...then click
Saturday, 20 September 2003
couple of things
1. it is raining, apparently there is another typhoon coming - what is up with the weather?
2. Julian (big, golf playing brother) was made redundant this week - bad news but you still haven't told me what you want for your birthday
3. we had a magnitude 4 (out of 7) earthquake this morning, big enough to make me worried that the cupboard was going to fall over
4. have finished assignment number one - now I just have to rewrite it in line with suggestions made by the tutor. nearly done with it, only 3 more and a dissertation to go.
5. did you speak like a pirate yesterday...?
1. it is raining, apparently there is another typhoon coming - what is up with the weather?
2. Julian (big, golf playing brother) was made redundant this week - bad news but you still haven't told me what you want for your birthday
3. we had a magnitude 4 (out of 7) earthquake this morning, big enough to make me worried that the cupboard was going to fall over
4. have finished assignment number one - now I just have to rewrite it in line with suggestions made by the tutor. nearly done with it, only 3 more and a dissertation to go.
5. did you speak like a pirate yesterday...?
Wednesday, 17 September 2003
Mid week update...
This new comments thing is great as I get to respond.
So, my brother Julian (the golfer...need I go on?) posted a comment that I hadn't mentioned, in my last post, that he, father and a couple of other reprobates called me at 5am on saturday morning to wish me a happy birthday.
Well, I can certainly hold up my hand and admit this, the evidence is all (not) there for everyone (not) to see, as it were. But here's the thing, it is such a common occurence to be woken up at 5am by drunken louts in the UK (and now Europe) that it is scarcely worth mentioning anymore, only unusual or noteworthy stuff gets in here.
This is tempered by the fact that I was, apparently, being serenaded by a restaurant full of drunken locals as well - although, to be frank (ha ha), the serious charge of 'willingly fraternising with known Belgians' is now an issue that may well be brought against the bibulous quartet...
PS
Don't forget friends, 19th September - Talk Like a Pirate Day...aaaarrrhhh, me hearties!
This new comments thing is great as I get to respond.
So, my brother Julian (the golfer...need I go on?) posted a comment that I hadn't mentioned, in my last post, that he, father and a couple of other reprobates called me at 5am on saturday morning to wish me a happy birthday.
Well, I can certainly hold up my hand and admit this, the evidence is all (not) there for everyone (not) to see, as it were. But here's the thing, it is such a common occurence to be woken up at 5am by drunken louts in the UK (and now Europe) that it is scarcely worth mentioning anymore, only unusual or noteworthy stuff gets in here.
This is tempered by the fact that I was, apparently, being serenaded by a restaurant full of drunken locals as well - although, to be frank (ha ha), the serious charge of 'willingly fraternising with known Belgians' is now an issue that may well be brought against the bibulous quartet...
PS
Don't forget friends, 19th September - Talk Like a Pirate Day...aaaarrrhhh, me hearties!
Sunday, 14 September 2003
Bugger
If you remember back on 27th August I mentioned that I had planted a peach seed in order to grow a tree that had to grow as Minako said it wouldn't. Well...it didn't.
Spent a lot of today writing my assignment and did a whole section that includes graphs. This may not sound a lot to you, but it was something of an achievement for yours truly as it was my first time, which was tricky enough, and also was on a Japanese computer, which was exceedingly tricky as I was, at every moment, dicing with the very real problem of deleting everything at the touch of a kanji'd button. But i didn't, which was a triumph in itself. Am now confident that it will be done, it is just the quality of it all that is in question. Also, the hardest thing, the most annoyingly difficult aspect of the whole thing is trying to keep it down to 5000 words or thereabouts. It would be so easy to just let it roll on a little and suddenly marks are deducted for verbosity. Very hard.
Also had the first, faintest to glimpses of Mt Fuji today, away in the hazy distance. Through the cold months it can be seen almost everyday, but when it gets humid, hazy and polluted the poor lad disappears. So it is nice when we can see him again for the first time as it means the summer heat is on its way out (or rather it has been really windy for the last two days, which has moved the pollution out of the way, but that doesn't sound nearly as romantic, or optimisitc about getting rid of the summer weather). I refer to fuji as a chap, although now Minako isn't so sure if this is right or not. If it isn't apologies to the spirits etc. [which is a really smooth segue into]
a grave situation
But here's a weird thing that Minako and I were talking about yesterday. We were talking about funerals and graves. Strange, I know, but it started as a temple in Tokyo has defaulted on a loan and is now bankrupt, which means they are trying to sell it off so it can be demolished and apartments built on the site. Sad, but understandable. But no, a consortium of loclas are trying to buy it as they have their family graves on the site and don't want them demolished, again understandably so.
So anyway we were chatting, as you do, about family graves in Japan, as they are quite different from most westerners experience. What happens is that the head of the family, sometime in the past (or maybe now) buys what is essentially a large lump of granite with two holes in it. When members of the immediate family die, their ashes are placed in one hole, i the front, and long flat sticks with writing on are place in the hole in the top of the lump of stone (don't really know what they are, but everyone, as it were, gets one). Women who marry into the family get placed in their new families hole, and daughters go to their new family's grave. Now, as you can probably see coming, one grave, lots of generations, one rapidly filling hole.
And now a lot of the babies that were born in the pre-wwII baby boom are getting to the age where they are thinking about all of this. There was, apparently, a big Takase family conference about this a few years ago and it was decided that Koichi, Minako's brother and only son in this generation of the family, would take care of the grave. But already there are members of the family who are getting a little ansty as to whether their place in the grave is assured or not, because there is not much space left. Not having a grave to go to is unthinkable.
I thought that you could just clear a little space, I mean, they won't care, will they? But yes they will, for two reasons. Firstly, after a life of slog and toil, one wants, as in the western version of these things, to rest in peace. That includes staying in your family grave (especially if, I suspect, you were the one who paid for it). Second, and more importantly, when you go through life, the spirit of an ancestor is supposed to sit on your shoulder and do stuff for you, like protect you, bring good luck etc. So, annoy the ancestor sitting on your shoulder and there could, literally, be hell to pay.
Where this leaves us, who knows. Now Minako is out of the Takase family she is not entitled to a place in that grave - rather it is now my duty to provide a suitable resting place when the time comes - Arakawa River perhaps...?
This is not meant to be morbid, by the way, just it is so different from what goes on in the west that I find it really interesting. Also, it might end up like a Japanese episode of Eastenders, with every angry with everyone else because the family grave is full nad no-one wants to buy a new one (granite is expensive, after all).
Anyway, tomorrow is a national holiday, yaay, which means no work but more study. As with all national holidays, this one has a theme, it is respect for the aged day.
So, yo, like, respect, aged people!
PS
thanks to Steve for writing comments on the last posting - and people thought I was becomming negative about Japan!
If you remember back on 27th August I mentioned that I had planted a peach seed in order to grow a tree that had to grow as Minako said it wouldn't. Well...it didn't.
Spent a lot of today writing my assignment and did a whole section that includes graphs. This may not sound a lot to you, but it was something of an achievement for yours truly as it was my first time, which was tricky enough, and also was on a Japanese computer, which was exceedingly tricky as I was, at every moment, dicing with the very real problem of deleting everything at the touch of a kanji'd button. But i didn't, which was a triumph in itself. Am now confident that it will be done, it is just the quality of it all that is in question. Also, the hardest thing, the most annoyingly difficult aspect of the whole thing is trying to keep it down to 5000 words or thereabouts. It would be so easy to just let it roll on a little and suddenly marks are deducted for verbosity. Very hard.
Also had the first, faintest to glimpses of Mt Fuji today, away in the hazy distance. Through the cold months it can be seen almost everyday, but when it gets humid, hazy and polluted the poor lad disappears. So it is nice when we can see him again for the first time as it means the summer heat is on its way out (or rather it has been really windy for the last two days, which has moved the pollution out of the way, but that doesn't sound nearly as romantic, or optimisitc about getting rid of the summer weather). I refer to fuji as a chap, although now Minako isn't so sure if this is right or not. If it isn't apologies to the spirits etc. [which is a really smooth segue into]
a grave situation
But here's a weird thing that Minako and I were talking about yesterday. We were talking about funerals and graves. Strange, I know, but it started as a temple in Tokyo has defaulted on a loan and is now bankrupt, which means they are trying to sell it off so it can be demolished and apartments built on the site. Sad, but understandable. But no, a consortium of loclas are trying to buy it as they have their family graves on the site and don't want them demolished, again understandably so.
So anyway we were chatting, as you do, about family graves in Japan, as they are quite different from most westerners experience. What happens is that the head of the family, sometime in the past (or maybe now) buys what is essentially a large lump of granite with two holes in it. When members of the immediate family die, their ashes are placed in one hole, i the front, and long flat sticks with writing on are place in the hole in the top of the lump of stone (don't really know what they are, but everyone, as it were, gets one). Women who marry into the family get placed in their new families hole, and daughters go to their new family's grave. Now, as you can probably see coming, one grave, lots of generations, one rapidly filling hole.
And now a lot of the babies that were born in the pre-wwII baby boom are getting to the age where they are thinking about all of this. There was, apparently, a big Takase family conference about this a few years ago and it was decided that Koichi, Minako's brother and only son in this generation of the family, would take care of the grave. But already there are members of the family who are getting a little ansty as to whether their place in the grave is assured or not, because there is not much space left. Not having a grave to go to is unthinkable.
I thought that you could just clear a little space, I mean, they won't care, will they? But yes they will, for two reasons. Firstly, after a life of slog and toil, one wants, as in the western version of these things, to rest in peace. That includes staying in your family grave (especially if, I suspect, you were the one who paid for it). Second, and more importantly, when you go through life, the spirit of an ancestor is supposed to sit on your shoulder and do stuff for you, like protect you, bring good luck etc. So, annoy the ancestor sitting on your shoulder and there could, literally, be hell to pay.
