is there an opposite to rose tinted spectacles?

Haven't finished the book yet, but it has certainly got me thinking.

The girls in blue

Now it might be thought that I have a bit of a thing about the police in this country, a bit of a negative attitude. This is of course completely wrong as I have a *extremely* low opinion of them. I have written in these pages, somewhere, about stories in the paper about crap things that they do, mainly because they seem quite funny to me, but then again because I'm usually quite aghast of the things that they manage to come out with.

But I'm beginning to realise, right now in fact, that this might just be because I come from such a totally alien cultural background that anything and everything the police do just seems odd because I am a foreigner. I wasn't going to write about this, probably because it was in the newspaper again, and that's not what we're meant to be about today, but we'll come onto that later. Anyway, letter in the paper from a chap whose wife/partner got knocked off her moped by a car. Chap, being dilligent, got the number plate details and so, when the police arose from their sloth long enough to scratch an armpit and arrive at the scene, he passed on said details. He then expected the police to leap into action, as it were, go to miscreant motorist's house, knock down doors, shout 'hut hut' a lot and effect a swift arrest (he is American). But no, and this is perhaps where the previously unheeded cultural chasm opens.

The police, being ever resourceful in finding ways to make their own job easier, telephoned the egregious automobile pilot and asked him, if it wasn't too much bother, if he minded wandering down to the nearest koban for a quiet word as he seemed to have nudged a motorcyclist whilst driving home half cut from his local sake-ya. Now if this happened in the UK, the response would be laughter followed by a few choice expletives and the connection being cut. But here the errant driver said 'right you are, it's a fair cop' and went to the station, apologised, bowed a bit and then buggered off - probably after paying a bit in damages, I would guess, but otherwise as free as scott, as the saying goes.

Now on the surface it seems like pretty shite policing to me, but the mere fact that the police did it, and the chap duly arrived, goes to show that no matter how strange you think this country is, and no matter how many times you think 'but they wouldn't do it like that in...' the fact is that Japan is a deeply, deeply weird place. I mean, even the criminals are polite and own up to their misdemeanors...but...I mean...huh?

Then again, some people have just no respect for the law whatsoever.

As I said earlier, all these stories about how crap the police are I have seen have been in the paper, but on Friday last week I saw this in action for myself. I was eating lunch with a couple of others from the office, this time at the curry place (good curries, no Japanese cooks there, all authentic Indian personages who, I'm sure I wrote somewhere before, have live cricket feeds over the internet when India are playing, which is just fine with me). Anyway they have a small terrace, big enough for one table and four chairs, where we were engaged in witless banter and curry consumption on the aforementioned sunny Friday afternoon. Along comes a black beamer that parks on the other side of the road but effectively blocking half the carriageway. These are residential streets and so are quite narrow, making passing tricky. Out jumps our plucky parker and dives into the curry emporium in which we are also scoffing.

About 10 minutes later a small car draws up. I have seen these cars before, they look a bit like police cars but have different markings on, are really small and always have three official looking ladies inside. So this patrol car slows and looks at the beamer and then quick as a flash a green and white cane is produced.

Fascinated, the terraced based foreigners watch agog...

The cane is tipped with a piece of chalk and in the blink of an eye, the chalk has marked the driver's side tire with a cross and written '155' on the road next to the mark. Then, blaring from the loud speaker atop the patrol car, the instruction "Oi! You! Wherevere you are! Move your bloody car toot sweet, we'll be back in 15 minutes to check on you" (may have been) barked.

Ah, '155' means it is five to two in the afternoon and so they will circle and come back to check at 3:10. Bouyed by our Holmes like deductive reasoning, we get up to leave, thinking what a jolly effective way to do the traffic warden thing, they don't even have to get out of the car (though quite what the lady in the back of the car did remains a mystery, moral support perhaps?) But then we saw the folly of the plan.

Beamer driver chap came out of the curry house looking a bit peeved. Got in, started the car, rolled it forward about a foot, then got out and returned to his lunch. Of course now the mark on the tire and the mark on the road didn't match up, so one assumes that the taffic ladies now had no hold over him, he had done exactly what they asked him to do. Though not quite in the spirit of the law, it was certainly within the letter of it.

We weren't able to hang around to see what happened when the ladies in blue returned, more's the pity, but it did increase my respect for law enforcement in this country.

No really.

Windows for warships

Saw this over at Dearie Me, does it make you worried? I think it should, Bill Gates really is going to take over the world...

Arrr!

You thought I'd forgotten, but I have done no such thing! Click here for this year's guide to 2004 Talk Like a Pirate Day...

And just to get in the mood

Yesterday I left my land lubbing legs on the quayside and embarked on the open seas for an evening for rape, pillage, plunder and drinking. Well, except for the first three, but luckily there was plenty of the fourth to make up for it.

That's right. Every year we organise a great big piss up for teachers and managers alike as a Tokyo boat cruise compnay has hit upon a jolly wheeze. Punters appreciate Tokyo Bay, especially at night as it is all twinkly, which looks pretty, and it's dark, unsurprisingly, so you can't see the pollution, and also the same punters like boozing. So, get a great big boat, put as many people on it as possible, fill it with beer and then sail around the bay for a couple of hours every weekend.

And it really works. For only 2500 yen, about 12quid, one can join this boat and get pretty well bladdered as the price includes as much beer as you can drink. So I and about 70 odd teachers did just that last night. And the nice thing about it is that as the average Japanese person gets drunk, they don't tend to get angry or pushy and want a fight, they just smile and then fall over, meaning that everyone else smiles and falls over as well, though luckily not overboard. If you really want to, as it were, push the boat out, you can hire a private room on this boat, which means you get some nosh as well. But this seems a bit odd to me as if you do, you only get a little porthole and so can't see outside, so what's the pont, you may as well be sitting in an izakaya in Saitama. But some people do, and fair play to them.

The Japanese are really into their all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink deals (tabehoudai and nomihoudai respectively). I suppose for the restaurants doing them they can be a good thing. I remember a few years back a largeish group of us met up for the Metropolitan Hotel Ikebukuro's evening nomihoudai one holiday. Things got off to a good start when we arrived. The drinking was meant to kick off at 6pm and go for three hours until 9 (this was a really good deal), but on arrival we found that the cake tabehoudai was still in full swing, even though it was meant to finish at 530. "But we wish to drink ourselves stupid" we said to the head waiter chap, who suddenly started looking very worried. "Ah, very sorry, but these people still need their sugar rush and we must not disappoint them in their fondant grazing" he (might have) replied. So we waited. By about 630 they had finally thrown out the last of the cake eaters - can you imagine eating nothing but cake for 2 hours? Horrible, but hugely popular in this wonderfully weird and woefully toothed country. So then we got started on the drinks.

And it was fab, but they obviuosly weren't in the slightest bit ready for a bunch of foreigners being there. Other places in Tokyo have a reputation amongst foreigners as good nomihoudai places (like the Shinagawa Prince hotel, Monday to Thursday - that's the other great thing about them, often they are in really nice hotels on the top floor, so you get great views and cheap booze - perfect) and so the staff are ready for foreign-falling-over antics, but not the Metro, or at least it didn't seem that way to us. First up was the fact that we demanded to be watered for the full three hours. The waiter chap tried the 'we finish at 9pm' blag, to which we countered 'oh pardon us, but the deal is for 3 hours and we didn't sit down until 645 because you wouldn't make the cake eaters leave, your problem, not ours'. We were still sober at this point and more importantly coherent, so faced with this barrage of logic, they were forced to acquiesce.

Next we realised why they were being so wary. A Japanese couple who had come in at the same time as us, at 645 as if they knew they would have to wait, left after about half an hour. This shocked us all quite profoundly. A fixed price all you can drink deal that last for three hours and you leave after 30 minutes! Where is the sense in that? But more Japanese came and went whilst we were there, treating the place as if it were a regular bar. Very odd, but it seems as if that was the Japanese way. We, however, did it the English way (and New Zealand way as well, if memory serves), which meant getting slowly louder and after enough beer had been drunk, moving onto silly drinks that came in small glasses and had a much bigger effect...

