me towards mumbai

All packed and ready to be off this island!
The mainland with other sights and smells and frights and delights awaits me.

Lets hope i don't get dysentery.
Peace out. x

J-Christmas

On Christmas Day I have heard it is "traditional" for Japanese families to go to KFC and eat a whole lot of chicken. Roast chicken is traditional Christmas fare after all. This, and other familiar but distorted practices make up what it is like to have Christmas in Japan. I'm sure for people who celebrate Christmas with gusto and faith in their home countries, all this bizarro world Christmas stuff is more unnerving than it is for me. My Christmases are traditionally spent wishing I was Christian so that I could get presents and decorate trees. When on November first they start playing electronic carols in Pick n Pay, it means little more to me than the sudden abundance of chocolate mallow eggs. Even this isn't all that exciting because that's what Easter means to me too.

My school insisted that I give a Christmas themed lesson this week. They know I am Jewish just like they know I am South African but I suppose all white people are the same to my co-workers (in the same way that us whiteys lump all Asians in the same boat). So a Christmas week it will be! I went all-out making a convoluted board game in the shape of a Christmas tree and worked long hours making present shaped question cards with such questions as:
The baby Jesus was visited by three wise
a) goats
b) kings
c) angels
and
Santa Claus says
a) Ho ho ho
b) He he he
Finally the little Jewish girl who went to A.P.P.S who still lives inside of me can do crafts with green, read and gold paper!

The Santa questions in the game have proved to be no problem so far. Everyone here knows that elves work in workshops, not gnomes and that the big man says Ho ho ho in his jolly red suit. The Jesus questions have been a little more problematic. One class had no one in it who had even heard of Jesus Christ. Initially I was shocked but you know - fair dos I reckon - I don't know the names of any bigwig Shinto gods (I don't even know if gods is the right term). Why does Japan do Christmas with such gusto though? Its really big here, much bigger than in South Africa. Everyone puts lights up in the windows. Suddenly all the food on sale is in Christmas wrapping or Christmas shapes. The malls play Mariah Carey and Wham! hits. Why? I asked a fellow teacher and they said that Christmas has been around since the end of the war and is growing in popularity. At first I thought this was a revolting tragedy - that the country had it forced on them and had to learn to love it. But then again, it is quite lovable. I like the twinkly lights and the cinnamon flavoured...everything. Should I feel bad for the Japanese people who have to have Christmas or should I feel sorry for the Jesus whose birthday has been forgotten in amongst the shopping. Maybe its a bit grinchy to feel sorry or bitter either way. Everyone appears to be enjoying themselves, even me. The one thing I know I will never take part in, however many Kurisu masu I spend here is the Christmas cake phenomenon. Somewhere along the line Japan heard about Christmas cake and decided to make it their own...and a big deal. Like real Christians feel about the whole birth of Jesus thing, I think that's how people here feel about Christmas cake. They are everywhere and they are not the stodgy brown fruit loaves with rock icing I think of when I play Christmas cake association. These cakes are enourmous white flurries - there is enough soft icing on them to fashion into ski slopes and they are decorated with lace and glitter and holly and and and. They also cost upward of 10 000 Yen...so about R1000.00. I don't care how delicious they look, I hope I never spend that much on holiday sugar.

The Christmas in Japan phenomenon (and believe me, it is rather phenomenal) is a crude but in no way unique example of how Japan has adopted something Western and run with it. Western isn't even the right term because Christmas here is thought of as American specifically and this is the point I am trying desperately to get to (thanks for bearing with me). Why does Japan embrace all that is American? Why don't they despise America the way the French despise America? One could say they have more reason than anybody. But they don't. They lurve America. It's a question that smells complicated - one part cinnamon to two parts uranium. Hmmmm... Any ideas?

gunch update

Just to let you all know that Gunch is decidedly on the mend! He went to the doctor who diagnosed him with nothing more than a bit of high blood pressure. His cough is nearly gone and he is wearing a natty new winter suit.

On Monday he was called into the principal's office (I think its ridiculous that a man of 68...yes, he is 68 now, can be called into a principals office). He thought he was going to get kakked on for smoking on the property or having his motorcross buddies round for tea in the staffroom but, it turns out, the principal just wanted to make sure he was going to keep teaching next year. And, he told me he had said that, reluctantly...he would. Hehe, he's back on board! I am so delighted. He told me that its not official yet, just between him and me. I thought it would be ok to let ya'll know, what with the internet being a most discreet place.