Where this leaves us, who knows. Now Minako is out of the Takase family she is not entitled to a place in that grave - rather it is now my duty to provide a suitable resting place when the time comes - Arakawa River perhaps...?
This is not meant to be morbid, by the way, just it is so different from what goes on in the west that I find it really interesting. Also, it might end up like a Japanese episode of Eastenders, with every angry with everyone else because the family grave is full nad no-one wants to buy a new one (granite is expensive, after all).
Anyway, tomorrow is a national holiday, yaay, which means no work but more study. As with all national holidays, this one has a theme, it is respect for the aged day.
So, yo, like, respect, aged people!
PS
thanks to Steve for writing comments on the last posting - and people thought I was becomming negative about Japan!
Saturday, 13 September 2003
Teachers
Saw a great headline in the Yomiuri today which I just had to share with everyone...
289 Teachers found incompetent in FY2002; 3 fired
what saved the 286, that's what I want to know...?
Apparently some of the shortcomings of these incompetent teachers were listed thus: inability to converse with students [pretty serious], teachers making too many mistakes in mathematics and Kanji [I sympathise with this one] and, best of all, 'high school teachers who continued with lessons even after the entire class had left the room'. Fantastic!
In fairness, it wasn't just that three were fired, there was a much larger number of these 289 incompetent teachers who were reprimanded/punished first - 19.
And now, over to you...
rather than do any studying today, it is my birthday after all, I have been playing around with this and found a way to get a comments section attached. So, if you would like to comment on any of the postings I have made, please do. It seems that everone will have the opportunity to read them, but i reserve the right to veto any that I find too sensible.
Saw a great headline in the Yomiuri today which I just had to share with everyone...
289 Teachers found incompetent in FY2002; 3 fired
what saved the 286, that's what I want to know...?
Apparently some of the shortcomings of these incompetent teachers were listed thus: inability to converse with students [pretty serious], teachers making too many mistakes in mathematics and Kanji [I sympathise with this one] and, best of all, 'high school teachers who continued with lessons even after the entire class had left the room'. Fantastic!
In fairness, it wasn't just that three were fired, there was a much larger number of these 289 incompetent teachers who were reprimanded/punished first - 19.
And now, over to you...
rather than do any studying today, it is my birthday after all, I have been playing around with this and found a way to get a comments section attached. So, if you would like to comment on any of the postings I have made, please do. It seems that everone will have the opportunity to read them, but i reserve the right to veto any that I find too sensible.
Sunday, 7 September 2003
The MBA pt.2
Well at least that is all sorted out. It seem that I was in the right and the university was in the wrong, although the way I read the email, it is a jolly good thing for me that they've managed to sort it all out and I had better not do anything of a similar nature again or there could be trouble.
I don't know, all I did was exactly what they wanted me to do, except that I think my tutor received that bit of paper and didn't know what to do with it, so kept it, throwing the administrators into a lather of confusion, which they then ignored for five months. Anyway I have been allowed to continue with my present plan of submitting my first assignment at the end of September, which is good (and, let's face it, bad), apparently after my tutor put in a good word about my progress being sound - which is always nice to hear. Talking of progress, I have now written about 3000 words, most of which I am happy with. Actually, I have probably written about 10,000 words in total, but with rewriting etc, 3000 is about right.
There was also a load of books that they were meant to send me, but didn't, at the start of this module. Thus about 40 quid's worth of books were bought needlessly by me. I wish they had told me that they would provide books at the start of each module, but that would be too easy I guess. They also sent a guide to the first module, with extensive lists of useful articles and suggested assignment titles. Come to think of it, this whole business may have started whrn I sent my tutor an email in August asking for some guidance on assignment titles...
Ah to hell with it, I'm back on course for the submission deadline, and that is what counts I guess. One problem with this could be, of course, the...
Holiday
...whereby I will return to the UK to drink real beer for a fortnight. The potential problem being this. I submit the first assignment on 29th Sept (company paid for DHL to the UK - nice). Leicester then take 10 days to mark it. If it is total garbage, they then return it to me to be rewritten. But I will leave for the UK on October 11th and may well not realise that I have to rewrite it until I get home on the 27th, possibly leaving me 3 days to resubmit it. I suppose I could call my tutor whilst in England, or even go and visit, but I will be so busy with hiking, drinking Bluebird and beating the lads at darts that I'm not sure I will have time. Oh well, in the words of Ferris Bueller (or it could have been Tom Cruise's character in Risky Business, I can't remember) "Sometimes you just what to say, 'what the f*ck...'"
Back to the Holiday
Yup, that's right, I will be back to Blighty on October 11th, sans partner I'm afraid, as I get a free plane ticket home whereas Minako doesn't. The first week will be spent hiking in the Lakes with Woolhead, CryBaby and Court Shoes (unreal names used to protect the daft) and it is here that the earlier references to Bluebird (local lake district brew, a 'session beer', according to a very drunk Court Shoes one night in March 2002) and darts. Apparently the lads have been practising in my absence and now think they are pretty handy - good luck boys, not a hope.
Profound Thoughts
When one becomes a Blogger, one is opened to a whole new world. One gets to read other peoples blogs as you find them at the site which hosts yours. I have read quite a few blogs, done a bit of research, and have come to a startling conclusion. Other people have deep, profound and philosophical thoughts, that they write on their blogs to share with the rest of the world.
Wish I could do that.
Lastly today
My brother is a golfer.
This is a terrible thing to have to say about any member of one's family and a line I hoped that I would never have to write. But it appears to be true as his wife, Katharine, who can only be described as an accomplice to the act, bought him a set of golf clubs for his birthday (which was yesterday, happy birthday Julian).
Oh my goodness me. From our apartment overlooking the Arakawa river we can see a golf course I sometimes watch the punters wandering around hitting their little balls and I wonder, if I had a high velocity sniper's rifle...
Of course not, but this doesn't alter the fact that my brother plays golf. He'll be giving up his playstation next...
Well at least that is all sorted out. It seem that I was in the right and the university was in the wrong, although the way I read the email, it is a jolly good thing for me that they've managed to sort it all out and I had better not do anything of a similar nature again or there could be trouble.
I don't know, all I did was exactly what they wanted me to do, except that I think my tutor received that bit of paper and didn't know what to do with it, so kept it, throwing the administrators into a lather of confusion, which they then ignored for five months. Anyway I have been allowed to continue with my present plan of submitting my first assignment at the end of September, which is good (and, let's face it, bad), apparently after my tutor put in a good word about my progress being sound - which is always nice to hear. Talking of progress, I have now written about 3000 words, most of which I am happy with. Actually, I have probably written about 10,000 words in total, but with rewriting etc, 3000 is about right.
There was also a load of books that they were meant to send me, but didn't, at the start of this module. Thus about 40 quid's worth of books were bought needlessly by me. I wish they had told me that they would provide books at the start of each module, but that would be too easy I guess. They also sent a guide to the first module, with extensive lists of useful articles and suggested assignment titles. Come to think of it, this whole business may have started whrn I sent my tutor an email in August asking for some guidance on assignment titles...
Ah to hell with it, I'm back on course for the submission deadline, and that is what counts I guess. One problem with this could be, of course, the...
Holiday
...whereby I will return to the UK to drink real beer for a fortnight. The potential problem being this. I submit the first assignment on 29th Sept (company paid for DHL to the UK - nice). Leicester then take 10 days to mark it. If it is total garbage, they then return it to me to be rewritten. But I will leave for the UK on October 11th and may well not realise that I have to rewrite it until I get home on the 27th, possibly leaving me 3 days to resubmit it. I suppose I could call my tutor whilst in England, or even go and visit, but I will be so busy with hiking, drinking Bluebird and beating the lads at darts that I'm not sure I will have time. Oh well, in the words of Ferris Bueller (or it could have been Tom Cruise's character in Risky Business, I can't remember) "Sometimes you just what to say, 'what the f*ck...'"
Back to the Holiday
Yup, that's right, I will be back to Blighty on October 11th, sans partner I'm afraid, as I get a free plane ticket home whereas Minako doesn't. The first week will be spent hiking in the Lakes with Woolhead, CryBaby and Court Shoes (unreal names used to protect the daft) and it is here that the earlier references to Bluebird (local lake district brew, a 'session beer', according to a very drunk Court Shoes one night in March 2002) and darts. Apparently the lads have been practising in my absence and now think they are pretty handy - good luck boys, not a hope.
Profound Thoughts
When one becomes a Blogger, one is opened to a whole new world. One gets to read other peoples blogs as you find them at the site which hosts yours. I have read quite a few blogs, done a bit of research, and have come to a startling conclusion. Other people have deep, profound and philosophical thoughts, that they write on their blogs to share with the rest of the world.
Wish I could do that.
Lastly today
My brother is a golfer.
This is a terrible thing to have to say about any member of one's family and a line I hoped that I would never have to write. But it appears to be true as his wife, Katharine, who can only be described as an accomplice to the act, bought him a set of golf clubs for his birthday (which was yesterday, happy birthday Julian).
Oh my goodness me. From our apartment overlooking the Arakawa river we can see a golf course I sometimes watch the punters wandering around hitting their little balls and I wonder, if I had a high velocity sniper's rifle...
Of course not, but this doesn't alter the fact that my brother plays golf. He'll be giving up his playstation next...
Sunday, 31 August 2003
ahoy there, me hearties!
This has to be one of the best ideas to come out of America in years. September 19th this year is world Talk Like a Pirate Day. No really!
Check out the new link at the top right of the screen for all the details, then mark the day in your diary and tell everyone you know about it. Even Hollywood is getting in on the action with the Pirates of the Caribbean flick proving jolly popular this summer. I mean, what could be better than spending a whole day shivering timbers and splicing mainsails? Not much I reckon.
