The Abe issue
The Daily Yomiuri has, once a month, a readers’ write-in thing where they propose a theme and your average punter can write in and let loose their thoughts. Recently they have had such things as ‘what more can Japan do to encourage eco-friendliness in others so we don’t have to?’; ‘Just how many nukes should we drop on Krazy Kim’s People Mart?’; and a personal favourite ‘What avenues of whining should Japan now explore in an attempt to get a permanent seat on the UNSC?’. This month’s question is a little different, however. If memory served it is something like ‘Why has new-ish PM Shinzo Abe’s popularity gone down the tubes?’
Now I have thought long and hard about this over the past few minutes and I must admit to being at something of a loss. This might strike you as strange, but it is so. The reason I am at a loss might, however, also be the reason his popularity has gone down the tubes, as I can’t think of anything that Shizo has done since he became PM, so much so that I still can’t think of a decent, or indeed any, nickname for him, which I find just a little bit depressing.
So, he came to power after the Kool Kid Koizumi collected his P45 in September last year and, as far as I can remember, really hasn’t done anything. It almost seems as if Japan has gone to sleep with him at the helm. Reading through the archives of this blog, as I am wont to do on occasion when bored, I have come across posts about Krazy Kim, about dodgy architects, scandals a-plenty, succession issues, Yasukuni, takeovers and makeovers and all sorts of other things that happened with, to and by the Kid (read back, you’ll find them all in there (somewhere)), but since the autumn I really can’t think of too much that has gone on. OK, there was the cabinet minister that said women were essentially ‘birthing machines’ and that they were failing in their duty – he threatened to resign but Abe wouldn’t let him. That was interesting for about a day, but that’s about it.
It’s almost as if John Major has decided that being the most dull and boring politico in Britain wasn’t enough so he thought he’d branch out and give another legislature a go. But maybe, and here possibly is the point of all this, the Kool Kid has actually done what all politicians want to do but generally fail in the attempt: he changed the game (here in Japan), changed the political landscape. Recast the mindset of ‘the people’ (whoever we/they are). Redefined what it is to be a politico in Japan. Reinvented. Shifted. No longer are ‘the people’ going to be happy with a faceless, humourless, unmemorable grey suit. Now, because of the Kid, perhaps people want politicos who try and do stuff, who have opinions, who try to change the way things work (or don’t work), who say things like ‘oops, might have bungled that one a tad’ and who have, (shudder) some passion for the job.
The thing with the Kid was that he polarized opinion, he really was, it seems to me, either loved or hated. Now that might seem strange if you are reading this in the UK or US (or elsewhere, but I don’t know much about the politics of that country) as political parties, and political issues, often have the effect of polarizing opinion, but here in Japan consensus has often been the order of the day. This is perhaps because Japan has essentially had one political party in power since 1945 (the good ‘ole Liberal Democratic party, who are neither liberal nor democratic, natch) and also because harmony is/was paramount – in this sense harmony means collusion between big business and big politics to ensure people are told what to do and then do it, sort of like Stalin or Hitler’s command economy but with smiles, nicer cars and no gulags. But the Kid, with acts like going postal (privatizing the postal savings system), being principled (kicking out the dissenters in the party) and having the balls to fight (his back me or sack me the country at the last election, and they backed him), maybe something changed in Japanese politics which has, perhaps quite unexpectedly, changed something in the electorate.
So when Silent Shinzo (how about that one?) comes along, expecting everyone to slip back into their late-90s political acquiescence, he may be feeling just a tad miffed that people are asking him questions and expecting (as if?!) answers and action. I think there may be a lot of head scratching going on the Strip OL Shabu-shabu joints of Shinjuku as the old guard, the ones who breathed a sigh of relief when the Kid was as good as his word and retired in September, try and figure out how they can run a damned country with a lame duck PM and an increasingly irritating tendency from ‘the people’ to ask questions they shouldn’t and expect something approaching a reasonable, or at least reasonably believable but not necessarily true, answer.
Or I might be wrong, maybe they just don’t like his ugly mug, but I’d like to think that there’s a bit more to it than that.
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
Monday, 5 February 2007
Stuff
So a couple of things going on this week, well, in the last few weeks or so.
Well done
First up a welcome week for English sporting success, with both the cricket team beating a not-really-trying-Australia team and then the rugby boys beating a not-very-good-Scotland team. Well done there to both, but I suspect it will be harder against teams who are actually trying to play them (indeed I fear the Aussies want us to reach the final of the CB series so they can humiliate us all over again – but that’s perhaps just my jaded and cynical view of the whole thing). But hey, at least we’ve remembered how to play the oval ball game at last, and long may it continue (might even get out of our RWC pool now...)
Beans means ?
Then yesterday, Sunday 4th, was Setsubun-no-hi, a rough and ready translation of which is ‘Day of throwing beans at Ogres’. Now this may sound like great fun, and in a way it is, in a weird Japanese festival kind of way. Essentially on this day, which in the weird old Japanese calendar is the first day of the New Year and of spring as well (could be the Chinese new year?), it was a whole new start kind of thing. So what you had to do was get some beans (special anti-ogre beans one suspects) and then proceed to attack any ogres that might be living in your house (as far as I can see). Now in our flat we, unfortunately, did not have any ogres, or any lesser fairy-tale creatures either, more’s the pity, so we had to make do with dad in an unconvincing ogre mask.
This ‘ogre’ then attacked the Guru and youngster before being repelled with the aforementioned anti-ogre beans. These were chucked at the ‘ogre’ whilst chasing the beasty around the house and then out of the front door. The youngster was, however, all a bit nonplussed by these anti-ogre antics so was not particularly good with the bean throwing (and come to think of it had I known that beans held such effective ogre repelling qualities it would have made role playing with MERP and D&D a whole lot easier in my spotty youth). However the ‘ogre’ was dismissed from the house and then, surprisingly, we had to spend the following 20 minutes picking up little bits of crushed beans from all over the place.
The youngster was happier, however, when he got up after a nap to find a train in the living room. He has a bit of a thing about trains, as does any 1 and 3/4 year old, as far as I am aware, and has books about them, models of them and probably dreams about them as well. Anyway a few weeks ago, or maybe a month, we bought a new oven/microwave thing that came in a big box. Since it was delivered the box has remained in the living room as the youngster’s Best Toy Ever ™ and the parent’s Most Annoying Big Box in the Living Room ™. Anyway for weeks I have been looking at said box and thinking, and saying, I must make a train out of that box, so yesterday I finally pulled my finger out and did the business. I must admit that it gave me a huge dose of fatherly feeling to actually make something that he plays with. My art skills, being a ‘bit shite actually’ are in fact perfect for impressing not-quite-two year olds and so he was most happy with his new train. It was modelled badly on a Kodama shinkansen, for those of you sad enough to want to know.
Our living room yesterday afternoon
The food of hot, p3rvy $ex...
Ok, you hear about chocolate being the food of love, or maybe strawberries & cream, asparagus or even oysters and powered rhino horn. But they, I’m afraid, are but a chaste peck on the cheek compared to Shabu-shabu, the padded black leather fetish dungeon of the culinary world.
Now for those of you not in Japan you may wonder what I am on about, but that’s surely been the case for the last four years, so no change there. Shabu-shabu is a type of dish that Japanese do very well, D-I-Y food. Japanese, it seems to me, love food that you go to a restaurant for but then proceed to actually cook yourself, for example okonomiyaki, kushiage and yakiniku to name but three. This, it seems, negates the real need to have a restaurant, but I guess Japanese hate washing up, hence their desire to go out. Shabu-shabu works like this – get a bit round pot of boiling water, take some wafer thin slices or raw beef, dunk beef in water for few moments (holding with chopsticks all the while), dunk now cooked beef in assortment of condiments (pepper, raw egg, candle wax), then eat. The shabu-shabu-ness of it comes from the motion of swishing the beef in the water.
OK, so far so not that odd or depraved. But it was in the 1990s that Shabu-shabu became, in Japan, a byword for smut with the notoriety of the No Pants Shabu-shabu restaurants in Shinjuku. The premise was simple. Same basic restaurant but with two key differences; one, mirrored floors and; two, waitresses not in kimono but in very short skirts and nothing to keep out the drafts. These became the talking point as they did not cater, as you might suspect, for the lower end of society, but it seemed predominantly for the ministry of finance and other government mandarins (actually you might have suspected that more...). A few dodgy deals, one or two intrepid reporters and the blag was blown.
But now we have a new phenomenon – the OL Strip Shabu-shabu. An OL, should you be wondering, is an Office Lady. They wear kind of crap corporate uniforms and until recently we employed to make tea and be groped on trains. But Women’s Lib finally arrived and so the mean old government made it illegal for the salaryman to manhandle these young ladies on the subway, thereby increasing the sexual frustration of every salaryman over the age of 40.
So OL Strip Shabu-shabu has now arrived. As you can see from this news article the basic idea is again simple – as you shabu you thin slices of beef you can ask you waitress to strip off. Great, your own personal floor show whilst you eat you dinner. You can, it seems, even ask the waitress to then dress up in another costume from, one assumes, the ‘side order’ menu.
But what makes me really wonder is, why Shabu-shabu? What is it about thin slices of beef that make men want to ‘get down on it’? I mean there’s no No Pants Okonomiyaki, no Strip Yakitori, so why Shabu-shabu? This, I suspect, is one of the unfathomable idiosyncrasies of Japan that I keep reading about in travel books...
So a couple of things going on this week, well, in the last few weeks or so.
Well done
First up a welcome week for English sporting success, with both the cricket team beating a not-really-trying-Australia team and then the rugby boys beating a not-very-good-Scotland team. Well done there to both, but I suspect it will be harder against teams who are actually trying to play them (indeed I fear the Aussies want us to reach the final of the CB series so they can humiliate us all over again – but that’s perhaps just my jaded and cynical view of the whole thing). But hey, at least we’ve remembered how to play the oval ball game at last, and long may it continue (might even get out of our RWC pool now...)
Beans means ?
Then yesterday, Sunday 4th, was Setsubun-no-hi, a rough and ready translation of which is ‘Day of throwing beans at Ogres’. Now this may sound like great fun, and in a way it is, in a weird Japanese festival kind of way. Essentially on this day, which in the weird old Japanese calendar is the first day of the New Year and of spring as well (could be the Chinese new year?), it was a whole new start kind of thing. So what you had to do was get some beans (special anti-ogre beans one suspects) and then proceed to attack any ogres that might be living in your house (as far as I can see). Now in our flat we, unfortunately, did not have any ogres, or any lesser fairy-tale creatures either, more’s the pity, so we had to make do with dad in an unconvincing ogre mask.
This ‘ogre’ then attacked the Guru and youngster before being repelled with the aforementioned anti-ogre beans. These were chucked at the ‘ogre’ whilst chasing the beasty around the house and then out of the front door. The youngster was, however, all a bit nonplussed by these anti-ogre antics so was not particularly good with the bean throwing (and come to think of it had I known that beans held such effective ogre repelling qualities it would have made role playing with MERP and D&D a whole lot easier in my spotty youth). However the ‘ogre’ was dismissed from the house and then, surprisingly, we had to spend the following 20 minutes picking up little bits of crushed beans from all over the place.
The youngster was happier, however, when he got up after a nap to find a train in the living room. He has a bit of a thing about trains, as does any 1 and 3/4 year old, as far as I am aware, and has books about them, models of them and probably dreams about them as well. Anyway a few weeks ago, or maybe a month, we bought a new oven/microwave thing that came in a big box. Since it was delivered the box has remained in the living room as the youngster’s Best Toy Ever ™ and the parent’s Most Annoying Big Box in the Living Room ™. Anyway for weeks I have been looking at said box and thinking, and saying, I must make a train out of that box, so yesterday I finally pulled my finger out and did the business. I must admit that it gave me a huge dose of fatherly feeling to actually make something that he plays with. My art skills, being a ‘bit shite actually’ are in fact perfect for impressing not-quite-two year olds and so he was most happy with his new train. It was modelled badly on a Kodama shinkansen, for those of you sad enough to want to know.
Our living room yesterday afternoon
The food of hot, p3rvy $ex...
Ok, you hear about chocolate being the food of love, or maybe strawberries & cream, asparagus or even oysters and powered rhino horn. But they, I’m afraid, are but a chaste peck on the cheek compared to Shabu-shabu, the padded black leather fetish dungeon of the culinary world.
Now for those of you not in Japan you may wonder what I am on about, but that’s surely been the case for the last four years, so no change there. Shabu-shabu is a type of dish that Japanese do very well, D-I-Y food. Japanese, it seems to me, love food that you go to a restaurant for but then proceed to actually cook yourself, for example okonomiyaki, kushiage and yakiniku to name but three. This, it seems, negates the real need to have a restaurant, but I guess Japanese hate washing up, hence their desire to go out. Shabu-shabu works like this – get a bit round pot of boiling water, take some wafer thin slices or raw beef, dunk beef in water for few moments (holding with chopsticks all the while), dunk now cooked beef in assortment of condiments (pepper, raw egg, candle wax), then eat. The shabu-shabu-ness of it comes from the motion of swishing the beef in the water.
OK, so far so not that odd or depraved. But it was in the 1990s that Shabu-shabu became, in Japan, a byword for smut with the notoriety of the No Pants Shabu-shabu restaurants in Shinjuku. The premise was simple. Same basic restaurant but with two key differences; one, mirrored floors and; two, waitresses not in kimono but in very short skirts and nothing to keep out the drafts. These became the talking point as they did not cater, as you might suspect, for the lower end of society, but it seemed predominantly for the ministry of finance and other government mandarins (actually you might have suspected that more...). A few dodgy deals, one or two intrepid reporters and the blag was blown.
But now we have a new phenomenon – the OL Strip Shabu-shabu. An OL, should you be wondering, is an Office Lady. They wear kind of crap corporate uniforms and until recently we employed to make tea and be groped on trains. But Women’s Lib finally arrived and so the mean old government made it illegal for the salaryman to manhandle these young ladies on the subway, thereby increasing the sexual frustration of every salaryman over the age of 40.
So OL Strip Shabu-shabu has now arrived. As you can see from this news article the basic idea is again simple – as you shabu you thin slices of beef you can ask you waitress to strip off. Great, your own personal floor show whilst you eat you dinner. You can, it seems, even ask the waitress to then dress up in another costume from, one assumes, the ‘side order’ menu.
But what makes me really wonder is, why Shabu-shabu? What is it about thin slices of beef that make men want to ‘get down on it’? I mean there’s no No Pants Okonomiyaki, no Strip Yakitori, so why Shabu-shabu? This, I suspect, is one of the unfathomable idiosyncrasies of Japan that I keep reading about in travel books...
Thursday, 1 February 2007
Feedback
Just to pass on a few choice quotes from a letter I received this morning:
"It is a very useful introduction"
"The literature review is relevant an extensive. Presenting a framework for literature review and explaining the relevant terms and concepts is very useful."
"[investigation] Sample is excellently explained"
"Data presentation is detailed, and reflects an understanding of the issues involved."
"The conclusions are well linked to the study."
"This assignment [dissertation] is an excellent piece of work" (particularly proud of that one)
"The author has a deep understanding of the issues involved, and the effort to engage them in the backdrop of international literature and practices is commendable. Very well done!"
And my personal favourite...
"We write to offer our warmest congratulations on achieving your Masters degree with distinction..."
OK, it's subject to external marking, which won't be complete for about three months, but as the first and second internal markers both gave over 70%, which is an 'A', I'm quietly confident that the 'with distinction' bit will remain.
Quite chuffed about this.
Just to pass on a few choice quotes from a letter I received this morning:
"It is a very useful introduction"
"The literature review is relevant an extensive. Presenting a framework for literature review and explaining the relevant terms and concepts is very useful."
"[investigation] Sample is excellently explained"
"Data presentation is detailed, and reflects an understanding of the issues involved."
"The conclusions are well linked to the study."
"This assignment [dissertation] is an excellent piece of work" (particularly proud of that one)
"The author has a deep understanding of the issues involved, and the effort to engage them in the backdrop of international literature and practices is commendable. Very well done!"
And my personal favourite...
"We write to offer our warmest congratulations on achieving your Masters degree with distinction..."
OK, it's subject to external marking, which won't be complete for about three months, but as the first and second internal markers both gave over 70%, which is an 'A', I'm quietly confident that the 'with distinction' bit will remain.
Quite chuffed about this.
