Caterpillars

Been thinking a lot about The Very Hungary Caterpillar recently, mainly as I seem to have to read it at least 4 times an evening to the young chap (and no, I’m not talking about George Dubya here) as it is one of his favourite reads. So ok, the caterpillar is born and is hungry, good premise so far. His diet over the first week, if you have forgotten, is thus:

Monday – one apple
Tuesday – two pears
Wednesday – three plums
Thursday – four strawberries
Friday – five oranges

So far so good, but then, as we know, he goes for the blow out smorgasbord on Saturday:

One piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.

And that night, as the story goes, he had a stomachache.

But what is this story trying to tell us, really?

Is the book trying to say that eating a lot of food isn’t a good idea? This seems to be the case as the caterpillar goes from eating five bits of fruit to eating a whole load of stuff. So the underlying message to the young mind might be ‘only eat as much as you need and don’t stuff your face else you’ll end up a fat wheezy kid no one picks for their team’.

But wait; if we look at it from a nutritionist’s point of view might the problem be with the choice of food? I mean the caterpillar, for the first 5 days of his life is following a strictly fruitarian diet – on raw fruit dropped from the bough. But then on Saturday he suddenly gets into complex sugars and starches, diary products, processed and cured meats and strong acidic vinegars. Wow, that would be a shock to anyone’s system, surely? So perhaps what the book is really trying to say is ‘keep as far away from man-made, processed foods and unnecessary fats and sugars as they are not good for you and will mean you have to detox your body else you’ll end up a fat wheezy kid no one picks for their team’. (Ok, similar sort of message but from a very different perspective)

However it might not be as simple as either of those possibilities. What if the book, and its author Eric Carle, is actually trying to suggest to young minds that there is a radical and destructive dichotomy in the world between the haves and the have-nots? In the first 5 days of his life the caterpillar eats as if he is in a pastoral/agricultural economy, what might be construed as the third world, where food is raw and unprocessed and what is eaten is whatever can be grown. But on the Saturday the caterpillar, Gulliver-like, is transported to the ‘first’ world, where he gets to eat all he rubbish that is regularly consumed by overweight westerners who have lost touch with what it means to nurture and grow food and who are at a loss if faced by something raw and unpackaged. No wonder the caterpillar gets sick, we think, but not sick on the food but on the consumerist over consumption of junk whilst half the world starves. So the message might be ‘don’t eat and eat and eat all this rubbish food but realise there is a whole world of starvation out there and anything you can do to help them is a good thing’. (Perhaps the one nice green leaf the caterpillar eats the next day to make himself feel better could be a metaphor for overseas aid and the good work of bodies like Oxfam and the UNHCR).

But of course the nutritionist would be asking “where are the vegetables in this caterpillar’s diet?” And, perhaps more to the point, what does he drink?

I never realised that picture books for young children could be radicalised in quite such a way. But do the kids get it, that’s the important question? I mean, I have been reading the book for a few months now but it has taken me quite a long time to realise that there are far deeper layers than at first you might assume (a bit like Rousseau comparing society to the layers of an onion, in whichever book it was that he wrote that (but I wouldn’t want you to think that I am comparing TVHC to Rousseau, I think the caterpillar is way beyond anything that tiresome French windbag could come up with, though they are both obviously very into their pastoral)). Naturally now I am trying to read all Marcus’ books first, but now with an open mind to see if hidden ideas can be discerned. My worry is, of course, that that in some innocent looking story about a train taking animals to the beach there will be a subliminal message exhorting the youngster to become an accountant, or something equally devastating.

Of course I might be reading too much into it, but don’t get me started on Curious George...

And congratulations...

...to my cousin Matthew who was married to Beáta on a boat in Budapest on Saturday. We couldn’t be there, I am very sad to say, but as soon as someone sends me some photos of the actual wedding I will glad put them up in their honour.

Reverse angle

Ok, I know this is a bit late as the association football world kickabout finished over a week ago, but the computer decided to do something funny on Monday evening (not yesterday but the week before) which is only just righting itself. No idea what happened, but seemed to coincide with the date that those wonderful people at microsoft decided to stop supporting windows 98 – now I know we should get a new computer, one a bit more up to date and that has a larger memory than my ipod, but to hell with it, the good ole’ NEC has only caused me hours of frustration so far, and what makes you think a new one would be any better? Anyway I asked the Japanbloggers webring if anyone had any ideas and they were all very helpful (thank you all), suggesting solutions that had lots of acronyms in them. It tried to do what was suggested, but got bogged down and in the end the laptop seems to have righted itself, after a fashion, anyway. IE is still pretty tetchy, which was where the problem was, it wouldn’t load any pages, and suffice it to say that when we do eventually get a new computer I will certainly be downloading netscape, which I use at work and prefer – if I tried that with the NEC it would explode, or rather implode, I feel sure.

Anyway, a few things to mention this week. As it says above, the reverse angle. Now I watched quite a lot of the world kickabout and cannot quite fathom the reverse angle. I mean take Zindane’s header towards the end of extra time in the final. First of all we get the normal, as-it-happens shot in real time. Fine, great header, great save. Then, as there are about a zillion cameras in the stadium, we start to get the replays, from about a zillion different angles. But then, for some reason, the producer decides that one particular angle is the ‘reverse angle’ and the legend duly pops up on screen. Now from watching all these games I still cannot understand what constitutes the ‘reverse’ angle. Sometimes it is 90 degrees from the original live footage, other times it was 180 degrees, so where was the consistency and, more importantly how did the producer know? Is it important for the match, be judged by the TMO or something? Also, what was the point? As I said each incident was filmed from a zillion different angles so why should one be singled out as the ‘reverse angle’ – ok, it’s one of a zillion angles that isn’t particularly better than any other, so what? I just didn’t get it, and still don’t. I watched the tri-nations Australia versus South Africa game on Saturday night to see of they indulged in the ‘reverse angle’ conspiracy, but I don’t think they bothered – though the data from this piece of investigative rugby watching must be tempered by the fact that I was a bit pissed and actually fell asleep for the last 10 minutes (they were showing it late after all), so it might just be that I missed the sign coming up on the screen. Anyway I shall continue to investigate with any major sporting event that I happen to come across on the telly.

Cute

Cute, for those of you who don’t live here or have never visited, is big in Japan. I don’t mean big in the sense that little kids like cute stuff (though they do, like kids everywhere), or that the people of these fair isles are particularly cute in a good looking way (though again some, most of them undoubtedly are). No, cute is big in Japan in the sense that not only do little kids like cute, furry, cuddly things, the entire population does. Unlike say the UK, where girls grow out of the cute phase by about the age of, I don’t know, ten (I haven’t lived there for a while), in Japan this carries on well into adulthood. There are lots of books written about this and from the outside I am sure it is a psychoanalyst’s wet dream. Perhaps it is the glorification of the young that does it, or maybe it’s just great branding and marketing, who knows? But it seems to permeate every level of society – where else do apparently sophisticated 20-something urbanites of both sexes have Hello! Kitty straps on their mobile phones?

Anyway this was brought home to me the other day whilst I was with the youngster down on the riverbank. There has been quite a bit of construction going on recently, widening and paving the footpaths, that sort of thing. Now as in most countries warning signs are put up to, well, warn people that construction work is going on. here is one I spotted...



and just to zoom in to close up on the bottom of that signboard...



Quite what a couple of cute pussies have in common with repaving footpaths, I don’t know. Also in this series was the ubiquitous floppy-eared dog and, strangely, an image of some penguins (?). seems to me that if you want small kids to be attracted to something, the best bet is to put cute pictures on it, but surely the point of warning signs is to keep people, especially little kids, away from potentially dangerous situations. A contradistinction, methinks...

Krazy Kim

Is at it again. As I am sure you know Krazy Kim fired off some rockets from his People Mart a couple of weeks ago. He did this around 5am on the day of the Italy v Germany kickabout semi-final, which caused panic in the massed ranks of mass media in Japan. now as I have written before, somewhere, Japan has some pretty odd ideas when it comes to screening sports fixtures, and this was no exception. So, Italy Germany went to full time all square. During the second half Krazy Kim looses his rockets. As extra time starts NHK channel 1, showing the footy but nominally a news and current affairs channel, says “thanks for watching the footy so far, but as this news is so massively important we are going to switch the rest of the footy to NHK channel 3. We are sorry that this will completely ruin anyone’s day who is recording the footy on this channel, but, well, fuck you, we don’t care.” Or words to that effect. But it was ok as the two periods of extra time weren’t that interesting, where they? Oh! Ah...