So don't tell anyone. But my friend Gunch is staying. Yipee.

mgmt at the shangri-la

I arrived at 19:07. The lobby was empty and there was no sound coming from the quilted velvet doors. Smugly assuming I was early I almost crossed the road to grab a bite to eat. Lucky I didn't, that would have been cocky! The concert had started, of course, at seven on the tit and I was not the first but literally the last to arrive. As I slipped through the padded doors I was confronted with the hundreds of backs and arses of a crowd already two songs in dammit! I couldn't believe I was stuck at the back of another concert! I wanted to let my elbows guide me to the front but alas Japan has made me too polite! Still, no biggie. The venue was tiny so even at the back you could see the writing on their Tshirts. The lead singer WhatisFucknosenberg or whatever is really really sexy in that way that ugly people manage to be only because they are really arrogant - which he was! I fell for him instantly. He is ugly because he is pale and scrawny and stooped. He also has the worst hair I have ever seen. Of course, its supposed to look that way and it says much about his innate deep sexiness that he still looks good under a long curly mullet with middle parting curtains to boot. Absolutely disgusting. And as he sweated bucketloads his mullet got longer and longer sticking to his neck and down his back.

The others were just hairy - not sexy at all. They looked like cave men or engineering students. The keyboard player, it seems had made some effort to look like...something, by wearing tacky plastic sunglasses. All in all their appearance was not overwhelming - they looked like a fun but kak South African band playing at Sunningdale hotel.

They played the whole of Oracular Spectacular - Kids being the highlight of course. Really fucking cool! Everyone went mad. Then 8pm had arrived and they had played the whole album and that was that. Lights up, roadies up to walk the guitars off. I went to the bar to get my one free drink and everyone else who had had their one free drink before curtain-up flocked out to buy the ugly tour thsirts. Three variants competed to be the ugliest tshirt design available, not just in the venue, but I suspect, on the whole island. As I stood in line amongst Osaka's horn rimmed uber-hip, clutching my free drink, I realised (as did the horn-rimmeds too I think, on some level) hang on, I dont want one of these ugly starchy t shirts in plastic packets from under a tressle table - I want the shirt the singer was wearing! Old and sweat drenched - it might have been blue or really old black - anyone's guess. I want that one! hmph. I bought one from the cardboard box under the tressle table. Design A. The black one with wizard purple bubble writing "mgmt" across the boobs, and a cutesy lion with purple paws. Sounds sif? It is. Better than T shirt B though, a clip-art hot dog drinking a beer or T shirt C which was lime green - I dont care if it had the best font, lime green is a crime. Like the hair, the shirts are dead ironic you see and I want to be as ironic at Whatis Fucknosenburg. I will sweat prodigiously into my new tshirt and make it old.

I had forgotten how heavy handed Japanese bar ladies can be with the hard tack - by the time I had downed it, bought my t shirt and been spat out into the street I was proper pissed. In the middle of Osaka. Where would I find a bed in the megalopolis? I was lucky that it was night time and I couldn't see quite how mega this lopolis really was, otherwise I might have cried.

capsule hotel - driected by Luc Besson

The area of Namba lies in the middle of The Osaka JR loop line. You would think this would make it very easy to get to but alas the opposite was true and it took ages to get there. On and off trains for hours whilst time ticked toward midnight. Finally I found the right stop and climbed the grubby station stairs into the hubbub of Namba. Namba is loveland. Love hotels everywhere. At night they light up and look the furthest thing from seedy, they look like magical castles or shining churches. Some have neon sign cherry blossoms floating up their ten storey exterior, some have massive inflatable creatures outside. My favourite one, a mint green chapel shaped thing had millions of fake flowers bursting out of every window and the door. I don't think Japan knows from kitsch or, at least, doesn't think of it as something bad and to be avoided. I have learned to stop worrying and love the kitsch.