The MBA
Got a strange email from a lady by the name of Diane Atkinson last week. The general gist was 'thanks for signing up for the course, sseeing as it has now been five months, when are you going to choose what to study and then get going?'. And there was me thinking I had already started...Seems that a piece of paper stipulating which order I want to do the modules in didn't get through to Diane, the mba academic co-ordinator. So she thinks I haven't started yet. Also, they apparently were meant to send me a whole bunch of books when you start each module, but they don't tell you. So there was me, happily buying books from Amazon (and believe me, academic texts are not cheap) and getting down to study whilst the office sat there and wondered when I was going to start...for five months! If it was five weeks I could understand it, but to wait that long, thinking 'wow, this guy has just spent all this money and he's not doing anything, ain't that weird? Well, better let him get on with doing nothing I guess...' And all the while I'm in contact with my tutor, talking about courses and texts and assignments and the like. I makes me wonder. It also makes me wonder about my tutor, who had this document stating the order of the course but didn't pass it onto the academic office. It's enough to make you tear your hair out. Anyway, I am still looking at an end of September submission for my first piece, but they amy not not be expecting it until February. Doh!
And here's a weird thing that I've just remembered but is great. If you remember, back on August 3rd I was holding forth on the old Japanese calender vis-a-vis the western one, with its special days like eel day and the beginning of autumn being August 8th. Anyway, not only do the Japanese use this calender, but, like most things in Japan, why have one when three or four will do? So they also use the Chinese year system when evey year has an animal with it - 1972 year of the rat, that sort of thing. Now, the Japanese are a deeply superstitious people and this manifested itself marvellously in 1966. I was reading an article about the population decline in japan and looking at some of those population/demographic graphs that look like bells (maybe it is a bell graph, who knows? statistics are not my forte, as well you know) and there was a huge blip in 1966 when the birth rate dropped prodigously. 1965 and 1967 were fine, but '66 was a shocker, the reason being that it was year of the horse. "What's wrong with that?" was the question. Well, apparently, female babies born in the year of the horse are guaranteed to grow up as fiery and headstrong and will, and I am not making this up (but someone might be), go mad and murder their husbands. Again, no really.
So the birth rate dropped as couples avoided getting pregnant from early 1965 to mid 1966 to make sure they didn't give birth in that year. Weird. Women born in that year will now be 36, so the time is right for them all to start going off their rockers and chopping up their spouses. I can't wait to see the news reports for the next few years - will it become a defence in court? "Well, it wasn't my fault, blame my parents, they gave birth to me in 1966...". As with most things to do with children in Japan, this terrible fate only happened to girls, boys born in this year are fine, apparently, as boys in Japan can do no wrong (well apart from sexually abusing 4 year olds and then throwing them off the 7th floor of a multistory, but let's not go there).
And oddly enough , it only seem that 1966 was affected by this curse of going mad and killing your husband, subsequent years of the horse, though not really trusted, are much more acceptable in which to give birth, it seems. This was something to do with a third calender being in some sort of dodgy conjunction - being year of the horse you get the headstrong and willful thing (very un-Japanese for a lady) and also a Hinoe year, which is the fiery/husband mudering bit. Add them all together and you get a massive drop in birth. Odd that.
This has to be one of the best ideas to come out of America in years. September 19th this year is world Talk Like a Pirate Day. No really!
Check out the new link at the top right of the screen for all the details, then mark the day in your diary and tell everyone you know about it. Even Hollywood is getting in on the action with the Pirates of the Caribbean flick proving jolly popular this summer. I mean, what could be better than spending a whole day shivering timbers and splicing mainsails? Not much I reckon.
The MBA
Got a strange email from a lady by the name of Diane Atkinson last week. The general gist was 'thanks for signing up for the course, sseeing as it has now been five months, when are you going to choose what to study and then get going?'. And there was me thinking I had already started...Seems that a piece of paper stipulating which order I want to do the modules in didn't get through to Diane, the mba academic co-ordinator. So she thinks I haven't started yet. Also, they apparently were meant to send me a whole bunch of books when you start each module, but they don't tell you. So there was me, happily buying books from Amazon (and believe me, academic texts are not cheap) and getting down to study whilst the office sat there and wondered when I was going to start...for five months! If it was five weeks I could understand it, but to wait that long, thinking 'wow, this guy has just spent all this money and he's not doing anything, ain't that weird? Well, better let him get on with doing nothing I guess...' And all the while I'm in contact with my tutor, talking about courses and texts and assignments and the like. I makes me wonder. It also makes me wonder about my tutor, who had this document stating the order of the course but didn't pass it onto the academic office. It's enough to make you tear your hair out. Anyway, I am still looking at an end of September submission for my first piece, but they amy not not be expecting it until February. Doh!
And here's a weird thing that I've just remembered but is great. If you remember, back on August 3rd I was holding forth on the old Japanese calender vis-a-vis the western one, with its special days like eel day and the beginning of autumn being August 8th. Anyway, not only do the Japanese use this calender, but, like most things in Japan, why have one when three or four will do? So they also use the Chinese year system when evey year has an animal with it - 1972 year of the rat, that sort of thing. Now, the Japanese are a deeply superstitious people and this manifested itself marvellously in 1966. I was reading an article about the population decline in japan and looking at some of those population/demographic graphs that look like bells (maybe it is a bell graph, who knows? statistics are not my forte, as well you know) and there was a huge blip in 1966 when the birth rate dropped prodigously. 1965 and 1967 were fine, but '66 was a shocker, the reason being that it was year of the horse. "What's wrong with that?" was the question. Well, apparently, female babies born in the year of the horse are guaranteed to grow up as fiery and headstrong and will, and I am not making this up (but someone might be), go mad and murder their husbands. Again, no really.
So the birth rate dropped as couples avoided getting pregnant from early 1965 to mid 1966 to make sure they didn't give birth in that year. Weird. Women born in that year will now be 36, so the time is right for them all to start going off their rockers and chopping up their spouses. I can't wait to see the news reports for the next few years - will it become a defence in court? "Well, it wasn't my fault, blame my parents, they gave birth to me in 1966...". As with most things to do with children in Japan, this terrible fate only happened to girls, boys born in this year are fine, apparently, as boys in Japan can do no wrong (well apart from sexually abusing 4 year olds and then throwing them off the 7th floor of a multistory, but let's not go there).
And oddly enough , it only seem that 1966 was affected by this curse of going mad and killing your husband, subsequent years of the horse, though not really trusted, are much more acceptable in which to give birth, it seems. This was something to do with a third calender being in some sort of dodgy conjunction - being year of the horse you get the headstrong and willful thing (very un-Japanese for a lady) and also a Hinoe year, which is the fiery/husband mudering bit. Add them all together and you get a massive drop in birth. Odd that.
Wednesday, 27 August 2003
just checking in
haven't written anything for a while, so just thought i'd drop everyone a line to say we are still alive over here. it has been a slow couple of weeks for news stories that i can comment on, but a rapid few weeks in terms of work to do and assignments to worry about.
minako's birthday was yesterday, so i'm sure evryone will join me in wishing her a jolly happy day and all that. naturally i was meant to finish work early and meet up so we could do romantic things like go to a concert, but of course i didn't get out until an hour and a half after i was meant to finish and missed everything, oops, but it wasn't really my fault, honest. so anyway we are off to dinner on saturday evening in ebisu, which should be most pleasant.
summer has almost gone, which is good because it means the fantasy football season has stated all over again. check out the CoB website link for all the latest happeneings, but suffice it to say Arakawa Athletic, proudly sponsored by this very blog, is in pole position after the first couple of weeks - long may it continue.
and that is it, except to say all the croiander is dead, last time i try and grow that nonsense herb, but the basil is marvellous and is being regularly consumed by yours truly, the lavender looks quite pukka and the rosemary is still alive. i have also planted a peach tree seed, and this must grow and thrive, mainly because minako has said it won't...
haven't written anything for a while, so just thought i'd drop everyone a line to say we are still alive over here. it has been a slow couple of weeks for news stories that i can comment on, but a rapid few weeks in terms of work to do and assignments to worry about.
minako's birthday was yesterday, so i'm sure evryone will join me in wishing her a jolly happy day and all that. naturally i was meant to finish work early and meet up so we could do romantic things like go to a concert, but of course i didn't get out until an hour and a half after i was meant to finish and missed everything, oops, but it wasn't really my fault, honest. so anyway we are off to dinner on saturday evening in ebisu, which should be most pleasant.
summer has almost gone, which is good because it means the fantasy football season has stated all over again. check out the CoB website link for all the latest happeneings, but suffice it to say Arakawa Athletic, proudly sponsored by this very blog, is in pole position after the first couple of weeks - long may it continue.
and that is it, except to say all the croiander is dead, last time i try and grow that nonsense herb, but the basil is marvellous and is being regularly consumed by yours truly, the lavender looks quite pukka and the rosemary is still alive. i have also planted a peach tree seed, and this must grow and thrive, mainly because minako has said it won't...
Friday, 15 August 2003
Oh Please...
As if anyone had any doubts left about the recent war in Iraq and motives of Bush and Blair, the newest search and destroy Saddam Hussein mission is code named Operation Ivy Lightning...
So next time Bush is asked if O.I.L is the motivation for being in Iraq, well, yes, he can say, and maybe even keep a straight face as he does it.
Go have a look atABCNews for the news story.
As if anyone had any doubts left about the recent war in Iraq and motives of Bush and Blair, the newest search and destroy Saddam Hussein mission is code named Operation Ivy Lightning...
So next time Bush is asked if O.I.L is the motivation for being in Iraq, well, yes, he can say, and maybe even keep a straight face as he does it.
Go have a look at
the working week
This week has been a holiday for me. Yes, the office has been closed - well, closed as far as I'm concerned - and I have been able to sit at home...and study. All week, no respite. At it hammer and tongs with Tony bush, Jacky Lumby and Keith Foreman, household names none and all. They do, however, write textbooks on educational management which are mostly dry but sometimes quite interesting. The deadline for this assignmant is getting closer and closer but, after a week of study and numerous emails to my tutor, who is now back after a month swanning around on a real holiday, I think I am a little closer to a title. The rest is easy...