Anyway whilst Krazy Kim has been firing his arsenal at Japan, Russia and anyone else who he deems fit, the Kool Kid has been away on the government sponsored world junket. Now this would, it would appear, be all right and proper, but actually with parliament now closed until September, when the Kid is going to stand down, what this tour really amounts to is a glorious goof off. I mean, he’s been pretended to be Elvis in Graceland, pretended to be Indiana Jones outside Petra and, most recently, pretended to be Japanese prime minister in Saint Petersburg. Nice work!

....++++Hello Houston++++....

....++++We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties++++....

....++++er.....think it might be because Microsoft have stopped support for windows 98++++....

....++++probably ought to buy a new computer sometime this century++++....

Well thank goodness that’s over and done with.

So, once again England fail to show the necessary class against handy but, let’s face it, not exactly superior opposition. Was it the mind games that didn’t work? Are the team just mentally not strong enough? Who knows... Can we take any positives from it all? Well, some of the news members of the squad did well, and some of the senior pros played well in places, but once again it was the old England failing of not all playing well for the whole game, or series of games, really. To be without you captain obviously doesn’t help, but then again there should have been enough quality on display to overcome that and put the game away. But again we failed when the pressure got too much. Have we learnt anything from it all? Well, play your strongest team in the positions they play day-in, day-out would be a start. Have a plan B would be another. But, at the end of the day, I don’t think we’re going to have too many international teams quaking in their boots right now, especially the Australians, who we visit this winter, or indeed the Pakistanis, who are next up. So, on the whole a bit of a debacle for the tour, but well done Sri Lanka and their 5-0 drubbing of the England cricket team.

Oh, and apparently something similar happened in the football, but that wasn’t exactly unexpected, now was it?

And it comes to a pretty pass when I have to rely on a Scottish tennis player for a bit of sporting relief (though as I type Mr Murray may well have been knocked out of Wimbledon already).

Life in Japan carries on apace, as it is wont to do. Nice to see the Kool Kid over in the US of A, making a bit of a fool of himself by pretending to be Elvis. Now personally I have nothing against trying to be Elvis, indeed I have be known to do the odd song by the ‘king’ during a karaoke evening, mainly as these are the types of songs that just about anyone (i.e. me) can sing without sounding totally off-key/rhythm/timing/tone/pitch/etc as I normally do when attempting to sing. But to do it on national news tv and, at the same time, making GWBush look less of a prat than normal, well, it doesn’t really project the image of a senior politico figurehead. But then again, why not, I suppose? The Kid is off later this year, retiring with grace to do who knows what, so why not enjoy his last few months in the job, organise a few foreign trips at the taxpayer’s expense, he won’t get them any more, after all. I feel sure that the Kid went to the land of the free to discuss something along political lines, but I’m buggered if I can remember seeing anything in the papers about new accords being signed. I remember seeing GW saying “buy our beef, it’s great”, but if his level of senility is anything to go by, I would not be buying any slightly dangerous foodstuff that he recommends.

The real issue is that the whole country is waiting for him to go so they can get on with the life. It is a bit like the whole Blair-Brown sage going on the UK, though at least we know when the Kid is off (well, when I say ‘we know’ I mean we know in a general sense of ‘later this year’, but truth be told I can’t recollect right now when this might be). Anyway as I wrote about once before a number of bigwigs are doing their bouffant best to position themselves in their ‘what me, take over from the Kid? The thought never crossed my mind…but now that you mention it’ pose. Still no one wants to come out and say that yes, they want to do it, but I suppose that isn’t the way its done in this neck of the woods – a bit more back room back scratching to do just now, then, just as someone shouts ‘look over there’, we’ll find we have a new PM whilst no one was looking.

But talking of PMs, as we were, it was sad to see Ryutaro Hashimoto pop his clogs at the weekend. Hashimoto was the PM when I first came to Japan in 1996 so I’ve always had a certain affinity for him. If the Kid is the Elvis of the Japanese politic world, the Hashimoto was the Bryan Ferry. If you’re wondering quite what I mean by that, it wasn’t that he was a brilliantly avant-garde muso or a stylish and contemporary dresser in white dinner jackets. No, he just had really greasy looking hair. But still, it meant that he stood out from most politicos as most only have quite greasy hair, and not a great deal of it, but old Hashimoto had a startling head of hair slicked back with a day’s worth of OPEC production. He did two years as PM, which wasn’t bad in the post war years, but again a reason to like him was that he was the chap accused of taking bungs from the political division of the Japan Dentist’s Association, which again I wrote about here I mean, if you’re going to take bribes, sorry donation, from a service industry, dentists are as good as any, and they’re rich, and you might get some decent dental care out of it.

And what with ‘Fiery’ F.S. Trueman shuffling off this mortal coil, it was a bit of a weekend, all told.

Of technology and trims

OK haven’t posted for a while, as I am sure you have noticed, but this can be blamed fairly and squarely on the Association Football World Cup, currently being played in Germany. It’s their fault as the early afternoon kick off in Europe is a TV friendly 10pm here in Japan, i.e. exactly when I would normally be musing on things to write in this here blog. So today I have taken the bold but necessary step of trying to write something during my lunch hour – and 86 words so far is a good start.

Now I don’t normally post about work as I don’t want to think about work whilst I am at home as it is bad enough having to go to work, let alone think about it at home. But sitting here in the office I still don’t want to think about work, so whilst some of you might want a post about work, you’re not going to get one from this wage slave today.

But what I’m sure you do want to read about is more brushes with technology that I have unfortunately had to make (and no, I am not going to talk about my iPod even though it is my blog and I can write what I want.. but I will say that I am sitting here listening to Beethoven on my iTunes as I type, how civilised). So, around the time the world cup started the grand old Yomiuri printed a schedule with all the games, what time they were on and which channels would be showing them. As I read I became a tad disheartened – Japan has 7 domestic TV channels that everyone can watch in the Kanto area, plus 2 satellite channels run by NHK, the Japan equivalent of the Beeb (and who no one pays the subscription for after some scandal a year or two ago that I cannot now remember – and of course no foreigner ever pays for because as soon as the collection person comes around you put on your best ‘dumb gaijin’ persona (not that difficult), refuse to answer even the simplest question if it’s in Japanese and then try to mime, at great length, that as a foreigner you only watch videos as you can’t understand the local lingo – apparently, so I’ve heard m’lud). Anyway the world cup was to be spread over most channels but predominantly on NHK’s domestic and satellite channels, with certain, high value games only on satellite.

So this is OK as we have satellite so no problem there. But the video is. It is about 400 years old and was given to us when we arrived. It has provided sterling service, no doubt, but its limitations were cruelly exposed by the world cup schedule as it cannot record the satellite channels (and no, before anyone starts on about it, especially those who have never been to Japan and know nothing about the broadcasting and/or home electronics systems (you know who you are), it can’t). this then means that we are going to have to spend some cash on getting something new that can record these programs and so, on a rainy Sunday after the Paraguay game, the Guru, youngster and I troop off to our local Yamada denki to purchase new consumer electronics.

Of course it is not that simple. One, no one buys a simple video deck anymore, not even sure if they make them. Second, there are an awful lot of acronyms out there. And third, in 2011 Japan will go wholly digital so unless you want to spend money now and again in 5 years time, you had better buy something that is savvy with all types of inputs. The choice was, of course, bewildering and the Guru and I (the youngster sensibly fell asleep), did not have much of a clue what we wanted. Well, I say that but we figured we needed something that could record DVDs, something, if it wasn’t too expensive, that had a recordable hard drive and something that, most importantly, could record the analogue satellite broadcasts from NHK that show the footy.