I think the biggest shock, though, was the 'no having fun' rule. We repeatedly told off, not for the volume of our speaking, but for laughing too long and too loudly. 'Speaking ok but not loud laugh' was the rule. Then, speaking softly as we were, a jazz trio started up on a little stage next to the dance floor. How jolly, thought some of the assembled, let's a go for a quick spin (not I, I hasten to add, dancing not being a strong point). But no, the waiter chap returned and admonished the perpetrators 'no dancing on dance floor - listening only!' was his refrain, which even surprised a couple of the Japanese who had got up for a swift two-step.

I think it was then, at not even 945, that we realised that it was not to be, made our farewells and headed out into the Ikebukuro night. In the time honoured fashion of very drunk people everywhere, I think we then decided that we hadn't had enough so sought out another favourable watering hole, the Hub pub I think, stayed they for a while and then, somehow, I fell in a fountain - things are a little hazy about it all around this point but I managed to find my way home and then complained long and loud to the guru (who had stayed at home) of being abandoned by everyone else. Next day I was informed that I had said me goodbyes to everyone before wandering off, bumping into things/people and listing heavily to port.

And the best thing about it was the whole evening hardly cost a thing because of this great nomihoudai deal at the hotel. About a tenner or so, which if you're Japanese and only stay for 30 minutes and one drink is probably a very good deal for the hotel, but if 15 foreigners turn up with the express intention of drinking for the entirety of the alotted time, I think the place may soon have been out of pocket.

Oh well, we had fun anyway.

Getting Chilli

Yes, we now have chillis! The seeds that I sowed more in hope than in expectation in spring have matured into quite big plants and we now have two fully formed green chillis slowly getting bigger. Next step is to try them out. The guru says she will have none of this (good, home grown organic produce, whyever not, what could be healthier?) so it shall have to be up to yours truly to test the water, as it were. Further bulletins as events, or hospital reports, warrant...

And lastly

Happy birhday to golf-playing-brother, who is one year older today. Yaay!

Apologies

for the lack of posting last week. Work was in one of those 'no, you do not have any free time' kind of moods which meant I wasn't getting home till late blah blah break out the violins etc. Anyway there you go, but back this week, so here we go.

It's the taking part that counts...

Readers outside of Japan probably haven't realised this, but the quadrennial All-Japan sports meeting has been held recently, this year in the sleepy Greek town of Athens.

This sports meeting is really something. What happens is that Japan gets all its best athletes together and sends them to a country and then invites other countries to send some of their not-quite-so-good athletes for the Japanese to beat. Then Japanese TV shows all these competitions repeatedly, especially if the Japanese athlete does what is expected and wins the gold.

This meeting usually takes place at the same time as the Olympics, but I don't think Japan sends any athletes there as there are lots of sports the Japanese aren't much kop at, which therefore aren't of much interest to the average Japanese couch potato. Who on earth wants to watch sports without Japanese people winning? Not the Japanese, that's for sure, so they have this other competition where they know they are going to win all the medals. Neat huh?

OK, being just a little bit critical there, but the coverge over really is piss poor. It would appear that sports such as sailing and rowing, which just happen to be sports the Brits aren't too shabby at, don't exist in the minds of the tv producers here - and this with about 6 channels covering the games at various times. However if you want to see Ryoko Tani winning her next Judo gold, you can watch it on six channels at the same time (if you had 6 tv's, naturally). This is so even on the olympic digest shows on nhk (equivalent of the beeb) which, in theory, are meant to show coverage of all the medals being won. Fat chance. And I know that every country is a bit skewed as to what coverage gets the hype, but at least in Blighty they at least show other countries winning events, in Japan you would never know.

But the Japanese did very well, getting something like 16 golds, which is pretty good if you ask me. Half of them were for Judo, which seems appropriate seeing as Japan invented it, but then again England invented most sports and we're crap at most of those so it doesn't always follow. Unexpected Japanese winners included a lady swimmer by the name of Shibata, who won the 800m something-or-other, to which the collective watching public was most happy. I say 'included' for her, but she was really it on the unexpected winners front. Unexpected not winners included one of the women wrestlers Hamaguchi, who was meant to steamroller all before her but became derailed at the semi-final stage, Inoue in the men's Judo, who, well, didn't get a gold and both the men's and women's footy teams, who basically bombed out without troubling the scorers (actually that's not fair to the men's team, thet troubled the scorers by knocking in a hatful of goals. Great, except for conceding even more at the other end).

But it is all over now, as Mick once sang, which left time for...

Azabu-Juban Matsuri

Yes, the other weekend the guru and I strolled off to Azabu-Juban in the beating heart of the metropolis for their annual August festival, meeting up with Steve and Yasuko on the way. Azabu-Juban, as the name suggests, is the 10th Azabu in Tokyo. There is precious little mention of what happed to the other nine or, indeed from 11 onwards. There is a Nishi Azabu, which isn't really that close but must be related in some way, who knows. Anyway number 10 is a bit of an old Shitamachi or downtown area, long term residents, little dingy old shops, that sort of thing, to make the place interesting. It's losing a bit of that now as it becomes posh, being close to boring but expensive Roppongi Hills can do that to a place.

Anyway because it still possesses a bit of its shitamachi-ness, it is one of the few places in central Tokyo that still has a proper Obon matsuri (Obon, I think I've mentioned before, is the summer festival when one returns to the parental bosom to pray for deceased ancestors - and woe betide you if you don't). Now for a 'proper' obon matsuri you need three things: food stalls: bon odori dancing and; beer - all of which Azabu-Juban had plenty of.

First up the food stalls. As the area is a bit downtown, as the Japanese call it, that means narrow streets with bends in, rather than wide straight roads you normally get. Into these streets the organisers squashed as many stalls as they could, which is great as wandering around we found a plethora of yakisoba (fried noodles), yakitori, steak on a stick, big boiled buttered potatoes, corn on the cob, a donner kebab stall (Steve had to try it, not bad was the verdict), and much more besides. It was great as the streets were absolutely packed so you kind of got swept along wherever everyone else was going. The smells were all great and the people really friendly and the food not fantastically overpriced, only reasonably so.

But the even better thing about it was this. Azabu-Juban is home to a fair number of foreign embassies and they, in the spirit of joining in and having a good time, set up food stalls of their own in a special, well, foreign embassies food stall park place...thing. So along with all the Japanese food there were curries from Asia and Africa (the Bangladeshi lentil curry was good, says the guru), smoking meat on the barby from Argentina, meatballs from Sweden, tapas from Spain, tacos and burritos from Mexico etc etc and shepherd's pie from Blighty. And this area was also packed with hundreds, if not thousands of people, all drinking the requisite beers, but everyone was jolly and happy and having a splendid time. It was a bit like the Notting Hill carnival but without the worry of being knifed (but also without the possibility of securing a decent bit of skunk, more's the pity).

There was also Bon odori dancing and the young ladies with their Taiko drums. For those who have never seen it, bon odori dancing is quite something. The general format is this.

1. Erect a tower made of scaffolding
2. Attach big loud speakers and a drum on top (and lights, decorations etc to make it look nice
3. Gather lots of old ladies in yukata in a circle around aforementioned tower
4. Play the bon odori tape and get everyone dancing around the tower
5. Repeat until drunk and/or shagged out

All sounds nice except for two things. First the music is shite - one plucked shamisen, some wooden blocks clapped together and wailing. It might be only one track, there might be hundreds, to the untrained foreign ear it is hard to tell. Second the dancing itself. It sort of goes something like this: (remember everyone is moving in a big circle with the tower on their left) take a step forward, and another, then a step back, dip, up, turn to the left, clap, turn right, clap twice, sway, dip, up and start again, continue to music stops. That's about it really, though the order of the moves can be changed for different tunes - except only you, as a foreigner, won't know that the tune has changed and therefore the moves are different, cue much Japanese old lady hilarity as you sway in the wrong place and clap twice instead of dipping.

But, and this is a big but, after a few cans of beer you don't care, and that is why beer is so important for a bon festival. So we did all the bits, though not the dancing this time, and we ate and we drank and generally enjoyed ourselves, as one is meant to do at a festival. Also at this festival, much to the delight of the organisers, they had some snow from Gifu prefecture... Your guess is a good as mine.

Nope, not going to happen this week

Back in the saddle

So even though it is now Wednesday, this post will naturally be all about last week, as this is the way things should be. So what went on?

Well, last week was hols (as is this week, up to tomorrow, ah the bliss of not working...) so the guru and I celebrated by not going away and not doing much at all really. There were a couple of reasons for this, firstly as it was just too damn hot. By Saturday Tokyo had set a new record for consecutive days over 30 degrees c, the new record being something like 40 days, which seems a tad biblical to me, but luckily it wasn't 40 nights over 30 as well (though I reckon it was pretty close).