Except I made the profound and sadly irreversible mistake on Wednesday afternoon of reading a chapter in my Research Methods text about 'analysing quantitative data'. Quantitative data, for those not in the know, is stuff you can count, hence the root 'quantity', as opposed to qualitative data, which is stuff you can't count and therefore have to think about. Anyway, I thought that, at age 16, I had left equations and numbers-with-letters-added-as-well behind in Calthorpe Park, never to return again. Oh boy was I wrong - I've just discovered that things called 'statistics' exist (in a real, 'I've to confront them' sort of sense, I've always known about statistics in the useful 'statistically speaking, BMW owners wash their cars more than other car owners' sort of sense) and that they are quite important for doing things like proving your research is accurate, or even that it is research at all, rather than some jolly ideas you've been having.
What made the really wry smile (soon followed by much swearing) was that this was classed as 'an introduction' to the 'basics of statistics'. Oh yes, that's right, the basics...Actually, they probably are just the basics and I am in for an extravagantly shit time. I could follow the calculations for their Chi-square, but I didn't really see how that then proved whatever it was they were trying to prove. It says something like 'the calculated figure 4.68 passes the significant critical mass of nuclear reactor number 1, proving that the number of children observed reading books wasn't down to chance and/or community chest unless they have 2 degrees of freedom in 1% of insignificant research' - or something like that. I intimated something like this to my tutor, perhaps without so much detail, and she suggested that maybe a reliance on qualitative data could well be more suited to my research focus. Thank f**k.
Moving on, it has been suggested by one of the regular readership of this nonsense that there has been little in the way of information regarding the good lady wife, and had I, not to put too fine a point on it, murdered her and buried her under the patio? Well rest assured this is not so as we live on the 7th floor and the patio would in effect be the balcony and even I realise that if I dumped a body on the downstairs balcony, people would talk. So I threw her in the river instead...
Not at all, true, Minako is alive and well and currently sleeping on the sofa about 2 metres to my left. Poor thing is tired and shagged out after accompianing me to the doctor's today for my obligatory annual medical (clean bill of health, except their instruments were faulty as they seemed to indicate my body fat percentage was slightly above normal, how odd...). As a lady of leisure she doesn't have to move around too much, so an unscheduled trip to the docs can be very tiring, I suspect. Other than that, not much to report - you see, this is why there hasn't been much mention of her as there isn't a lot to mention - anyway, I will keep everyone posted with events if and when they arise.
Lastly, it is raining here again. Typhoon number 10 last weekend meant it was raining for the whole weekend and whilst sunday, monday and tuesday were quite pleasant, it has been raining since wednesday afternoon and will continue until sunday apparently. Still, better weather in which to attempt to study statistics I guess, statistically speaking.
This week has been a holiday for me. Yes, the office has been closed - well, closed as far as I'm concerned - and I have been able to sit at home...and study. All week, no respite. At it hammer and tongs with Tony bush, Jacky Lumby and Keith Foreman, household names none and all. They do, however, write textbooks on educational management which are mostly dry but sometimes quite interesting. The deadline for this assignmant is getting closer and closer but, after a week of study and numerous emails to my tutor, who is now back after a month swanning around on a real holiday, I think I am a little closer to a title. The rest is easy...
Except I made the profound and sadly irreversible mistake on Wednesday afternoon of reading a chapter in my Research Methods text about 'analysing quantitative data'. Quantitative data, for those not in the know, is stuff you can count, hence the root 'quantity', as opposed to qualitative data, which is stuff you can't count and therefore have to think about. Anyway, I thought that, at age 16, I had left equations and numbers-with-letters-added-as-well behind in Calthorpe Park, never to return again. Oh boy was I wrong - I've just discovered that things called 'statistics' exist (in a real, 'I've to confront them' sort of sense, I've always known about statistics in the useful 'statistically speaking, BMW owners wash their cars more than other car owners' sort of sense) and that they are quite important for doing things like proving your research is accurate, or even that it is research at all, rather than some jolly ideas you've been having.
What made the really wry smile (soon followed by much swearing) was that this was classed as 'an introduction' to the 'basics of statistics'. Oh yes, that's right, the basics...Actually, they probably are just the basics and I am in for an extravagantly shit time. I could follow the calculations for their Chi-square, but I didn't really see how that then proved whatever it was they were trying to prove. It says something like 'the calculated figure 4.68 passes the significant critical mass of nuclear reactor number 1, proving that the number of children observed reading books wasn't down to chance and/or community chest unless they have 2 degrees of freedom in 1% of insignificant research' - or something like that. I intimated something like this to my tutor, perhaps without so much detail, and she suggested that maybe a reliance on qualitative data could well be more suited to my research focus. Thank f**k.
Moving on, it has been suggested by one of the regular readership of this nonsense that there has been little in the way of information regarding the good lady wife, and had I, not to put too fine a point on it, murdered her and buried her under the patio? Well rest assured this is not so as we live on the 7th floor and the patio would in effect be the balcony and even I realise that if I dumped a body on the downstairs balcony, people would talk. So I threw her in the river instead...
Not at all, true, Minako is alive and well and currently sleeping on the sofa about 2 metres to my left. Poor thing is tired and shagged out after accompianing me to the doctor's today for my obligatory annual medical (clean bill of health, except their instruments were faulty as they seemed to indicate my body fat percentage was slightly above normal, how odd...). As a lady of leisure she doesn't have to move around too much, so an unscheduled trip to the docs can be very tiring, I suspect. Other than that, not much to report - you see, this is why there hasn't been much mention of her as there isn't a lot to mention - anyway, I will keep everyone posted with events if and when they arise.
Lastly, it is raining here again. Typhoon number 10 last weekend meant it was raining for the whole weekend and whilst sunday, monday and tuesday were quite pleasant, it has been raining since wednesday afternoon and will continue until sunday apparently. Still, better weather in which to attempt to study statistics I guess, statistically speaking.
Wednesday, 6 August 2003
back to the plants
What am I doing to this poor coriander? Now the Percy Thrower stuff is dying as well! It's getting plenty of sunshine, plenty of shade, plenty of water and plenty of loving care and attention with a good regular talking to - and what do I get in return? Well... not a lot really is the only way to answer that one.
And some little bugs are eating half of my basil! The stuff that I transplanted to the big pot and that we ate some of recently has been attacked by some voracious little bugger that is eating all the new growth. This, coupled with my gardening assistant's patent lack of ability in the please-go-to-the-garden-shop-and-buy-some-bug-killer stakes, is making life decidedly risked for the herbacious [spelt wrongly I suspect] borders of my balcony.
At least the lavender and olive tree are doing well. I am still undecided about the rosemary. It isn't dead, but it doesn't seem to be doing an awful lot. Then again, it looks healthy in itself, perhaps it is just biding its time.
Other than that I'm just really panicking about my MBA...
What am I doing to this poor coriander? Now the Percy Thrower stuff is dying as well! It's getting plenty of sunshine, plenty of shade, plenty of water and plenty of loving care and attention with a good regular talking to - and what do I get in return? Well... not a lot really is the only way to answer that one.
And some little bugs are eating half of my basil! The stuff that I transplanted to the big pot and that we ate some of recently has been attacked by some voracious little bugger that is eating all the new growth. This, coupled with my gardening assistant's patent lack of ability in the please-go-to-the-garden-shop-and-buy-some-bug-killer stakes, is making life decidedly risked for the herbacious [spelt wrongly I suspect] borders of my balcony.
At least the lavender and olive tree are doing well. I am still undecided about the rosemary. It isn't dead, but it doesn't seem to be doing an awful lot. Then again, it looks healthy in itself, perhaps it is just biding its time.
Other than that I'm just really panicking about my MBA...
Sunday, 3 August 2003
...summer's here and the time is riiiight, for sweating in the streeet....
It is hot today. In fact it has been hot and really quite sunny for the past couple of days now. Yeah! The rainy season is over, with its dull, monotonous grey skies and unpleasant humid rain. Now summer is here we can sit around and complain about how hot it is - makes a change from complaining about wet it is. Anyway, I personally think it is a great improvement.
According to the paper today, the 'Official' end to the rainy season for Tokyo was announced by the Met office on Saturday 2nd August. This was 13 days later than last year and only the third time since records began that the rainy season lasted into August (though not hard as official announcements date from the 1950s). The rainy season this year lasted for 54 days, which by anyone's reckoning is pretty long. So now it is 31 degrees, sunny with 47% humidity (which is quite low really).
Another thing the article said in the paper, was that there is an internal rule at the Met offoce which states that the end of the rainy season must be announced before the official start of Autumn. All well and good, I hear you say. Well yes, except the official start of Autumn is August 8th...
I find this strange as the 30+degree days will last well into September and Autumn - red leaves, crisp mornings etc - is a wish away in Novemeber at least. So what is going on? Well, it is all to do with the old Japanese calender.
Japan adopted the Gregorian Calender, like the rest of the world. But I don't think they really trust it and so kind of acknowledge its existence to the rest of the world, play along with it, but really follow the old Japanese one because, well, it is more Japanese for a start. So you get all these weird things like the start of Autumn is August 8th, palpably not Autumn in the slightest. Then you get special food days. July 27th was Eel day, and all the supermarkets had huge displays of Eel for sale - and the even better thing was that far from pushing up the price on this one day to take advantage, the Eel everywhere was really really cheap. A loss leader, maybe, but good news all the same. This kind of thing also accounts for the 'auspicious' days on which to get married - and conversely there are really bad days to get married as well. Apparently this all comes from the days when Japan was a much more agrarian place and the year was shaped by the seasons (don't even bother trying to tell a Japanese farmer this is the same all over the world - they will not believe you) and therefore the day autumn started was important for rice growing, or eel catching, or perhaps something else. As a result all Japanese have grown up using this calander and not really bothering with the western one. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the Gregorian calender was foisted upon the Japanese by the Americans after their defeat in WW2 and the top brass said something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, a calender, fine, whatever" whilst the average chap in what was left of the street said, "okay, will it tell me when Eel Day is? No, well I don't really think I'll be using it too much then. I have to!? Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever".