Wednesday, 24 January 2007
Movie of fairy vacance life
Now I know that everyone who blogs in or about Japan does this eventually and just so I don’t buck the trend, here’s mine. Yup, it’s the Japlish post. Now you may have spotted the link over on the right for Engrish.com, which is a whole website devoted to it, and indeed it is a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture, that of their extraordinary ability to mangle the English language.
The title of this post is from a Japanese advertisement that came through the door this evening as one of those pieces of unwanted junk mail that appear on an almost daily basis. Can you guess what it is promoting? Go on, have a guess...
Well done for those of you who managed to figure out that yes, it is the tag line for a new block of apartments that are being built on the other side of Kawaguchi station, as can be seen from the photo below.
And just in case you wanted to see the back of the flyer...
I mean, what the ****? And what’s the ‘No Cinema, No Life’ bit for as well? The flats won’t have a cinema in them!
Now I work for an English school and have a pretty good handle on the English language and its uses (even if my typing leaves a lot to be desired (that’s why this blog is full of typos, not because of my ability, honest)), but I am well and truly stumped about a) how someone could possible come up with it b) what it could ever possible mean and c) how on earth I could even begin to explain what is wrong with it. Seems to me that some marketing bod probably said, after a long toke, “let’s play Cheddar Gorge and use the results to form the basis of our next advertising campaign” (for those of you who don’t know how to play Cheddar Gorge, firstly shame on you and secondly visit I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue immediately!).
Anyway it is an amazing ability, the Japanese have, this utter un-mastery of English. I figure that the company building these flats probably have a bit of cash, as do the people advertising them, so surely it wouldn’t be beyind the wit of someone to say “hey, do you think this makes any sense at all?”. Or perhaps I’m coming at it from totally the wrong angle. Maybe the original tagline was something like ‘Apartments in Kawaguchi: Quite a Nice Place to Live’ and the advertising bod said “hey, that’s no good; it makes sense, throw this trash out and give me some non sequiturs! Show me the nonsense! Etc” or something like that.
But everywhere you go, as you can see from the Engrish.com website, you get this weird and wonderful use of English. Vending machines are fertile ground, especially cigarette machines with their legends extolling you to ‘enjoy happy smoke life in harmony’. Another I especially liked was for the SMBC bank, who have the pleasure of holding my well earned wages for a few hours on pay day (before the Guru spirits the lot away into hidden (from me) savings accounts (and this is a good thing else I would spend the money, possible enjoying a happy smoke life, who knows?)). Anyway one of their campaigns, when we got back here in 2002 and joined the bank, was based on the tagline One’s Next..., which in itself isn’t too bad, except their pension planning brochure was entitled One’s Next Life, for which I’m sure you’ll agree, you probably don’t need a pension for.
The common excuse for all of this is that having a bit of English is cool and as most people, except perplexed foreigners, can’t read it and even if they could they wouldn’t understand it, it therefore doesn’t have to make sense. But that just seems a bit too pat and a bit too lame to me. Then again I suppose plenty of westerners go around with Kanji tattoos for girl power or other such nonsense that it is a two way thing. (aside, two stories about tattoos I like. One, from Chris who used to be in Japan and set up the excellent kanji learning site KanjiSite, he was amazed how many requests he got from people wanting to know specific kanji so they could get tattoos done, his favourite was from an American chap from one of the rectangular, mid-western states who wanted the specific kanji for carburettor so he could have it tattooed, probably on his forehead. And second, from a football (that’s association soccer) email I get, a teenager in Argentina is suing a tattooist as the tattooist, a supporter of the River Plate team didn’t, as the chap wanted, do a great big logo of Boca Juniors (the chap’s personal team and huge rival of River Plate) on his back. No, he tattooed a picture of an enormous penis. The chap only found out when he got home and proudly displayed his back to his parents...)
Anyway, I’ve often wondered how I’d be able to get a story about tattooing the kanji for carburettor onto an American chap into this blog – I can sleep easily tonight.
Now I know that everyone who blogs in or about Japan does this eventually and just so I don’t buck the trend, here’s mine. Yup, it’s the Japlish post. Now you may have spotted the link over on the right for Engrish.com, which is a whole website devoted to it, and indeed it is a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture, that of their extraordinary ability to mangle the English language.
The title of this post is from a Japanese advertisement that came through the door this evening as one of those pieces of unwanted junk mail that appear on an almost daily basis. Can you guess what it is promoting? Go on, have a guess...
Well done for those of you who managed to figure out that yes, it is the tag line for a new block of apartments that are being built on the other side of Kawaguchi station, as can be seen from the photo below.
And just in case you wanted to see the back of the flyer...
I mean, what the ****? And what’s the ‘No Cinema, No Life’ bit for as well? The flats won’t have a cinema in them!
Now I work for an English school and have a pretty good handle on the English language and its uses (even if my typing leaves a lot to be desired (that’s why this blog is full of typos, not because of my ability, honest)), but I am well and truly stumped about a) how someone could possible come up with it b) what it could ever possible mean and c) how on earth I could even begin to explain what is wrong with it. Seems to me that some marketing bod probably said, after a long toke, “let’s play Cheddar Gorge and use the results to form the basis of our next advertising campaign” (for those of you who don’t know how to play Cheddar Gorge, firstly shame on you and secondly visit I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue immediately!).
Anyway it is an amazing ability, the Japanese have, this utter un-mastery of English. I figure that the company building these flats probably have a bit of cash, as do the people advertising them, so surely it wouldn’t be beyind the wit of someone to say “hey, do you think this makes any sense at all?”. Or perhaps I’m coming at it from totally the wrong angle. Maybe the original tagline was something like ‘Apartments in Kawaguchi: Quite a Nice Place to Live’ and the advertising bod said “hey, that’s no good; it makes sense, throw this trash out and give me some non sequiturs! Show me the nonsense! Etc” or something like that.
But everywhere you go, as you can see from the Engrish.com website, you get this weird and wonderful use of English. Vending machines are fertile ground, especially cigarette machines with their legends extolling you to ‘enjoy happy smoke life in harmony’. Another I especially liked was for the SMBC bank, who have the pleasure of holding my well earned wages for a few hours on pay day (before the Guru spirits the lot away into hidden (from me) savings accounts (and this is a good thing else I would spend the money, possible enjoying a happy smoke life, who knows?)). Anyway one of their campaigns, when we got back here in 2002 and joined the bank, was based on the tagline One’s Next..., which in itself isn’t too bad, except their pension planning brochure was entitled One’s Next Life, for which I’m sure you’ll agree, you probably don’t need a pension for.
The common excuse for all of this is that having a bit of English is cool and as most people, except perplexed foreigners, can’t read it and even if they could they wouldn’t understand it, it therefore doesn’t have to make sense. But that just seems a bit too pat and a bit too lame to me. Then again I suppose plenty of westerners go around with Kanji tattoos for girl power or other such nonsense that it is a two way thing. (aside, two stories about tattoos I like. One, from Chris who used to be in Japan and set up the excellent kanji learning site KanjiSite, he was amazed how many requests he got from people wanting to know specific kanji so they could get tattoos done, his favourite was from an American chap from one of the rectangular, mid-western states who wanted the specific kanji for carburettor so he could have it tattooed, probably on his forehead. And second, from a football (that’s association soccer) email I get, a teenager in Argentina is suing a tattooist as the tattooist, a supporter of the River Plate team didn’t, as the chap wanted, do a great big logo of Boca Juniors (the chap’s personal team and huge rival of River Plate) on his back. No, he tattooed a picture of an enormous penis. The chap only found out when he got home and proudly displayed his back to his parents...)
Anyway, I’ve often wondered how I’d be able to get a story about tattooing the kanji for carburettor onto an American chap into this blog – I can sleep easily tonight.
Monday, 15 January 2007
Burn Kawaguchi burn, taking down steeltown
Ok, I know it doesn’t scan quite as well as the original, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
So yes, Kawaguchi was on fire on Saturday night. I don’t mean that in a figurative sense, I mean that in a real, literal, Kawaguchi was a-burnin’ at the weekend. Now this may seem odd, and indeed it was. At about 9pm on Saturday evening we were getting to that ‘bedtime story’ kind of time when we heard a few sirens going off. Now this is not an unusual thing as we live on a main road and so quite often we get fire engines and ambulances going past. The young ‘un got a noisy fire engine toy from a grand parent for Christmas so he is quite into them and so the Guru thought ‘ah, good learning experience here) and took the little fella to the window for a peek. And what did she see? Not one engine but a whole host, certainly more than one would normally shake a stick at, and they seemed to be congregating around this area...
Odd, we thought, and then for some reason I thought I’d have a look out onto the river and, low and behold, the river bank was on fire!
For those who have never been in japan in winter I should mention that winters here are very dry indeed, so the grass and reeds on the riverbank become very brittle and easily flammable, a bit like kindling, so in a way it not that much of a surprise that some bright spark might accidentally start a fire. Anyway this was quite a conflagration and at one point seemed to stretch about 100 meters from side to side, and luckily, being on the 7th floor we got a jolly good view, as the photo below shows...
OK, doesn’t really do it justice, but it is all on fire. The fire engine chappies did their darnedest to get to the flames, but I must admit that it did take them a while as they had to get over the levee/bank bit and then past all the sports pitches and finally to the fire itself. But got there they did and once on site made short work of the inferno. How it started can only be pure speculation, but it is a popular place for fisher folk to try and poison themselves by catching swimming turds from the river, and also there are a few homeless souls (or fisher folk who have forgotten how to get home), or indeed it could be young hoodlums and their high jinks (like burning homeless people to death, as seems a reasonably popular pastime amongst the more deranged/crazed/disaffected yoof’). Anyway it was lucky the fire was there and not, say, in my apartment, juding by the time it actually took to get there. But it was good practice as the following day (Sunday, if you’re not paying attention), in exactly the same place, was...
Kawaguchi Fire Persons Training and Demonstration Day
No really, which means, of course, that the fire that really happened was actually about 12 hours early and was meant to be part of the Sunday jollity.
But seriously, folks, Sunday was the local fire brigades’ deomstration day. We kind of half remembered this from last year and again thought it would be a jolly good wheeze to take the young ‘un down to enjoy the show, after all it is only 5 minutes away, involves loud fire engines, gets us all out in the fresh air and contains the possibility of a helicopter being included for free (and the youngster loves helicopters at the moment). So at about 855 we can see the fields have been set up and long line of fire engines are in a sort of scramble mode on one of the riverbank access roads. We wonder when things are going to start, but as 9am passes by and nothing happens, the business of breakfast takes over. The same thing happens around 955, but this time, as the more likely hour of 10am looms do we do anything about getting ready? Of course not, so when the sirens start blaring at exactly 10am, we are thrown into a frenzy of ‘get him changed! Where are his gloves? Sort out the pushchair! I said it would start at 10am but who listens to me! Etc’. But we get out of the front door in a world record 1 minute 35 seconds and , as I mentioned it was all quite close, we get there in time.
‘In time’ for what? is a question that might be asked. Well. There were lots of fire engines and lots of hoses spraying a lot of river water into the air. There were mocked up buildings surrounded by, I guess, earthquake style debris and detritus, from which ‘injured’ people had to be rescued. There were also other buildings that were torched so the firefighters could strut their stuff and dowse the flames. This last bit was quite impressive, but less so for those who had been witness to the real thing the evening before. They also had those long extendable ladder things and rescued a ‘person’ from a tallish building that only about 27 floors lower than the new tower blocks they are building here at the moment, so no need to worry (much) for those new residents. You can get a feeling about the whole thing from these photos below (click for bigger photos).
The main thing was the youngster thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, he seemed to and he did wave to the fire engines and ambulances that went past, which is always a good sign. I am glad to report that the chaps coped very well with all the drills and everything went off with nary a hitch, though I must admit I was slightly worried about what might have happened if, say, a major fire had broken out in Omiya whilst all these engines were on the riverbank as there were a lot of them and not just from Kawaguchi but from all over southern Saitama. But this was just idle speculation as nothing of the sort happened, I’m glad to say
This week’s out-of-touch politician award...
...goes to Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa (well known for commonsense approach to politics). There is a potential bill being debated at the moment, known snappily as the White-collar work-hour exemption bill, which as far as I can tell, would exempt office workers from the standard 8 hour day (meaning they could be forced to work much longer hours) and also stop them from being entitled to overtime pay (meaning they wouldn’t get paid for it). Mr Nakagawa apparently complained on a news programme on NHK last weekend that “salaried workers and their families, who should welcome the white-collar exemption system, were opposed to it [so it can’t be submitted]”.
Now call me crazy, but a bill that might mean that I work longer hours for which overtime payments have been abolished, hmm, let me think about it...Hey, sounds like a swell idea, where can I sign up?
Idiot.
Ok, I know it doesn’t scan quite as well as the original, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
So yes, Kawaguchi was on fire on Saturday night. I don’t mean that in a figurative sense, I mean that in a real, literal, Kawaguchi was a-burnin’ at the weekend. Now this may seem odd, and indeed it was. At about 9pm on Saturday evening we were getting to that ‘bedtime story’ kind of time when we heard a few sirens going off. Now this is not an unusual thing as we live on a main road and so quite often we get fire engines and ambulances going past. The young ‘un got a noisy fire engine toy from a grand parent for Christmas so he is quite into them and so the Guru thought ‘ah, good learning experience here) and took the little fella to the window for a peek. And what did she see? Not one engine but a whole host, certainly more than one would normally shake a stick at, and they seemed to be congregating around this area...
Odd, we thought, and then for some reason I thought I’d have a look out onto the river and, low and behold, the river bank was on fire!
For those who have never been in japan in winter I should mention that winters here are very dry indeed, so the grass and reeds on the riverbank become very brittle and easily flammable, a bit like kindling, so in a way it not that much of a surprise that some bright spark might accidentally start a fire. Anyway this was quite a conflagration and at one point seemed to stretch about 100 meters from side to side, and luckily, being on the 7th floor we got a jolly good view, as the photo below shows...
OK, doesn’t really do it justice, but it is all on fire. The fire engine chappies did their darnedest to get to the flames, but I must admit that it did take them a while as they had to get over the levee/bank bit and then past all the sports pitches and finally to the fire itself. But got there they did and once on site made short work of the inferno. How it started can only be pure speculation, but it is a popular place for fisher folk to try and poison themselves by catching swimming turds from the river, and also there are a few homeless souls (or fisher folk who have forgotten how to get home), or indeed it could be young hoodlums and their high jinks (like burning homeless people to death, as seems a reasonably popular pastime amongst the more deranged/crazed/disaffected yoof’). Anyway it was lucky the fire was there and not, say, in my apartment, juding by the time it actually took to get there. But it was good practice as the following day (Sunday, if you’re not paying attention), in exactly the same place, was...
Kawaguchi Fire Persons Training and Demonstration Day
No really, which means, of course, that the fire that really happened was actually about 12 hours early and was meant to be part of the Sunday jollity.
But seriously, folks, Sunday was the local fire brigades’ deomstration day. We kind of half remembered this from last year and again thought it would be a jolly good wheeze to take the young ‘un down to enjoy the show, after all it is only 5 minutes away, involves loud fire engines, gets us all out in the fresh air and contains the possibility of a helicopter being included for free (and the youngster loves helicopters at the moment). So at about 855 we can see the fields have been set up and long line of fire engines are in a sort of scramble mode on one of the riverbank access roads. We wonder when things are going to start, but as 9am passes by and nothing happens, the business of breakfast takes over. The same thing happens around 955, but this time, as the more likely hour of 10am looms do we do anything about getting ready? Of course not, so when the sirens start blaring at exactly 10am, we are thrown into a frenzy of ‘get him changed! Where are his gloves? Sort out the pushchair! I said it would start at 10am but who listens to me! Etc’. But we get out of the front door in a world record 1 minute 35 seconds and , as I mentioned it was all quite close, we get there in time.
‘In time’ for what? is a question that might be asked. Well. There were lots of fire engines and lots of hoses spraying a lot of river water into the air. There were mocked up buildings surrounded by, I guess, earthquake style debris and detritus, from which ‘injured’ people had to be rescued. There were also other buildings that were torched so the firefighters could strut their stuff and dowse the flames. This last bit was quite impressive, but less so for those who had been witness to the real thing the evening before. They also had those long extendable ladder things and rescued a ‘person’ from a tallish building that only about 27 floors lower than the new tower blocks they are building here at the moment, so no need to worry (much) for those new residents. You can get a feeling about the whole thing from these photos below (click for bigger photos).