Anyway it seems we have Tibet to blame for this as excerssive yak dung production created a massive lump of high pressure, which then moved off and deposited itself on Honshu, or something like that. And it made it hot and humid and horrible. On Sunday it was grey, overcast, raining and, blissfully, only 26 degrees - we both felt slightly chilly, which is just mad for a day in August. I had hoped that the worst was over as Mon and Tues were quite cool, relatively speaking, but today is back up there in the hotness stakes, oh joy.

Deep breaths please.

I also took my annual medical on Friday at a clinic just down the road. This is the second time I have been for a medical in Japan and it is still a difficult and slightly nerve wracking thing to have to go through, mainly as I'm never really sure exactly what it is the doctors and nurses are saying to me.

Medicals are big business in Japan as companies generally pay for them and so clinics are quite happy to overcharge. I had expected (the first time) that it would be in some out of the way place in the country side where I could discuss things with the doc, stroll around the grounds in the dressing gown etc, bit like James Bond on a bit of R&R (it is quite amazing just how many events in my mind's eye have me in situations like James Bond, or maybe not). But no, it is more like a conveyor belt, production line medical - go into this room, stand here, don't look, press this button and so on. Makes it all quite impersonal really.

So they checked my ears and eyes, internal organs (piss into a cup, rather than the ejaculate, more's the pity), impedence (whatever that is) and the usual other stuff. Everything seems to be in working order, which was good news, though I did find one aspect of it all somewhat disconcerting.

I was going for the really basic medical check, rather than the full monty, mainly as it was the cheapest option, though not cheap at 50 quid (or is it? I don't know). So my actual contact time with a real doctor was limited, as this, I guess, is what you pay more for when you go for the more thorough/expensive check ups. So anyway I pop into the docs little consultation room a little nervously as if he asks me anything technical in Japanese I am not going to know what he is on about, unless, that is, he asks me to order a couple of beers and some yakitori - which was unlikely let's face it. But when I walk in he asks me sit down in English, hesitantly, it must be said, but in English nonetheless. So far so good.

Then he whips out his stethoscope for a listen to the old chest. What he would really like to say next is "deeply inhale Mr Justin....and exhale".

What he actually said was "deeply inspire Mr Justin...and expire".

It comes to something when your doctor tells you to die on the spot. But I did not take his advice and so I am able to write to you all today.

Otherwise

The rest of last week was quite quiet. After the last day in the office on the Friday a few of us went out for beers in Aoyama. This was most pleasant as we found a couple of jolly pleasant bars in which to sup. One, named NOS (which has a cute litte website, especially the 'room' section, if you can look at it) was very nice as it had a terracy thing that we could sit on and drink red wine after the obligatory first beer on a Friday evening had done its magic. But these chaps only let us stay there until 8pm as the place was booked out. This looked to be a bit rum, but we then found an even better place. We wandered down to Las Chicas, which is quite well known, but this place was packed but upstairs we found a really nice little place, quiet, reserved, with a terrace but a perfect place to continue with the red wine and convivial chat. I wish I could remember the name of the place, but it doesn't matter as it was quite easy to fine - I recommend it to anyone in Aoyama passing by.

Japan itself has been quiet this week in terms of scandals, mishaps, buggering about and the like, mainly as all the politicians and bigwigs are either gearing up for the Olympics or gearing down for the Obon holiday. Naturally the Games have been big over here as Japan has won a bucketful of Judo medals, a few in the pool and also the men's team gymnastics. Well done to all, doing better that team GB, though that doesn't seem to be too difficult to me. By the way, anyone else think the Olympic flame, rising after it had been lit by the torch, looked like a giant penis surging to erection? Maybe it was just me then.

Fantasy football

Last but by no means least, the fantasy football season is now up and running. Go to the CoB website to see just how sad we all are, and to the Telegraph site if you fancy joining - the more the merrier, we have 25 or 26 in our mini league right now. And on this note I would like to say thanks to Mr Steve Denney for providing me with the prize for winning last seasons UEFFA Cup, by buying me the required 'a couple of beers' in the Adgate pub last night.

No post

Listening to the cricket, can England do it? 175 more to win, plenty of overs but what about the pitch? Will write tomorrow.

We're back

Apologies if you have been over recently and found yourself transported to the strange world of sparclinux.org, this was due to some old bits of code that were hanging around the template and confusing me from the old comments provider. Now hopefully sorted, it's almost like we've never been away.

(PS thanks to Jason at Blogger for pointing me in the right direction.)

Am now in holiday mode so there will be precious little structure to the ramblings for this week and, quite possibly, next.

This week, or perhaps next week dates are a little hazy, is Obon. For those who don't know, obon is the festival of the dead, as far as I can tell, where you average Japanese salaryman person decamps back to the family dwelling in the country side, with wife and kids in tow to say hello to the folks and pay homage to the ancestors by visiting graves and, nice touch I think, leaving little offerings of sake for the deceased but obviously thirsty grandparental to sup on. Makes more sense than flowers, if you ask me, and seems to prove that the Japanese have the right idea towards deceased relaties, i.e. they could do with a drink. As we don't have any deceased realtives in Japan, that means the guru and I get to stay in Tokyo and do nothing (and I get to keep the sake for myself, which seems an even better outcome than giving it to blocks of stone containing ashes of people I have never met).

On top of this, not only are we not worried about long gone parts of the family, as mentioned yesterday we are far more interested in new additions. So again a quick congratualtions to Julian and Katharine for producing the next generation of the family. Well done, jolly good etc etc.

However what with it being the obon hols, my brain has gone to sleep, probably on account of the heat and the humidity, so my usual prose and eloquent discourse is replaced with the following:

Football - Japan won the Asian cup in China against China and the Chinese weren't very happy. They booed the anthem and rioted after the final. The China coach, a dutch chap, refused to accept his losers medal as he said the Japan team cheated. Blah blah blah, if he was really pissed off he would have complained about the referee, who made the decisions and approved the goals, rather than the team, who played to the whistle (though Japan's second goal was a handball worthy of Maradonna)

Fallout - Another day another problem for the Japanese nuclear industry. Last year Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) had to close all 17 of reactors after investigators looked up the word 'maintenance' in the TEPCO manual and found the explanation 'sit back, have a cup of coffee, falsify reports and hope no one asks you about it'. Now it would seem a reactor in Kansai (Osaka) has had to let off a bit of steam after overheating or something. Unfortunately 4 or 5 workers got in the way and were boiled on the spot, poor chaps. This is a breaking story, so more bulletins if I ever remember.

Jenkins - oh for heaven's sake is this still going on? Allegedly so, though now he is back on Japanese soil and in hospital it has taken a bit of a back seat. Anyway he is, apparently, going to plea bargain with the US. I don't really know what this means, but I think it is where he says 'I'm really sorry' and the US says 'Oh right, that's ok then' and everyone goes home happy. I might be wrong about that, but I don't care.

Onsens - Even more have been discovered doing, as it were, the dirty. This time in Ikaho, Gunma, where rather than put bath salts in to make the water smell nice, the dodgy owners couldn't even be bothered to do that. They, again allegedly, boiled up bog standard tap water and then added it to the bath and claimed it was the good for you, flatulence inducing real mccoy. Que outrage in Gunma and, no doubt, Japan as a whole as the whole edifice of Japanese bath times crumbles in the face of a scandal that, try though I am sure they do, they can't blame any foreigners for at all.

More Fallout - This week was, of course, the 59th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in fact Nagasaki was today). Having been to both peace parks I can say they are places of tranquility and reflection. Blair, Bush and any other leader with an itchy nuclear trigger finger would do well to visit those cities in August.

It's a boy!

And so I am an uncle! Golf-playing-soon-to-be-a-father-brother has dropped the now entirely inappropriate 'soon' business as Katharine gave birth to a bouncing baby boy at 12:08pm today. Charlie James George (or possibly Charlie George James) dropped into this world with all the correct appendages and, to quote 'enormous knackers'. They, or he, weighed in at 8lbs 5oz in old money or around 4 kgs in new, which seems like an awful lot to me, but apparently it is not.

Anyway, congratulations to mother, father and well-tackled baby and welcome to the newest addition to the family.

Do not forget!