Tonight I was not going to on of these temples of excess which only make economic and moral sense to couples, I was going to the soberly titled Namba Capsule hotel - an unusual capsule hotel in that it allows women (on certain floors). I found it squeezed between all the pink and florescence on a tiny side street. Inside and out it was the opposite of love land. It was all mustard carpeting and peeling wall paper. The concierge was a gruff and shabby old man with a shiny head fringed with bristly tufts. He eyed me sceptically. Had I been to one of these before he asked? No, I admitted I hadn't. Hmmm. Was I a foreigner? Yes, I said, thinking that much was obvious. Hmmmmmm....I could see him debating whether to let me stay. I wasn't sure if he thought I would be prissy and report him to some guide book authority or be a tourist and destroy the reclusive anonymity the guests desired by running amok down the corridors, drinking and taking photos. I tried to pull a face that suggested I would do neither of these things (what face is that exactly, i wonder now). It worked and he handed me a grubby key that opened one locker downstairs for my shoes and one upstairs for the rest of my stuffu. The capsule itself didnt have a lock. This would have worried me if I had been in any other country in the world.

In the lift I could barely contain my excitement. A capsule hotel! My own capsule! I couldn't wait to see it. Stepping out of the lift I was confronted first with a bank of blue metal lockers and behind them a dimly lit corridor. The capsule mouths opened straight onto the corridor - some were unoccupied and open, others had their brown blinds down, their inhabitants already asleep or doing whatever else one does in a capsule. Read? Shoot up? Mine - number 317 was on the bottom row right at the end of the passage. I clambered in and pulled down the blind. Feeling around the moulded plastic walls i found the light and flicked it on. Wow! It was my own sci-fi cell. The plastic was off white as was the bedding. It was old but clean and starchy. The dimensions were less like a coffin and more like the interior of an economy car - small indeed but not claustrophobic and to further assuage any fear of suffocation there was a small fan silently circulating the air. Along the one wall the plastic bubbled out to form a narrow shelf. At the foot of the bed the plastic bulged down housing a small tv whose remote was dangling below on a rubbery chord. There was also a tiny mirror and a digital alarm clock set into the wall. All this luxury for 200 Zed a Rands. I was so happy! Lying in my pod sipping water. I watched tv quietly for a bit, there was some space anime movie showing which complemented the situation perfectly. I could hear people in other capsules turning over, coughing and fiddling with their phones. It was comforting to hear them but never see them. It all felt extremely futurist and dystopian - storyboarded in the seventies or with the seventies in mind. Before going to sleep I nipped out to shower in the bathroom at the end of the corridor. There, as in the pod there was everything you would get in a regular hotel, just utilitarian and small . A shower box, a basket of sterilized hairbrushes, a box of single service toothbrushes in packets, a hair dryer, shampoo and soap. Little basins to spit your little toothpaste into and little stools to sit on while drying your hair.

In the morning it was still pitch black in the capsule. I turned on the yellow light, got dressed and fixed my face in the tiny mirror. I then went down to the lobby where the no-frills complementary breakfast of boiled eggs toast and coffee was being enjoyed by the guests - all of them skinny and middle aged, all of them smoking, burping and farting. I sat and ate with them. We ignored each other together. By daylight the love hotels admitted their seediness. The glamour gone, I headed back into the station.

Homelessness and Liberty

The night at Capsule Hotel Namba had made me feel very out-of-this world. Everyone I have spoken to about Osaka finds it to be a big city. I found this too. They do not however, think of it as alien. Which I did. I felt so foreign and disassociated the next morning, as I headed back into the train intestines, I might as well have been in space.

I got off at a station that, according to my Lonely Planet, was stone's throw from Liberty Osaka Human Rights Museum. When you are in a train you could be anywhere in the country (squint a bit and you could be anywhere in the world). Outside this particular station though, I felt nowhere in Japan. Not anywhere I had been or seen before. It was dirty. The chicken wire flanking the tracks was hung with debris and a powdery brown with years of pollution and neglect. The museum, which should have been looming in front of me was nowhere to be seen so I decided to penetrate the area for a few blocks and see what was what. Everywhere on the street were little shabby stalls made of blue plastic sheeting. Some of the stalls had plastic on the ground in front of them too on which were assorted items which, I guessed, were for sale. Old video tapes, broken shoes, small grubby plastic purses. Stall after stall of worthless tsatkes. It looked like a street-long garage sale that was selling stuff that came from a home too poor to have a garage. Ten minutes walk into the area and I found street after street to be the same. Concrete buildings that wept black goo from their cornices and in front of them the blue stalls. For miles and miles in every direction. There were also more dogs than I had yet seen in this country and they were not the precious, groomed little handbag dogs that belong to fancy women in sunglasses. They were big and baleful township braks. Some were roaming slowly through the clutter of stalls and some were shut up in chicken wire cages between the buildings. Some sat at the feet of men who wore overalls of pistachio green I recognised as construction wear. The men, like the dogs were baleful, slow, innumerable and indiscernible from one another. They sat and smoked or crossed the streets without apparent purpose. This was not the first time I had seen this many people on the streets of a Japanese city but it was certainly the first time I had seen so many people without a destination. They were clearly not going anywhere. They were nowhere.