Unfortunately the newspapaer article did not say what would happen if the rainy season didn't end before August 8th. Would they declare it over even if it wasn't? Wouldn't this confuse a lot of farmers? Who knows?
Anyway, I'm off to check my Japanese diary as I have a strong suspicion that Sunday 3rd August may well be beer and yakitori day...
It is hot today. In fact it has been hot and really quite sunny for the past couple of days now. Yeah! The rainy season is over, with its dull, monotonous grey skies and unpleasant humid rain. Now summer is here we can sit around and complain about how hot it is - makes a change from complaining about wet it is. Anyway, I personally think it is a great improvement.
According to the paper today, the 'Official' end to the rainy season for Tokyo was announced by the Met office on Saturday 2nd August. This was 13 days later than last year and only the third time since records began that the rainy season lasted into August (though not hard as official announcements date from the 1950s). The rainy season this year lasted for 54 days, which by anyone's reckoning is pretty long. So now it is 31 degrees, sunny with 47% humidity (which is quite low really).
Another thing the article said in the paper, was that there is an internal rule at the Met offoce which states that the end of the rainy season must be announced before the official start of Autumn. All well and good, I hear you say. Well yes, except the official start of Autumn is August 8th...
I find this strange as the 30+degree days will last well into September and Autumn - red leaves, crisp mornings etc - is a wish away in Novemeber at least. So what is going on? Well, it is all to do with the old Japanese calender.
Japan adopted the Gregorian Calender, like the rest of the world. But I don't think they really trust it and so kind of acknowledge its existence to the rest of the world, play along with it, but really follow the old Japanese one because, well, it is more Japanese for a start. So you get all these weird things like the start of Autumn is August 8th, palpably not Autumn in the slightest. Then you get special food days. July 27th was Eel day, and all the supermarkets had huge displays of Eel for sale - and the even better thing was that far from pushing up the price on this one day to take advantage, the Eel everywhere was really really cheap. A loss leader, maybe, but good news all the same. This kind of thing also accounts for the 'auspicious' days on which to get married - and conversely there are really bad days to get married as well. Apparently this all comes from the days when Japan was a much more agrarian place and the year was shaped by the seasons (don't even bother trying to tell a Japanese farmer this is the same all over the world - they will not believe you) and therefore the day autumn started was important for rice growing, or eel catching, or perhaps something else. As a result all Japanese have grown up using this calander and not really bothering with the western one. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the Gregorian calender was foisted upon the Japanese by the Americans after their defeat in WW2 and the top brass said something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, a calender, fine, whatever" whilst the average chap in what was left of the street said, "okay, will it tell me when Eel Day is? No, well I don't really think I'll be using it too much then. I have to!? Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever".
Unfortunately the newspapaer article did not say what would happen if the rainy season didn't end before August 8th. Would they declare it over even if it wasn't? Wouldn't this confuse a lot of farmers? Who knows?
Anyway, I'm off to check my Japanese diary as I have a strong suspicion that Sunday 3rd August may well be beer and yakitori day...
Sunday, 27 July 2003
Japanese gadgets
Are the coolest gadgets in the world. Now for those of you who live, or have lived, in Japan, this may not be news for you. But for everyone else.
Japanese people love their toilets. Now I realise that people all over the world love their toilets as well, but I think the Japanese really love their toilets. Most households in Japan now have electronic toilet seats that look like more technologically advanced versions of Captain Kirk's seat in Star Trek. They have warming functions so you don't get a cold bottom in winter. They have have buttons that do things like shoot water upwards, waft warm air to dry everything off, and probably start world war three if you press them in the right combination. Personally I avoid anything that tries top shoot water up my arse, but the Japanese seem to love them.
But wait! What is this on the horizon? Has the perfect toilet seat been improved? What could they have done? Well, a company by the name of INAX - very big in the lavatory world - has now invented a seat that you don't have to lift up. It has a built in infrared sensor that senses when someone approaches and a small motor to automatically raise the toilet lid. All you have to do is walk up, drop your trousers and then sit down, none of this bending down to lift lid. And of course, when the business is finished, all you do is stand up, flush and walk away, no messing about with putting the lid down afterwards.
Great stuff and a much needed development to the work begun by Thomas Crapper all those years ago. Whatever will they think of next....?
Are the coolest gadgets in the world. Now for those of you who live, or have lived, in Japan, this may not be news for you. But for everyone else.
Japanese people love their toilets. Now I realise that people all over the world love their toilets as well, but I think the Japanese really love their toilets. Most households in Japan now have electronic toilet seats that look like more technologically advanced versions of Captain Kirk's seat in Star Trek. They have warming functions so you don't get a cold bottom in winter. They have have buttons that do things like shoot water upwards, waft warm air to dry everything off, and probably start world war three if you press them in the right combination. Personally I avoid anything that tries top shoot water up my arse, but the Japanese seem to love them.
But wait! What is this on the horizon? Has the perfect toilet seat been improved? What could they have done? Well, a company by the name of INAX - very big in the lavatory world - has now invented a seat that you don't have to lift up. It has a built in infrared sensor that senses when someone approaches and a small motor to automatically raise the toilet lid. All you have to do is walk up, drop your trousers and then sit down, none of this bending down to lift lid. And of course, when the business is finished, all you do is stand up, flush and walk away, no messing about with putting the lid down afterwards.
Great stuff and a much needed development to the work begun by Thomas Crapper all those years ago. Whatever will they think of next....?
Monday, 21 July 2003
Not quite right
Try as the Japanese do, they can't get everything right. So even though they tried desperately hard to have an English style grey bank holiday Monday, they blew it right at the end. Ah well.
So we got an hour of glorious sunshine just as the sun was setting. The timing was excellent as well as it coincided with me finishing studying for the day (no really) and thus I got to eat yakitori and drink beer in the sunshine on a bank holiday monday afternoon.
Marvellous.
PS The word on the underground grapevine is that the rainy season will be over by next weekend. Fingers crossed...
Try as the Japanese do, they can't get everything right. So even though they tried desperately hard to have an English style grey bank holiday Monday, they blew it right at the end. Ah well.
So we got an hour of glorious sunshine just as the sun was setting. The timing was excellent as well as it coincided with me finishing studying for the day (no really) and thus I got to eat yakitori and drink beer in the sunshine on a bank holiday monday afternoon.
Marvellous.
PS The word on the underground grapevine is that the rainy season will be over by next weekend. Fingers crossed...
Saturday, 19 July 2003
Under the weather
Because, of course, it is a bank holiday weekend over here. Monday is Umi-no-hi or holiday for the Sea, which I think is a mighty fine reason for having a national holiday - Japan after all being an island nation and eating a lot of fish. The usual plan is to get together with all your mates and go to the beach, again a mighty fine idea. Except in a stab at improved globilisation, Japan has decided to import the very British idea of 'bank holidays = bad weather' and so it will be probably be raining on monday. Oh well.
Apparently there has been a big lump of high pressure over the Sea of Japan that has been hanging around for longer than usual, making the rainy season last longer and the weather cooler - no bad thing there, you may think, but it is. Sales of air conditioners, sun block, beer and other summer goods are all down (though I'm doing my bit for the beer sales), and for a economy in a parlous state, this is not a good turn of events. And this poor weather also has a pretty negative effect of the farming industry, inhibiting the growth of fruit and veg all across Japan, which will undoubtedly lead to higher prices later in the summer.
On the upside, the threatened power blackouts have yet to happen as demand for electricity to run air con units is down. For those not in the know, TEPCO, the Tokyo Electricity Power Company has had to shut down most of its nuclear reactors as they were found to be unsafe, with potentially lethal levels of slackness in their maintenance and upkeep - with the follow on effect that Tokyo will not have enough electricity for the summer and therefore rolling power blackouts have not been ruled out. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.
But I am trying not to be negative as it has been pointed out to me that there may have been a certain amount of ranting against the Japanese going on recently. So apologies if you have felt the same way, I just try to tell it like I see it. Incidentally, Mr Konoike withdrew his comments about publically beheading parents' of errant children - I don't know, these politicians never stick by what they believe...
Anyway one cool thing I saw this week was this. On Thursday all our schools were closed and a companywide 5-a-side football tournament was arranged. A bit short notice, to be sure, but in the end we had about 30 players, including yours truly, turn up and a fine day was had by all. But the cool thing was where we played. For those of you who remember, the 2002 World Cup was half played on these shores and they built lots of nice new stadia to hold the games. One of these stadia was built not 30 minutes from where we now live in a place called Urawa-Misono. It was at this stadium that England played Sweden and the whole place is a salutary lesson in how to organise and build an impressive stadium with minimum fuss - i.e. those in charge of the Wembly/National Stadium fiasco take note.
The stadium was built just outside of Tokyo, but with a dedicated subway line meaning that most of central Tokyo is only about 40 minutes away. Also, it was built right next to a motorway, giving easy access to the road system. Also, it was built far from any residential areas, so as not to piss off the locals. This had the added benefit of more space - so not only have they built a swish, futuristic stadium, but they also have a separate full size pitch, and 2 smaller 5-a-side/futsal pitches that anyone can come along and hire. And this we did, and not only did we get the pitch, we also got clean changing rooms with working hot showers. All for about 150quid, which does not seem at all unreasonable to me. And this being Japan, even though there are huge swathes of concrete, there was not a single piece of graffiti to be seen.