The main thing was the youngster thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, he seemed to and he did wave to the fire engines and ambulances that went past, which is always a good sign. I am glad to report that the chaps coped very well with all the drills and everything went off with nary a hitch, though I must admit I was slightly worried about what might have happened if, say, a major fire had broken out in Omiya whilst all these engines were on the riverbank as there were a lot of them and not just from Kawaguchi but from all over southern Saitama. But this was just idle speculation as nothing of the sort happened, I’m glad to say
This week’s out-of-touch politician award...
...goes to Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa (well known for commonsense approach to politics). There is a potential bill being debated at the moment, known snappily as the White-collar work-hour exemption bill, which as far as I can tell, would exempt office workers from the standard 8 hour day (meaning they could be forced to work much longer hours) and also stop them from being entitled to overtime pay (meaning they wouldn’t get paid for it). Mr Nakagawa apparently complained on a news programme on NHK last weekend that “salaried workers and their families, who should welcome the white-collar exemption system, were opposed to it [so it can’t be submitted]”.
Now call me crazy, but a bill that might mean that I work longer hours for which overtime payments have been abolished, hmm, let me think about it...Hey, sounds like a swell idea, where can I sign up?
Idiot.
Monday, 8 January 2007
December
December was a busy month, as might have been alluded to in a previous post, and as it is for everyone who has one (a December, I mean, though for some they are busier than for others, I suspect. Anyway). So at the start of the month I headed back to Blighty for a good friend’s wedding. Richard, who had once had the dubious honour of being my best man, got hitched to Lorna, his sweetheart of the past couple of years. I went solo on this trip, for a couple of reasons, one was the expense, which we decided was too great for what was quite a short trip back (and we will be going back in August 2007 for my cousin’s wedding, all things being equal (like being given time off from work, not guaranteed by any means now), and also because this was a ‘no kids’ wedding. This was the first time I had come across one of these, though according to friends they are much the common thing nowadays. Personally, this bothers me. When the Guru and I had the UK leg of our wedding in 2002 it would never have occurred to me to have a ‘no kids’ wedding, what’s the point? If you want your friends there, you invite them. If they have kids, along they come too. It’s simple. But not, apparently. But OK, if that’s what people do nowadays, fair enough, but what about if you are flying 5,000miles to see your mates and have no chance of arranging baby sitting facilities as you don’t live in the country? Tough, is the answer, it seems to me. And, for those who can arranging babysitters, not only do they have to buy presents for the happy couple, but fork out for a sitter as well (which in London, is eight quid an hour, according to the friends I was staying with. 8 quid! So for them, from 2pm to midnight, the cost was going to be something like 70quid! Outrageous that it costs that much and outrageous that they should have to pay because of this ‘no kids’ rule – it kind of p*ssed me off, this ‘no kids’ thing, as you might suspect from this rant. But really)
Anyway I was back for a week and managed to fill my time most responsibly. We had a big family Christmas about 3 weeks early, this not just for my benefit but also for my cousin who lives in Hungary, who was over with his Romanian wife for the weekend. That was jolly good fun, as one might expect from this kind of thing. Then I got to treat Golf-playing-Brother-and Family’s house like a hotel for a few days whilst I spent time visiting old school friends in Fleet. This again was most pleasant as I got to meet lots the (quite recently) arrived children of my friends, and of course my nephew Charlie. I fact one of the over-riding themes of the trip was kids; firstly mine, in that I didn’t get to see him for about 10 days and at times it was really difficult, and other people’s kids, which were everywhere (except the wedding, of course) and made me miss the youngster even more. But everyone seems to be having, or had, them. As I said all my old school friends in Fleet were kidded up with one, if not two, whilst the old university friends in London I stayed with had one with number two due in March. As I said, everywhere, but then again I suppose we are of an age where these things are happening. In London I also met up with an old work colleague who moved back to the UK earlier in ’06. He was doing well in that he had finally left the company and was now free-lancing, which in time honoured tradition meant he was living with his parents and not, technically, doing any work. “That will change” he said, ‘but not too soon’ I thought. But anyway good luck to him in his IT endeavours.
The wedding itself was held at the English Speaking Union, which is at Dartmouth House in the heart of Mayfair. It was, as these things tend to be, a rather drunken affair. I seemed to spend all of my time talking to people, some of whom I hadn’t seen since the end of sixth form, so only about 15 years ago, which made me feel exceptionally old, as I mentioned in a past post last year (but I can’t remember where – think I might be getting old…) The same of it was that (apart from the family not being there to enjoy it with me) I didn’t really get much of a chance to talk to the bride or groom as they were doing the bride and groom thing, which seemed to involve being nice to parents and worrying about stuff. I think I might have said ‘hello’ and ‘awfully nice to meet you’ to Lorna, as it was the first time I had met said lady, but I think that was about it (though of course I may have said an awful lot more, but due to the rigours of alcohol and jet lag, I might have forgotten (this has happened before), but no one mentioned anything to me the next day, which is always a good sign).
Last but not least I picked up presents from various family members to do my best Santa impression and ferry loot from one side of the world to the other. I’m glad to say that, on knowing I was coming alone and that I would therefore be traveling light, my family did their level best to send me rocketing over the luggage limit on Virgin (to whom I once again doff my cap). Suffice it to say I went to the UK with once smallish case at under 10kgs (including presents for all them), but returned with my original bag as hand luggage and a new case twice the size of mine and a whisker under the 23kgs limit (and that was with leaving a present for me behind!). And last of all, on getting back and lugging all this stuff half way across the world, I got back to find the lift in the apartment building was being repaired so I had to drag everything up six floors to finally get home. (oh, and I lost the backgammon this year in a strangely disappointing series).
Christmas
Was something I enjoyed with the Guru and the Youngster on, and this night come as a surprise, December 25th, as unlike some I don’t have to work (though the bit of work from getting back from the UK to finishing for the holiday was hellishly busy, possibly on account of a promotion that has somehow seen me end up as principal. Don’t ask me how.) Anyway my last day was Saturday 23rd and then it was a frenzy of shopping, eating and drinking, not necessarily in that order, until, well, today really. For Christmas day we awoke early-ish, I think the youngster did us the honour of sleeping in until at least 630am (not because it was Christmas, it is just his time of arising). Breakfast was followed by presents and, as is traditional, the young ‘un had a huge pile, the guru had an impressive pile and I had, well, pitiful in comparison does spring to mind (of course this was my fault as I had not told anyone what I wanted – I didn’t think that was the point...) anyway the youngster got, in no particular order, a Mr Potato Head, a puzzle, lots of books and DVDs, a noisy fire engine, a toy helicopter (his favourite word at the moment is he-buta, which is his attempt at this obviously tricky word) and a load of other stuff as well.
Then it was to the park to run around a bit and climb up and then slide down the slide. This was in order to tire the little fella’ out a bit as he goes a bit stir crazy if he doesn’t burn off a few kilowatts a day.
(I know I don’t, as a rule, put photos of him of the blog anymore, but it’s Christmas (or was) so a special exception can be made).Then it was back home for yours truly to cook the Christmas lunch. This was, I must admit, done with a certain panache and aplomb, with the three of us sitting down to a veritable feast at 2 o’clock. There was, however, a slight cock-up – the plan of using up a bit of the youngster’s energy worked so well that as we sat down to eat the excitement of the whole day got to him and, no longer able to contain himself, he fell asleep, as you can see from the two photos below:
And so we ate in peace and quiet, which is always nice, mainly as it is so uncommon, and then spent the rest of the day feeling bloated. We even had a Hollywood blockbuster to watch (Pirates of the Caribbean, I think), but as I had already seen this on the plane to the UK (and didn’t think that much of it) I only had half an eye on it. (In fact all of the three films I watched going to the UK were sequels: Pirates etc 2, Mission Impossible 3 and X-Men 3, all of which weren’t that much kop at all. I saw Cars on the way back, which was better, but I wasn’t exactly bowled over with the choice).
Boxing day it rained all day, so we just sat around eating and drinking again. All this lead to the New Year, which for Japanese involves a shit load of cleaning. Japanese don’t do spring cleaning, they do new year cleaning, which makes sense I suppose as the weather is usually nice and it is a grand idea to start the new year with a clean house. That this cleaning took three whole days, for an apartment the size of ours, doesn’t really bear thinking about. But we managed it and for ringing in 2007 we had the cleanest apartment in Japan (I am willing to bet). The night itself was a low key affair, as they tend to be when you have kids, I suspect. After which we went to spend a couple of days with the Guru’s folks to let them look after the youngster for a few hours each day so we didn’t have to! This was pleasant and I got to do what always makes me feel it’s new year and watch the Hakone Ekiden (kind of like a long distance relay race from Tokyo to Mt Fuji and back for university athletics teams (men only) over January 1st and 2nd, very traditional and always makes me feel the new year has begun, especially if I watch it at the Guru’s folk’s place).
And that was about it. More shopping was to be done, including a couple of new suits and a new oven, more visits to the park and the riverbank to use up that energy (so successful was this that on a couple of occasions the little ‘un actually fell asleep around 7pm, giving us a couple of evenings together for the first time in ages. We watched more films in the last week than we have in the past two years!) And so tomorrow it’s officially back to work, though I did have two days last week, but I don’t feel they count as today is a national holiday. Great!
December was a busy month, as might have been alluded to in a previous post, and as it is for everyone who has one (a December, I mean, though for some they are busier than for others, I suspect. Anyway). So at the start of the month I headed back to Blighty for a good friend’s wedding. Richard, who had once had the dubious honour of being my best man, got hitched to Lorna, his sweetheart of the past couple of years. I went solo on this trip, for a couple of reasons, one was the expense, which we decided was too great for what was quite a short trip back (and we will be going back in August 2007 for my cousin’s wedding, all things being equal (like being given time off from work, not guaranteed by any means now), and also because this was a ‘no kids’ wedding. This was the first time I had come across one of these, though according to friends they are much the common thing nowadays. Personally, this bothers me. When the Guru and I had the UK leg of our wedding in 2002 it would never have occurred to me to have a ‘no kids’ wedding, what’s the point? If you want your friends there, you invite them. If they have kids, along they come too. It’s simple. But not, apparently. But OK, if that’s what people do nowadays, fair enough, but what about if you are flying 5,000miles to see your mates and have no chance of arranging baby sitting facilities as you don’t live in the country? Tough, is the answer, it seems to me. And, for those who can arranging babysitters, not only do they have to buy presents for the happy couple, but fork out for a sitter as well (which in London, is eight quid an hour, according to the friends I was staying with. 8 quid! So for them, from 2pm to midnight, the cost was going to be something like 70quid! Outrageous that it costs that much and outrageous that they should have to pay because of this ‘no kids’ rule – it kind of p*ssed me off, this ‘no kids’ thing, as you might suspect from this rant. But really)
Anyway I was back for a week and managed to fill my time most responsibly. We had a big family Christmas about 3 weeks early, this not just for my benefit but also for my cousin who lives in Hungary, who was over with his Romanian wife for the weekend. That was jolly good fun, as one might expect from this kind of thing. Then I got to treat Golf-playing-Brother-and Family’s house like a hotel for a few days whilst I spent time visiting old school friends in Fleet. This again was most pleasant as I got to meet lots the (quite recently) arrived children of my friends, and of course my nephew Charlie. I fact one of the over-riding themes of the trip was kids; firstly mine, in that I didn’t get to see him for about 10 days and at times it was really difficult, and other people’s kids, which were everywhere (except the wedding, of course) and made me miss the youngster even more. But everyone seems to be having, or had, them. As I said all my old school friends in Fleet were kidded up with one, if not two, whilst the old university friends in London I stayed with had one with number two due in March. As I said, everywhere, but then again I suppose we are of an age where these things are happening. In London I also met up with an old work colleague who moved back to the UK earlier in ’06. He was doing well in that he had finally left the company and was now free-lancing, which in time honoured tradition meant he was living with his parents and not, technically, doing any work. “That will change” he said, ‘but not too soon’ I thought. But anyway good luck to him in his IT endeavours.
The wedding itself was held at the English Speaking Union, which is at Dartmouth House in the heart of Mayfair. It was, as these things tend to be, a rather drunken affair. I seemed to spend all of my time talking to people, some of whom I hadn’t seen since the end of sixth form, so only about 15 years ago, which made me feel exceptionally old, as I mentioned in a past post last year (but I can’t remember where – think I might be getting old…) The same of it was that (apart from the family not being there to enjoy it with me) I didn’t really get much of a chance to talk to the bride or groom as they were doing the bride and groom thing, which seemed to involve being nice to parents and worrying about stuff. I think I might have said ‘hello’ and ‘awfully nice to meet you’ to Lorna, as it was the first time I had met said lady, but I think that was about it (though of course I may have said an awful lot more, but due to the rigours of alcohol and jet lag, I might have forgotten (this has happened before), but no one mentioned anything to me the next day, which is always a good sign).
Last but not least I picked up presents from various family members to do my best Santa impression and ferry loot from one side of the world to the other. I’m glad to say that, on knowing I was coming alone and that I would therefore be traveling light, my family did their level best to send me rocketing over the luggage limit on Virgin (to whom I once again doff my cap). Suffice it to say I went to the UK with once smallish case at under 10kgs (including presents for all them), but returned with my original bag as hand luggage and a new case twice the size of mine and a whisker under the 23kgs limit (and that was with leaving a present for me behind!). And last of all, on getting back and lugging all this stuff half way across the world, I got back to find the lift in the apartment building was being repaired so I had to drag everything up six floors to finally get home. (oh, and I lost the backgammon this year in a strangely disappointing series).
Christmas
Was something I enjoyed with the Guru and the Youngster on, and this night come as a surprise, December 25th, as unlike some I don’t have to work (though the bit of work from getting back from the UK to finishing for the holiday was hellishly busy, possibly on account of a promotion that has somehow seen me end up as principal. Don’t ask me how.) Anyway my last day was Saturday 23rd and then it was a frenzy of shopping, eating and drinking, not necessarily in that order, until, well, today really. For Christmas day we awoke early-ish, I think the youngster did us the honour of sleeping in until at least 630am (not because it was Christmas, it is just his time of arising). Breakfast was followed by presents and, as is traditional, the young ‘un had a huge pile, the guru had an impressive pile and I had, well, pitiful in comparison does spring to mind (of course this was my fault as I had not told anyone what I wanted – I didn’t think that was the point...) anyway the youngster got, in no particular order, a Mr Potato Head, a puzzle, lots of books and DVDs, a noisy fire engine, a toy helicopter (his favourite word at the moment is he-buta, which is his attempt at this obviously tricky word) and a load of other stuff as well.
Then it was to the park to run around a bit and climb up and then slide down the slide. This was in order to tire the little fella’ out a bit as he goes a bit stir crazy if he doesn’t burn off a few kilowatts a day.
(I know I don’t, as a rule, put photos of him of the blog anymore, but it’s Christmas (or was) so a special exception can be made).Then it was back home for yours truly to cook the Christmas lunch. This was, I must admit, done with a certain panache and aplomb, with the three of us sitting down to a veritable feast at 2 o’clock. There was, however, a slight cock-up – the plan of using up a bit of the youngster’s energy worked so well that as we sat down to eat the excitement of the whole day got to him and, no longer able to contain himself, he fell asleep, as you can see from the two photos below:
And so we ate in peace and quiet, which is always nice, mainly as it is so uncommon, and then spent the rest of the day feeling bloated. We even had a Hollywood blockbuster to watch (Pirates of the Caribbean, I think), but as I had already seen this on the plane to the UK (and didn’t think that much of it) I only had half an eye on it. (In fact all of the three films I watched going to the UK were sequels: Pirates etc 2, Mission Impossible 3 and X-Men 3, all of which weren’t that much kop at all. I saw Cars on the way back, which was better, but I wasn’t exactly bowled over with the choice).
Boxing day it rained all day, so we just sat around eating and drinking again. All this lead to the New Year, which for Japanese involves a shit load of cleaning. Japanese don’t do spring cleaning, they do new year cleaning, which makes sense I suppose as the weather is usually nice and it is a grand idea to start the new year with a clean house. That this cleaning took three whole days, for an apartment the size of ours, doesn’t really bear thinking about. But we managed it and for ringing in 2007 we had the cleanest apartment in Japan (I am willing to bet). The night itself was a low key affair, as they tend to be when you have kids, I suspect. After which we went to spend a couple of days with the Guru’s folks to let them look after the youngster for a few hours each day so we didn’t have to! This was pleasant and I got to do what always makes me feel it’s new year and watch the Hakone Ekiden (kind of like a long distance relay race from Tokyo to Mt Fuji and back for university athletics teams (men only) over January 1st and 2nd, very traditional and always makes me feel the new year has begun, especially if I watch it at the Guru’s folk’s place).