But of course I did, I mean, it's not the sort of thing you remeber on a friday night as you're charging out of the office in search of that first, friday evening, start of the weekend, ice cold asahi superdry beer. Japanese do the friday evening beer very well. Most of the time their beer seems a little lightweight for western (ok, my) tastes. But that first friday beer, the refreshing one that is gone in three gulps and hardly touches the sides, the one that mocks the heat and humidity as it slips down your throat, released from the pint glass that has been in the freezer, meaning the beer is even colder and even crisper. That beer the Japanese do really well. Better than any other beer I've come across. And, in my view, asahi superdry is the king. All hail the king.

Slightly off the point.

Do not forget to bring the webcamera home. These were instructions given to me by a parental a few weeks ago. I used to webcam every couple of weekends but now they have a behemoth that they use to clog up the roads of southern england at weekends to 'get away from it all'. No one is quite sure what it is they are getting away from, their children and their webcams perhaps, who knows. Anyway, do not forget it last weekend as it is a grandparentals birthday on friday so send a card and then we can all webcam chat on sunday when the family comes around etc. No worries. I remembered the card, even remembered to send it, but forgot the webcam.

Now what, you may ask, am I doing bringing a webcam home from work? Well once, in these hallowed pages, I wrote about going to Akihabara to buy a webcam and the awfulness of having to do it (and then install the bleeding thing on the laptop after. I still have flashbacks). I did swear that I would go back and buy my own, but taking the one from the office at the weekend was a good stop gap that never got filled. Until, that is, about 8pm on friday when, halfway home and in no mood to return to the office, I realise that the bag is somewhat light in the webcam department. Oops. I was even talking to the guru at the time, mentioning that I was off to seijoishii to buy smelly cheese and salad dressing - strange how things jog your memory...

So we decided to bite the bullet, return to Akihabara and buy our own webcam so I could forget the whole office nonsense. And with a due sense of foreboding and dread, we set off on Saturday for the heart of nerd-dom in Japan, nay, in the world.

It's actually quite convenient to get there, straight down the old keihin-tohoku line, so in the flash of an eye we were there. But on the way we were witness to a very strange thing. Now I've been in Japan a while now and am used to seeing strange things on the trains. This one had to do with a young lady and her appearance. Japanese young ladies are most fastidious about their appearance, you will rarely see one out without her face plastered in makeup, hair just so etc and trains are, it would seem, a jolly good place to adjust oneself. I once watched in awed fascination a couple of school girls transform themselves from very prim and proper A-grade looking students into the... searching for the best phrase... school girl bimbos on their way to Shinjuku, all in 25 minutes on the subway line.

Anyway this girl on saturday was, thought the guru, on her way to hot date city. She was forever checking her hair, checking her makeup, checking her phone for messages, checking her hair again etc etc etc. For a good 20 minutes with abolutely no let up at all. Not that odd, you may think, but one thing was. Asian people, women especially, have for a long time had a thing about their eyes and eyelids. It became very fashionable, if you could afford it, to have cosmetic surgery to give yourself western style double eyelids rather than the more common single variety you get in Japan and, more commonly, in continental asia. Now this girl on the train looked a little young to be seriously considering cosmetic surgery on her eyelids, so she would do what I guess is the next best thing. She would get her bicycle lock key, which was about a inch long, flat and quite narrow, hold it near her eyelid and then push it in, trying to fold back the skin between her eyeball and its socket. Sound horrible?

Trust me it was ten times worse to watch. And she kept doing it. I don't know if she expected it to stay there, but I have a strong suspicion that someone in Japan has invented eyelid glue, to give you the western look without potentially blinding you with an operation. I don't know, but it made me feel queasy watching her do it, I wanted to look away but it was just horrible fascination that meant I couldn't. Anyway she got off at Ueno, hope she had a good date.

Akihabara was easy this time, as perfect as a shopping trip there could be. Into the first shop, 'sir, vend me a webcam, pronto, chop chop' even got the same make and model, just in case. In and out in 15 minutes - minimum nerd exposure time, and then off to the Maru building near Tokyo station for lunch (yes, just like roppongi hills, shiodome, odaiba, yokohama etc, but good place to get a bite to eat).

Anyway, got home, set up the camera, all worked like a charm. Waited around at 6pm on sunday for the call.

Did it come...?

I'll leave you to guess the answer to that one.

but on a more positive note...

Power to the people!

Very popular in Japan, John Lennon, and he would have been proud of this one.

Amalgamating towns to make cities is big business in Japan. It would appear that if you can get two or three towns together to make an urban area big enough to be called a city, then you can get loads of tax kickbacks from the central govt, new amenities, maybe even lower taxes, who knows. Anyway there must be something in it as lots of places seem to be giving it a go and making themselves into new cities and changing their names and confusing local people. So recently the good burghers of Kawaguchi (where we live), Warabi and Hatogaya decided that it would be a jolly wheeze to all join together and make a big, bright and shiny new city that everyone would lurve, and they'd get loads of cash, pocket the slush fund, live like kings for a few years, patting each other on the backs, then get discovered and thrown in the clink for misappropriation of funds (cynical, moi?). And these chaps decided that the new city should have a new name and in a very Japanese way, decided it would be Bunan, but in a very un-Japanese show of democracy, thought they'd ask the people what they thought.

So apparently the good people of Warabi and Hatogaya said 'Bunan, sounds ok to me' but the people of Kawaguchi said 'oh no, the new city should be called Kawaguchi'. So the committee chaps decided that Kawaguchi was just being selfish and they said 'no, you must be quiet and not be selfish, we will call ourselves Bunan from now on'. And this caused such a furore that the whole plan has been shelved, just because of the people of Kawaguchi!

And too right I say. I live in Kawaguchi, not Bunan. What is Bunan anyway? Some made up artificial piece of nonsense. No, long live Kawaguchi!

Had to listen to the cricket on Test Match Special last night so that was why there was no post, apologies to regular Monday evening viewers. Something odd about the England cricket team at the moment, mainly that they keep winning - six out of the last seven - which seems somewhat unbecomming of an England Cricket XI. Certainly feels like the first time in my lifetime that we've been doing it (though I can, just about, remember the '81 Ashes with Botham et al), but in modern times, not really. So hey, isn't the internet fantastic in that I, in Japan, can listen to TMS in real time whilst watching the score on Cricinfo and not have to worry about the tube strike?

Japan in hot water (again)
 
Except for another scandal. Now it is getting a bit dull, to be honest, writing about all these scandals. They just keep coming, thick and fast, so it is hard to keep up with who has bribed who, to cover up what, to protect someone else's arse etc, but this one, I thought, just had to be reported. It is the tail end of the whole thing, in truth, but I think it is important to tell as it shows the truly dark side of Japan, the canker eating at the soul of the nation, the sort of thing, in short, that the country is either going to have to deal with or end up at the bottom of the pile socially, economically, morally, ethically and any other ~ally you can think of.

You may think I'm building this up too much and that in reality it won't be so bad. You are wrong.

So what's it all about? Well, in the mountains of Nagano there are two things in abundance: ski slopes and onsens (or baths fuelled by hot springs). Now the ski slopes are all well and good in the winter, making pots of cash as they do, but the onsens are the real money earners as they are open all year and everyone, *everyone* in Japan likes a good hot bath, especially if it comes out of a mountain.

Now naturally all this water is gushing through the rock and out of the ground, where it is collected by onsen owners and put into big wooden tubs, whereupon one relaxes and, if one has any sense, has a beer or two to savour the moment. These rocks, of course, impart their minerals and things into the water, making them good for things like flatulence and arthritis and turning the water all sorts of different colours. And the more minerals the better, can cure you (or give you more) of whaterever it is you have.

But for some nefarious, no, downright evil, onsen owners this wasn't enough. Oh no. They had to be better than their neighbours, didn't they. "Doesn't matter if it is all the same water", they said. "Ours is different, another kind of rock in back garden makes my onsen water better". And the people trusted them, so they went and bathed and said "ooh, innit' nice, I can feel my flatulence returning good and proper".

And then the Inspector of Onsens came along and took a water sample.

"Now then sonny jim" said the Inspector "what's all this about a different kind of rock in your back garden?"

"Yeah, that white one there, very good for healthy toenails, or something..."

"Right. and the fact you've been adding bath salts to your onsen water wouldn't have anything to do with that, now would it?"

"Ah...Er...it's a fair cop?"