So it was all pretty marvellous, if you ask me. The only problem is what will happen to it all. Like a lot of the other stadia, not a lot of thought was put into what would happen after the World Cup. It was hoped that Urawa Reds, the local J-League team, would play their home games there. But no-one actually thought to ask the Reds. They prefer their old stadium, which although smaller, creates a better atmosphere and is better placed for their fans - the result is that only about 6 games a year are played by the Reds at Urawa-Misono. Now even i can see that six games isn't going to pay the rent, or debt, and nor is hiring out the futsal pitches to English schools for 5-a-side tournaments, so heaven knows what they are going to do to make money. And I doubt very much if the other stadia built for the world cup are doing any better, which again is a real shame. However, the FA in England could do a lot worse than ask the people who organised and built these stadia to take over the Wembly situation and get a stadium built - preferably with the same ideas about location and transport access.
On a related note, the Telegraph Fantasy Football site is now up and running for the new season and a link has been added above right. This is the site from which the whole CoB Intercontiliga has sprung and which has given Steve D something to do with his afternoons for the last 4 years. For those wishing to join this happy throng, drop Steve a line on the CoB site and your applications will be vetted by committee at the earliest opportunity (written references will almost certainly be required).
PS as if anyone is interested in our performance - P6 W0 D1 L5 GF4 GA plenty
Because, of course, it is a bank holiday weekend over here. Monday is Umi-no-hi or holiday for the Sea, which I think is a mighty fine reason for having a national holiday - Japan after all being an island nation and eating a lot of fish. The usual plan is to get together with all your mates and go to the beach, again a mighty fine idea. Except in a stab at improved globilisation, Japan has decided to import the very British idea of 'bank holidays = bad weather' and so it will be probably be raining on monday. Oh well.
Apparently there has been a big lump of high pressure over the Sea of Japan that has been hanging around for longer than usual, making the rainy season last longer and the weather cooler - no bad thing there, you may think, but it is. Sales of air conditioners, sun block, beer and other summer goods are all down (though I'm doing my bit for the beer sales), and for a economy in a parlous state, this is not a good turn of events. And this poor weather also has a pretty negative effect of the farming industry, inhibiting the growth of fruit and veg all across Japan, which will undoubtedly lead to higher prices later in the summer.
On the upside, the threatened power blackouts have yet to happen as demand for electricity to run air con units is down. For those not in the know, TEPCO, the Tokyo Electricity Power Company has had to shut down most of its nuclear reactors as they were found to be unsafe, with potentially lethal levels of slackness in their maintenance and upkeep - with the follow on effect that Tokyo will not have enough electricity for the summer and therefore rolling power blackouts have not been ruled out. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.
But I am trying not to be negative as it has been pointed out to me that there may have been a certain amount of ranting against the Japanese going on recently. So apologies if you have felt the same way, I just try to tell it like I see it. Incidentally, Mr Konoike withdrew his comments about publically beheading parents' of errant children - I don't know, these politicians never stick by what they believe...
Anyway one cool thing I saw this week was this. On Thursday all our schools were closed and a companywide 5-a-side football tournament was arranged. A bit short notice, to be sure, but in the end we had about 30 players, including yours truly, turn up and a fine day was had by all. But the cool thing was where we played. For those of you who remember, the 2002 World Cup was half played on these shores and they built lots of nice new stadia to hold the games. One of these stadia was built not 30 minutes from where we now live in a place called Urawa-Misono. It was at this stadium that England played Sweden and the whole place is a salutary lesson in how to organise and build an impressive stadium with minimum fuss - i.e. those in charge of the Wembly/National Stadium fiasco take note.
The stadium was built just outside of Tokyo, but with a dedicated subway line meaning that most of central Tokyo is only about 40 minutes away. Also, it was built right next to a motorway, giving easy access to the road system. Also, it was built far from any residential areas, so as not to piss off the locals. This had the added benefit of more space - so not only have they built a swish, futuristic stadium, but they also have a separate full size pitch, and 2 smaller 5-a-side/futsal pitches that anyone can come along and hire. And this we did, and not only did we get the pitch, we also got clean changing rooms with working hot showers. All for about 150quid, which does not seem at all unreasonable to me. And this being Japan, even though there are huge swathes of concrete, there was not a single piece of graffiti to be seen.
So it was all pretty marvellous, if you ask me. The only problem is what will happen to it all. Like a lot of the other stadia, not a lot of thought was put into what would happen after the World Cup. It was hoped that Urawa Reds, the local J-League team, would play their home games there. But no-one actually thought to ask the Reds. They prefer their old stadium, which although smaller, creates a better atmosphere and is better placed for their fans - the result is that only about 6 games a year are played by the Reds at Urawa-Misono. Now even i can see that six games isn't going to pay the rent, or debt, and nor is hiring out the futsal pitches to English schools for 5-a-side tournaments, so heaven knows what they are going to do to make money. And I doubt very much if the other stadia built for the world cup are doing any better, which again is a real shame. However, the FA in England could do a lot worse than ask the people who organised and built these stadia to take over the Wembly situation and get a stadium built - preferably with the same ideas about location and transport access.
On a related note, the Telegraph Fantasy Football site is now up and running for the new season and a link has been added above right. This is the site from which the whole CoB Intercontiliga has sprung and which has given Steve D something to do with his afternoons for the last 4 years. For those wishing to join this happy throng, drop Steve a line on the CoB site and your applications will be vetted by committee at the earliest opportunity (written references will almost certainly be required).
PS as if anyone is interested in our performance - P6 W0 D1 L5 GF4 GA plenty
Sunday, 13 July 2003
Various things on a Sunday
It seem that over the last couple of posts I have been criticising Japan and the things that go on here. This week is different. This week I am going to criticise Japanese politicians and the really idiotic things that they say. George Bush and Tony Blair with their "Iraq has lots of really nasty weapons of mass destruction, honest, no really" don't even come close to the sort of comment that Japanese politicans come out with. Consider the evidence:
Case #1: A group of guys from a Tokyo University set up a company that organises and runs parties for university students in the Tokyo area. These parties are big, really cool and everyone has to be there. Then 5 of these guys invite some poor unsuspecting and very drunk girl to a 'behind the scenes' area of one party and gang rape her. This gets into the papers and soon more girls come forward and say it has happened to them. Seiichi Ota, of the Liberal Democratic party and member of Parliament then comments to the press that gang rape is essentially a good thing as these chaps have more 'vigour' and therefore are more likely to halt the declining birth rate in Japan.
Case #2: Again in relation to the problem of declining birth rate, a problem facing most of the western world as well as Japan. This case involves Yoshio Mori. In case you don't know, Mori was actually elected Prime Minister and served without distinction for a year or two, before going the way of most PMs in Japan. Anyway, his startling answer to the problem is to deny any kind of pension payments to Japanese women who failed to have children. That'll teach them. Doesn't matter that they may have paid all their national insurance all their working lives. They shouldn't have been at work, they should have been at home either pregnant or trying to be. Again this comment was given to the national press, without one assumes, engaging the brain before opening the mouth.
Case #3: This is my favourite. you may remember the last post in which I mentioned a 12 year old boy who allegedly murdered a 4 yr old by throwing him off the 7th floor of a car park. This happened in Nagasaki and one of the government ministers who hails from that area, Yoshitada Konoike, came out with this gem. To quote "If we can't charge the boy with the crime, then we should drag his parents around the town and then decapitate them. This will show parents the necessity of raising morally upright children". That's right folks, parade them through town and then publically behead them. Again that'll teach them. Are these people living in the dark ages? And just in case you might have thought that Mr Konoike doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to children, he is the chairman of a government panel concerned with juvenile development and child-rearing. Oh, and don't forget, this child hasn't actually been accused of anything yet, or had a trial, or even benn arrested, he's just being questioned right now. God help the children of Japan.
Other than that, Japan is a great country and at least the trains run on time....now where have I heard that before?
Plants
Not good news here either, I'm afraid. All the old coriander has gone the way of parents with deliquent kids (in the new Japan). Well, not all of it as the percy thrower coriander is still alive, although seem to be going the same way. The seedlings get to be about 2 inches high, then just start to flop and go pale and then slowly die. I've tried a little sun, lots of sun, a little water, lots of water, combinations of those, food, talking to them, everything, and still nothing. But, the basil is going great guns and it looks like it is going to stay. The rosemary and lavender are not doing too badly. Indeed the lavender, after a slow start, seems to have decided that it quite likes this whole growing lark and is getting into it in a big way. No flowers yet, but I reckon they are on their way. Lastly the olive tree and the coffee tree. The olive tree is still trying to do its upward thing rather than the outward thing that I would prefer. I tried the pinch out the new growth strategy, and this worked for a short while until it decided it prefered the upward thing and started again. But I have clipped it again in a vain attempt to get 'spread' - it is a battle of wills. Unlike the coffee tree, which is still making its own cobwebs and not growing. Don't know what to do about that one, but it doesn't seem to be dying, so I think I'll just leave it for the time being.
Kabuki
Last thing today is about Kabuki. For those not in the know, Kabuki is traditional Japanese theatre and has a reputation of being really, really dull. Well, I went to a kind of 'introduction to Kabuki' today, and so, speaking with some authority, can say that Kabuki is only quite dull. The again, I only had to endure about 90 minutes of very abridged wailing - I'm not not sure I could sit through a 'proper' 6 hour production.
It is awfully stylised stuff, with men playing women's roles and fight scenes where no-one actually touches each other. But it was bright and colourful and quite reasonably paced, so much so that it was quite like english theatre, especially as we were given a small headset that had a friendly voice telling you what was going on in English. But the most important scene (where the wife dies as she is in fact the earthly embodiment of the spirit of a willow tree that is being cut down) was so long and had so much unecessary wailing that it did give a good flavour of what a full on production would be like - really, really dull.
But hell, today I've done a bit of 'culture' - a word that would be useful for the politicians of this country to learn.