And that was about it. More shopping was to be done, including a couple of new suits and a new oven, more visits to the park and the riverbank to use up that energy (so successful was this that on a couple of occasions the little ‘un actually fell asleep around 7pm, giving us a couple of evenings together for the first time in ages. We watched more films in the last week than we have in the past two years!) And so tomorrow it’s officially back to work, though I did have two days last week, but I don’t feel they count as today is a national holiday. Great!
Tuesday, 26 December 2006
About football
So, as alluded to in the last post, which being over a month ago I am sure most have forgotten (I had until I read it again), recently I went to a footy match. This was the first time I had been to a J-League 1 match (the equivalent of the English Premiership (in terms of, well, being the number one league in the country, but in terms of money it is well down, but in terms of excitement and lack of play acting, it is far, far ahead)) before, but I had been to see football (that is, Association Football, rather than Rugby Football or Aussie Rules) in the past, a World Cup qualifier no less, in 1997 I think, when Japan played the UAE. But no, this was the first league match.
So what prompted you? I hear you muse. Simple really, I got a pair of free tickets so thought ‘what the heck, may as well use them!’ the free tickets came about because, strangley, the old NEC laptop disintegrated. When we bought the new one the deal with the shop was that if we changed to NTT for our broadband connection, at no extra cost, they would give us 20,000 yen’s worth of points at the selfsame shop, and as NTT sponsor one of the teams we watched, for some reason they decided to throw in a pair of freebie footy tickets into the bargain. And they even gave a choice of which games you wanted to watch. Great.
So Steve and I duly made our way to Saitama Stadium 2002, where I ahd been before to play 5-a-side footy many years ago (I even wrote about it somewhere in this blog, but I don’t remember where so sorry, no link). Now if you remember, when I wrote that post, the home team was Urawa Reds – they are still mainly the home team and play most of their games there, but they are sponsored by Mitsubishi (I think), so it was not them. Oh no, we went to see Omiya Ardija. Omiya is a big city brother of Urawa but has a pretty rubbish footy team, though having said that they are in J-1, something they could not claim a couple of years ago, and it does add a little spice to the derby games. (And no, by the way, neither Steve nor I have any idea what an Ardija is – it might be a rodent of sorts, apparently, but no one we asked knew either).
Now once, when I lived in London, I went to a premiership game. I, for al my faults, am a supporter of Middlesbrough, mainly for the simple reason that I was born there. In London I have a chum who is a Chelsea supporter (for the simple reason that he was born in Fulham). He often got tickets for games and surprisingly it was quite easy to come by tickets to watch ‘Boro as they weren’t, and aren’t, one of your sought after draws. When we went to that game we met in a pub in Fulham and I was under strict instructions not to wear anything that might incriminate me as in some way a Middlesbrough fan as I might get lynched – we were to sit in the Chelsea stands after all. The walk to Stamford Bridge was through the streets of west London and was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. It was threatening, tense and oppressive, and that was just the walk to the bar. Inside the ground there was a hostility I have not encountered anywhere else, especially when, in the 90th minute, a Chelsea defender deliberately handled the ball in the area and Alan Boksic (I think) completed the penalty and tied the game at 2-2. The walk back wasn’t too pleasant either. It was not the sort of atmosphere I would ever want to take a family to enjoy, there were police a-plenty so I don’t think anything would have kicked off, but you just don’t know and the attitude of the police didn’t exactly make the afternoon any better. Worse probably, but then I suppose they have been dealing with this every Saturday afternoon for years.
Now I know that the Japanese have a very different take on these things, and reports from England hooligans fans after the 2002 World Cup was friendly and efficient staff and stewards at the games, but I wondered how things might have changed in 4 years. The good news was not a lot. We got to the station about 30 minutes before kick off and had about a 2km stroll to the stadium. Plenty of other fans were strolling with us and, like my experience in London, plenty were draped in flags and other tribal insignia. But everyone was really happy. The atmosphere was more like, well, for want of a better comparision, that everyone was off to watch a rugby match rather than a football match. And there was not one policeman to be seen, in fact the only uniform we saw between the station and the stadium was three chaps directing pedestrians across an extremely un-busy that crossed the route at an inopportune point at about two-thirds distance.
The stadium was as big and impressive as I remembered it, but this time I got to see the inside as well, which was nice. On the inside it was jolly big, but as we were watching Omiya Ardija vs. Kashima Antlers (a team with a storied past but now on leaner times), it wasn’t exactly full (the attendance was, I think, about 12,000 in a place that could hold well over 40,000). Now as we had freebie tickets we were in the ‘unreserved’ section, which meant, again astoundingly to anyone who’s been to a football match in England, anyone could sit where they wanted and opposing fans could intermingle with impunity. And they did. The hardcore fans occupy opposing ends behind the goals, as can be seen from this photo (after Kashima scored)
But everywhere else is far more relaxed – it’s almost as if the people have paid money to come along and actually watch the game, rather than fight or hurl abuse at people not from the same town as them. Or something. But that is not to say that there wasn’t an atmosphere in the place. Oh no, there was plenty of that, with both sets of hardcore fans doing there bit for chanting and singing. But again for the rest of us it was all pleasantly low key. The hard core fans were fascinating to watch as they represented a microcosm of Japanese culture (he pontificates, donning an in-no-way-deserved anthropological hat). If you look at this photo you’ll see a bunch of guys standing at the bottom facing towards the terraces:
These guys are the organizers. They are paid members of the club and it is their job to gee everyone up by organizing a constant stream of chanting, singing and flag waving. They didn’t watch the game except for a corner-of-the-eye job to make sure the chants were appropriate for the action. They shouted, heckled, cajoled, whipped and generally made the hard core follow their lead. In Japan, you see, you mustn’t do spontaneity, individuality is a no-no; if you want to support a team you must do what the team supporter’s manager says you do. This happens at baseball games as well, even at high school games apparently (according to Steve, who has attended a few at his school), and volleyball and basketball as well, I don’t doubt. It is a reflection of society as a whole, that to take part you must join in with everyone else. If you want to chant at a footy match you stand behind the goal and do it there with the hardcore – no one around us chanted in any way during the game. Interestingly the one game, as far as I am aware, that doesn’t follow this pattern is rugby. Certainly all the games I’ve been to, and more that I’ve watched on TV, none have had this hardcore organizer element to make sure everyone is, literally, singing from the same page.
So anyway, we watched the game and the Antlers scored in less than 30 seconds from the kick off to get, as it were, the ball rolling, and never looked back. The final score was 0-3 to the visitors, but it was a bit of a mid-table nothing game as neither team was in danger of winning the league or being relegated (for the record the league winners were, in fact, our old pals Urawa Reds, who were pipped at the post in 2005 but were not to be denied this season). The atmosphere was pleasant and positive and there were plenty of families in attendance. This might also be due to the fact that tickets are dirt cheap. I know ours we freebies, but the regular price is only something like a tenner, if that, so a family of four can watch a game for comfortably less than 50 quid, which is what I might have to pay if I wanted to watch a reprise of the Chelsea-Boro match by myself this season.
Anyway, here are some more photos, next up will be my trip to the Uk and then Christmas (were about a month behind, I reckon, with these posts, but will try to get as much written in the next week or so whilst I am on my Christmas and new year hols)
Spirit of Zico? No wonder Ardija lost...
Interesting spelling there...
And from one English football hooligan...
...to another
So, as alluded to in the last post, which being over a month ago I am sure most have forgotten (I had until I read it again), recently I went to a footy match. This was the first time I had been to a J-League 1 match (the equivalent of the English Premiership (in terms of, well, being the number one league in the country, but in terms of money it is well down, but in terms of excitement and lack of play acting, it is far, far ahead)) before, but I had been to see football (that is, Association Football, rather than Rugby Football or Aussie Rules) in the past, a World Cup qualifier no less, in 1997 I think, when Japan played the UAE. But no, this was the first league match.
So what prompted you? I hear you muse. Simple really, I got a pair of free tickets so thought ‘what the heck, may as well use them!’ the free tickets came about because, strangley, the old NEC laptop disintegrated. When we bought the new one the deal with the shop was that if we changed to NTT for our broadband connection, at no extra cost, they would give us 20,000 yen’s worth of points at the selfsame shop, and as NTT sponsor one of the teams we watched, for some reason they decided to throw in a pair of freebie footy tickets into the bargain. And they even gave a choice of which games you wanted to watch. Great.
So Steve and I duly made our way to Saitama Stadium 2002, where I ahd been before to play 5-a-side footy many years ago (I even wrote about it somewhere in this blog, but I don’t remember where so sorry, no link). Now if you remember, when I wrote that post, the home team was Urawa Reds – they are still mainly the home team and play most of their games there, but they are sponsored by Mitsubishi (I think), so it was not them. Oh no, we went to see Omiya Ardija. Omiya is a big city brother of Urawa but has a pretty rubbish footy team, though having said that they are in J-1, something they could not claim a couple of years ago, and it does add a little spice to the derby games. (And no, by the way, neither Steve nor I have any idea what an Ardija is – it might be a rodent of sorts, apparently, but no one we asked knew either).
Now once, when I lived in London, I went to a premiership game. I, for al my faults, am a supporter of Middlesbrough, mainly for the simple reason that I was born there. In London I have a chum who is a Chelsea supporter (for the simple reason that he was born in Fulham). He often got tickets for games and surprisingly it was quite easy to come by tickets to watch ‘Boro as they weren’t, and aren’t, one of your sought after draws. When we went to that game we met in a pub in Fulham and I was under strict instructions not to wear anything that might incriminate me as in some way a Middlesbrough fan as I might get lynched – we were to sit in the Chelsea stands after all. The walk to Stamford Bridge was through the streets of west London and was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. It was threatening, tense and oppressive, and that was just the walk to the bar. Inside the ground there was a hostility I have not encountered anywhere else, especially when, in the 90th minute, a Chelsea defender deliberately handled the ball in the area and Alan Boksic (I think) completed the penalty and tied the game at 2-2. The walk back wasn’t too pleasant either. It was not the sort of atmosphere I would ever want to take a family to enjoy, there were police a-plenty so I don’t think anything would have kicked off, but you just don’t know and the attitude of the police didn’t exactly make the afternoon any better. Worse probably, but then I suppose they have been dealing with this every Saturday afternoon for years.
Now I know that the Japanese have a very different take on these things, and reports from England hooligans fans after the 2002 World Cup was friendly and efficient staff and stewards at the games, but I wondered how things might have changed in 4 years. The good news was not a lot. We got to the station about 30 minutes before kick off and had about a 2km stroll to the stadium. Plenty of other fans were strolling with us and, like my experience in London, plenty were draped in flags and other tribal insignia. But everyone was really happy. The atmosphere was more like, well, for want of a better comparision, that everyone was off to watch a rugby match rather than a football match. And there was not one policeman to be seen, in fact the only uniform we saw between the station and the stadium was three chaps directing pedestrians across an extremely un-busy that crossed the route at an inopportune point at about two-thirds distance.
The stadium was as big and impressive as I remembered it, but this time I got to see the inside as well, which was nice. On the inside it was jolly big, but as we were watching Omiya Ardija vs. Kashima Antlers (a team with a storied past but now on leaner times), it wasn’t exactly full (the attendance was, I think, about 12,000 in a place that could hold well over 40,000). Now as we had freebie tickets we were in the ‘unreserved’ section, which meant, again astoundingly to anyone who’s been to a football match in England, anyone could sit where they wanted and opposing fans could intermingle with impunity. And they did. The hardcore fans occupy opposing ends behind the goals, as can be seen from this photo (after Kashima scored)
But everywhere else is far more relaxed – it’s almost as if the people have paid money to come along and actually watch the game, rather than fight or hurl abuse at people not from the same town as them. Or something. But that is not to say that there wasn’t an atmosphere in the place. Oh no, there was plenty of that, with both sets of hardcore fans doing there bit for chanting and singing. But again for the rest of us it was all pleasantly low key. The hard core fans were fascinating to watch as they represented a microcosm of Japanese culture (he pontificates, donning an in-no-way-deserved anthropological hat). If you look at this photo you’ll see a bunch of guys standing at the bottom facing towards the terraces:
These guys are the organizers. They are paid members of the club and it is their job to gee everyone up by organizing a constant stream of chanting, singing and flag waving. They didn’t watch the game except for a corner-of-the-eye job to make sure the chants were appropriate for the action. They shouted, heckled, cajoled, whipped and generally made the hard core follow their lead. In Japan, you see, you mustn’t do spontaneity, individuality is a no-no; if you want to support a team you must do what the team supporter’s manager says you do. This happens at baseball games as well, even at high school games apparently (according to Steve, who has attended a few at his school), and volleyball and basketball as well, I don’t doubt. It is a reflection of society as a whole, that to take part you must join in with everyone else. If you want to chant at a footy match you stand behind the goal and do it there with the hardcore – no one around us chanted in any way during the game. Interestingly the one game, as far as I am aware, that doesn’t follow this pattern is rugby. Certainly all the games I’ve been to, and more that I’ve watched on TV, none have had this hardcore organizer element to make sure everyone is, literally, singing from the same page.
So anyway, we watched the game and the Antlers scored in less than 30 seconds from the kick off to get, as it were, the ball rolling, and never looked back. The final score was 0-3 to the visitors, but it was a bit of a mid-table nothing game as neither team was in danger of winning the league or being relegated (for the record the league winners were, in fact, our old pals Urawa Reds, who were pipped at the post in 2005 but were not to be denied this season). The atmosphere was pleasant and positive and there were plenty of families in attendance. This might also be due to the fact that tickets are dirt cheap. I know ours we freebies, but the regular price is only something like a tenner, if that, so a family of four can watch a game for comfortably less than 50 quid, which is what I might have to pay if I wanted to watch a reprise of the Chelsea-Boro match by myself this season.
Anyway, here are some more photos, next up will be my trip to the Uk and then Christmas (were about a month behind, I reckon, with these posts, but will try to get as much written in the next week or so whilst I am on my Christmas and new year hols)
Spirit of Zico? No wonder Ardija lost...
Interesting spelling there...
And from one English football hooligan...
...to another
Sunday, 26 November 2006
Exams and the like
Well I know it has been a while, but things have been just a tad busy recently so posting has been a bit of luxury I haven’t been able to afford. But now, Sunday afternoon, rest of the family napping, the scoreboard from Brisbane ticking over on Cricinfo (and what depressing reading it is, seems that plan A has been adopted for the first test. This worked at Lord’s in 2005, but I’m not convinced it will work here.), and a spare 5 minutes after reading briefly perusing thr reports from England v South Africa from last night, I find a bit of time on the old hands so thought ‘how better to use the time than waffle on and post something on the blog?’. So here you go. You can tel that having less time to post hasn’t done anything to stop the verbal diarrhoea, more’s the pity.
So many things have come up in the past few weeks that it is wonder where to start. About three weeks ago I saw an article in the paper mentioning that the 2006 Kimono exam had taken place and not a few people had taken it. This was to the basis of a post all about Japanese and exam taking, to which they are addicted, but this has now passed (the post, not the addition), but in a nutshell, risking repeating myself as I go, the Japanese love taking exams. But then again, on reflection, I don’t think they do, but they love having benchmarks on which to judge themselves and exams are a good way of doing this. They are also a good way of making money, according Alex Kerr and his book Demons and Dogs, which I talked about a couple of years ago. It’s all to do with Amukudari (which I think is how you spell it) apparently. This essentially means something like ‘descent from heaven’ or something, and is a practice where govt. bureaucrats, on retiring, take exceptionally well paid jobs in the private sector, for not a lot of work, in the hope that there presence will confer benefits on the company or organization they join. The best example of this is the construction industry, especially bridge builders who are currently going through a massive bid-rigging scandal. The premise is that local govt. chap retires and joins Bridge Builder A, he then calls his old office where he was a bigwig and asks what’s in the pipeline. He gets the info, along with info, illegally, on what other firms are bidding. He then calls up more firms and together the collude to ensure that one of them gets the contract at an inflated price. Then a couple of months later the same process happens but this time Bridge Builder B gets the contract. Throughout this the local govt. johnnies claim big salaries and even bigger bonuses for making a phone call or to and defrauding the local taxpayers. This has been going on for time immemorial, but now the locals are getting restive and those responsible are being called to account, which can only be a good thing (thought I feel sure that if they stopped all the corruption in Japan the entire country would grind to a halt).