So we looked at all these sleek, expensive boxes in Yamada denki, prodded them, poked them, wondered what the difference between a DVDR, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+/-R and DVD-RAM was and generally became confused. Then we saw the most popular, biggest selling model. ‘Absolutely great’ the sales chap assured us. ‘Does everything including make your dinner’ he intoned. ‘All ready for the digital age, in fact the only one that is’ he claimed. ‘Even have big baseball star Hideki Matsui advertising it on the telly’ he added. “Does it record DVDs, have a hard disk and can record the existing NHK satellite channels?” we asked with serious faces. ‘Oh yes, all of the above, sir, just you wait ‘til you get it home’.

So we bought it and a bunch of DVD-RAMs (that I subsequently looked up on wikipedia so now know at least what they are) that set us back the best part of three hundred quid. Got it home and low and behold it could do all of the above – with the one exception of actually being able to record the NHK satellite channels that we expressly bought it for. Bugger. It can record the NHK Hi-vision channels, the new digital ones that will take over fully in 2011 and on which many games are being shown, but that’s not much good if you aren’t hooked up to those channels, which we aren’t, or the building you are in doesn’t want to get the cables put in, which they don’t.

So now we have a jolly complex DVD/HDD recorder thing, which is very cool and does have great features, like being able to start watching the program you are recording whilst you are still recording it, but it still doesn’t do what I really wanted it to do, so this morning I had to get up at 4am to watch England vs. Sweden, as I couldn’t record it, and what a pain that turned out to be and now I am flagging as lack of sleep kicks in. oh well.

Otherwise the other big news this week was a haircut. Not mine, though I did have one last night, but the youngster’s. Yes, at the tender age of 1 year and nearly 2 months he has had his first trim. We, the Guru and I, have been going on about this for a while and...

[finishing this off back home now]

...well, basically neither of us could pluck up the courage to go anywhere near the little fella with a pair of scissors. So off we trotted to a local hairdressers, which is a bit of a grand sounding word for a cheapie in-and-out-in-10-minutes kind of place, where to our surprise one of the chaps there said he’d have a crack at a one year-old’s hair. On we plonked the little ‘un on to the booster seat and then, much to our surprise again, he stayed absolutely stock still, probably paralysed in fear and wonderment, as the chap did his stuff. He snipped, judged, snipped again with a flourish , as artistes do and after about 3 of our allotted 10 minutes, the youngster was done.

And it worked as the hair cut has taken years off him, which at 14 months is a pretty impressive thing to do.

One step closer

Now if you remember back to here, I started an aural exploration of my ipod recently with a view to listening to each and every song on there, just to say that I had. So recently I was walking along when the U2 track “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, track #643, came along. Just to digress for a moment, there are 30 song titles in my ipod that start with the pronoun (that, for all you grammarians out there, is a noun that has lost its amateur status) ‘I’ – this is more than the 17 ‘alls’ that I remarked upon earlier, but in my opinion is not as remarkable as all the alls as I just seems like a more song-y kind of word to start wit. I will spare you the list of 30 songs as I can’t be bothered to note them all down. (NB. I will also not be counting the hundred or whatever songs that start with the definite article as that would just be silly).

Anyway the U2 song with the long title came on and it got me a-musing, as these things are wont to do. The muse went along the line of ‘hmm, I remember this...haven’t heard it for a while...[interlude of half humming half singing long forgotten words]...biggest seller on the planet once...read about it in Q magazine ages ago...hmmm,1987 it was released........1987! Holy Shit that’s 20 years ago...TWENTY YEARS AGO!! (I don’t often do double exclamation marks, but this moment was a definite double).

Normally this would have been an issue, but in that week my dear Ma had written to me with contact details of a bloke who I’d known at school and college, we’d played rugby together for about 8 years, but with whom I’d lost contact with around the start of university. Anyway my mum met his mum, she passed on his email address and we got in touch. It had been 15 years, or something very near that. He didn’t know I live in Japan even though I’ve been here for the best part of a decade. It blew me away.

So it all got me thinking about that fact that I’m getting older. It had to happen sometime, I know, especially after the youngster was born, but I didn’t think I would sneak up on me this way – I bet everyone says that. So ‘I Still...’ was off the Joshua Tree album that was released in 1987 which is about 20 years ago, and as my mind did strange things with mental arithmetic it said to me “wow, so, the Joshua tree was released 20years ago and, like, if you go back twenty years from that you’re in, like 1967, which is like another planet”. That’s when I began to lose it a little. It only seems (sort of) like yesterday that I got a copy of the Joshua tree and played it for the first time, but twenty years before that is like soooooo long ago – but if course it’s not, it just seems that way to me.

So anyway, as I was mulling all this over, my disappeared youth and the fact that policemen and doctors are looking younger everyday, fate in her fickle way decided to make me feel really bad.

In our office at the moment is a guy named Joe. He is from New York and is an intern. He came to Japan a few months ago and is studying at a university in Chiba but on a Wednesday he comes to our office to gain valuable experience in business and to use his rapidly expanding Japanese vocabulary (the fact they put him on the only set of desks containing foreigners who are all English speakers seems to have escaped his handlers, but there you go (and he’ll learn an awful lot about how companies operate from that piece of planning...)). So I was talking to Dave about this whole ‘getting older’ thing and we were both looking in wonder back at the nineties and eighties, wondering where they had gone, and so, knowing it would hurt, asked Joe how old he is. “Twenty” wss the reply. We both do some mental arithmetic, but get confused so ask his date of birth. “October 1985” he answered.

It then dawns on us both, Dave and I that is, that pleasant Joe from New York was not even born when the original Live Aid concerts were on in the summer of 1985... OMG. And to make it worse is that he looks at us, as our jaws (and jowls and waistlines) sag, with a kind of ‘yeah, I’ve heard about it but it was, like, so long ago man, ancient history, it had those kind of drug dudes from like the seventies in there, the hippy stuff, yeah, whatever...’ expression. He probably looks at the original Live Aid the way I look at Woodstock – yeah, I know it happened but like get over it, it was ages ago and no one cares about it anymore, live in the now, man – or something like that. (God knows what Joe thinks of Woodstock, probably reads about it in history class).

All the markers of my formative youth, things like the Falkland’s war, Bhopal and Chernobyl, the first shuttle launch and then the Challenger disaster, Gazza, the Mary Rose etc – this kid has no first hand knowledge of them whatsoever. Completely freaked me out, I can tell you – but what is it going to feel like when the youngster grows up...?

PS up to track #730 now, Kashmir by Plant & Page off their MTV (sort of) unplugged album No Quarter.

Good news

So the good news about this weekend, apart from the fact that I took today and tomorrow off, giving me a four day weekend, is that the youngster decided that he had had enough of this crawling or standing lark so so put them together in a semblance of what can only be described as 'walking' (though waddling then falling over would be slightly more accurate, so gross misuse of the word 'only' there).

His first attempt at this seems to have been on Friday evening - as I was getting ready to give him a bath he was standing by, and holding on to, the fridge. He then let go but instead of sitting down, as is normal, he took three tottering steps to the door, whence he held on once more. I was watching this in the bathroom mirror (the angles are such that one can see into the kitchen, this usually entails a game of peekaboo with the youngster) and thought it was impressive but something he had already done, but on telling the Guru she was surprised as she had not yet seen it (a rare occurence when dad sees something for the first time!). Obviously he realised that as a big boy (well, it was 1 day before his 13 month 'birthday'), he had better get this walking thing sorted, and so he has.

But for some strange reason he has regressed a little in that whilst over the weekend he has tried, and achieved, quite a bit of tottering, the new best game is to use his stroller/trolley thing to practise with, supported by the bar rather that 'free' walking. Anyway that will come, I am sure, but for now it is a big well done for the walking boy!

First Aid

So on Saturday we went off for adventures in Kinshicho. Now you may think there is little adventure to be had in Kinshicho, and in the main you would be right, but we found a little bit of it that was not only adventuresome but also educational and informative as well. Well slightly adventuresome, at least. OK, I’m padding now.

Ever since the little ‘un was born the Guru, in her dedicated mother sort of way, had been looking for a kind of first aid for little kids type class we could go to together as a family. Now I know what you are thinking, how can a one year-old kid do first aid? But no this was a class for the parents of kids who have a feeling that their kid is going to injure themselves in the not too distant future (i.e. every parent on the planet, I reckon).