I have become used to being stared at here. It is impossible to slip under the radar because I cannot 'be Japanese' in appearance, however much I try to be in behaviour. In this derelict neighbourhood I was more conspicuous than I have ever been; wearing my white coat (which is inexplicably still bright white - it must be magic) and I literally shone , reflecting light and otherness against the grot. I found a way out of the maze of shacks - I had given up pretending they were commerce ventures of sorts and accepted them as what they were - the first informal housing I had found in the country and these sad, sad men my first homeless in Japan. Toothless, dirty. Smelly. A taxi found me on a main street lined with petrol stations and whisked me off to Liberty Osaka; which wasn't that far away distance wise, but that it had trees and playgrounds and public amenities like post offices around it, made it a world away. In the taxi I tried to work out why I had felt so threatened. I was from South Africa man. I can do homeless, I can do poverty. I'm not a naive first-world baby who cries when she sees a dog...or a man...foraging through garbage. Has four months in Japan made me soft? Yeah, so the men had stared at me. But by now, I should be used to that - everyone here stares. No one had approached me or tried to mug me or anything. They had done nothing but stare, so why was I so freaked?

The Museum is manned by volunteers - little old men and littler ladies in nylon waistcoats. They were very kind to me. They gave me a walk about headset that provided English commentary and they tag-teamed me so that I was never alone in the otherwise deserted rooms. The exhibits are divided into twelve sections. Twelve sectors of Japanese society that have had their rights infringed upon and, in some cases, that continue to be marginalised. The Ainu, Okinawan first peoples, Koreans in Japan, Gays and Lesbians, people with AIDS, women, the disabled, victims of pollution and Minamata disease, Hansen's disease survivors, Buraku and the homeless. In past posts I have written effusively about Japan's advanced-ness, the nation's progressive practices with regards to the aged and the sick. I have seen the monuments to war and peace in Hiroshima. I suppose that any country and its policies turn out to be putrid if you scratch the surface. Seeing these twelve exhibits completely shattered my idea of Japan as a land of boundless compassion. I found out about Eugenics, extreme racism and modern high-tech discrimination based on ancient feudal kak. I learned about people crippled by hazardous chemical fuck-outs or wars who the government then ignore or worse, ship off to die somewhere with no infrastructure where no one will see or smell them.

The lowlight of the whole experience was the section on homelessness in Japan, Osaka in particular. The area in which I had got lost an hour or so before, it turns out, is called Kamagasaki. It has for generations been the place where day labourers gather and get work. Working a day in construction or on the docks gets you a stamp in a little passport type book. That stamp is then presented at a government office and you get a small wage. With these wages men would be able to pay a day's rent in a hostel - all those grubby grey buildings that weep muck from the windows. Problem is, with Japan's ageing populous, thousands of day labourers are now too old to labour. If they don't work they don't get money and if they don't get money they cant pay a night's rent. So instead of living in the buildings they now live outside them, in the blue plastic shacks. The scores of men I saw doing nothing were waiting for work that day or maybe, at ten a.m they were already waiting till the next day. Apparently there are 30,000 day labourers in Kamagasaki nearly all men and nearly all over 50. What I had seen now made such horrible sense. I thought again about why I had been so frightened there. Maybe it was fear mixed with embarrassment - it's bad enough being a tourist anywhere but to be so obvious a tourist around people who maybe didn't want to be looked at?

just a trailer

Hi guys! Just got back from a 24-hour mini-adventure in Osaka. I have so much to write about! Look forward to blogs on the following: mgmt, capsule hotels, love hotels, IKEA, homeless people in japan, salarymen and Christmas & Japanese conspicuous consumption.

gunch

I dread Gunch coming into the teacher's room nowadays. How can that be? He is my closest ally at school, a deep and funny man - charming and kind. He enjoys teaching me and he does it very well. He always remembers to ask where I am going on the weekends, brings me pictures and books about the place I am heading for and the following Monday he asks sincerely about my adventures. He is my teacher and he is my friend.