Those canny amongst you will have notice a couple of things here. One, this has nothing to do with exams, and you’d be right but we’ll get there, and two, I said I wasn’t going to write about it, but I’m on a roll now so here we go.
The exam thing happens, apparently, when one of these Amukudari chaps joins an organization, like the Kimono promoters or whatever they are. Now with the construction industry it is easy to see where the money might be made, as above, but with kimono, or aerobics, things are a little trickier. So some bright spark, a while ago, came up with a cunning plan, that of exam and preparation courses. The idea evolves into a system where you can’t be a teacher of a subject unless you have taken and passed an exam in it. Now I’m all for this for things like schooling, as teachers have know what they are doing, but for Kimono it seems a bit much. The example Alex Kerr uses is aerobics – here there are apparently two certificates you need, they are not legal requirements, but their influence is such that sports centres won’t take on instructors without one, but the rub is that as neither is a legal requirement it is not clear which one you should havem so instructors in the end have to take both, but to take each exam, which ask essentially the same thing, you must take an expensive preparation course. All this cash, of course, goes to the organization in question – essentially a license to print money.
Another example is, oddly hairdressing. A colleague’s Japanese husband in a hairdresser and in the fullness of time he wants to open his own salon. Now the fact that he has to pass a test in hairdressing is fair enough, I wouldn’t particularly want someone with no basic skills attacking my head with a pair of scissors, however for this chap to open his own shop he not only has to prove that he has worked in another shop for 3 years (sort of like indentured service, or something) but he also has to take a long and expansive course in ‘how to open your own hairdressing salon’ before he will be granted a license to open his shop. If he doesn’t get the license he won’t get planning/opening permission from the local town authorities. Now seems to me that if you want to open your own place then fair enough off you go. If you can’t cut hair properly you’ll go out of business, so better make sure you can do it properly, but to have to pay for all these courses and tests and things just seems, well, like someone else wants a bit of cash and is taking the piss.
The upshot of this, of course, is that there are exams for absolutely everything you could ever want to do in Japan. As I said for some things I can understand this, like schooling, or martial arts, where you might hurt someone if you muck up a move. But I really don’t get it for things like putting Kimono on, or performing tea ceremonies, hence the article mentioned at the top caught my eye. To make life more difficult, of course, most of these exams are only once a year and so if you miss the date due to illness or some unforeseen circumstance, then you are b*ggered for another year. To rate your Japanese for example, everyone takes the govt. organized Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I did it once when I first came to Japan, and this is only held on the first Sunday in December, no retakes, no extenuating circumstances. Imagine if you had to get a grade to get a job but had a cold that day, as people often do in December, you’d be, well b*ggered. Now I know that this argument can be applied to the UK for things like school exams, which are always in June, and fair enough, but a direct comparison to the JPLT would be something like the TOEIC exam, a very popular English language exam in Japan. This is not run by any Japanese agency, so no Amukudari (though I bet there’s one or two in there from the Ministry of Education), no mandatory expensive preparation course, (you can study at home), and best of all the exams are held something like every two months.
Other stuff that has gone on include the retirement of Kyokushuzan from the ranks of Sumo. Kyok was my guy, mainly as when he joined the top division he was the first Mongolian to do so, at about the same time as my first arrival in Japan. This meant that as we were both outsiders, my support was sent his way. He often remarked on this in post-bout interviews, stating that he would never have been able to progress so far without the knowledge I was rooting for him. Although as he always said this is Mongolian the translation often became a bit garbled and in the press was reported something like ‘I was very happy to win’. But that’s ok, I knew what he was really saying.
Also, you may be wondering quite why I have time, on a Sunday afternoon, to post. ‘Shouldn’t you be studying?’ is, I suspect, your first thought. Well the good news on that score is that the dissertation is finished, as of yesterday (though I might go and give once more once over whilst the house is quiet). All printed, proof read and inserted into a folder and ready to be sent off, all 120 pages or 21,000 words of it. Thank goodness for that, is about the best I can come up with. I won’t know what to do with my Sundays from now on, but blogging is a possibility as this blog has been going about as long as I have been studying. Anyway that’s enough for now.
Next time I will regale you with stories, and photos, of Japanese professional football, but I’m not sure when that will be as I am off back to Blighty next Saturday for visits and weddings, so see some of you then, I feel sure.
Well I know it has been a while, but things have been just a tad busy recently so posting has been a bit of luxury I haven’t been able to afford. But now, Sunday afternoon, rest of the family napping, the scoreboard from Brisbane ticking over on Cricinfo (and what depressing reading it is, seems that plan A has been adopted for the first test. This worked at Lord’s in 2005, but I’m not convinced it will work here.), and a spare 5 minutes after reading briefly perusing thr reports from England v South Africa from last night, I find a bit of time on the old hands so thought ‘how better to use the time than waffle on and post something on the blog?’. So here you go. You can tel that having less time to post hasn’t done anything to stop the verbal diarrhoea, more’s the pity.
So many things have come up in the past few weeks that it is wonder where to start. About three weeks ago I saw an article in the paper mentioning that the 2006 Kimono exam had taken place and not a few people had taken it. This was to the basis of a post all about Japanese and exam taking, to which they are addicted, but this has now passed (the post, not the addition), but in a nutshell, risking repeating myself as I go, the Japanese love taking exams. But then again, on reflection, I don’t think they do, but they love having benchmarks on which to judge themselves and exams are a good way of doing this. They are also a good way of making money, according Alex Kerr and his book Demons and Dogs, which I talked about a couple of years ago. It’s all to do with Amukudari (which I think is how you spell it) apparently. This essentially means something like ‘descent from heaven’ or something, and is a practice where govt. bureaucrats, on retiring, take exceptionally well paid jobs in the private sector, for not a lot of work, in the hope that there presence will confer benefits on the company or organization they join. The best example of this is the construction industry, especially bridge builders who are currently going through a massive bid-rigging scandal. The premise is that local govt. chap retires and joins Bridge Builder A, he then calls his old office where he was a bigwig and asks what’s in the pipeline. He gets the info, along with info, illegally, on what other firms are bidding. He then calls up more firms and together the collude to ensure that one of them gets the contract at an inflated price. Then a couple of months later the same process happens but this time Bridge Builder B gets the contract. Throughout this the local govt. johnnies claim big salaries and even bigger bonuses for making a phone call or to and defrauding the local taxpayers. This has been going on for time immemorial, but now the locals are getting restive and those responsible are being called to account, which can only be a good thing (thought I feel sure that if they stopped all the corruption in Japan the entire country would grind to a halt).
Those canny amongst you will have notice a couple of things here. One, this has nothing to do with exams, and you’d be right but we’ll get there, and two, I said I wasn’t going to write about it, but I’m on a roll now so here we go.
The exam thing happens, apparently, when one of these Amukudari chaps joins an organization, like the Kimono promoters or whatever they are. Now with the construction industry it is easy to see where the money might be made, as above, but with kimono, or aerobics, things are a little trickier. So some bright spark, a while ago, came up with a cunning plan, that of exam and preparation courses. The idea evolves into a system where you can’t be a teacher of a subject unless you have taken and passed an exam in it. Now I’m all for this for things like schooling, as teachers have know what they are doing, but for Kimono it seems a bit much. The example Alex Kerr uses is aerobics – here there are apparently two certificates you need, they are not legal requirements, but their influence is such that sports centres won’t take on instructors without one, but the rub is that as neither is a legal requirement it is not clear which one you should havem so instructors in the end have to take both, but to take each exam, which ask essentially the same thing, you must take an expensive preparation course. All this cash, of course, goes to the organization in question – essentially a license to print money.
Another example is, oddly hairdressing. A colleague’s Japanese husband in a hairdresser and in the fullness of time he wants to open his own salon. Now the fact that he has to pass a test in hairdressing is fair enough, I wouldn’t particularly want someone with no basic skills attacking my head with a pair of scissors, however for this chap to open his own shop he not only has to prove that he has worked in another shop for 3 years (sort of like indentured service, or something) but he also has to take a long and expansive course in ‘how to open your own hairdressing salon’ before he will be granted a license to open his shop. If he doesn’t get the license he won’t get planning/opening permission from the local town authorities. Now seems to me that if you want to open your own place then fair enough off you go. If you can’t cut hair properly you’ll go out of business, so better make sure you can do it properly, but to have to pay for all these courses and tests and things just seems, well, like someone else wants a bit of cash and is taking the piss.
The upshot of this, of course, is that there are exams for absolutely everything you could ever want to do in Japan. As I said for some things I can understand this, like schooling, or martial arts, where you might hurt someone if you muck up a move. But I really don’t get it for things like putting Kimono on, or performing tea ceremonies, hence the article mentioned at the top caught my eye. To make life more difficult, of course, most of these exams are only once a year and so if you miss the date due to illness or some unforeseen circumstance, then you are b*ggered for another year. To rate your Japanese for example, everyone takes the govt. organized Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I did it once when I first came to Japan, and this is only held on the first Sunday in December, no retakes, no extenuating circumstances. Imagine if you had to get a grade to get a job but had a cold that day, as people often do in December, you’d be, well b*ggered. Now I know that this argument can be applied to the UK for things like school exams, which are always in June, and fair enough, but a direct comparison to the JPLT would be something like the TOEIC exam, a very popular English language exam in Japan. This is not run by any Japanese agency, so no Amukudari (though I bet there’s one or two in there from the Ministry of Education), no mandatory expensive preparation course, (you can study at home), and best of all the exams are held something like every two months.
Other stuff that has gone on include the retirement of Kyokushuzan from the ranks of Sumo. Kyok was my guy, mainly as when he joined the top division he was the first Mongolian to do so, at about the same time as my first arrival in Japan. This meant that as we were both outsiders, my support was sent his way. He often remarked on this in post-bout interviews, stating that he would never have been able to progress so far without the knowledge I was rooting for him. Although as he always said this is Mongolian the translation often became a bit garbled and in the press was reported something like ‘I was very happy to win’. But that’s ok, I knew what he was really saying.
Also, you may be wondering quite why I have time, on a Sunday afternoon, to post. ‘Shouldn’t you be studying?’ is, I suspect, your first thought. Well the good news on that score is that the dissertation is finished, as of yesterday (though I might go and give once more once over whilst the house is quiet). All printed, proof read and inserted into a folder and ready to be sent off, all 120 pages or 21,000 words of it. Thank goodness for that, is about the best I can come up with. I won’t know what to do with my Sundays from now on, but blogging is a possibility as this blog has been going about as long as I have been studying. Anyway that’s enough for now.
Next time I will regale you with stories, and photos, of Japanese professional football, but I’m not sure when that will be as I am off back to Blighty next Saturday for visits and weddings, so see some of you then, I feel sure.
Sunday, 12 November 2006
Friday, 10 November 2006
Plan A
+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++
ECB Strategy unit issues the following advisory to Duncan Fletcher (coach) and Andrew Flintoff (captain) of England Ashes Tour Party 2006/7.
1. Lull dumb Aussies into false sense of security by being strategically thrashed by any non test-status team.
***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***
Implementation of Plan A worked perfectly. Australian cricketing professionals and public alike stunned by abject captulation by our boys to third rate bunch of sheep shaggers and Presidents. Note: have word with Andrew Strauss, appears to not understand current tactical thinking - half century may lead to suspicions of competence by Australian authorities.
+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++Confidential England Ashes Memorandum+++
ECB Strategy unit issues the following advisory to Duncan Fletcher (coach) and Andrew Flintoff (captain) of England Ashes Tour Party 2006/7.
1. Lull dumb Aussies into false sense of security by being strategically thrashed by any non test-status team.
***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***Status Report***
Implementation of Plan A worked perfectly. Australian cricketing professionals and public alike stunned by abject captulation by our boys to third rate bunch of sheep shaggers and Presidents. Note: have word with Andrew Strauss, appears to not understand current tactical thinking - half century may lead to suspicions of competence by Australian authorities.
Monday, 30 October 2006
Where are we?
So on Friday last week the little ‘un finally reached the ripe old age of 18 months, so I figure it is about time to take stock, look back and see how we got here, or something like that. So in no particular order, this is what he, and I suppose we, have achieved in the last year and a half:
He has grown from a promising 3.23 kgs to a much larger 10.99kgs, and from 51cm to 81.9cm (that’s a foot, but still under 5 foot so he can join the club)
He has spent two weeks in hospital with a dodgy oesophagus, but this now seems to be working just fine
He can now not only walk forwards without bumping into too many things, but he can also walk backwards (though bumping into more things)
He can help get himself dressed and undressed, a marked improvement
He can now deal with water being splashed on his face, which for some reason took what seems like an awfully long time
He has a full mouth of teeth, head of hair, hand of fingers and foot of toes. Indeed all appendages seem present and correct
He knows when he is doing something he shouldn’t, but still does it anyway, like trying to play with the computer or with daddies CDs
He gets excited by trains, though worryingly not cars at the moment
We have a first year book of his that is full to the brim of advice, wishes, photos and information we have already forgotten
We have realised that taking videos is important, not for now, but for much later. We know this as neither I nor the Guru can really remember what he was like at 3 months old, so now we take more footage to remind us of him now
You really can sit for an hour at lunchtime talking about kids to your colleagues, but only those with kids themselves
He can identify a whole bunch of animals, though saying their names is tricky
His favourites are elephants, snakes and cows
Masie, Teletubbies and Baby Shakespeare videos rock!
Pulling as many books as possible off the bookshelves is FUN
I spend all day every day at work wishing I was at home with him and the Guru, so we’d better win the lottery damn soon
Climbing is good
No, climbing is dangerous!
He doesn’t put everything he finds in his mouth anymore
He can feed himself, just about, and choose things he wants to eat and drink and, more importantly, have a pretty good stab at letting us know what they are
For some reason he loves cookbooks
Brushing teeth isn’t usually too big a chore (not compared to colleagues kids, apparently)
Crayons and drawing paper are cool (as was one of the sliding doors before we stopped him)
He is really good at copying mum and dad’s routines
He loves getting the brush and pretending the sweep up
He will happily sleep through the night but will wake everyone up at 630am because if he’s up, we should be as well
He has had two haircuts in his life
Things that are quite warm he will point at from afar and shout atchee!, or hot!, but things that are really hot he will silently walk up to and touch
Atchee! (hot) sounds very like oishi! (delicious) when he says them, making mealtimes a bit of a lottery to know what he is going on about
Most of the words he says are Japanese, but he understands words in Japanese or English that are thrown at him. The few English words he says are apple, banana and mama
He likes mud and muddy puddles
He is not so keen on asparagus
But marmite toast is a great way to start the day (though not as good as pancakes or French toast, apparently)
The balcony is a source of unparalleled mystery
Stickers are great
There is very little left in any drawer below a height of three feet
He smiles all the time
I am the luckiest dad alive
Tuesday, 17 October 2006
To you it’s a potato, to me it’s a potato, but to Sir Walter bloody Raleigh...
So on Saturday we did something that was quintessentially both Japanese and autumnal, and luckily it involved mud. The Japanese, you see, are really, at heart, all sons and daughters of the soil. If you listen to any Enka song (enka = original Japanese pop music, or maybe folk music. Maybe folk/pop music. Not sure about this one, but it is very 50s, I suppose, but without Elvis style pelvic thrusts, but with men in bad suits, women in kimono and a lot of heartfelt wailing. It is also phenomenally popular and was the reason for karaoke. I digress). So, if you listen to any, or pretty much any, enka song it will be about a wistful longing to jack in the salaryman lifestyle and return to the ancestral rice fields of Toyama, or other such rurally depopulated for very good reasons place, and retake the reins of the rice/shiitake/sea cucumber farm, or whatever you do to take control of one. No one really does this, of course, because being a farmer is bloody hard work and is, like most things in life, better left to the professionals, so come Monday morning the salaryman is back selling flood insurance to the selfsame rice farmers because it is what he is good at. So that’s enka.
Anyway part of the Japanese psyche is this desire to return to the soil (not in the literal sense of being buried in it, but to till it), but as most people don’t do it, mainly, as mentioned, because it is hard work, they kind of give it a go in spring, when little kids (and adults too) go off and plant rice er, saplings? Sprouts? Little baby rice plants at least, for a couple of hours until they realise that it is back-breaking work and best left to the professionals (whereupon the professional farmer, who is a darned sight cleverer than the dumb townies, gets out his Acme rice planter and lets the machinery get on with it). But in autumn, much like harvests everywhere across the world, everyone gets the urge to pull things out of the ground, which is what we did.