But it might surprise you to know that these kinds of classes are pretty few and far between and hence we had to go all the way to Kinshicho to find one – not that Kinshicho is really that far away, but it isn’t just around the corner and took a good hour to get to via various train lines. We were meant to leave around 1130ish but sitting arounf at 930 we found we had little to do except tidy the house and as such the cry of ‘why don’t we go earlier?’ was raised and accepted with, it has to be said, a lucky degree of foresight.

The other reason for going was to visit a brand spanking new Baby Zarus. Now I am sure you can looking at it written there, quickly work out that is meant, in fact, to be Babies ‘R’ Us, but when the Guru told me this was where she was intending to go I must admit that it took me a good 5 minutes to work out what she talking about (try saying it quickly with a Japanese accent and you’ll see what I mean). So we arrived in Kinshicho early and headed off in search of the aforementioned Baby Zarus, which had only be open for about a week. Whilst we were in the UK for crimbo we went to a UK version (or it might have been a Toy Zarus, I can’t quite remember) and it was, to be quite frank, somewhat on the dingy side, a bit tatty, understaffed and well, a bit dishevelled – basically, I suppose, like the UK. But this one was all gleaming and new and shiny and, as with most shops in Japan, heavily staffed. However what we also found out was that it was pretty over-priced and Akachan Honpo (to whom we take off our hats) was just as good and a darned sight cheaper (though I will admit that Baby Zarus has Baby Einstein DVDs, of which I will return to purchase as I haven’t seen them anywhere else in Japan).

Other than that it was all pretty much the same as the baby store was in a shopping mall that, I figure, there is a big mould for in some far away corner of Japan, as these places are ubiquitous not only in their occurrence in the towns of Japan but also in their uniformity and, truth be known, their dullness. (OK, OK, I know, cheap shot at shopping malls, but come on, they’re getting a bit too much now, don’t you think?)

Then it was onto the fire station and their attached ‘Disaster Prevention Centre’, or somesuch grandiose name (hint – to prevent disasters in Japan, move away from seismic fault lines and volcanoes (and yes, I realise that would mean moving out of the country all together)). So we arrived and registered and then had a few minutes to poke around and see what was what. It is quite a good place this and there were lots of kids playing with various touch screen TV gizmos that told them how to put out fires or save their elderly relatives from mochi-death at new year and, as luck would have it, you could choose English language variations as well. Got to worth a crack, thought I, and selected a machine for phoning the fire and/or ambulance service. At the start this was quite straight forward as you selected what sort f thing you wanted to report, I chose an accident in the home, then you picked up a real phone and placed the imaginary call. But here it got a little strange at the voice at the other end of the phone said everything in Japanese and the TV screen translated it into English and, as it was all a recording, it didn’t matter what you said into the phone as the video played through anyway. So if I do ever have to phone in an accident in our home I hope a bloke on a TV screen suddenly appears as otherwise person at the emergency end of the phone isn’t going to understand too much of what I’m saying. Hmm.

So onto the first aid bit. Now having been in various boys organisations as a spotty youth I have a pretty good grasp of first aid, rusty though it may be, and so I was quite looking forward to this to see if it was what I remembered and to see if things were the same in Japan as the UK. But in the end there wasn’t actually that much first aid going on, more it was what to do in one of two situations: 1 what to do if your baby is choking on something and; 2 what to do if s/he has stopped breathing (and to be fair the first one is something that is invariably going to happen, judging by the fact that anything that can be picked up goes into the mouth almost straight away).

Places on these sessions are hard to come by and when we saw the other attendees it was easy to see why. The session had been block booked by the Kinshicho women’s volunteer baby task force group, or something, about 15 of whom took over one end of the practice dojo, there were only two couples with kids in there, of which we were one. Not sure what the task force actually do, could be cleaning up the dodgy, gang infested streets of Kinshicho for all I know, but some of them looked pretty mean to me (and others pretty dopey so maybe not).

The leader of the session was not some strapping fire or paramedic type person but a little old lady in a uniform whose skirt made getting up and down from mats on the floor quite an operation. She was also one of those types who would not stop talking or interrupting, which can make instruction excruciating at times. First the choking. This was practiced with a plastic baby who had swallowed a small foam pellet just the right size to get trapped in a hole in her mouth. The instruction was simple, put the baby face down on your thigh as you are kneeling and then give it one almighty thump on the small of the back with the heel of your hand. The instructor women said hard, but I am sure that the way I was thumping the back (and failing to remove the pellet) I would have broken the baby’s spine, but there you go. She said it was fine and in the end the pellet did come out, but only after enough force had been applied to dislodge the lungs, appendix and spleen, I suspect.

The stopped breathing bit was more complex as you had to check various things as you went along, as you would expect, and ended with trying to give artificial respiration to another small plastic baby. This was actually quite interesting and we all got quite into this – the thing to remember is when you are trying to blow air into the baby’s lungs you should only do it a little bit otherwise you might blow too much air in the lungs might explode – not a nice way to go! Anyway the point about this was the instructor showed everyone how to do it, then went through it again, and again and again. Then we got to have a go with the dolls and she talked us through it, stopping at each action to explain, again, what and why. And then we did it again to her accompaniment. At no time did she let everyone just have a go themselves, all the time she was clapping and counting and stopping and explaining. Even the Guru got frustrated with the instructor so in the end we just did it ourselves and got the hang of it without interference, which we felt was more important as it is unlikely the instructor will be in our apartment to help count out 10 seconds if something does happen to the little ‘un.

And that was about it, so now we fell jolly prepared for if something does happen – well, a little bit more prepared than we did before. They also had one of the big earthquake simulators there, which we really wanted to go on, but it was all part of a tour that we had missed the start of so wouldn’t let us in, more’s the pity. But by the end of the day the plan to go early proved the right decision as just as we got home a massive rain storm hit, flash flooding in the streets stylee, and we just missed it. Nice.

Podcasting

Everything you always wanted to know...

Have decided to become a bit coy with the photos of the family, no real reason but there are some weirdos out there who may want to use photos for nefarious purposes like, I don't know, pretending to be me, for example, and we can't have that. So, if you would like to see new photos of the family please get a Flickr log in thing and let me know what it is and I will, after careful vetting, perhaps add you to the list of desirables...

Children’s Day

It isn’t really called children’s day, you know, that, apparently, is quite an un-Japanese sop to PC-ness and inclusion. It’s actually Boy’s Day and most people still refer to it as this, because, basically, boys are allowed to have more fun in Japan than girls so they need a day especially for them, or something like that. That day is May 5th (also, by coincidence, my mother’s birthday – happy birthday mum) and is a national holiday (there is, I think, also a girl’s day, but of course it is a normal day rather than a holiday for obvious reasons (like wives/mothers aren’t allowed a day off so why should girls get one? (The views expressed here are in no way representative of the liberal, new manliness of the author, not only do I eat quiche but I can make a pretty darned fine one too))).

Anyway it was ‘Children’s’ Day on Friday last week and this was also the first proper one for the youngster, as last year he would only have been about two weeks old, and as such there are strange and wonderful traditions that need to be upheld, although actually the strange tradition was for something else, but we will come to that in time.

So on the 5th the Japanese grandparentals and uncle came over to pay their respects to the youngster and generally for lunch and a beer or two. There are two things you have to do for boys on ‘Children’s’ day, the first is to buy some Shobu. Shobu is, as far as I can tell, a worthless type of grass, or possibly weed. You can’t eat it, it doesn’t look particularly appealing and it doesn’t have an arresting fragrance. In fact it is the sort of thing that farmers, a few centuries ago, looked at and decided ‘well, we can’t actually do anything with this stuff, but it seems rampant round the rice fields, so let’s invent a ceremony for it, otherwise we’ll have to cut all the blasted stuff down and that will take forever”. Or something. So, what you have to do is hang some of this stuff around you front door on ‘Children’s’ day in honour and homage of any boys in your house. Fair enough, I guess, bit like hanging mistletoe at Christmas, possibly. Then when grandparentals come in they can nod sagely and murmur “well done on the shobu front. No, I don’t know what it’s for either”.