That's right, dear readers especially those not in Japan. The nation's onsen are not safe from the corruption that is sweeping the land. And the Inspector didn't just find one, he found loads. Dodgy 'onsen' owners were filling their wooden baths with tap water, adding a few salts and then charging punters to take their waters to give them back their flatulence and basically conning them all and coining in the cash.

And for a regular Japanese person, you can forget the sumo, to hell with the summer fireworks and even the cherry blossom can be put aside - just don't fuck with their baths.

So now there is a task force, the Inspector has some Constables who, I guess like the Michelin people (foodies, not tyre makers), visit establishments, sample the delights on offer and then grade the place on the quality of it's fart inducing products. This should, hopefully, put a stop the practice and make bath time safe for eveyone again.

Otherwise it was just another week in Tokyo, with ex-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto accused of pocketing a 100 million yen bribe, sorry, donation, back in 2001 from the Japan Dental Association. Business as usual, really.

Actually, I like the story above for one redeeming factor, because of the way the Japanese media translate things. The bribe apparently was made by Nisshiren (I think that is the English spelling) which has been translated as 'the political wing of the Japan Dental Association', which I just love. The 'political wing' just sounds so cool. I can imagine their annual conference:

Main Hall: Japan Dental Association General Conference
Rose Room: JDA Political Wing
Jade Room: JDA Tactical Operations and Counter Insurgency Unit
Ivory Room: JDA Steering Committee for the Establishment of the World Revolution and Clean Teeth Brigade

Almost worth becomming a dentist for.

Almost.

Out and about
 
As I mentioned yesterday, Monday was a national holiday so the good Guru and I ventured forth to keep those not living in Japan abreast of the state of the nation. And about 5 paces from the flat this proved to be a stupid move as it was hot. Hot, hot, hot! I may have mentioned that last year it was hot at times, but last year was nothing compared to this year. And luckily yesterday was nothing compared to today, when all I had to do was go to work. Today the mercury topped 41 degrees in Shinjuku, next to the station. 41 degrees! This is just silly weather, I mean, it is as hot as Delhi (old and new) and tonight the temperature will drop to a much more 'comfortable' 28 degrees, which is good for a lot of things except sleeping. "Why did I come back to this ridiculous country?" is a thought that is going through my head quite a lot at the moment. However I am allowed to rib the Guru mercilessly as she was heard to utter, back in May or June "oh I have missed a Japanese summer" - she ain't thinking that now...
 
So anyway, as it was such a nice, hot, sunny day we thought what better way to spend it than to go to the beach. Now for you sad plebs not at home in Japan, this would mean going along to some sad bit of the country where the land stops and the sea starts, all very haphazard and, well, natural. Oh dear. Now us ultra chic and 'with it' people here, we don't do nature, organic or original. Oh no, if it is a beach we want, we go to an artificial one right in the middle of Tokyo. Yup, we wandered off to Odaiba.
 
Odaiba is an island built on reclaimed land right in the middle of Tokyo bay. You might think, therefore that it is all quite new, but you'd be wrong. It was originally built, according to the rough guide, by the Shogun in 1853 as a cannon emplacement to protect Tokyo from Admiral Perry's black ships in the same year. This was about as successful as trying to keep MacDonalds out of Moscow and soon Japan was opened up to the west after 300 years of isolation. About 140 years later the governor of Tokyo had an even better wheeze;
 
"Lads, lads, hold that and watch out for the roach, I've just had an epiphany [translating freely as I go]. What we need to do, right, is get all the crap from Tokyo, throw it in the bay and build a big shopping centre on it. What do you think? Nah, nah build on the rubbish, they'll never know. And we'll get this really big bridge right across the bay, we really need one as we don't have a famous bridge and everywhere has a famous bridge..."
 
And he got his way, Mr Shunichi, so he dug a big pit in the middle of Tokyo bay, filled it with rubbish and then built the Rainbow bridge across to it and, in the best magician traditions said 'ta daa!' And what he had, then, was an enormous, and enormously expensive, car park, as there was nothing there at all. Somewhat surprisingly, this annoyed the good tax payers of Tokyo so they kicked him out and scratched theirs heads thinking, 'and what shall we do with this' until someone, clever and more perspicacious than the others, asked 'what do Japanese really like doing?' to which the answer is, of course, shopping.
 
So they turned this great big car park into a smaller car park with lots of shops there. This proved to be immensely popular so they built more, and restaurants, video arcades, cinemas and, in the end, houses and offices, even persuading (or maybe tricking) Fuji TV to move there. And then lastly, in an effort to keep the place at the forefront of cutting edge silliness, someone decided about 2 years ago to make an artifical beach there. This is a grand idea as, if you live in Tokyo, it is a bit of a trek to the beach, either down past Yokohama to Enoshima, or over to Chiba to the Pacific (Sotobo) side. The reason you have to go so far is that if one wants to put a toe anywhere near Tokyo bay as it is horrible water, brown, a bit smelly, definitely oily and, like Odaiba, basically crap.
 
So we went there as, being residents of Saitama, we are even further from the sea than Tokyo people. So we stood on the sand, looked warily at the water, sniffed, endured the sun, and then retreated back to the shopping malls for lunch. Odaiba, nice beach, shame about the water.
 
But the rest of Odaiba is a bit like Roppongi Hills, where the Guru and I went before, and a bit like Yokohama, and a bit like Shiodome, in fact I think that Japanese adults have theme parks here, they are called shopping malls and they are all the same - maybe, though, I'm just being naive and the rest of the world is like this, though I hope not.
 
Driving
 
Julian, golf playing soon to be a father brother, passed his driving test last weekend after going on one of those (I shudder to use the phrase 'crash course') short course things in Wales and he passed, at last, mainly so he drive Katharine to the hospital when the sprog finally makes its entrance. So, first time Julian drives his wife anywhere will be when she is about to give birth - my won't that be a fun journey...
 
Mr Jenkins again
 
So he is still going to be arrested by the American authorities, but he is now in Japan as he has to have some emergency medical treatment. The MPs won't nab him until he is all better, which who knows, may take 20 or 30 years? But here's a weird thing. When he got off the plane in the Sweden of South East Asia, he was a spry and energetic 65 yr old with a mischevious twinkle in his eye. By the end of the week he was bent over double, using a cane and leaning on anybody close. Just coincidence after the Japanese govt. found a loophole in the deserters agreement with the US which says if they're in hospital they're safe, for the time being...?

holidays
 
Today was a national holiday, marine day I believe, which means the Guru and I were out and about. So no post today, a long squawk as Monty Python would have it, but I promise that it will be done tomorrow.
 
Having said that, blogger seems to have altered things a bit, so i can write in different colours without an awful lot of arsing about. Hmm, and

• have bullet points

should I feel the urge. Not to mention upload pictures by the look of it, may have to buy that digital camera now...

saw that chicken again this morning

This week in Japan

So two stories have really dominated the news and views of Japan this week, at least as far as I'm concerned. The first follows on from something I wrote about before, that of...

Krazy Kim's People Mart - reprise

So as we all know from reading the august reportage of this great tome, Japan has been having a spot of bother with North Korea over the nicking of Japanese nationals for nefarious purposes in the 1970s and 80s. No one belived the Japanese until Krazy Kim said it was all true and let some of them go, but not the kids etc.

Anyway, there is another part of this story that you in Japan may not have followed, the strange case of Robert Charles Jenkins. Now he was an American GI who fought in the Korean war back in the 1950s on the side of the US and the South. So he finishes the war without being shot, a pretty good feat if you ask me, so the powers that were decided it would be a jolly wheeze to ship him off to Vietnam to fight another bunch of God fearing Asian types who obviously hadn't learnt their lesson at the hands of the wishy washy frog eating French. Now as you can quite imagine, trooper Jenkins (sorry, don't know his rank) thought this to be a less than enticing prospect and so, no doubt in a fit of pique, deserted from the US Army and went over to the North.

Now you may think this was not a good career move, but you would be most wrong. He was exactly what the north Korean propagandists were looking for and so he spent the next 30 years making films like 'The Devilish American Baby Eating Monsters from Des Moines", or something like that, and having a pretty life, by all accounts. But in that time he met Hitomi Soga...

Soga-san was one of the Japanese abductees. They met, they talked and in the cliched and over used American-GI-deserts-to-the-most-closed-tyrannical-state-in-the-world-meets-girl-who- has-been-abducted-from-nearby-US-influenced-democracy style, they fall in love, marry and produce offspring who are brought up to believe they are one big happy North Korean family in Kim's world.