Now Japan and the Japanese are quite big on potatoes. They like to chip them, and bake them, and do the usual things that you do with potatoes – however the humble spud will never replace rice as the staple accompaniment to every meal. But sweet potatoes, now they are a different kettle of fish (to use an unrelated metaphor). Sweet potatoes, or satsuma-imo, (yes that is Satsuma as in the place and type of orange and no I don’t know why a potato should be named after it as they certainly aren’t orange but they may originally have come from Kagoshima where Satsuma is so that might have something to do with it) are big in Japan, in a literal and a metaphorical sense, and apparently pulling them out of the ground in October creates a massive nostalgia trip for everyone as it is what you used to do as a kid. So on Saturday morning we embarked on a trip to Asakadai, to the north of Kawaguchi, to do just that.
Now if you, or indeed I, think of potato farms you think large rolling fields, big machinery to pull the goods from the ground and generally things on an oversized scale. But this is Japan and unless you go to Hokkaido, or possible Toyama, farms can be quite small scale. Indeed they can be in the middle of a town, like Asakadai. So it is a 10am start there so about an 830 start for us as although it isn’t that far, there is a change of trains and a spell on the Musashino line which, in very un-Japanese fashion, only has a train about once every 10 minutes! Very poor service, that. Also there is a bus to catch as the farm isn’t very near the station (though only about 15 minutes walk away, as we found on the way back). This particular jaunt has been organized by a local (I think) group that organizes things for kids to do and so is aimed at those from 0 to 2 years old, though quite what a 1 month old kid would want to do in a potato field is beyond me). On getting the bus it was obvious that this was the bus for the potato picking as there were lots of parents and sprogs, all looking eager.
The farm was owned by Mr & Mrs Watanabe, they had a nice old farmhouse and a bit of land surrounding it. They also had another bit of land over the road. Another bit behind the apartment block to the left. And the right. And some more bits round the corner. And so on. They probably had enough land for a large, rolling field, but it was spread over the whole of Saitama prefecture, so the average size of one of his fields was about the size of a large garden. All very odd. Anyway we go there and there are about 30 families, with kids and as this is being arranged through the community centre, and as we have some of the community centre ladies there, we have to do some songs. I didn’t know any of the songs we do, though I did recognize one tune, but every single other person not only knew the words but also all the actions that went with them. All very confusing for your poor reporter – it felt a bit like trying to learn bon-odori dancing that I wrote about somewhere, but this time all the kids knew what to do as well. Stil it was fun. Then we had a little play about pulling sweet potatoes out of the ground. Typical thing, big potato, won’t come out, need extra help to pull, so audience participation is de rigeur. So, 30 families, one foreigner, you work out the odds of me being dragged to the front.
That’s correct. Ladbrokes would not give you odds as it is a sure fire guarantee, more likely to happen that an England one-day batting collapse. Luckily no photographic evidence exists as I was holding the camera, but for some reason, known only to Japanese, I had to put a cat mask on and help pull the recalcitrant sweet potato whilst the young ‘un looked on bemused..
Then we strolled about 10 minutes to field 42a to pull up the sweet potatoes. In typically organized Japanese fashion not only had the irritating stuff like undergrowth been pushed back, but little plot had been marked with chalk dust so you knew you were getting five plants. Now this being a field you expect a bit of mud, so most people, knowing this, would not a) wear trainers or b) well at least not their best ones. But no, most people did so we had the odd sight of adults tying plastic bags over their shoes and around their ankles to protect their designer footwear from the brown stuff. Me? I just wore a pair of old boots and got on with it. And get on with it we did. On our little plot of five plants we found a veritable treasure trove of medium to large sized sweet potatoes. I must admit that it was quite therapeutic, in a get your hands a bit dirty sort of way, mostly as you never get to get muddy in Tokyo. The little ‘un, on the other hand, wasn’t really interested in the whole potato thing at all, but he was into pouring mud over himself and everything around him, which was fun. It wasn’t so much fun for the little girl next to us, who was into finding potatoes. She didn’t find the mud thing a problem, but their 5 plants yielded only a few small spuds, nothing like the half-a-hundredweight that we yanked out, so we donated a whole load to her, which made mum happy but you could see the little girl was far more into the pulling, which she didn’t get to do. Oh well.
And that was about it. Back to the farmhouse for baked sweet potatoes and hand washing, which was fine, and a bit of a picnic. And then, for some reason, they gave us a bag of ordinary potatoes as a kind of souvenir. Not really sure about that, though they were tasty on Saturday evening.
But there you go, fun on the farm. Pity I don’t actually like sweet potatoes...
Teeth
Had the at-the-back-totally-wrong-angle-tooth out last night. Dentist told me it would take about 50 minutes. Over two hours later I finally left the surgery. Am in a reasonable amount of pain, mainly from, I think, the muscle strain of keeping my mouth open all that time and him pushing down so hard on my lower jaw for leverage. Had plenty of anaesthetic, which was good, but even that couldn’t hide the times when, getting a bit of tooth out, he twisted and twisted until the piece snapped off. Back next Monday to have the stitches out, but fair play to the bloke, he called here earlier this evening to check I was ok. But now he wants to be my friend and go out drinking.
So on Saturday we did something that was quintessentially both Japanese and autumnal, and luckily it involved mud. The Japanese, you see, are really, at heart, all sons and daughters of the soil. If you listen to any Enka song (enka = original Japanese pop music, or maybe folk music. Maybe folk/pop music. Not sure about this one, but it is very 50s, I suppose, but without Elvis style pelvic thrusts, but with men in bad suits, women in kimono and a lot of heartfelt wailing. It is also phenomenally popular and was the reason for karaoke. I digress). So, if you listen to any, or pretty much any, enka song it will be about a wistful longing to jack in the salaryman lifestyle and return to the ancestral rice fields of Toyama, or other such rurally depopulated for very good reasons place, and retake the reins of the rice/shiitake/sea cucumber farm, or whatever you do to take control of one. No one really does this, of course, because being a farmer is bloody hard work and is, like most things in life, better left to the professionals, so come Monday morning the salaryman is back selling flood insurance to the selfsame rice farmers because it is what he is good at. So that’s enka.
Anyway part of the Japanese psyche is this desire to return to the soil (not in the literal sense of being buried in it, but to till it), but as most people don’t do it, mainly, as mentioned, because it is hard work, they kind of give it a go in spring, when little kids (and adults too) go off and plant rice er, saplings? Sprouts? Little baby rice plants at least, for a couple of hours until they realise that it is back-breaking work and best left to the professionals (whereupon the professional farmer, who is a darned sight cleverer than the dumb townies, gets out his Acme rice planter and lets the machinery get on with it). But in autumn, much like harvests everywhere across the world, everyone gets the urge to pull things out of the ground, which is what we did.
Now Japan and the Japanese are quite big on potatoes. They like to chip them, and bake them, and do the usual things that you do with potatoes – however the humble spud will never replace rice as the staple accompaniment to every meal. But sweet potatoes, now they are a different kettle of fish (to use an unrelated metaphor). Sweet potatoes, or satsuma-imo, (yes that is Satsuma as in the place and type of orange and no I don’t know why a potato should be named after it as they certainly aren’t orange but they may originally have come from Kagoshima where Satsuma is so that might have something to do with it) are big in Japan, in a literal and a metaphorical sense, and apparently pulling them out of the ground in October creates a massive nostalgia trip for everyone as it is what you used to do as a kid. So on Saturday morning we embarked on a trip to Asakadai, to the north of Kawaguchi, to do just that.
Now if you, or indeed I, think of potato farms you think large rolling fields, big machinery to pull the goods from the ground and generally things on an oversized scale. But this is Japan and unless you go to Hokkaido, or possible Toyama, farms can be quite small scale. Indeed they can be in the middle of a town, like Asakadai. So it is a 10am start there so about an 830 start for us as although it isn’t that far, there is a change of trains and a spell on the Musashino line which, in very un-Japanese fashion, only has a train about once every 10 minutes! Very poor service, that. Also there is a bus to catch as the farm isn’t very near the station (though only about 15 minutes walk away, as we found on the way back). This particular jaunt has been organized by a local (I think) group that organizes things for kids to do and so is aimed at those from 0 to 2 years old, though quite what a 1 month old kid would want to do in a potato field is beyond me). On getting the bus it was obvious that this was the bus for the potato picking as there were lots of parents and sprogs, all looking eager.
The farm was owned by Mr & Mrs Watanabe, they had a nice old farmhouse and a bit of land surrounding it. They also had another bit of land over the road. Another bit behind the apartment block to the left. And the right. And some more bits round the corner. And so on. They probably had enough land for a large, rolling field, but it was spread over the whole of Saitama prefecture, so the average size of one of his fields was about the size of a large garden. All very odd. Anyway we go there and there are about 30 families, with kids and as this is being arranged through the community centre, and as we have some of the community centre ladies there, we have to do some songs. I didn’t know any of the songs we do, though I did recognize one tune, but every single other person not only knew the words but also all the actions that went with them. All very confusing for your poor reporter – it felt a bit like trying to learn bon-odori dancing that I wrote about somewhere, but this time all the kids knew what to do as well. Stil it was fun. Then we had a little play about pulling sweet potatoes out of the ground. Typical thing, big potato, won’t come out, need extra help to pull, so audience participation is de rigeur. So, 30 families, one foreigner, you work out the odds of me being dragged to the front.
That’s correct. Ladbrokes would not give you odds as it is a sure fire guarantee, more likely to happen that an England one-day batting collapse. Luckily no photographic evidence exists as I was holding the camera, but for some reason, known only to Japanese, I had to put a cat mask on and help pull the recalcitrant sweet potato whilst the young ‘un looked on bemused..
Then we strolled about 10 minutes to field 42a to pull up the sweet potatoes. In typically organized Japanese fashion not only had the irritating stuff like undergrowth been pushed back, but little plot had been marked with chalk dust so you knew you were getting five plants. Now this being a field you expect a bit of mud, so most people, knowing this, would not a) wear trainers or b) well at least not their best ones. But no, most people did so we had the odd sight of adults tying plastic bags over their shoes and around their ankles to protect their designer footwear from the brown stuff. Me? I just wore a pair of old boots and got on with it. And get on with it we did. On our little plot of five plants we found a veritable treasure trove of medium to large sized sweet potatoes. I must admit that it was quite therapeutic, in a get your hands a bit dirty sort of way, mostly as you never get to get muddy in Tokyo. The little ‘un, on the other hand, wasn’t really interested in the whole potato thing at all, but he was into pouring mud over himself and everything around him, which was fun. It wasn’t so much fun for the little girl next to us, who was into finding potatoes. She didn’t find the mud thing a problem, but their 5 plants yielded only a few small spuds, nothing like the half-a-hundredweight that we yanked out, so we donated a whole load to her, which made mum happy but you could see the little girl was far more into the pulling, which she didn’t get to do. Oh well.
And that was about it. Back to the farmhouse for baked sweet potatoes and hand washing, which was fine, and a bit of a picnic. And then, for some reason, they gave us a bag of ordinary potatoes as a kind of souvenir. Not really sure about that, though they were tasty on Saturday evening.
But there you go, fun on the farm. Pity I don’t actually like sweet potatoes...
Teeth
Had the at-the-back-totally-wrong-angle-tooth out last night. Dentist told me it would take about 50 minutes. Over two hours later I finally left the surgery. Am in a reasonable amount of pain, mainly from, I think, the muscle strain of keeping my mouth open all that time and him pushing down so hard on my lower jaw for leverage. Had plenty of anaesthetic, which was good, but even that couldn’t hide the times when, getting a bit of tooth out, he twisted and twisted until the piece snapped off. Back next Monday to have the stitches out, but fair play to the bloke, he called here earlier this evening to check I was ok. But now he wants to be my friend and go out drinking.
Wednesday, 4 October 2006
Bit of an overreaction
OK, I know we’re all a bit unhappy that the Kool Kid has gone and been replaced by [think of nickname] Shinzo Abe, but I do feel that Krazy Kim is taking it just a little bit too far, don’t you? I mean OK, you’re upset, maybe the Kid didn’t pop over to Pyongyang to say goodbye, but that doesn’t really seem to be much of a reason to start letting off nuclear devices, now does it?
As I say, I think Krazy Kim is just smarting because no one told him that the Kid had gone, not even the Kid himself, probably, so he’s just a little pissed by this so decided to throw some of his toys out of his pram. Hope he doesn’t through them quite as far as Tokyo, or indeed anywhere else in Japan, as that could cause one or two tensions. Of course the fact the eyes of the world have been drawn away from North Korea to the Middle East (most bits of it) probably doesn’t help [aside, hey, here’s a really annoying thing – I’m using Japanese Word to type this, which is fine, but every time I highlight something, or use the spell checker, it works but then decides that I am indeed stupid to be using Japanese Word to type in English so decides to go back to a much more useful script like Japanese. If anyone knows how to stop it doing that in xp, I’d be most grateful].
Otherwise it has been quite quiet in Japan, considering we have a new PM. Although he has said that he’s not going to do anything about the ropey old constitution, especially with regard to the imperial succession (note – I had a bit of a dig about the whole female succession thing last post and suggested that Japan was a bit behind. Whilst this is still true I then found out that Spain has a similar policy, so just goes to show that people are dumb all over the world) which caused a bit of a stir. He also said, though I haven’t seen it in the papers, that the plan to make English a compulsory primary school lesson was going to be axed as Japanese kids need to learn Japanese. I can see some sense in the second bit of that, but don’t understand what it has to do with the first bit – I mean, if that were true, best get rid of all subjects except for Japanese history, language, literature and patriotic citizenship lessons for kindergarten kids and upwards. Dimwits, the lot of ‘em.
Talking of dimwits, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara was in the news this week (Ishihara is great if you like racist, misogynist and other ~ist politicians, but he is also great if you want stuff to write about in a blog). In past Ishihara has come up with such gems as ‘watch out, if the big one hits Tokyo the rioting and looting will only be done by foreigners, so kick them out [nb he used the term ‘sangokujin’, rather than ‘gaikokujin’, which is to ‘foreigner’ what n**ger is to those of African-American descent i.e. rather insulting]; on the rape of Nanking by Japanese soldiers “They say we made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a lie made up by the Chinese”; and I have a strong suspicion he was the infamous one who said that birthrate would go up if the footy world cup came to Japan because the foreign fans would rape all the Japanese women they found (but I might be wrong in attributing that one to him, though someone did say it).
Anyway a year or two ago he passed a resolution that stated that all teachers at public (i.e. state run) schools, from primary through to high school, must stand and face the hinomaru, otherwise known as the flag of Japan, and sing Kimigayo, the national anthem, during school ceremonies. If the teachers failed to do this they could be reprimanded and sacked. This was, it appears, to make them better citizens, more patriotic and something else as well. So this was passed and not surprisingly a bunch of teachers didn’t do what they were told and were then reprimanded and/or sacked. But in an unusually un-Japanese move the teachers complained about it and took the Tokyo Government to court. Even more unusually, they won. Last week the Tokyo District court of somethingorother found that the rule passed by Ishihara was unconstitutional and that people cannot be forced to sing the national anthem if they don’t want to. Naturally this first of all really surprised Ishihara as I suspect he had paid awful lot of mon...[snip: we would prefer not to publish libelous comments on this blog – rude, yes; libelous, no] and secondly he was really pissed off about it, naturally, so has decided to appeal the ruling (at least I think he has, he was certainly mulling it). But for heaven’s sakes you shouldn’t be forcing people to do this – you can create a just and civilized society so that its citizens might be proud and want to sing the national anthem, but as soon as you start telling people they have to, well, best call Krazy Kim for some advice.
Oh, and found this link over at Ippoippo – if you haven’t seen it it is the interview Bill Clinton did on Fox News where he gets a little angry. So nice to a) hear an intelligent American (ex)president speak and b) for said intelligent American to have a right go at Fox. Enjoy.
OK, I know we’re all a bit unhappy that the Kool Kid has gone and been replaced by [think of nickname] Shinzo Abe, but I do feel that Krazy Kim is taking it just a little bit too far, don’t you? I mean OK, you’re upset, maybe the Kid didn’t pop over to Pyongyang to say goodbye, but that doesn’t really seem to be much of a reason to start letting off nuclear devices, now does it?
As I say, I think Krazy Kim is just smarting because no one told him that the Kid had gone, not even the Kid himself, probably, so he’s just a little pissed by this so decided to throw some of his toys out of his pram. Hope he doesn’t through them quite as far as Tokyo, or indeed anywhere else in Japan, as that could cause one or two tensions. Of course the fact the eyes of the world have been drawn away from North Korea to the Middle East (most bits of it) probably doesn’t help [aside, hey, here’s a really annoying thing – I’m using Japanese Word to type this, which is fine, but every time I highlight something, or use the spell checker, it works but then decides that I am indeed stupid to be using Japanese Word to type in English so decides to go back to a much more useful script like Japanese. If anyone knows how to stop it doing that in xp, I’d be most grateful].