It seem that over the last couple of posts I have been criticising Japan and the things that go on here. This week is different. This week I am going to criticise Japanese politicians and the really idiotic things that they say. George Bush and Tony Blair with their "Iraq has lots of really nasty weapons of mass destruction, honest, no really" don't even come close to the sort of comment that Japanese politicans come out with. Consider the evidence:
Case #1: A group of guys from a Tokyo University set up a company that organises and runs parties for university students in the Tokyo area. These parties are big, really cool and everyone has to be there. Then 5 of these guys invite some poor unsuspecting and very drunk girl to a 'behind the scenes' area of one party and gang rape her. This gets into the papers and soon more girls come forward and say it has happened to them. Seiichi Ota, of the Liberal Democratic party and member of Parliament then comments to the press that gang rape is essentially a good thing as these chaps have more 'vigour' and therefore are more likely to halt the declining birth rate in Japan.
Case #2: Again in relation to the problem of declining birth rate, a problem facing most of the western world as well as Japan. This case involves Yoshio Mori. In case you don't know, Mori was actually elected Prime Minister and served without distinction for a year or two, before going the way of most PMs in Japan. Anyway, his startling answer to the problem is to deny any kind of pension payments to Japanese women who failed to have children. That'll teach them. Doesn't matter that they may have paid all their national insurance all their working lives. They shouldn't have been at work, they should have been at home either pregnant or trying to be. Again this comment was given to the national press, without one assumes, engaging the brain before opening the mouth.
Case #3: This is my favourite. you may remember the last post in which I mentioned a 12 year old boy who allegedly murdered a 4 yr old by throwing him off the 7th floor of a car park. This happened in Nagasaki and one of the government ministers who hails from that area, Yoshitada Konoike, came out with this gem. To quote "If we can't charge the boy with the crime, then we should drag his parents around the town and then decapitate them. This will show parents the necessity of raising morally upright children". That's right folks, parade them through town and then publically behead them. Again that'll teach them. Are these people living in the dark ages? And just in case you might have thought that Mr Konoike doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to children, he is the chairman of a government panel concerned with juvenile development and child-rearing. Oh, and don't forget, this child hasn't actually been accused of anything yet, or had a trial, or even benn arrested, he's just being questioned right now. God help the children of Japan.
Other than that, Japan is a great country and at least the trains run on time....now where have I heard that before?
Plants
Not good news here either, I'm afraid. All the old coriander has gone the way of parents with deliquent kids (in the new Japan). Well, not all of it as the percy thrower coriander is still alive, although seem to be going the same way. The seedlings get to be about 2 inches high, then just start to flop and go pale and then slowly die. I've tried a little sun, lots of sun, a little water, lots of water, combinations of those, food, talking to them, everything, and still nothing. But, the basil is going great guns and it looks like it is going to stay. The rosemary and lavender are not doing too badly. Indeed the lavender, after a slow start, seems to have decided that it quite likes this whole growing lark and is getting into it in a big way. No flowers yet, but I reckon they are on their way. Lastly the olive tree and the coffee tree. The olive tree is still trying to do its upward thing rather than the outward thing that I would prefer. I tried the pinch out the new growth strategy, and this worked for a short while until it decided it prefered the upward thing and started again. But I have clipped it again in a vain attempt to get 'spread' - it is a battle of wills. Unlike the coffee tree, which is still making its own cobwebs and not growing. Don't know what to do about that one, but it doesn't seem to be dying, so I think I'll just leave it for the time being.
Kabuki
Last thing today is about Kabuki. For those not in the know, Kabuki is traditional Japanese theatre and has a reputation of being really, really dull. Well, I went to a kind of 'introduction to Kabuki' today, and so, speaking with some authority, can say that Kabuki is only quite dull. The again, I only had to endure about 90 minutes of very abridged wailing - I'm not not sure I could sit through a 'proper' 6 hour production.
It is awfully stylised stuff, with men playing women's roles and fight scenes where no-one actually touches each other. But it was bright and colourful and quite reasonably paced, so much so that it was quite like english theatre, especially as we were given a small headset that had a friendly voice telling you what was going on in English. But the most important scene (where the wife dies as she is in fact the earthly embodiment of the spirit of a willow tree that is being cut down) was so long and had so much unecessary wailing that it did give a good flavour of what a full on production would be like - really, really dull.
But hell, today I've done a bit of 'culture' - a word that would be useful for the politicians of this country to learn.
Wednesday, 9 July 2003
oh bugger
just had another one of those "write out a whole new diatribe and then just when you're about to post it you press a weird button and it all disappears" moment. Shit. May write it all again tomorrow, but the new link I added is still there. This new link is one that naturally I stumbled across after the last little rant about the short comings of Japan (newest shortcoming - 12 year old boy detained after allegedly sexually abusing a 4 year old and then throwing him off the 7th floor of a multi-story car park - what is this country coming to?).
Anyway, not everyone out there likes us foreigners (gaijin) in Japan apparently...
(PS - tonight's post that I had written was all about the plants, a request from Bert for an update. this will now appear at a later date. Sorry)
just had another one of those "write out a whole new diatribe and then just when you're about to post it you press a weird button and it all disappears" moment. Shit. May write it all again tomorrow, but the new link I added is still there. This new link is one that naturally I stumbled across after the last little rant about the short comings of Japan (newest shortcoming - 12 year old boy detained after allegedly sexually abusing a 4 year old and then throwing him off the 7th floor of a multi-story car park - what is this country coming to?).
Anyway, not everyone out there likes us foreigners (gaijin) in Japan apparently...
(PS - tonight's post that I had written was all about the plants, a request from Bert for an update. this will now appear at a later date. Sorry)
Sunday, 6 July 2003
What's wrong with Japan today...
Its things like this. An article in yesterday's Yomiuri about lorries and how there seem to be a lot more fatal accidents this year than before. A spokesman from the Department of Transport said (a government ministry, one that makes laws);
"It'll be difficult to establish a law to control the trucking industry, because the transport industry will resist it."
So if the government won't do anything to regulate industry, what hope have we got...?
This is one example. Another is the case of a manager at an agricultural collective who embezzled 17million yen from the savings of local farmers to gamble on coffee futures. A bit of embezzling, that's ok, but what makes it much much worse is the fact that when his superiors found out, they lent him another 20 million, of farmers savings, without telling anyone, in an attempt to try and recoup the money on the exceedingly dodgy Tokyo stock exchange. Only when they'd lost that and an even more superior superior found out did anyone even think about calling the police.
And that is just on a local level. Even more impressive a scam is the newly formed Resona bank, which was previously known as Asahi bank, and a couple of others. This is now in seriously deep trouble, so what do the government do? Let it go to the dogs for having such inept managers? Oh no. They decide to pump in 1.96trillion yen's worth of tax payers cash to bail them out. That is 1,960,000,000,000, or 98,000,000 quid...for a private bank. In any other country this bank would be allowed to become bankrupt, probably as soon as everyone found out they were in trouble and took out their savings.
But not in Japan. Here, not even a murmur.
Its things like this. An article in yesterday's Yomiuri about lorries and how there seem to be a lot more fatal accidents this year than before. A spokesman from the Department of Transport said (a government ministry, one that makes laws);
"It'll be difficult to establish a law to control the trucking industry, because the transport industry will resist it."
So if the government won't do anything to regulate industry, what hope have we got...?
This is one example. Another is the case of a manager at an agricultural collective who embezzled 17million yen from the savings of local farmers to gamble on coffee futures. A bit of embezzling, that's ok, but what makes it much much worse is the fact that when his superiors found out, they lent him another 20 million, of farmers savings, without telling anyone, in an attempt to try and recoup the money on the exceedingly dodgy Tokyo stock exchange. Only when they'd lost that and an even more superior superior found out did anyone even think about calling the police.
And that is just on a local level. Even more impressive a scam is the newly formed Resona bank, which was previously known as Asahi bank, and a couple of others. This is now in seriously deep trouble, so what do the government do? Let it go to the dogs for having such inept managers? Oh no. They decide to pump in 1.96trillion yen's worth of tax payers cash to bail them out. That is 1,960,000,000,000, or 98,000,000 quid...for a private bank. In any other country this bank would be allowed to become bankrupt, probably as soon as everyone found out they were in trouble and took out their savings.
But not in Japan. Here, not even a murmur.
Tuesday, 1 July 2003
cool gadgets
As most of you know, I am something of a techno-phobe. If it is electronic, then I like it to be nice and simple. But get this. Today was my official 'first day in the new job' and so, at about midday, a bright young Japanese thing bounds over and presents me with a box saying "here is your new mobile phone!". This is great, in my job, I will never leave the office! So they give me a mobile...And not just any mobile, it has a little ity-bity camera in it as well, as if I need one of them! (for those of you in Japan shaking your heads now and muttering things like "mine has 15 seconds of video recording on it", bugger off). This job gets better and better. Now I just have to see how long I can hang onto the phone before they ask for it back...
As most of you know, I am something of a techno-phobe. If it is electronic, then I like it to be nice and simple. But get this. Today was my official 'first day in the new job' and so, at about midday, a bright young Japanese thing bounds over and presents me with a box saying "here is your new mobile phone!". This is great, in my job, I will never leave the office! So they give me a mobile...And not just any mobile, it has a little ity-bity camera in it as well, as if I need one of them! (for those of you in Japan shaking your heads now and muttering things like "mine has 15 seconds of video recording on it", bugger off). This job gets better and better. Now I just have to see how long I can hang onto the phone before they ask for it back...
Sunday, 29 June 2003
Another Sunday evening
This seems to be falling into a pattern, as perhaps these things do, of a sunday evening session with a midweek update. So today's great news is that today we ate dinner laced with fresh herbs from the herb garden! Yes, an auspicious moment without a doubt. The dish was a sort of tomato and chicken stew, delicately flavoured with basil picked moments before serving. The whole thing wasn't too bad and you could actually taste the basil - I was so proud. Now all we have to do is wait for about 8 weeks until it regrows or some of the other stuff gets up to the level of edible (though that may be thwarted by hell freezing over first).