But ever since the night he told me that his health is not good I have started to notice how sickly he seems. I keep thinking back to the Gunch before he told me he wasnt well. Did he have the same black bubbling cough? Was his suit always so tatty looking? It has always been chalky and wrinkly, since I met him in the heat of summer, but did it hang so limply then? When I met him he was an eccentric and natty man, now he looks dirty and unkempt. Has he always mumbled to himself quite so much? I dont remember. I simultaneously attend to his every splutter and berate myself for doing so, invading his privacy by eavesdropping on his body.
It doesnt help that, because of the school renovations we go down and then up four flights of stairs every time need to get to class. When Gunch and I make the walk together we stop on the landings between every floor to look at the trees and the beautiful mountain. He needs those few minutes between floors and the least I can do is play into the distraction of the view. It also doesnt help that at the end of every class Gunch goes to the field next to the school and has a smoke. He smokes the strongest cigarettes available.

The students think Gunch is funny. Sometimes they laugh with him but sometimes they are laughing at him too: swooning once he turns his back to show their friends that yes, they can smell the sharp sourness of cigarettes on his suit. Laughing when he writes something incorrectly on the board. I can see them do this. They make no effort to hide it from me. It is heartbreaking. I want to shake them and try to explain to them - Dont you see! This silly old man is the most important teacher you will ever have.

I might be exaggerating Gunch's condition because I have become so acutely aware of it. I try to act as if the wracking cough and dripping nose do not bother me when he sits with me for our lessons but I know that there must be micro-expressions of disgust that flash across my face. If he sees them they must be so hurtful I hate myself for having them. I hate that I can't genuinely ignore his current condition.

It might just be a winter cold (I did ask and he said he often gets chesty in winter). Every day I silently appraise him - is he looking better than yesterday? Sounding better than yesterday? It is this new layer of our interaction, my constant and uncontrollable appraisal that makes me dread our time together. Gunch's frailty is making me see him differently and judge myself for seeing him differently. I hate it. I wish things could go back to the way they were when I never suspected he was sick. Then, Gunch was a constant whereas now I have confront the fact that I might not have him forever. It is a horrible thing to face.

sumo

Fukuoka, the biggest city on the island of Kyushu is ugly. The buildings are all prefab, there are malls of obscene proportions and mustard and tomato sauce coloured kombinis on every corner. Perhaps in summer the trees lining the street soften the man-made edges somewhat but when I went they were naked and scraggly, shivering in the drizzle. The Sumo stadium is a brown toad squatting across three city blocks looking up into the commercial sprawl. If the sprawl was grey liquid from some sci-fi volcano, full of urban debris running in rivulets towards the sea, the toads fat concrete arse would dam it up pretty effectively. Around the stadium are what feel like acres of concrete where people can gather and chat, take photos, buy stuff and sumo spot.