Otherwise it has been quite quiet in Japan, considering we have a new PM. Although he has said that he’s not going to do anything about the ropey old constitution, especially with regard to the imperial succession (note – I had a bit of a dig about the whole female succession thing last post and suggested that Japan was a bit behind. Whilst this is still true I then found out that Spain has a similar policy, so just goes to show that people are dumb all over the world) which caused a bit of a stir. He also said, though I haven’t seen it in the papers, that the plan to make English a compulsory primary school lesson was going to be axed as Japanese kids need to learn Japanese. I can see some sense in the second bit of that, but don’t understand what it has to do with the first bit – I mean, if that were true, best get rid of all subjects except for Japanese history, language, literature and patriotic citizenship lessons for kindergarten kids and upwards. Dimwits, the lot of ‘em.
Talking of dimwits, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara was in the news this week (Ishihara is great if you like racist, misogynist and other ~ist politicians, but he is also great if you want stuff to write about in a blog). In past Ishihara has come up with such gems as ‘watch out, if the big one hits Tokyo the rioting and looting will only be done by foreigners, so kick them out [nb he used the term ‘sangokujin’, rather than ‘gaikokujin’, which is to ‘foreigner’ what n**ger is to those of African-American descent i.e. rather insulting]; on the rape of Nanking by Japanese soldiers “They say we made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a lie made up by the Chinese”; and I have a strong suspicion he was the infamous one who said that birthrate would go up if the footy world cup came to Japan because the foreign fans would rape all the Japanese women they found (but I might be wrong in attributing that one to him, though someone did say it).
Anyway a year or two ago he passed a resolution that stated that all teachers at public (i.e. state run) schools, from primary through to high school, must stand and face the hinomaru, otherwise known as the flag of Japan, and sing Kimigayo, the national anthem, during school ceremonies. If the teachers failed to do this they could be reprimanded and sacked. This was, it appears, to make them better citizens, more patriotic and something else as well. So this was passed and not surprisingly a bunch of teachers didn’t do what they were told and were then reprimanded and/or sacked. But in an unusually un-Japanese move the teachers complained about it and took the Tokyo Government to court. Even more unusually, they won. Last week the Tokyo District court of somethingorother found that the rule passed by Ishihara was unconstitutional and that people cannot be forced to sing the national anthem if they don’t want to. Naturally this first of all really surprised Ishihara as I suspect he had paid awful lot of mon...[snip: we would prefer not to publish libelous comments on this blog – rude, yes; libelous, no] and secondly he was really pissed off about it, naturally, so has decided to appeal the ruling (at least I think he has, he was certainly mulling it). But for heaven’s sakes you shouldn’t be forcing people to do this – you can create a just and civilized society so that its citizens might be proud and want to sing the national anthem, but as soon as you start telling people they have to, well, best call Krazy Kim for some advice.
Oh, and found this link over at Ippoippo – if you haven’t seen it it is the interview Bill Clinton did on Fox News where he gets a little angry. So nice to a) hear an intelligent American (ex)president speak and b) for said intelligent American to have a right go at Fox. Enjoy.
Wednesday, 27 September 2006
Back in the saddle
OK, we are, as the title says, back in the saddle. The old NEC laptop has been replaced by a new NEC laptop, which some might say is only courting disaster (and a certain part of me thinks the same way) but it is new and seems to work so far, since last Sunday, and came with the added bonus that the internet was up and running with a few clicks of the mouse (we were both expecting lengthy phone calls to Guatemala in order to get it going, but no, just a simple “do you have an existing provider?” and from there it was simple).
Naturally there have been a few scandals over the past few weeks. One of the better ones was the holidays work tours. But then, to really piss off the people of
Thursday, 14 September 2006
Kaput!
Was the last thing the NEC laptop said last week, and then...silence. This is going to make posting pretty tricky for a while, at least until we can rustle up enough of the folding stuff to persuade Dell or some other such cheapo desktop manufacturer to part with their wares.
So, watch this space...
Was the last thing the NEC laptop said last week, and then...silence. This is going to make posting pretty tricky for a while, at least until we can rustle up enough of the folding stuff to persuade Dell or some other such cheapo desktop manufacturer to part with their wares.
So, watch this space...
Thursday, 31 August 2006
We’re going the zoo, zoo, zoo...
So, been away for a while, but am back now. First things first, should get the ‘gazette’ stuff over and done with first, so congratulations and felicitations to my father, who celebrated his sixty-something birthday by visiting the village of Goosnargh in Scotland, a town with great family connections (and, indeed, connections with anyone who has read The Meaning of Liff), so well done you. Also, not six days later, the Guru celebrated her something-something birthday, we celebrated that by eating curry in Nishi Kawaguchi, well known for its large, non-Japanese population, most of whom work in the ‘pink’ trade, as it is sometimes affectionately known. In fact walking back through the town after eating the aforementioned curry we wandered across a sort of cross roads that seemed to have about half a dozen slightly disreputable persons standing in the corners, almost as if they were about the re-enact the climatic scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where Clint, Tuco and Angel Eyes face off in the cemetery. Actually, with a toddler in a pushchair it could have been the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin, but I could be heading towards pseud’s corner quite quickly, so had better stop. Anyway happy birthday to parental and guru.
Last week was off and, for the most part, was devoted to studying. This was a good thing as I am now nearing the end of this damned course. About 11,500 words have been written and rewritten, so only about 8,500 to go, but I’m quite happy with most of those 11,500 done so far, though I must admit to being a bit worried about the rest. But what the hell, it will all be over by Christmas! (now where have we heard that before…?) although really it will all be over by the end of November, which is even better. However what we also did was spend a long weekend with the in-laws who live down Chiba way, as I may have mentioned. Their place is very much more ‘in the countryside’ than us here in Kawaguchi, so the air was clear and the heat and humidity milder, which was pleasant indeed. They also live quite close to Chiba Zoo, so we went there for the day.
Now I must admit that I am not a great fan of zoos at the best of times and I’m afraid that Chiba Zoo isn’t very close to ‘the best of times’ at all. Quite far from it really. But they do have what they called a ‘Kids Zoo’, which I suppose is what you would more likely know as a petting zoo, or somewhere where the kids can get closer to some animals, touch and stroke them if they wish and watch them doing lots of poos. So that was where we headed so the little ‘un could commune with nature a little more than he has. But of course he wasn’t reallt that interested. This might have had something to do with the fact that the animals weren’t really interested in him, who knows. But we went into the sheep and goats enclosure at feeding time and he looked about warily as I held onto him, I thought about letting him go, but figured that he would grab and twist handfuls of fur/ear/leg/anything, so discretion meant I kept a reasonably firm hold on the young chap. And so the animals sort of swarmed around our legs and he watched them go by, and they ate leaves and then he tried to wander off. I think he enjoyed it as he point at a few things and make noises, but then again he does that for most things. In the kids zoo bit we also got to look at pigs, horses, ducks and cows, so all very domesticated, but also parrots, prairie dogs and penguins, which makes me think the zoo couldn’t quite decide what to do with animals that start with the letter ‘p’, so put them in there. The most fun thing in the kids zoo, for some reason, was the big washing sink and taps, which the little ‘un thought was the best thing he had seen in ages and so kept wanting to go back and wash his hands, something he never does at home – odd that.
The rest of the animals in the zoo seemed pretty sad and listless, sitting around and not doing too much. We saw an old elephant, camels, giraffes (who did seem quite animated), kangaroos, a water buffalo, monkeys and baboons and a stately emu. But the best thing was actually when we got home. We had taken some wooden toy animals with us and when we saw an animal for which we also had a toy, we made great play of showing them together, making the noises and generally trying to get the youngster to realise that the toys were representations etc. So, when we got home he got the bag of animals and started to show them to his grandparentals, but only picking out the ones we had seen earlier that day. This impressed us no end and, whilst it may appear a little dull, was fascinating to watch him and the development of his cognitive reasoning, or something.
Other news is that we are now mobile with the youngster. Being a big urban megalopolis (remembering my GCSE geography – the others being Boswash, Chipitts and Sansan, if you’re interested (well, they were in 1989, could all have changed now)) there isn’t too much piint having a car, but you’ve got to have a bicycle. In Japan these are often known as mamachari’s, or mama chariot’s, as they are used for carting kids about to and from shops, clinics and the like. Anyway we purchased a brand new Bridgestone contraption with a built baby/toddler seat over the front handlebars (specially designed by NASA scientists to be in the optimum load bearing/centre of gravity position, or something), and a mighty fine ride it is. When you try and manhandle the thing it feels like it weighs a quarter of a ton, but once you get one, that passenger is on too, it is surprisingly easy to manoeuvre, and with three gears one can fairly race along as well. So taken with it was I that I took the little ‘un out for a spin and we ended up at the water park about 40 minutes away – on our first trip! He seemed to enjoy it, which is the important thing, and not object too strongly to wearing a baby skid-lid (which, it comes as no surprise, are mystifyingly scarce in Japan, even though mothers everywhere take their kids, everywhere, by bike. I don’t wear a helmet, but I’m buggered if I’m going to let my son on a bike without one. But then again, this is a country where kids routinely stand on their father’s laps, or on the passenger side seat, when being driven in cars, so there you go, I suppose).
And now I’m back to work – and what a joy that is...
So, been away for a while, but am back now. First things first, should get the ‘gazette’ stuff over and done with first, so congratulations and felicitations to my father, who celebrated his sixty-something birthday by visiting the village of Goosnargh in Scotland, a town with great family connections (and, indeed, connections with anyone who has read The Meaning of Liff), so well done you. Also, not six days later, the Guru celebrated her something-something birthday, we celebrated that by eating curry in Nishi Kawaguchi, well known for its large, non-Japanese population, most of whom work in the ‘pink’ trade, as it is sometimes affectionately known. In fact walking back through the town after eating the aforementioned curry we wandered across a sort of cross roads that seemed to have about half a dozen slightly disreputable persons standing in the corners, almost as if they were about the re-enact the climatic scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where Clint, Tuco and Angel Eyes face off in the cemetery. Actually, with a toddler in a pushchair it could have been the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin, but I could be heading towards pseud’s corner quite quickly, so had better stop. Anyway happy birthday to parental and guru.
Last week was off and, for the most part, was devoted to studying. This was a good thing as I am now nearing the end of this damned course. About 11,500 words have been written and rewritten, so only about 8,500 to go, but I’m quite happy with most of those 11,500 done so far, though I must admit to being a bit worried about the rest. But what the hell, it will all be over by Christmas! (now where have we heard that before…?) although really it will all be over by the end of November, which is even better. However what we also did was spend a long weekend with the in-laws who live down Chiba way, as I may have mentioned. Their place is very much more ‘in the countryside’ than us here in Kawaguchi, so the air was clear and the heat and humidity milder, which was pleasant indeed. They also live quite close to Chiba Zoo, so we went there for the day.
Now I must admit that I am not a great fan of zoos at the best of times and I’m afraid that Chiba Zoo isn’t very close to ‘the best of times’ at all. Quite far from it really. But they do have what they called a ‘Kids Zoo’, which I suppose is what you would more likely know as a petting zoo, or somewhere where the kids can get closer to some animals, touch and stroke them if they wish and watch them doing lots of poos. So that was where we headed so the little ‘un could commune with nature a little more than he has. But of course he wasn’t reallt that interested. This might have had something to do with the fact that the animals weren’t really interested in him, who knows. But we went into the sheep and goats enclosure at feeding time and he looked about warily as I held onto him, I thought about letting him go, but figured that he would grab and twist handfuls of fur/ear/leg/anything, so discretion meant I kept a reasonably firm hold on the young chap. And so the animals sort of swarmed around our legs and he watched them go by, and they ate leaves and then he tried to wander off. I think he enjoyed it as he point at a few things and make noises, but then again he does that for most things. In the kids zoo bit we also got to look at pigs, horses, ducks and cows, so all very domesticated, but also parrots, prairie dogs and penguins, which makes me think the zoo couldn’t quite decide what to do with animals that start with the letter ‘p’, so put them in there. The most fun thing in the kids zoo, for some reason, was the big washing sink and taps, which the little ‘un thought was the best thing he had seen in ages and so kept wanting to go back and wash his hands, something he never does at home – odd that.
The rest of the animals in the zoo seemed pretty sad and listless, sitting around and not doing too much. We saw an old elephant, camels, giraffes (who did seem quite animated), kangaroos, a water buffalo, monkeys and baboons and a stately emu. But the best thing was actually when we got home. We had taken some wooden toy animals with us and when we saw an animal for which we also had a toy, we made great play of showing them together, making the noises and generally trying to get the youngster to realise that the toys were representations etc. So, when we got home he got the bag of animals and started to show them to his grandparentals, but only picking out the ones we had seen earlier that day. This impressed us no end and, whilst it may appear a little dull, was fascinating to watch him and the development of his cognitive reasoning, or something.
Other news is that we are now mobile with the youngster. Being a big urban megalopolis (remembering my GCSE geography – the others being Boswash, Chipitts and Sansan, if you’re interested (well, they were in 1989, could all have changed now)) there isn’t too much piint having a car, but you’ve got to have a bicycle. In Japan these are often known as mamachari’s, or mama chariot’s, as they are used for carting kids about to and from shops, clinics and the like. Anyway we purchased a brand new Bridgestone contraption with a built baby/toddler seat over the front handlebars (specially designed by NASA scientists to be in the optimum load bearing/centre of gravity position, or something), and a mighty fine ride it is. When you try and manhandle the thing it feels like it weighs a quarter of a ton, but once you get one, that passenger is on too, it is surprisingly easy to manoeuvre, and with three gears one can fairly race along as well. So taken with it was I that I took the little ‘un out for a spin and we ended up at the water park about 40 minutes away – on our first trip! He seemed to enjoy it, which is the important thing, and not object too strongly to wearing a baby skid-lid (which, it comes as no surprise, are mystifyingly scarce in Japan, even though mothers everywhere take their kids, everywhere, by bike. I don’t wear a helmet, but I’m buggered if I’m going to let my son on a bike without one. But then again, this is a country where kids routinely stand on their father’s laps, or on the passenger side seat, when being driven in cars, so there you go, I suppose).
And now I’m back to work – and what a joy that is...
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
Just because you'll all dying to know
I finally reached the end of my aural odyssey this morning; track #1799, Ziggy Stardust, was played around Kudanshita station on the Tozai line at about 855am. It has been a long, hard journey but certainly a worthwhile one.
I might even provide some analysis next time I post...
I finally reached the end of my aural odyssey this morning; track #1799, Ziggy Stardust, was played around Kudanshita station on the Tozai line at about 855am. It has been a long, hard journey but certainly a worthwhile one.
I might even provide some analysis next time I post...
Monday, 14 August 2006
Top-right-back
So no post for a while, but I reckon you spotted that already.
The reason behind this is two fold, or possibly three- or four-fold, it depends on how many I can think of whilst typing between here and when I get there, or something. Anyway the main reason was work (and, totally unrelated, here’s a point about ms word – when you misspell a word, for example leave a letter out, it tells you, but why, when you add a number into a word by accident, such as behi9nd, it doesn’t? (and that happens a lot when I type the letter ‘i’ as this keyboard is a little small)). Anyway work was shitty because everyone went on holiday. This is usually a sign to kick back and surf the net, but not for me as it left me ‘in charge’. I don’t mean in a nominal sense, I unfortunately mean in a ‘questions from the CE and MD’ kind of in charge. What made it worse was not only did my boss disappear on July 31st, but so did the recruitment manager (my old job, for those paying attention to such things), so not only did I have my job to do, but I had not one but two others as well. Even better was this was in the eight or so working days up to the Obon holiday, not traditionally a time for the faeces to hit the fan (much, if at all. Any way I can make that more ironic?). And now, just to add insult to injury, their returns may well be delayed due to all the nonsense going on the UK with the airports and the terror and whatnot, so my ‘one day back in the office to handover’ on the 16th, before my holiday starts, may well also be delayed (like f*ck will it, even though I have nothing more planned than a trip to the outlaws, if the MD tries to stop me by as much as a day then an invoice for an extremely expensive flight to the UK for the 17th for the whole family will mysteriously appear (I didn’t work closely with all those airlines for nothing)).