Then Hitomi Soga is given the chance to return home to Japan, and she takes it.

And as soon as she gets here she starts complaining loudly to anyone that will listen (and that is everyone in Japan) that it's a terrible thing that she's had to leave her husband and kids in North Korea and that everyone, especially Koizumi should be trying to get them back and if that includes going to war to get them, so be it. No one (or no one that I have read about) seemed to say 'why did you leave them there, you selfish person?' or 'stop moaning and go back' or anything remotely negative (and I do realise the gravity of it all and that it is a highly emotive issue, but one dissenting voice would be nice).

But the crux of this little problem in thus. She can get the kids, no real problem, but as soon as Jenkins sets foot on Japanese soil he will be arrested and extradited back to the US to face a court martial for desertion. Now this guy is about 60, no real harm to anyone so the US can do themselves a big PR favour by saying "ok, we waive the charges, enjoy yourselves" etc. But do they?

Of course not, not the present administration in this day and age. So again poor old Koizumi is up against the wall. Everyone is shouting at him to do something about it all, but he can't let Soga return to Korea (that would lose face), he can't let Jenkins come here (the Americans would shoot Jenkins, he'd lose face) and he can't do nothing as everyone is getting really het up about it all (and he'd eventually lose face)...

So thank goodness for Indonesia. Out of the blue they say "you guys can meet here - for we are the groovy Indonesians, a bit like the Swedes of South East Asia without the blond hair, so, like, chill out man, yeah (oh, and, like, don't worry about East Timor, they're kind of like the Danes, yeah, so what do you expect?)". Or something like that.

So they do, last Friday, in a tearful reunion. And so Koizumi is saying 'curses, missed a PR op. there', and the US are saying 'curses, missed a chance to execute someone there', and the Japanese people are saying 'curses, that should have been here', and the North Koreans are saying 'curses, hotel security won't let us back onto their floor', and Krazy Kim is saying 'curses, they've forgotten about me already'. And the Swedes, sorry, Indonesians are saying 'groovy guys'. But at least the Jenkins-Soga family is happy, though I suspect the kids are a little overawed by it all as it is the first time they have been out of Krazy Kim's Krazy Kingdom so they don't have to eat grass and boiled shoe leather anymore.

But what happens next is the big thing. The US has extradition treaties with quite a few nations, which limits where Jenkins can go (though not the cool Indonesians, of course, so staying there is an option). But of course Soga wants to come back here with all her family intact, but unless the US relents, this will be impossible (of course we could be preparing for a George Bush Jnr electioneering PR coup by pardoning the nefarious Jenkins, you never know). What they really want to settle down away from the glare of publicity, which would be nice for them, though seeing as Soga used the media so shamelessly to get what she wanted, a bit of payback is probably due.

Anyway, further bulletins as events warrant. Which leads us onto...

Electioneering

Sunday was the Upper House elections here in Japan, and, luckily, Japanese elections are just as boring as English ones. Now Koizumi, as Prime Minister, is head of the Lower House. The Upper House is full of other people who mill about and shout a lot when they feel the need to. I assume they are a bit like the House of Lords, except they are elected and are not Lords (strange, we have a Royal family in Japan, with Emperors, Princes and Princesses, but none of the cool titles like Earl and Baron, or even Samurai - seems such a waste).

Now from what I remember about electioneering in the UK, prospective people who want your vote drop leaflets through your letterbox and then come and annoy you on your doorstep (not that any MP came to my door in Brixton). But in Japan someone once decided that this was for too much of an invasion of privacy (or too much like hard work more like, what with all the apartment blocks), so they decided that noise pollution was a far better ploy and not nearly as invasive of your privacy. Yeah right.

So we got, for two weeks, vans with exceptionally loud speakers on the top cruising around spouting their 'message' to every block. And the message was always the same. "Tanaka! Yes, Tanaka! That's his name! I said Tanaka! Vote for Tanaka! Tanaka! How many times do I have to tell you? TANAKA! YES, TANAKA!" etc etc etc. A curious fact of Japanese life is that women should have high squeaky voices, it makes them more sexy to Japanese men (Japanese men, conversely, no matter how wimpy, should have a deep, gruff baritone (you may think I am sweeping in my generalisations here, but if you ever worked with a Japanese women, you will know this to be true - talking to you they will use a perfectly normal voice, as soon as the phone goes they will answer in pitch usually reserved for etching glass). But these high voices, when put through a sophisticated PA on top of a moving van, can penetrate the thickest of concrete and hit that bit of your inner ear that registers pain. The walls of Jericho were not flattened by horns, it was one of these vans that got lost...

And if you ever get to see one of these vans at street level it is even worse. Not only are you physically assaulted by the noise but then inside the van are the electee and all his little wizards, smiling serenly as it they are doing you a favour by cleaning out you ears. So I gestue to them rudely, not that it makes any difference. But I'd like to meet the person who thought these vans were less of an invasion of privacy than knocking on doors.

The other thing that the electees do is gather around the local train station, or other open area, stand on top of their van and then shout at the top of their voices about the terrible state of Japan/the world/their fillings/litter/insert own rant here. They don't seem to do much of the 'if I were elected I'd...' more the negative 'what has the [incumbent] ever done for us...?'. And they get quite agitated about it all, shouting, frothing at the mouth and gesturing a lot, suggesting that if anyone got in their way at that moment they might not be responsible for their actions.

And today it is all over. Thankfully. Koizumi and the LDP didn't get the 51 straight seats that he wanted in the upper house, but with his alliance partner, New Komeito, they seem to have done OK. Minshuto, the main opposition party did much better than expected and took a decent chunk out of the LDP - people seem to have been a little unhappy with Koizumi over North Korea (can't think why), sending the GSDF to Iraq (can't think why either) and the pension scandals (nope, got me there) - in fact all things that have been extensively discussed on this site, how very topical...

After the laziness comes...

A proper post this week. Apologies for last week, but lethargy and apathy set in in a big way. I blame the weather, which has turned hot and humid, as is its won't in July. Also to blame was England's triumphal return to sporting mediocrity, with the football, rugby and cricket teams all losing, Robert Millar being kicked off the tour de france for drugs offences and the absolute drubbing of the England 1st XV Croquet (gateball) team by the Kawaguchi Irregulars (amateur) at the Saitama Super Arena on Thursday morning (possibly). Anyway, you get the picture. Luckily there were no loud mouthed antipodeans to rub in the salt, or octagenarian Japanese for that matter, so I survived and have come through the stronger for it.

However for sporting success I did turn to...

Japanese Rugby

Rugby in Japan has a long and glorious history. It has always been popular with universities and companies and has a lively following today, indeed Waseda university team is one of the most popular sports teams in the country, apparently. OK, so Japan has the record world cup thumping on its books, 145-17 against NZ a few years back, but I say well done for putting 17 points on them, its more than England managed in two games last month!

Anyway, up until this year, as rugby was only played by universities and company teams, it meant that there wasn't really much of a season to talk of, all very bitty, and when the companies played the unis, they thumped pretty spectacularly. (A little aside - strange thing about sports in Japan, all teams, in every sport, are basically formed, owned and run by companies, so the top baseball side, the Giants, is owned by the Yomiuri newspaper group, one of the Tokyo football teams (I think Verdy) is still nicknamed the 'Gasmen' as their are owned by Japan Gas, whilst the top rugby teams are Kobe Steel(ers), Yamaha and Suntory. Its all down, I think, to the idea that as an adult male in Japan you have to work for a company, even if you are a sportsman (or women). The idea of a non-company aligned team seems an anathema. I suppose it makes sponsorship easier to come by, but all seems a little soulless to me, but then again, who am I to judge)

So no real competition on the domestic front and, to be honest, not much competition from the rest of Asia, whom Japan regularly walloped, and so when those pluckly little banzai warriors
came up against the Europeans, Aussies and Kiwis, they had had little preparation and were walloped.

Not good.

So cunningly, this season, they invented the Top League, organised a season, levelled the playing field (as it were) and generally sorted their house out. So we had a jolly good season of rugby, I even watched a few matches on TV and they were all good fun, hell for leather, death or glory type affairs, a little lacking technically, perhaps, but more than made up for in passion and commitment. And one of the important things it did was to stop the one-sided 100-0 games and get a bit of tension and competitiveness in there, making the players improve their decision making under pressure and learning how to fight teams of equal strength.