But then, at the end of the day, when you shobu is beginning to wilt, do you throw the stuff away? Oh no, much better than that, you have a bath with it. As I said before it seems to have no smell, or healing properties, it is grass after all, but tradition has it that you pop a couple of plants in your ofuro before your evening soak. There were even pictures on TV of local sento bath houses with baths full of the stuff. And to be fair the youngster kind of enjoyed it – well, kind of enjoyed slapping it in my face as I gave him a bath, which is pretty much the same thing, but I’m not entirely sure that was the point.

The second thing you must do for boys on ‘Children’s’ day is to buy them some imitation ceremonial samurai armour, so they grow up to be big strong warriors following the Bushido code (and to keep ceremonial armour manufacturers in business), though no one seems to actually wear samurai armour on a daily basis any more, so I think things may have moved on a little. Anyway as you can see from the photos below, we have bought the youngster some rather fine blue, black and gold armour (well, helmet) that has been on display for a week or two now. Unfortunately you can’t actually put the armour on, or even draw the little sword that comes with it, as, I assume, it might be dangerous. But still, it’s pretty cool stuff to have. Girls have to make do with a bunch of Hina dolls on their day – as I said, more fun to be a boy.

The other thing we got to do was an old, old Saitama tradition that the Guru heard about from her pregnant pals and which thought sounded like jolly good fun. The tradtion goes something like this. After a baby (boy or girl this time) has reached the ripe old age of one they take part in a ceremony called Ishoumochi where the parents go to a department store and buy a bloody great lump of mochi, weighing in at about 1.5 kilos (or about 3lbs in old money). Now mochi, if you remember, is pounded rice that forms kind of stringy mozzarella type stuff that Japanese eat lots of at new year and by which old folk are always dying as it gets all stringy in their throats and they suffocate. Anyway it is solid stuff and, again as you can see from the photo below, the lump is quite big and has kanji painted on it. The idea is to show how big and strong a baby is by tying this lump of mochi to them and then getting them to walk around with it.

Now this is jolly good fun, except, of course, for the little kid that has got to do it. The youngster did not take kindly to having 1.5kgs of mochi strapped to his back at all (I can’t imagine why). Apart from the fact that he can’t walk yet and his standing is of the tentative kind as well. But he did manage to crawl a bit, dragging the mochi behind him, which we all agreed was pretty good going and so have him a rousing hurrah. Apparently if the kid can’t do it with one lump of mochi it is because they are over balanced, so the accepted remedy is to strap two lumps to them, one front and one behind (just the 3kgs then) so as to counter balance the forces on them.

Personally I’m all for weird and wonderful traditions, especially ones I can’t understand and can humiliate my offspring with in the future, so I had another beer and watched the show.

Happy families on Children's day


’Children’s’ day armour


Trying to carry the mochi


Playing with the mochi


Quality time

One year older

So a busy last few days really. As you may have noticed in a comment from golf-playing-brother (and you might even have guessed anyway) it was the youngster’s birthday last week, on Thursday 27th to precise, when he attained the ripe old age of one (saying it to myself now, the grammar seems wrong if you say ‘he is one year one’ or is you say ‘he is one years old’, but surely one of them must be correct and it doesn’t seem right to say ‘he is a year old’, though of course he is, but I’m rambling now). To celebrate this most auspicious of occasions we dined at Maxim de Paris and then spent the night clubbing at Womb, Yellow and the Liquid room, as these are his favourite haunts. Not really, but he may do one day.

What we did do is have a small party with meself, the Guru and the man of the moment, where we had cakes and presents and things, which is at it should be. What it shouldn’t really be, but was, was two days after the day itself, on Saturday afternoon, mainly as we couldn’t really get ourselves organised for Thursday and, of course, about 30 minutes after I got home from work he went to bed, which would have made any party a curiously short lived affair. Anyway he didn’t seem to mind too much about having his party on Saturday afternoon and seeing as it takes a kid over a year to gain a sense of time (apparently), I don’t think he noticed anyway. But he did like his cake, with a candle in, of course. He doesn’t get to each much cake as these things are strictly rationed by his dietician (the Guru), so when he got to eat most of a fruit muffin thing he was most happy indeed, put a big smile on his face at least, though that could have been wind, who knows (oh, and he had his cake and he ate it, putting that myth to bed, I hope). Anyway, he are a couple of photos of the day.

My first birthday party


Mmm...cake


To the park

Monday was 1st May, if you hadn’t noticed, and that means demonstrations by the Japanese Socialist and/or Communist Worker’s Party in the park where not three weeks ago everyone was getting drunk looking at cherry blossoms. Funny old world, eh? Anyway we walked past this demonstration on the way to a much better park that contained no political rallies of any sort.

(Incidentally one has to ask why they socialists/communists bother in this country. I mean no one trusts them; the standard of living is generally pretty good (though with growing disparity, according to the Yomiuri); their idea of tough negotiating with management is to say ‘it was a bad year so no pay rises for the workers whilst managers get fat bonuses? Er…OK’; and culture has got groupthink sown up already. But then again, that’s me up against a wall when the revolution comes.)

But back to the action. Near Kawaguchi there is a place called the Green Centre – the green centre of what, they don’t tell you, but it is close to Green City which is a shopping centre I wrote about once as it contains our nearest branch of Japanese Mothercare. What the Green Centre is, though, is a park that has all the things you want from a park, such as grass, trees, flowers, ponds, waterfalls and lots and lots of little kids running about. Also on Monday the mercury touched 28oc and so a trip to the park seemed a fine idea indeed.

The park was, well parky, as you can see from a couple of photos below. The long carp streamers are there because we are rapidly approaching Boys Day on May 5th (more of which next week), and these are traditional things to hang outside to say ‘yes, my son is 14 foot trout’, or something. At the park we strolled about in a promenade style fashion, taking in the air and watching what seemed like the entire population of Kawaguchi’s kindergarten system running about enjoying themselves (I’m sure I never went to places like this when I was a kid – I got farming museums, as far as I can remember).

Naturally we took a picnic with us. Well, when I say we took what I mean is that the Guru and I took food to eat whilst the young ‘un decided to pick something up at the park. What he didn’t tell us was that he intended to pick up 4 handfuls of mud, a couple of leaves and a stick. I’m glad to say that he enjoyed these very much, though the same can’t be said for the Guru, who was nonplussed to say the least.

(a bit of) The park


About to eat his first leaf


More photos at Flickr.

All I ever wanted...

Now as you may or may not remember, yours truly bought an ipod last year as it was a gadget that I just had to have, and jolly good it is too. Now, like most people, I suspect, I put most of my cd collection straight onto it with nary a thought as to whether I would actually listen to most of the tracks and it struck me the other day that I probably hadn’t and wouldn’t. so with this in mind I thought I would give it a try, just to see if anything came along that made me think ‘ooh’ in rediscovery, or indeed in discovery of a hidden gem.

One of the features of the ipod is you can list all the tracks alphabetically by song, rather than album, so last week I embarked on my aural journey to the nether regions of the hard drive. My ipod is only a 20gb one and even then it’s only just over half full, but that still means 1,621 songs to plough through, which could take some time.

I realise you may be wondering where this is all going, and it is here. Last Thursday I was walking home and as I got near to the flat on came Bob Dylan with All Along the Watchtower (which, by-the-by, I’ve always wondered about, as how can you be ‘along’ a watchtower? Maybe I’m missing the Bobness of it all, but a tower seems a bit, well, up and down, rather than along a bit. Any suggestions?)

Nothing strange in a bit of Bob, of course, and just as I reached the flat the ‘wind it begin to howl’ and the song finished. Next morning, which was Friday, if you’re paying attention, I walked out the front door and in the lift replaced the earphones and carried on with my sonic saga and, by the time I got to the office, about one hour and twenty minutes later, John Lennon was telling me, along with Paul, George and Ringo, that All You Need is Love. That’s about an hour and twenty-five minutes of songs all starting with the word ‘All’.

I don’t know why, particularly, but for some reason I find that quite remarkable. No one at the office did, when I remarked to various personages there, and I suspect that neither will you, dear reader, but there you go. I will keep you informed as to whether any other words crop up with such regularity at the start of song titles, but I think they will have to go some way if they are going to beat the all conquering ‘All’ – well, about ninety minutes to be exact...