Friday was my last official day at Minami Urawa office, in honour of this occasion, I did absolutely no work. This was partly not my fault as I was in the process of handing over the reins to Chris, so I didn't really have much to do anyway, and also last week Paul told me to go down to Nishi Kasai on Friday, so I got someone else to do the training I was meant to be doing, but then Paul changed the day to Thursday, leaving me with nothing arranged for friday and therefore nothing to do. So I did nothing. The bit that is my fault, a little, is that I didn't exactly go out of my way to find anything to do either, but bugger it, I was leaving. In the evening we had a farewell party with all the office staff at a local bar called Zan, which was very trendy and we all felt cool and sophisticated...well, I did anyway. Tomoko, who deals with accomodation in the office, managed to get pretty smashed on one cocktail, this after assuring everyone that she could drink 2 bottles of wine without falling over - hmm. However Tomoko is good fun and a crowd of us are going to go sea fishing in Tokyo bay in August, organised by her husband. (I realise that 'sea' fishing in Tokyo bay doesn't quite have the Hemmingway-marlin-fishing-off-cuba kind of style to it, but you have to start somewhere). I must have got drunk at the farewell party as i ended up drinking sake. This is always a good indicator of my state as if I am sober or thereabouts, sake for me is pretty rank stuff. But with a few inside me I suddenly feel the urge to be more Japanese and thus start shouting for sake, or if I'm really drunk, shochu, which is poor man's paint stripper from southern Japan. Anyway this accounted for a nagging head on saturday. But to be 'more Japanese', I would probably be better off sticking to the beer or going onto even ranker Japanese whisky (or maybe they spell it the US way whiskey) both of which appear to be far more popular than sake these days. In a way it is a shame, but it does mean that the sake you get these days is much better quality than the gut rot that used to be available, by all accounts. Apparently little specialised sake breweries are opening up all over the show now, which is good news, and not just for the Japanese, for me too.
The one time I've had really top notch sake was when a student took me out on the piss. This was years ago and the guy was Fujino-san. He was an old guy, about 60-65 and a patent attorney for Snowbrand,who recently have had some pretty severe scandals even by Japanese standards, but in those days were a big company in the dairy products market. I thought this guy was great as he was a Japanese salary man of the old school. He lived in Kanagawa, about 2 hours from Tokyo and his lesson was on a saturday afternoon. This was thhe only time in his weekly work schedule that he could fit in an English lesson. He used to come to the lesson and basically slag off his colleagues of the younger generation for not working hard enough. He was in the office at 7 every morning and was the last to leave, past 10 every night (so he said) and couldn't understand why the younger generation weren't doing the same, if not longer hours..."they are younger than me, and they live in Tokyo. I am and old man and still I work harder than them. I fear for the company" was the gist of the first 5 minutes of every lesson, and he was right as Snowbrand now apparently does not exist, or rather it has changed its identity after the scandals alluded to earlier.
Anyway, slightly ff the point here. So, Fujino liked me as I was a teacher (major respect) and I liked a beer. There may have been more to it than that, who knows. But getting back to the original rambling, he took me out drinking one saturday after work (I expect he rationalised it by thinking it was study time, therefore he could leave his office). Usually, when you go out with students, they take you to an izakaya, or to their mistresses house for dinner (that's another story), but this guy took me to the Hotel New Otani in Akasaka, one of the most swish places in town and one which I had not expected to be taken to. With us was also the school manager, whose name I have now forgotten but I can remember she was a bit of a looker. So, up to the 20-something floor and into a bar that it would cost 20 quid to walk past, but we breeze in and its all smiles and hellos to Fujino, who is obviosly a regular. We sit and he orders sake and yakitori for the 3 of us, and this sake is absolutely sublime. Delicious, melt in the mouth, like drinking liquid velvet. Of course I drank plenty of it and can't remember too much of the evening. One thing I do remember is him sitting there with a beautific smile on his face saying nothing excpet "you are a beautiful couple" to the school mamager and I every 5 minutes, and nothing else. Heaven knows how much the evening cost as he would not let us pay, but I know that I will not be able to afford to drink there for a long time.
And I blame him for making me dislike sake as I spent the next couple of years drinking a lot of it, but much cheaper versions, which give you stinking hangovers, in an effort to rdiscover the essence of the east...or get really drunk, take your pick.
So anyway, more specialsed sake breweries mean better quality sake, and probably better quality hangovers.
I was going to harangue the Japanese banking system in today's polemic, but that will have to wait for another day. Lastly there is a new link, this one is to Thana Towers, the website of Bangkok Dave of the Olive tree fame. Nice to have you aboard Dave.
This seems to be falling into a pattern, as perhaps these things do, of a sunday evening session with a midweek update. So today's great news is that today we ate dinner laced with fresh herbs from the herb garden! Yes, an auspicious moment without a doubt. The dish was a sort of tomato and chicken stew, delicately flavoured with basil picked moments before serving. The whole thing wasn't too bad and you could actually taste the basil - I was so proud. Now all we have to do is wait for about 8 weeks until it regrows or some of the other stuff gets up to the level of edible (though that may be thwarted by hell freezing over first).
Friday was my last official day at Minami Urawa office, in honour of this occasion, I did absolutely no work. This was partly not my fault as I was in the process of handing over the reins to Chris, so I didn't really have much to do anyway, and also last week Paul told me to go down to Nishi Kasai on Friday, so I got someone else to do the training I was meant to be doing, but then Paul changed the day to Thursday, leaving me with nothing arranged for friday and therefore nothing to do. So I did nothing. The bit that is my fault, a little, is that I didn't exactly go out of my way to find anything to do either, but bugger it, I was leaving. In the evening we had a farewell party with all the office staff at a local bar called Zan, which was very trendy and we all felt cool and sophisticated...well, I did anyway. Tomoko, who deals with accomodation in the office, managed to get pretty smashed on one cocktail, this after assuring everyone that she could drink 2 bottles of wine without falling over - hmm. However Tomoko is good fun and a crowd of us are going to go sea fishing in Tokyo bay in August, organised by her husband. (I realise that 'sea' fishing in Tokyo bay doesn't quite have the Hemmingway-marlin-fishing-off-cuba kind of style to it, but you have to start somewhere). I must have got drunk at the farewell party as i ended up drinking sake. This is always a good indicator of my state as if I am sober or thereabouts, sake for me is pretty rank stuff. But with a few inside me I suddenly feel the urge to be more Japanese and thus start shouting for sake, or if I'm really drunk, shochu, which is poor man's paint stripper from southern Japan. Anyway this accounted for a nagging head on saturday. But to be 'more Japanese', I would probably be better off sticking to the beer or going onto even ranker Japanese whisky (or maybe they spell it the US way whiskey) both of which appear to be far more popular than sake these days. In a way it is a shame, but it does mean that the sake you get these days is much better quality than the gut rot that used to be available, by all accounts. Apparently little specialised sake breweries are opening up all over the show now, which is good news, and not just for the Japanese, for me too.
The one time I've had really top notch sake was when a student took me out on the piss. This was years ago and the guy was Fujino-san. He was an old guy, about 60-65 and a patent attorney for Snowbrand,who recently have had some pretty severe scandals even by Japanese standards, but in those days were a big company in the dairy products market. I thought this guy was great as he was a Japanese salary man of the old school. He lived in Kanagawa, about 2 hours from Tokyo and his lesson was on a saturday afternoon. This was thhe only time in his weekly work schedule that he could fit in an English lesson. He used to come to the lesson and basically slag off his colleagues of the younger generation for not working hard enough. He was in the office at 7 every morning and was the last to leave, past 10 every night (so he said) and couldn't understand why the younger generation weren't doing the same, if not longer hours..."they are younger than me, and they live in Tokyo. I am and old man and still I work harder than them. I fear for the company" was the gist of the first 5 minutes of every lesson, and he was right as Snowbrand now apparently does not exist, or rather it has changed its identity after the scandals alluded to earlier.
Anyway, slightly ff the point here. So, Fujino liked me as I was a teacher (major respect) and I liked a beer. There may have been more to it than that, who knows. But getting back to the original rambling, he took me out drinking one saturday after work (I expect he rationalised it by thinking it was study time, therefore he could leave his office). Usually, when you go out with students, they take you to an izakaya, or to their mistresses house for dinner (that's another story), but this guy took me to the Hotel New Otani in Akasaka, one of the most swish places in town and one which I had not expected to be taken to. With us was also the school manager, whose name I have now forgotten but I can remember she was a bit of a looker. So, up to the 20-something floor and into a bar that it would cost 20 quid to walk past, but we breeze in and its all smiles and hellos to Fujino, who is obviosly a regular. We sit and he orders sake and yakitori for the 3 of us, and this sake is absolutely sublime. Delicious, melt in the mouth, like drinking liquid velvet. Of course I drank plenty of it and can't remember too much of the evening. One thing I do remember is him sitting there with a beautific smile on his face saying nothing excpet "you are a beautiful couple" to the school mamager and I every 5 minutes, and nothing else. Heaven knows how much the evening cost as he would not let us pay, but I know that I will not be able to afford to drink there for a long time.
And I blame him for making me dislike sake as I spent the next couple of years drinking a lot of it, but much cheaper versions, which give you stinking hangovers, in an effort to rdiscover the essence of the east...or get really drunk, take your pick.
So anyway, more specialsed sake breweries mean better quality sake, and probably better quality hangovers.
I was going to harangue the Japanese banking system in today's polemic, but that will have to wait for another day. Lastly there is a new link, this one is to Thana Towers, the website of Bangkok Dave of the Olive tree fame. Nice to have you aboard Dave.
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