This all has the desired affect as, in May, we had the somewhat optimistically named Super Powers Cup. Not, as you might have thought, with England, Oz or NZ, but with Canada, Russia and the US. But the important thing was that Japan won by beating Canada in the final, which I did watch, by about 30-20 with some pretty good play, especially up front.

"Now where is all this wittering going?" I can almost hear you muse.

Well, yesterday Italy were in town for a one off test match against Japan and so Steve and I, intrepid as we are, went down to the Prince Chichibu Memorial Ground in Gaienmae, Tokyo, to watch proceedings and assess Japan's progress (and get out of doing any study).

And what a fine afternoon we had. First up was the fact that we bought tickets in advance and so got a pair of tickets for only 2000 yen, or about 5 quid each - for a deal like that who isn't going to watch international rugby live? And it was a lovely hot and sunny day. Chichibu stadium will never be counted amongst the great world rugby stadia, but it is cosy and compact and was pretty much full for the game, so must have drawn in 20-30,000 punters, 99% of whom were shouting for the Japanese (not surprising, I guess...).

And we were treated to 80 minutes of attacking and skillful rugby, but most of it, as you've probably guessed, from the Italians. The Japanese were never really out of it, but then, they were never really in it either. It was summed up by a passage of play about 5 minutes or so into the second half. The score was 9-18 to Italy and Japan was camped on Italy's 22, hammering away at the defensive line when they broke through - I can't quite remeber if it was a deft pass or a re-gathered kick but Ohata was away and through. So he cruised up to the try line, no one around and with the rest of the Japanese players starting to celebrate, started his dive to score the try under the posts and...

...yup...

dropped the ball. I mean really. At this level. Of all the things to do. Had he not, and the kick gone over, it would have been 16-18 and the game may well have followed a different course. But no, the silly bugger dropped it.

The final score was 19-32, not a complete drubbing by any standards, but one always felt that Italy were never really that stretched. They were happy, of course, and especially their loose head prop, Castrogiovanni, who scored an unlikely hat-trick and who will, if that sort of thing continues, be drummed out of the front row club and forced to become a back. So Japanese rugby is still trying to get there. It will, I think, mainly because it will continue to be popular and more money will flow into it and the players will become properly professional and therefore better, but I think it's going to take a bit more time.

All that was left was for Steve to kick over a beer and ruin the young lady in front's Louis Vuitton handbag - more fool her for taking it to a rugby match, I reckon.

Plants

The thyme and sage are having a most trying time. Light patches on the leaves that then develop little black spots, go pale and die, taking the plant with it. I looked on the net but couldn't find anything, answers anyone?

Hemingway had it right

'I am drunk,' Pablo said with dignity. 'To drink is nothing. It is to be drunk that is important. Estoy muy borracho.'

oh for heaven's sake...

it's a pretty pass when i have to rely on the cricket team for some success in england's international sporting arena

(and i hope, pray, that we beat the west indies in today's one dayer)

So apologies for the delay, but when there's magic on tv, well, you've got to watch really haven't you. No? OK, I have to watch, which seems eminently fair to me.

Global Warming

Time was, so I'm reliably informed, when typhoons were an Autumn phenomenom. Certainly when I came to Japan first they seemed to congregate in September and October as a sort of 'Summer-heat-is-over' signal that meant body odour was no longer going to be such a problem for every westerner in Japan.

But it is a measure of how buggered up the weather patterns have become by global warming as last weekend we had typhoon number 6 pass by, and my what a biggy it was too! Usually typhoons seem to hug the coastline, moving up from Taiwan and Okinawa and, once they get to the bottom of Kyushu, either head left towards Korea or veer right along the coast of Honshu, occasionally wandering up past Tokyo but more often that not moving back out to sea. Maybe there is a meterological reason for this, maybe not, but this bugger moved slightly to the right of Kyushu and then just kept going, passing right over Shikoku and Honshu and, in the process, doing its worst.

If you've never been in a typhoon, they are pretty wicked things (or a hurricane, for that matter. By the by, know the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon? Guesses/answers in the comments section please). They start with a stiffening of the breeze about a day before they are going to hit. This can be quite pleasant as they sometimes push cooler air in front, so you get a nice cool breeze, hence everyone quite likes them in Autumn. Then the wind starts to really pick up, and clouds start to form and the air gets wetter. First a few spots of rain, then a steady fall, but not too heavy. Then, an hour or two before it hits, things begin to pick up. The rain gets heavier and the wind really starts to howl over the balcony and through the telegraph wires. When it hits proper it really is time to batten down the hatches. The rain is coming down at 30-40 cms per hour and wind is whistling past at 160kms, heady stuff and hot and sticky too boot. No walking in that, and no surfing, though some always try and a chap died on Sunday off Shikoku trying that very thing (surfing, not walking). All the trains stop running, all the streets are empty, ghost town stuff and the wind howls.

And then it stops.

Absolutely and completely.

Calm in the eye of the storm? You betcha, and it is that which is the strangest thing. No wind, no rain, just stillness and silence after all that noise and fury. And you know it is only for a short time and so its the waiting for the restart that gets you. Because it all starts again with no warning at all, suddenly the wind is howling again and the rain driving horizontally into the buildings and you have to sit it out for another hour or two to wait for things to die down.

When this happens in the Autumn the air after is often beautifully cool, clear and soft, like it has been freshly washed and laundered, which it kind of has, and so the world looks a little brighter and cleaner, everything seems a little sharper and in focus. But with number 6 being at the start of summer it brought with it loads of moist warm air from the south pacific, meaning that on Tuesday the temperatures in Tokyo hit 33 degrees and 37 in Saitama - these are the temperatures we usually see in the dog days of August and are far from pleasant. Last year, in a cooler than usual summer the temp in Tokyo never got above 32, so to hit 33 in June doesn't bode well for a pleasant summer (though aircon manufacturers and brewers have big smiles right now).

As with anything to do with nature in Japan, this is of course dangerous (think earthquakes, volcanoes and mud slides - dangerous country...). 4 people, I think, died because of this typhoon, and all of our new teachers who arrived on Monday were delayed as flights were held, shinkansens cancelled and roads made impassable, all from a bit of rain. Powerful stuff, I guess.

Luckily I got all the plants inside and so all were protected from the ravages of nature, just in case you were worried. Oh, and I'm not sure I've mentioned it but we have some new additions, now we have mint, growing as if its life depended on it, little chilli plants which seem hale and hearty (though no chillis yet) and shiso, or Japanese basil, which I am rapidly discovering doesn't like too much water - god knows how it survives June in this country...

Magic

Apologies, should be blogging but there is one of those 'magician does magic' shows on tv and, as a complete sucker for this kind of thing, I am absolutely hooked. Promise to write tomorrow.

Well thankfully a lot more happened this week, which night make this blog intetesting for a change (don't believe the hype). First up was...

Gareth and Kumiko's Wedding

Gareth is a chum from work, jazz afficionado, wine lover and general all round good sort. On Saturday he and the lovely Kumiko were married. I don't know Kumiko so well, she did use to work with us, in the bit of the company that fleeces students by convincing them that studying in the UK for an inordinate amount of wad is going seriously improve their English ability. Seriously lighten their wallets, more like, but plenty sign up so either the dept is very persuasive, of there are a lot of Japanese students out there who want to splash their cash, have a nice holiday and assuage their guilt by pretending to study...

Seem to have wandered off the point somewhat, apologies.

Anyway now Kumiko has an infinitely more pleasurable job in the wine import business, which means she gets to go on lots of tastings and, in the best business perk I can think of, filch lots of half empty bottles of very passable plonk. Normally her and Gareth knock these back of an evening, but occasionally some of us others do as well, and I have spent a very pleasant evening or two with them in a small wine bar with take-in that the owner doesn't mind as she a good supplier. It also means that they know how to pick a good place for a wedding reception as they start at the wine list and go from there.

But that's getting too far ahead, first up was the ceremony. This was held at Kando Myojin Shrine in the very heart of Tokyo (going to the link, by the way, gives you a lovely picture of the shrine and some excellently bad English written by a Japanese person, enjoy).