The ‘All’ list in full

All Along the Watchtower – Bob Dylan
All Apologies – Nirvana
All Around the World – The Jam
All Because of You – U2
All Blues – Miles Davis
All I Wanna Do – Sheryl Crow
All I Want is You – U2
All Mine – Portishead
All Night Long – George Shearing & Nancy Wilson
All Of Me – George Benson
All That You Give – The Cinematic Orchestra
All the Things She Said – Simple Minds
All the Things You Are – Wes Montgomery
All This Time – Sting
All Those Yesterdays – Pearl Jam
All Tomorrow’s Parties – The Velvet Underground
All You Need is Love – The Beatles

NB, now up to Bear Hug by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, number 117 on the count up.

Er....right...

OK, so the eagle eyed amongst my reader may have noticed a lack of a post this week. Apologies, I guess, are in order. Now I don't want to whinge, as it always sounds crap, but it's going to sound like that, I suspect. So, just too many things going on at the moment, too busy, not enough time to think, let along write too much down. These include work (too worky), study (too booky) and home life (too baby - though thank goodness the Guru is around to do most of the work here (thank you :-))

So for a bit, at least the next few weeks, I will try and post a few, shorter posts at random intervals rather than try and rewrite war & peace every Monday evening.

(it doesn't help that ER series 11 is now showing at 10pm on a Monday evening either)

In the meantime here is a photo of one of the few interesting things being built in the backstreets of Omotesando...



That's right, it's a one third size replica of a European cathedral for all those Japanese non-christians that absolutely must have a church wedding. Weird, if you ask me...

Omotesando

Omotesando [Street, road or perhaps boulevard, I suppose], has been described as the Champs Elysee of Tokyo, though not be me, you understand. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it is because of the trees that line it, or maybe because it has always been home to fashionable boutiques and expensive stores (and by fashionable I really mean expensive and full of clothes normal (or rather sane) people don’t buy – I digress), but then so is Ginza and no one, to my knowledge, calls Ginza Dori the you-know-what of Tokyo (maybe as they are calling Omotesando that? -Ed.). It could also mean that it is full of rude people, as is the rest of Paris. Or even that it is a long shopping street with too many cars running down it and the Arc de Triomphe at one end (though sadly this is missing from the Tokyo version so it can’t be that one).

BasicallyI don’t really know why, but what I do know is that it is a rather fetching street of Tokyo. Or, at least, it was.

What Omotesando was was a long road full of quite interesting shops and then a network of small lanes behind on each side which contained many small, interesting little shops, bars, galleries and restaurants and where it was pleasant to stroll of an afternoon. It also had, near the top of the road, an apartment block the name of which I cannot remember, but which was built after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake using cutting edge technology (of the time) and which came to be a beloved, ivy clad symbol of the area as its lower floors were filled with more interesting little shops and galleries

Now as everyone knows the average life of a building in the Tokyo area is about 26 years so an apartment block that was eighty was either going to be declared a national treasure or torn down. And I bet you can guess which one it was...

Enter, stage left, Mr Mori, he of the boring, way over hyped and remarkably uninspiring (in my opinion) Roppongi Hills. He was given he task of redesigning the area surrounding, and possibly including, the apartment block so it became a centre for international fashion and shopping and lifestyle and other vitally important functions as Tokyo, with only Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Roppongi, was felt to be at something of a disadvantage with other major cities as a shopping destination.

Mr Mori took a long hard look at the apartment block and came to startling but very perceptive conclusion – unlike his other ventures, Roppongi Hills, Ark Hills, Aoyama Hills and Hills Hills, Omotesando in general and specifically the apartment building in question did not have the word ‘Hills’ in their respective names. He also realised that the area of Omotesando had some individuality in its makeup that did not sit well with his vision for the redevelopment of central Tokyo.

Thankfully, a few years later, Mr Mori’s dream has been realised and (no really) Omotesando Hills has been created.

The reason I am going on about this now is that on Saturday I visited Omotesando for the first time in really ages and certainly the first time since OH was opened and so I got there a bit early to have a wander around. I was there for a leaving do (of Chris, who knows stuff about IT and his partner Vicki, who are heading back to the UK), so knowing that OH had been opened I thought I’d have a walk down the avenue to have a gander. I wasn’t expecting much as I had, over the preceding months, read plenty about OH, most people slagging it off as an eyesore. Well, to be honest, I didn’t really feel it was an eyesore or carbuncle on the backside of Tokyo. To me it was much worse than that. It was, sadly, just bland.

It is, essentially, a copy of Roppongi Hills and all the others, only whereas Roppongi Hills is all towers and upwards, Omotesando Hills is flatter and low rise. It does, apparently, go down quite a long way as well, so that while the top is only about 2 or 3 stories high, there are in fact 6 or 7 floors – this has been done to keep the low sky line feel. A nice touch but ruined by another, really ugly building across the road that is meant, I think someone told me on Saturday night, to resemble a tree or something equally preposterous (what’s wrong with a real tree instead of the building, I say?). But for OH, the outside is all white concrete and pale/white glass and not a lot else. The few shops that have windows on the outside, and there aren’t many, for some reason, are full of jeans that cost a month’s salary. Fascinating.

I realise, as I write this, that I am in danger of becoming an old fogey, but what the hell, I don’t care, I loved the old Omotesando for it’s quirkiness and variety and sense of itself and that has all now disappeared.

Walking away, saddened as I was, I went through a few back streets and they, at least, seem to have retained a bit of their charm, thank goodness. But one of my favourite lunchtime eateries, and place named Bamboo that did great sandwiches and which was in a great building, all nooks and crannies, has been transformed into Bamboo bog standard French restaurant (parties, weddings and monotony catered for) that now looks truly uninspiring indeed.

In fact the lanes seemed to confirm that Omotesando is now the place to come if you need to buy expensive jeans or for a woman to get a haircut and not a great deal else.

Shame that.

Last week

So apologies for the lack of posting last week, other than the brief message – all got a bit too much, as things are wont to do at times. Of course it didn’t help that my boss took three days off in what is arguably the busiest week of the year as it is the end of the academic year, new teachers arriving (the biggest intake of the year), spring schools before the regular teaching day begins and, though not his fault, the owner of the company still fecking about with 2006 budgets even though we are well and truly into the year. Enter stage right muggings here to try to keep all the plates spinning at the same time, whilst worrying about his son’s and wife’s health and getting a little bit antsy over dissertations.

But now it’s all over. Well, apart from the dissertation, which resolutely won’t go away until I have actually written the bloody thing, but at least I have 1800 words (of mostly, if total, crap) down which is, as is oft said, a start. [Not really sure why I used the word ‘oft’ there instead of a more sensible one...perhaps am developing a poetic steak (which would be odd as I have a very strong, profound but personal belief that poetry is, essentially, all shite)]. But no, the little ‘un and the Guru are now in much finer fettle than they were a week or so ago. Work has quietened down a little and the boss is back, so I don’t have to worry about stuff that he has to deal with. Unfortunately the owner of the company still owns the company and is an imbecile, oh well.

Hiding behind words

Anyway, this week I want to write about words in their spoken form. Actually that’s not strictly true, as I don’t believe that ‘words’ could really describe the noises that Marcus makes, though there may be one or two coming through. But here’s the point – how are you meant to know?

Now the little ‘un is quite the verbose type, apparently. Whilst at the community centre with he Guru he crawls around, plays with toys and generally enjoys himself, all the accompaniment of his own voice – something that the other kids there, especially the same age kids from the Guru’s pregnant pals group (not, of course, that they are pregnant anymore, but it sounds a lot better than her birthing buddies or mumma mates). All the other kids kind of get on with things without making too much noise, whilst Marcus keeps up a running commentary, just in case anyone is recording it for posterity. Kinki over at 35degrees recently wrote about the various noises her daughter makes, and there are similarities, though Marcus is now very much into compound noises such as “bababababaaaa” and ‘jyarjyarjyarjyar” and “shashashasha”. As you can see the whole consonant-vowel thing is very well developed

But what got me thinking was this. The other night he woke up about 3am, as he often does these days, for no good reason, it seems, other than let the world know. Except that he doesn’t really wake up, rather he stays in a pretty deep doze but manages to engage the bit of his brain that connects the stomach to the voice box and, sensing he could do with some milk, lets anyone close by know about it. So the Guru will wake up (as will I, I hasten to add), change his nappy and then give him some milk. But the other night, in between changing his nappy and giving him some milk she went to the toilet, so Marcus sat there and wailed and what came out could have been “mamamamamamaaaa” or it could have been “mama, mama, mama” as there did seem to be added stress on each odd syllable i.e. “Mama, Mama” etc

Of course he denies it completely and, when properly awake later would say only “bababababaaa”. Will keep you posted on this one, though I think “...and a pint for my dad” is a way off yet.