The second thing was that on the final day of term, before the Obon holiday started, I had to go and get drunk, as is traditional at these times. So chalk off the middle of last week as it now takes me a day and a half to recover from these things.
Then, on Friday, I had an appointment with death.
But that was after I had my annual health check up. This went quite smoothly though again, as I wrote about last year (or maybe the year before that) I think the scales they use are slightly dodgy. Or they’re just plain wrong. But this year I fear they are even wronger as they seemed to indicate that my lithe and svelte look was nothing of the sort and 3 kilos (or 6 pounds in old money) had appeared upon my person from somewhere. I know what you’re thinking but no, it was either the wrong scales or the nurse had her foot on the back of the scales as well as yours truly. However being a realist I realised that diet or amputation is the only real way forward from here, I will let you know which it is in due course.
That was Friday morning and then, in the afternoon, I had the aforementioned appointment with death. Now you may think I am over-dramatising here, but I can think of them in no other way. I mean, they take pleasure in the pain and torment of others (just like death). They smile far too much (just like death). The first two letters of their profession are d-e- (just like death). And they are evil (ok, not like death, but I’ve got to try and keep the analogy going). So, if you haven’t already guessed from my obtuse prose, I had to go to the dentist.
I have not had a particularly relationship with dentists. The first one, when we lived in Somerset, was fine as I was too young to know any different and he didn’t inflict years of unwavering pain upon me. Unlike the right bastard who ‘looked after’ me when we lived in Hampshire. His name was Dr Yoong (de Sade), a gentleman of (possibly) Singaporean descent who tortured me for about three or four years whilst at secondary school by fitting me with a brace – the split level ‘train tracks’ variety, which meant monthly visits to his chamber (the inaptly named ‘Health House’) whereby he would tighten the ****ing thing with pliers, electric screwdrivers, crowbars and anything else he could lay his hands on. But that, actually, wasn’t the worst of it. Because my jaw and/or mouth is too small (ironic, for those who’ve met me) I had to have four teeth taken out. Four healthy, living, well attached to my jaw teeth. It was the anaesthetic that really got me. On the chair, oriental gentleman say ‘relax, this may hurt a little’ (as if you can relax when someone tells you, a 13 yr old, it is going to hurt!) and then watching a needle about 8 feet long and 2 feet wide (the joys of perspective) being lowered slowly and then the excruciating agony of this needle being poked directly into my gums and the roof of my mouth. Of course his knee on my chest as he tried to prise the healthy teeth from the living bone of my jaw didn’t help much either. I’m wincing as I write this now – time does not heal all wounds, not by a long ****ing chalk.
Once I had the thing off my teeth that was it for me and dentists. I was lucky in that my teeth never actually hurt so I had no reason to go back. Well, except when a bit fell off one of my teeth whilst we were living in Brixton a few years back. At that moment I thought it prudent to go and see another one, all of about 15 years since I had last set foot in a surgery. This time it wasn’t a Singaporean gentleman but one from central Europe, Czechoslovakia perhaps. Anyway he looked at my back tooth, from whence the bit had fallen off, and said ‘hmm, yes, it vill haff to come out, but maybe today, maybe tomorrow, who knows? But it vill be tricky as it is right at za back, you know…’ Which of course I did know as I could feel it. But, happy that he was so non-committal, I figured that maybe later was good enough for me and never went back to him (or his surgery which, I swear, had a Dickensian air about it – dimly lit, musty smell, peeling wallpaper...ok, it had a Rising Damp air about it).
Into the present and I suspect you are wondering why I eventually gathered up the courage to go. Well, mainly it was because I discovered that dental was actually included on our insurance policy so I wouldn’t have to pay for it, and secondly the Guru had been going and the bloke didn’t sound like a complete, evil bastard (as dentists go). Indeed he seemed something of a gaijin-ophile and was always asking the Guru about her foreign husband. But of course I was wary, not only for the reasons stated above, but also because the Japanese, as a nation, seem to have bloody awful teeth (better, I suppose, than awfully bloody teeth). Mouths full of gold and/or other substances or, more commonly mouths half full of black teeth, or, not uncommonly, mouths full of nothing at all. Doesn’t fill you with confidence, that. Theories are put forward like lack of calcium in the diet from an early age (also blamed for higher levels of osteoporosis) or a lack of fluoride in the water system, but I personally blame dentists as I figure it is a plot by them to stay in business (like garage mechanics, they’re never going to completely fix everything, now are they, as then you might not need to come back).
So I knew I had to go, even though I still had no pain from my teeth, and so last Friday was deemed D-day. So we go in and the place is jolly swish, no Dickensian/Rising Damp here. Importantly everything looked new, shiny and professional. And, far more importantly, the nurses looked pretty – a far more important consideration if you are about to have pain inflicted upon you. First up was a quick sit in the chair, which had a pleasantly space-age feel about it, including a computer monitor attached showing scuba diving pictures (‘probably feed my remains to his fish’ was my thought). Then it was an x-ray. At the Health house this had taken weeks to do and probably involved pain, but this was just ‘stand here; chin here; bite this; don’t move; whirr; done’. Cool, then, as I sat back down in the space chair my x-ray came up on the screen! (Apologies if this isn’t hi-tech at all and is now common across dentists world wide – it has been 20 years, after all).
And yes, he confirmed that top-right-back was indeed rotten and would need to be pulled out, the sooner the better (I could have told him that... I did tell him that on the beloved Japanese pre-action questionnaire!). But top-left-back, which I thought in a similar condition, actually wasn’t too bad. But the worst bit was back-right-bottom; I’ve always though this one was a bit odd, but the x-ray showed that whilst healthy, it is at completely the wrong angle. Teeth should all be in a nice neat line with the roots pointing down and crown pointing up. This tooth, whilst in a neat line, has its root pointing out the back of my head and the crown at ninety degrees growing into the next tooth. Bugger.
So the doc said that top-right-back needed to come out right away and would be a cinch, 5 minutes at most (what was in Czech dentist said again?), but bottom-right-back needed to come out as well but this would be hard because of the angle and the fact that it is still healthy – he even sucked in his breath through his teeth when he said it...
And then we did the rotten top-right-back. Now if you remember it was the anaesthetic that caused me most issue when I was a kid and I was expecting more of the same. Indeed the new style syringe looked a bit like a hot glue gun you used to get, so I wasn’t holding out much hope, but when he did the business I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t, for want of a better expression, feel even a slight prick. Wow. And the old style used to make the whole side of my face go numb, but this one was pretty localised around the tooth in question – in fact I began to worry that the anaesthesia had worn off as I could feel the outside of my cheek, but when I gave the gum a surreptitious poke with my finger, no feeling was to be had. Wow again.
Then, in order for the numbness to take full effect, I was put into the hands of a nurse with very pretty eyes who had the undoubted pleasure of cleaning 20 years of tartar of the backs of my teeth, lucky her. So caked on was it that she only had time to do the bottom row before the Doc called me back. With trepidation I settled back into the space chair and let him do his thing. And true to his word, in less than 5 minutes and with barely a sustained tug, the offending peg was in his hand and I didn’t feel a thing. Wow for a third time. And that, rather anti-climactically, was it.
He was relived as he could tell I was sooo stressed about the whole thing, whilst I was full of admiration for his technique – or whoever invented to the new anaesthetic thing. I still have to go back for a bit or remedial work, and the tricky bottom-right-back, which could, literally, be a pain. But overall a little bit of faith has been restored in the dentisting profession, and by a Japanese dentist to boot.
A little was then lost when I found out I was banned from alcohol for the evening to prevent infection, or something. Nice of him to tell me that after the procedure.
So no post for a while, but I reckon you spotted that already.
The reason behind this is two fold, or possibly three- or four-fold, it depends on how many I can think of whilst typing between here and when I get there, or something. Anyway the main reason was work (and, totally unrelated, here’s a point about ms word – when you misspell a word, for example leave a letter out, it tells you, but why, when you add a number into a word by accident, such as behi9nd, it doesn’t? (and that happens a lot when I type the letter ‘i’ as this keyboard is a little small)). Anyway work was shitty because everyone went on holiday. This is usually a sign to kick back and surf the net, but not for me as it left me ‘in charge’. I don’t mean in a nominal sense, I unfortunately mean in a ‘questions from the CE and MD’ kind of in charge. What made it worse was not only did my boss disappear on July 31st, but so did the recruitment manager (my old job, for those paying attention to such things), so not only did I have my job to do, but I had not one but two others as well. Even better was this was in the eight or so working days up to the Obon holiday, not traditionally a time for the faeces to hit the fan (much, if at all. Any way I can make that more ironic?). And now, just to add insult to injury, their returns may well be delayed due to all the nonsense going on the UK with the airports and the terror and whatnot, so my ‘one day back in the office to handover’ on the 16th, before my holiday starts, may well also be delayed (like f*ck will it, even though I have nothing more planned than a trip to the outlaws, if the MD tries to stop me by as much as a day then an invoice for an extremely expensive flight to the UK for the 17th for the whole family will mysteriously appear (I didn’t work closely with all those airlines for nothing)).
The second thing was that on the final day of term, before the Obon holiday started, I had to go and get drunk, as is traditional at these times. So chalk off the middle of last week as it now takes me a day and a half to recover from these things.
Then, on Friday, I had an appointment with death.
But that was after I had my annual health check up. This went quite smoothly though again, as I wrote about last year (or maybe the year before that) I think the scales they use are slightly dodgy. Or they’re just plain wrong. But this year I fear they are even wronger as they seemed to indicate that my lithe and svelte look was nothing of the sort and 3 kilos (or 6 pounds in old money) had appeared upon my person from somewhere. I know what you’re thinking but no, it was either the wrong scales or the nurse had her foot on the back of the scales as well as yours truly. However being a realist I realised that diet or amputation is the only real way forward from here, I will let you know which it is in due course.
That was Friday morning and then, in the afternoon, I had the aforementioned appointment with death. Now you may think I am over-dramatising here, but I can think of them in no other way. I mean, they take pleasure in the pain and torment of others (just like death). They smile far too much (just like death). The first two letters of their profession are d-e- (just like death). And they are evil (ok, not like death, but I’ve got to try and keep the analogy going). So, if you haven’t already guessed from my obtuse prose, I had to go to the dentist.
I have not had a particularly relationship with dentists. The first one, when we lived in Somerset, was fine as I was too young to know any different and he didn’t inflict years of unwavering pain upon me. Unlike the right bastard who ‘looked after’ me when we lived in Hampshire. His name was Dr Yoong (de Sade), a gentleman of (possibly) Singaporean descent who tortured me for about three or four years whilst at secondary school by fitting me with a brace – the split level ‘train tracks’ variety, which meant monthly visits to his chamber (the inaptly named ‘Health House’) whereby he would tighten the ****ing thing with pliers, electric screwdrivers, crowbars and anything else he could lay his hands on. But that, actually, wasn’t the worst of it. Because my jaw and/or mouth is too small (ironic, for those who’ve met me) I had to have four teeth taken out. Four healthy, living, well attached to my jaw teeth. It was the anaesthetic that really got me. On the chair, oriental gentleman say ‘relax, this may hurt a little’ (as if you can relax when someone tells you, a 13 yr old, it is going to hurt!) and then watching a needle about 8 feet long and 2 feet wide (the joys of perspective) being lowered slowly and then the excruciating agony of this needle being poked directly into my gums and the roof of my mouth. Of course his knee on my chest as he tried to prise the healthy teeth from the living bone of my jaw didn’t help much either. I’m wincing as I write this now – time does not heal all wounds, not by a long ****ing chalk.
Once I had the thing off my teeth that was it for me and dentists. I was lucky in that my teeth never actually hurt so I had no reason to go back. Well, except when a bit fell off one of my teeth whilst we were living in Brixton a few years back. At that moment I thought it prudent to go and see another one, all of about 15 years since I had last set foot in a surgery. This time it wasn’t a Singaporean gentleman but one from central Europe, Czechoslovakia perhaps. Anyway he looked at my back tooth, from whence the bit had fallen off, and said ‘hmm, yes, it vill haff to come out, but maybe today, maybe tomorrow, who knows? But it vill be tricky as it is right at za back, you know…’ Which of course I did know as I could feel it. But, happy that he was so non-committal, I figured that maybe later was good enough for me and never went back to him (or his surgery which, I swear, had a Dickensian air about it – dimly lit, musty smell, peeling wallpaper...ok, it had a Rising Damp air about it).
Into the present and I suspect you are wondering why I eventually gathered up the courage to go. Well, mainly it was because I discovered that dental was actually included on our insurance policy so I wouldn’t have to pay for it, and secondly the Guru had been going and the bloke didn’t sound like a complete, evil bastard (as dentists go). Indeed he seemed something of a gaijin-ophile and was always asking the Guru about her foreign husband. But of course I was wary, not only for the reasons stated above, but also because the Japanese, as a nation, seem to have bloody awful teeth (better, I suppose, than awfully bloody teeth). Mouths full of gold and/or other substances or, more commonly mouths half full of black teeth, or, not uncommonly, mouths full of nothing at all. Doesn’t fill you with confidence, that. Theories are put forward like lack of calcium in the diet from an early age (also blamed for higher levels of osteoporosis) or a lack of fluoride in the water system, but I personally blame dentists as I figure it is a plot by them to stay in business (like garage mechanics, they’re never going to completely fix everything, now are they, as then you might not need to come back).
So I knew I had to go, even though I still had no pain from my teeth, and so last Friday was deemed D-day. So we go in and the place is jolly swish, no Dickensian/Rising Damp here. Importantly everything looked new, shiny and professional. And, far more importantly, the nurses looked pretty – a far more important consideration if you are about to have pain inflicted upon you. First up was a quick sit in the chair, which had a pleasantly space-age feel about it, including a computer monitor attached showing scuba diving pictures (‘probably feed my remains to his fish’ was my thought). Then it was an x-ray. At the Health house this had taken weeks to do and probably involved pain, but this was just ‘stand here; chin here; bite this; don’t move; whirr; done’. Cool, then, as I sat back down in the space chair my x-ray came up on the screen! (Apologies if this isn’t hi-tech at all and is now common across dentists world wide – it has been 20 years, after all).
And yes, he confirmed that top-right-back was indeed rotten and would need to be pulled out, the sooner the better (I could have told him that... I did tell him that on the beloved Japanese pre-action questionnaire!). But top-left-back, which I thought in a similar condition, actually wasn’t too bad. But the worst bit was back-right-bottom; I’ve always though this one was a bit odd, but the x-ray showed that whilst healthy, it is at completely the wrong angle. Teeth should all be in a nice neat line with the roots pointing down and crown pointing up. This tooth, whilst in a neat line, has its root pointing out the back of my head and the crown at ninety degrees growing into the next tooth. Bugger.
So the doc said that top-right-back needed to come out right away and would be a cinch, 5 minutes at most (what was in Czech dentist said again?), but bottom-right-back needed to come out as well but this would be hard because of the angle and the fact that it is still healthy – he even sucked in his breath through his teeth when he said it...
And then we did the rotten top-right-back. Now if you remember it was the anaesthetic that caused me most issue when I was a kid and I was expecting more of the same. Indeed the new style syringe looked a bit like a hot glue gun you used to get, so I wasn’t holding out much hope, but when he did the business I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t, for want of a better expression, feel even a slight prick. Wow. And the old style used to make the whole side of my face go numb, but this one was pretty localised around the tooth in question – in fact I began to worry that the anaesthesia had worn off as I could feel the outside of my cheek, but when I gave the gum a surreptitious poke with my finger, no feeling was to be had. Wow again.
Then, in order for the numbness to take full effect, I was put into the hands of a nurse with very pretty eyes who had the undoubted pleasure of cleaning 20 years of tartar of the backs of my teeth, lucky her. So caked on was it that she only had time to do the bottom row before the Doc called me back. With trepidation I settled back into the space chair and let him do his thing. And true to his word, in less than 5 minutes and with barely a sustained tug, the offending peg was in his hand and I didn’t feel a thing. Wow for a third time. And that, rather anti-climactically, was it.
He was relived as he could tell I was sooo stressed about the whole thing, whilst I was full of admiration for his technique – or whoever invented to the new anaesthetic thing. I still have to go back for a bit or remedial work, and the tricky bottom-right-back, which could, literally, be a pain. But overall a little bit of faith has been restored in the dentisting profession, and by a Japanese dentist to boot.
A little was then lost when I found out I was banned from alcohol for the evening to prevent infection, or something. Nice of him to tell me that after the procedure.
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