Now I, who has been here for quite some time in total, had never been to the actual cremony part of a Japanese wedding before Saturday, so this was an interesting experience. Part one involved G&K sitting in, as it were, state. A reception room was set aside, they sat at the end, all dolled up in Japanese finery, with the families down each side. Mere mortals and friends then tentatively creep in, say "ooh, don't you look nice" and then ushered outside again, quick as possible. Sort of like paying one's respects, I suppose.

At this point I should mention that G had all his family over from the UK, that included parents, brothers, sisters and hangers on, all of whom looked utterly bemused from start to finish. But kept up with everything and certainly seemed to enjoy the day, especially after the wine started flowing.

Anyway, then it was onto the parade. Here we walked from the first room to the shrine proper. This was cool as G&K and the rest of us followed and kind of marching band, consisting of 6 monks playing flutes, shakuhachi (another kind of flute (and interestingly, the crude Japanese word for a blow job, no really)), and other instruments to make for a very traditional atmosphere. Also in the line up was a tsukisoi-nin (or perhaps a kaizoe-nin, the Guru isn't quite sure). This person's very important job is to make sure the K's kimono looked picture perfect - quick note about kimono, usually they are a bugger to wear, but bridal ones are very heavy, have 12 layers, a huge head dress/hat affair, are very restricting and are, basically, a real bugger to wear. So the tsukisoi-nin is there to help, though how much help you are when, with 50 metres to go you stop the procession to adjust the kimono, then the bride starts again and, with 48 metres to go the procession is stopped and kimono adjusted again and then the proces.... It's a moot point, anyway. Anyway the pair did look smashing and the tsukisoi-nin did prove amusing for the gaijin there.

Once in the shrine we had the ceremony, which was very traditional and Japanese. We had some chanting, where the chief priest chap tried his best to do each, admittedly long, stanza in one breath but really struggled on some of them. We had shaking of tree branches to drive out evil spirits. We had the shaking of rattles, to scare away any rattle snakes that had escaped from the zoo, presumably. And G&K got sake. In a Japanese wedding there is no exchange of rings, rather the betrothed swap alcoholic beverages early in the morning, which seems a much simpler, less expensive and, I think, apt, way to celebrate marriage. Start as you mean to go on, kind of thing.

One thing that did make me smile was the collection box. At Shinto shrines the average punter walks up to the barrier, throws some coins into the collection box, has a pray and then moves on (which is perhaps why it is still so popular, none of that droning on for hours on a Sunday morning nonsense). Whilst the ceremony was going on, this could still happen as the punters stand outside as normal and lob in their coins. What made me smile was that the sound of the coins falling sounded exactly like an electricity meter. So when the coin dropping coincided with the end of a chant, it was remarkably like paying to get the old chap started again. This put a smile on my face, though no-one noticed as most of the assembled were, by this stage, dabbing at tears.

Then it was outside for the group photo. At this time we had the attention of not only the tsukisoi-nin, but also the photographer and the photographer's mate. This meant an awful lot of fucking about to get everything 'just' so. It came to something when one of them moved Gareth's brother, who is in a wheelchair, from one point to exactly the same point but, as he was in the chair, this included no small amount of too-ing and, wait for it....fro-ing into the bargain as well.

After all that you may think I am citical of the whole shebang. Not so. It was an excellent thing to be asked and, as it was my first, it was an interesting experience. The ceremony itself was nice and quick, about 30 minutes, long enough to enjoy the differences but not too long to get bored. So, a very pleasant time was had by all.

Then we went off to get drunk.

This was much more in the 'western' style. G&K changed out of their kimono clobber, much to their relief I'm sure, and we all decamped to a Californian restaurant not 15 minutes away. I got to sit next to Mark, Gareth's older brother who seemed pretty remarkable to me as he is disabled but has his own house, lives alone and works in IT for Prudenial and was a nice bloke too boot.

So we all chatted, we drank some extremely agreeable Californian red wine (Californian, never really tried it as has always suspected it, don't know why as usually new world wines are where I go. Anyway, I will certainly be going back to California when I get the chance) and we ate some rather pleasant tucker - though not G&K, who were too busy talking to everyone and so weren't able to eat, so ended up eating in the kitchen after everyone else had gone to the nijikai (second party) venue.

And we got speeches, we got gifts (in Japan you give money to the newlyweds and they give you a present in return - strange custom that)and then we got to go to the nijikai. And from here the rest of the evening gets hazy. There is lots of moving, you see, in a Japanese wedding. Ceremony, then reception, then second party, then third party, then fourth party, then gutter, all in different places with a gradually diminishing list of attendees. I made it to the end of the third party before I ungracefully bowed out - at least it wasn't disgracefully... well, I haven't heard anything yet, but then I took a day off today... I did manage to persuade the bar in question to let me keep the 3/4's of a bottle of red that I had just started, and so I wended my way home, luckily with enough presence of mind not to swig from the bottle as I stumbled around on the wrong trains. And I manged to get home with dignity intact and with all my valuables in place. Yes, I was surprised as well.

So, congrats to Gareth and Kumiko, thanks for a great party wedding day combo. Good luck and all that.

What else...?

Well, this weekend was also Le Mans...

...which I was able to listen to at length via the internet and even on TV. Now I don't want to blow the Arakawa trumpet too loudly, but after last year's diatribe on these very pages about the shocking quality of Le Mans coverage on TV, this year we got really good coverage. OK, it was on ESPNi, which I luckily have and heve never watched, but who's to complain? We got about 6 hours of live feed, of which I got to see about 3 hours of, and jolly exciting it was too. About 1 hour to go, that's 15 laps, with Johnny Herbert about 45 seconds down in second but lapping 3 seconds a lap quicker that the first placed car. Can he do it? No, in the end, but boy did he try. Cracking stuff. Even got to talk to various mebers of the b-team, who were there this year - they did mange to do their usual trick of waking me up at 6am, mainly as I was dead to the world with the wedding party hangover. And there was...

Rugby

Best not talk about that. And the...

Football

can be put into the same bracket.

But, strange thing. I came home from the wedding party, much the worse for wear but was able to program the video to record the rugby on sky, a difficult process that involves moving wires, which was being repeated at 5am as I had missed it earlier. But when I was sober I set the video to record the football, being shown live at 4am, and completely mucked it up and recorded the wrong channel. This then proves that video timing recorder things are only successfully operable by young children and adults who have gained mental acuity on a par with young children through the judicious application of alcohol. They should put that in the manual.

This week in Japan...

Has been quite quiet, to be honest with you all. The pension scandal has rumbled on. As you may remember I wrote sometime ago about how lots of dodgy old politicians had been caught not paying their pension premiums whilst at the same time telling everyone else that they should. Well, now some resolution has been passed about it. But here's the thing, I have been reading the paper trying to find out what this resolution says, mainly so I could write about it here, but, in all the column inches, I couldn't actually get to the bottom of what it was all about. Some of the dodgy old politicians didn't like it, I think from Minshuto the main opposition party, so they performed an 'ox walk' which is where they walk very slowly up to the voting place in an attempt to delay, and then stop, I guess, the vote.

It didn't work, of course. But it did mean that a lot of old politicians, who should know better, got to act in a very silly manner, ham it up in front of the camera and generally pretend to be 4 yr olds. And in this sense, I suppose, they are no different from any other politicians around the world.

But anyway I still don't know what the bill passed was all about, which is probably bad news for me as I have a sneaking suspicion it was something important...

Tsuyo

Japanese are very proud of their seasons. There are four of them, you see. Now everyone not Japanese who is reading his will be very surprised at this because much unbeknownst to you, you don't have four seasons in your country, only Japan has four seasons and the Japanese are very proud of it. (They seem to forget that Vivaldi, the distinctly non Japanese Italian composer wrote a piece of music called the Four Season, but that is by the by of course). Anyway, the Japanese four seasons are called spring, summer, autumn and winter. It doesn't matter what seasons in your country are called and it doesn't matter how many of them there are. Japan is unique in that it has these four seasons, each of which has its own distinct weather patterns.

They're a weird lot, these Japanese.

Anyway, you can easily confuse them by asking what season it is now. They will say 'tsuyo', which translates into English as 'rainy season' and lasts from mid-June to early July. It's like trying to teach Baldrick to count:
'So that's spring, tsuyo, summer, autumn and winters - 1,2,3,4,5'
'Oh no, Japan has 4 seasons'
'What'
'And that one'
'And if I add tsuyo to these 4, what does that make?
'A very crowded calender, my lord'