Exam hell

Japan is known as exam hell for some very good reasons, such as, there are too many, they are too hard, school doesn’t actually teach you anything useful in terms of knowledge to pass them and there are too many. But now there is another reason – very dodgy invigilators.

Two stories came up in recent weeks that made sitting an exam even worse than normal. One was in an exam at Tohoku university where a professor was invigilating – now I have never invigilated a proper, 2 or 3 hour exam but I reckon it must be pretty dull. This professor thought so he sat down and slowly nodded off. This wouldn’t have been too bad except that his snoring was such that he was asked to leave the hall as he was putting off the examinees. Nice work.

More recently, during the World Baseball Classis as described in an earlier post, a teacher at an elementary school got so wrapped up in the game during the lunch hour that when lesson started again in the afternoon he switched on the TV in his classroom so he could follow the action. The fact that he had set his students a test and they couldn’t concentrate obviously slipped his mind. Again what a plonker, but worse still in this case is the fact that the kids complained about not being able to do their exam, rather than sit and watch the game with the teacher. All going to grow up to be accountants, that lot, and serves them right too.

Last but not least, Saturday last was gloriously sunny and the peak of hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, so we, and the rest of Kawaguchi, went to the nishikoen (or east park) to drink some beer, eat something unhealthy and look at the onset of spring. Here are some snaps, there are a few more over at flikr.

Hanami at night


Nishi park


Hmm, hanami...


People and trees


This is what the fuss is all about


Hanami hangover

the little 'un is running a temperature, work is just too stressful and sh*tty to be funny anymore and it's raining. Too much for me, I think, to think about posting anything longer than this.

apologies, normal service will be resumed soon, one hopes...

Classic stuff

Apologies for the lack of post last night, but I was out for leaving beers with colleagues. End of March is always a popular time for leaving beers as lots of colleagues seem to feel it is a good time to move on to something new or return to the UK. I know this to be true as when we left in 2001 we went in April, probably because it coincides with the end/beginning of the academic year here in Japan. This year is a popular one with three friends moving on, one to pastures new in Japan (the chap we were out for last night) whilst two others are returning to Blighty to do stuff there. I have warned them, but little heed has been taken. Oh well.

So in the news this week has been the World Baseball Classic, which is a silly name for what is, in effect, the baseball world cup. It is about time baseball got a world cup, mainly so whichever American team wins their domestic league title (or World Series, as it is known there, after it was originally sponsored by World magazine) will stop calling themselves the world champions, when, patently, they aren’t. Of course the winners of the US’s domestic American football championship will continue to call themselves the world champions, but at least the baseball is a start. Anyway this all kicked off a couple of weeks ago with some games here in Japan in the Asian leg, where Japan managed to lose to South Korea once, or even possibly twice, but they both went to the finals in the US anyway. Lots of games, not a little controversy and some excellent teamwork saw Japan into the final against Cuba, the Americans having been put out by someone, possibly Mexico, whilst Japan got there by beating South Korea at the third attempt. To put it in context a little, Cuba were the favourites to win as they are a better team and, more importantly I guess, are reigning Olympic champions so should be quite handy.

The final was today from 11am Japan time, an amazingly synchronicitious coincidence as today is a national holiday (spring equinox, don’t you know) and so everyone could stay at home and watch it, and not have to get up early to do so. As the kick off (er... pitch off? Hit off? Toss off?) was at 11am, we decided to go out to the community centre, and thence shopping, as it seemed a better thing to do. Actually we went to the community centre a bit earlier than that, to be honest, just after the young ‘un had had his breakfast, when father’s hangover was kicking in (though it wasn’t too bad, luckily (the Oh God of Hangovers would not be happy)). The community centre, which has a name in Japanese that I can never remember, possibly Kokumin centre, is a jolly place that mothers, and sometimes fathers, take their kids under 4 years of age to let off a bit of energy. Essentially it a big room with mats and lots of toys where you can just let your kid go off and they can enjoy themselves whilst mothers chat with other mothers. Today was my first time there and I must say that I was impressed. It was big, there was plenty of room and plenty of toys and, because it was a national holiday, not too crowded. Marcus seemed to enjoy himself, playing with various things, including waving a toy (wooden) kitchen knife around with surprising precision and gusto (career as a chef or mass murderer perhaps). Dad also had fun as I got to push Marcus around on a little scooter thing, his legs aren’t quite long enough to reach the floor just yet, and also because I managed to make two other little kids cry just by looking at them – and there was me thinking I had a great rapport with little kids, oh well. At this point I should just mention that on Saturday we went to Akachan Honpo (Japanese Mothercare, if you remember) and whilst in a play area Marcus managed to stand all by himself with no support and not holding on to anything! An auspicious day, I think you’ll agree and something he did again this afternoon back home, but only for a moment.

So after spending about an hour or so there we went off shopping to the new shopping centre in Kawaguchi (the city is abuzz, I tell you, new building sites, shopping complexes and other stuff everywhere. The place has changed completely in the three years we’ve been here). The place is called Ario and it is, basically, a shopping mall, but it has a cinema that we haven’t been to yet, so it is not all bad. Anyway the good people of Ario were sensible and realised that whilst lots of families may be there to do a spot of shopping, more than likely the fathers would be far more interested in watching the baseball, so they set up TVs for precisely this purpose. When we got there it was 2-0 to Japan in the first inning and people were getting excited. Now personally I don’t really care for baseball, I prefer cricket as any self respecting Englishman should, but then again I have a little interest in it and follow what happens in a cursory way, much as I did ski jumping before watching the Nagano Olympic final in a sports centre once that I wrote about but don’t know where. And of course I, and by ‘I’ I mean we as the Guru got into it as well, really got into this game. We wandered around Ario for a bit, had lunch, bought dinner food, looked at arms & armour for the boy (more of which in future posts), but always kept coming back to the baseball. By the time we left it was 4-1 to Japan and there was a palpable buzz. We walked home in the pleasant spring sunshine, the young ‘un fell asleep and as soon as we got into the house we switched on the TV to find out what was going on.

At this stage I should really have gone to do some study, but what with the previous evening’s exertions, the baseball on the tv and the cricket on the web discretion was the better part of valour and so I slobbed out. On out return Japan was now winning 6-1 and it was looking like a cakewalk (what does that expression really mean and where did it come from?), but then Cuba came back into it. Soon it was 6-3 and Japan had stopped scoring. Then in the bottom of the eighth a Cuban hitter smacked a two run homer to left field and it was 6-5. was an upset on the cards…? Belatedly Japan got their offence working again and, though some really excellent team batting, managed to pound out 4 runs (inexplicably the Cubans walked one Japanese hitter, loading up the bases so that the next man in, Ichiro, who holds the single season record for hits in the US league, had merely to connect and Japan were assured of runs). So, by the bottom of the ninth it was 10-5 and Cuba had to score 6 to win. The second in chap hit another home run, I think, to make it 10-6, but then the Japanese pitcher showed some excellent control and struck out the last two batsmen for no runs and unfancied Japan won the inaugural series and can now, justifiably, call themselves world Champions. And jolly well done, too.

Perhaps the most pleasing aspect is that their play followed national stereotypes almost to perfection. The Cubans wanted to big and macho and hit the leather off the baseball. All death or glory, the individual big hitter, superstar kind of thing. Japan, on the other hand, was all about teamwork, playing as a group, all members doing their bit well to make sure the whole team (and country) succeeded. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it...

On the move

Now Tokyo has, if you don’t know and/or haven’t lived here, one of the best public transport systems in the world. I can say this because I have been to a few places and have decided it to be so (but, for the record, I haven’t been to that many places, but have decided it to be so anyway. I mean, I haven’t seen the marble-clad mausoleum that is the Moscow subway, but I reckon that Tokyo’s probably works a little better). The fact that the public transport services are, to put in mildly, excruciatingly busy of a morning does not seem to stop their ability to deliver me to where I want to be at, basically, the time I want to be there. Actually there was an interesting piece in one of the free weekly listings magazines recently about the Tokyo Metro (as it has been renamed as when it was called the subway people kept going to station masters and tried to order club sandwiches with extra mayo (honestly)), which had the usual blurb you would right about a metro system if you were writing an article about one, and also some facts and figures. The most interesting fact and figure for me was that the most crowded bit of line is the Tozai line between Kiba and (I think) Monzen-nakacho, heading into Tokyo, around 830am of a weekday. This was interesting to me as this exactly the time that I pass this stretch of line – thank goodness that I’m going out of Tokyo and can wave at all the suckers squashed sardine fashion on trains going the other way. Ho ho. Amazingly this bit of line runs every morning at 197% capacity. 197 per cent! I mean, how can that be? To me 100% capacity means a full train so to squeeze double that number of people on, I mean, phew. Thank goodness it isn’t me indeed. Although I do get a jolly busy train for three stops from Kawaguchi to Oji on the Keihin-Tohoku train line, and that three stops is bad enough and is only rarely crowded enough that I have trouble breathing. Still, with this aging population problem there should be enough space by about, say 2106, or something.

Anyway that is not exactly what I was going to write about. What I want to mention is the fantastic service you get if, shock horror, the trains go wrong. Now this has happened on the old Keihin-Tohoku line a couple of times in the last month, which in itself is enough to write home about (not that I have, apologies to parentals) as, generally speaking, trains and metros do not get delayed in this country, even when the men with white gloves are pushing people onto the trains so they all fit (yes, it does happen, it is not an urban myth but no, I have not been subjected to their synchronised shoving and nor do I want to be). But sometimes the trains do get delayed, quite often by some exceptionally unhappy yet not very public spirited person who jumps in front of a train as it pulls into a station. Other times there are just technical problems (wrong kind of snow, leaves on the line, tricky sudoku problem to solve), which mean delays. Now in the UK, from what I remember, there is such a thing as a timetable which BR and The London Underground produce which list trains, times and destinations and which have no bearing to what is actually travelling along the tracks at any given time. The Japanese, on the other hand, have a timetable which bears not a passing resemblance to reality but which is actually run by atomic clocks and is attuned to the cosmic tick (or rather, the universe sets its wristwatch by the 11:02 Tokyo-Osaka shinkansen (possibly). That this works is testament to the fact that, well, the Japanese know how to run a train/tube system properly – so much so that if I go onto Yahoo Japan and tell it I want to be in Yokohama at 930 in the morning, as I did this morning, it will tell me to take the 8:30 from Kawaguchi and I know that I can pitch up at Kawaguchi at 8:30 and the train will be pulling into the station and it will then deposit me in Yokohama at 9:26 as promised. And it works every time. Why the British can’t do this, I will never know.

Slightly off point there – so, what happens when it doesn’t work? Well, last week, or perhaps the week before I arrived at the station at my regular time of about 8:15 to find crowds and an unmoving train at the platform. Hmm, thinks I, shall I pop for a cup of coffee and wait as this could take a while if it was a jumper (i.e. someone jumped in front of a train, not a sweater left on the tracks, which would be a BR excuse)? I have a moment of indecision and walk to the overpass to see if the trains start moving. They do, but I wait a little longer just to make sure another comes to replace the one that left, which it does.

Ok, so I head down to the platform and wait for a train, of which plenty come past but these are now somewhat more stuffed than usual as, naturally, more people have got on, or tried to get on, at earlier stations etc. by the time I manage squeeze on my 8:20 has become an 8:40 running at (at least) 197% capacity. As I said I only have to go three stops before I change and, even better the first of the stops in Akabane which is a big changeover station so you can usually fight to get into an aisle here, much better than being squashed against a door and/or other person. By the time I get to Oji I am still about 20 minutes late but here is why the Japanese public transport system is so great. At Oji I leave the trains and head underground and actually change station and on exiting Oji JR station there are stationed three bowing, exceedingly apologetic JR staff, saying sorry for the delays and hading out little slips of paper, about the size of a shop receipt with the day’s date, approximate time, station and train line and a short message to my boss saying ‘sorry this chap was late, it wasn’t his fault, the line was delayed, we will happily pay for any inconvenience this has caused or offer our daughters hand’s in marriage, if it will make things better’, or something like that. I mean wow, can you imagine BR apologising for being 20 minutes late? Come to think of it if a BR train were only 20 minutes late the staff would congratulating themselves on a job well done.

So, well done, greater Tokyo public transportation staff, for a job really well done.

Oh

And just in case you thought there wasn’t anything to complain about this week, well done to the boys in blue of Kawaguchi who arrested a woman the other week for ‘looking foreign’ even though she was Japanese. But fair enough because looking foreign is a crime in Japan, isn’t it...? More here.

Meme

These things seem to be all the rage right now, well, I mean that they have appeared over at 35degrees and SAAP recently and as I don’t have much to write about this week, or rather I do but summoning the creative energy has defeated my so far, I thought I’d be self indulgent and write about myself. And why not, so...

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

Cheese a deli assistant in Waitrose
English Teacher
‘Jonny No Stars’ in KFC
Recruitment Consultant (which is bottom of the list for a very good reason)

Four movies I can watch over and over again

Goodfellas
Blazing Saddles
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Aliens

Four places I have lived

Fleet in Hampshire
Somerton in Somerset
Leamington Spa in Warwickshire
Kawaguchi in Saitama

Four TV shows I love

Er, well this is a tricky one as I don’t really watch a great deal of TV except for news and sports, mainly as in Japan there isn’t a great deal to watch. I suppose ER is about the only thing that annually comes around that the Guru and I watch all of, but I’ve never got into The Simpsons or much like it. Though I suppose if I can catch South Park, I will. And there is the Before/After house changing programme thing on Sunday evenings, now sadly discontinued, that was worth a watch, as was Iron Chef when it was on. But otherwise, not a lot really.

Four holiday locations I have enjoyed

Sydney, Brisbane and Noosa in Australia (and a place I’d like to add to the ‘...have lived in’ list)
Koh Samet in Thailand
Annecy in France (ah, childhood)
The Lake District in the UK

Four of my favourite dishes

Mum’s roast beef (of course)
Thai green curry
Grilled lamb chops (not that easy to find in Japan and not at all cheap)
Maguro (tuna) sashimi

Four websites I visit everyday

The Telegraph (for news and sports and the Alex cartoon)
Cricinfo (to see what’s going on in the world of cricket)
Site Meter (to see who’s looking)
Flickr (to look at other people’s snaps)

Four places I’d rather be now (apart from playing with the little ‘un and the Guru)

Sitting on a beach somewhere, not really that bothered where, so could be SE Asia, Australia, southern France or anywhere else warm really. But must have a bar close by, a decent book close to hand and somewhere for the little ‘un to play.
Gambolling up, or indeed down, a mountain somewhere in the UK, probably in the Lakes, but Wales and Scotland are also beautiful.
Poking my nose into some antiquity such as Egypt, Greece or Iran, getting a bit of culture, seeing the sights, breathing in a bit of history.
Wandering around Italy, I’ve never been but the Guru has and of this I am very jealous. When we finally have the time, it will be spent travelling from place to place.

Four bloggers I have tagged

Er, is that the same as linking? Don’t think so, in which case none. I may have a blog, but that does not mean I know what I am doing. What is tagging? Actually don’t bother to answer that, if I had wanted to do it I would have done it by now (as it is free, unlike spending a year wandering around Italy, which most definitely is not).

NB all the above will have probably have changed by tomorrow - well, not the ones about where I have lived, for example, as that cannot be changed, but opinion-y ones like where I'd rather be. You get the idea.