Inside the stadium was organised pandemonium. The foyer had a grid stalls that forced the the throngs to toddle between them, buying stuff. Omiyage is a Japanese custom I am particularly fond of - if ever you travel somewhere you are expected to bring back some small tsatske for everyone you work with. These tsatskes are called omiyage - a souvenier. They are often a foodstuff; a biscuit or jam or cracker and because its customary to buy like fifty of them, they are sold in big batches, individually wrapped then boxed beautifully. They are also cheap. A region or city will have omiyage that relates to its own sites or traditions or cuisine. The island of Miyajima has momiji manju, a maple leaf shaped cookie stuffed with custard; Setoda, an island not far from Mihara has mikan jelly pockets, little cups of delicious mikan segments suspended in clear bitter jelly. Dogo, where I went a few weeks ago has a kebab of three coloured mochi balls - brown, green and yellow. In Onomichi you can get a beautiful red box with four helpings of Onomichi speciality ramen noodles. Here, the omiyage were obviously Sumo themed. I bought sumo biscuits for my colleagues and little boiled sumo sweets for my language partner. As well as omiyage, stalls were selling official sumo memorabilia including the equivalent of a sumo wrestlers autograph: his handprint in red ink with his name calligrafied across it. Unlike other sports (I am specualting here, seeing as I think sumo was my first real live sporting event) the athletes do not sneak in through another entrance only to be seen in glorious play and then sneak out again with their omniscience intact. The sumos come in through the front doors just like everyone else. They mingle and get snapshots taken, they are among the crowds but in no danger of losing power and prestige because of this, their appearance and attitude make them utterly astonishing to behold, godlike. Tall and wide wearing traditional kimonos and wooden sandals. There hair is slicked into tight buns or, if they are top players their hair is glued into a bell shaped swoop with a small knot at the top. Maybe it is their diet, something makes their skin glow - they radiate health and strength. Their faces are smooth (the fat having ironed out any crease) they look like beautiful deities capable love and benevolence if you please them, horrible violence if you dont . After holding babies for about a hundred pictures taken with cell phones their trainers usher them to private rooms on either the left or right of the stadium. The sumo ring has an east and west side, wrestlers are assigned a side and are kept separate from those on the other side so as not to see their competitor until they are in the ring. They emerge from their room two bouts before their own and march down a red carpeted aisle, now only in the famous loin cloth and girder which is jewel coloured satin - brown, black, turqoise or purple. They sit on a small bench alongside the ring and watch the match before their own. The match build up and ceremony take far longer than the fighting itself. Competitors climb onto the raised mud ring and pick up a handful of salt which they throw dramatically across the ground. They then do those astonishing lef lifts bringing their thihgs up to their ears and down again - boom! They pace back and forth, go back into their corner to pow-wow with their trainers. They look at eachother and pace some more. A referee in a sumptuous robe shoos them onto their respective sides and calls for the bout to begin. They sqaut down, their legs shaking with readiness - they must leap up at exactly the same moment and engage, if one jumps before the other they restart, from the salt throwing all the way through. A successful start entails the two men leaping at and grabbing hold of one another in knotted locks that range in appearance from the amorous, to the deadly to the extremely awkward. Even a layman like myself could tell a good wrestler from a bad one. The bad ones writhe and jiggle while the strong ones keep as still as possible, waiting for their opponent to imbalance themselves. Once this happens the strong wrestler will move with lightning speed tipping the other man out of the ring or throwing him to the ground - the loser is the wrestler who first places any body part outside the ring or touches the ground with anything other than the soles of his feet. Sometimes the force of the final throw will send them both flying into the crowd (the closest seats are on the ground a treacherous meter or so away). The on-site ref then has to confer with four or five ringside refs as to who touched outside the ring first. The winner is declared - and the pair leave the ring, the loser first with his head hung low, the winner loiters arond for a bit, puts his shiny robe back on and saunters out to meet his fans clamouring in the lobby.

for sumo pics go here.

tough tough toys for tough tough boys

About twenty years ago Dad took Paul Wilson to watch the bridge at Wits being swung into place. His girl children disappointed him by showing little to no interest in the event. Perhaps he rented Paul like he rented Kate and David Savage - to have a sprocket at an event where one feels compelled to have one. Beks and I didnt even fake an interest when Dad came home bursting with stories about cranes and hoists and engineering mastery. Sorry Dad, I hope our disinterest wasnt utterly shattering.

I was reminded today of my genetic (gender-ic?) crane watching deficeincy when the construction going on at school, that has until now been carrying on without grandeur or obstruction to justice, reached a whole new level. Overnight it seems, two enourmous cranes have been brought right into the belly of the school. All cars and bikes have been relocated to make way for them and all but the most important building corridors have been cordoned off because the cranes have to operate over them and might crash into them any second. Until now the construction was both silent and invisible; it was like magic elves were fixing the school with magic and we could teach without noise or distraction. Today the cranes changed all that. Every single classroom has a view of the cranes and in every class every boy has their head turned towards the window, dumbstruck. They cannot tear their eyes away from the cranes. The hoisting and pivoting. They all gasp with terror and exhiliration as bundles
of scaffolding swing to within inches of the glass. I reckon I could spontaneously combust or spontaneouly stand on a desk and take my shirt off or and it wouldnt register; they just love to watch the cranes. Its not just the students either - the male teachers are equally mesmerised; physically in the classrooms dummying through teaching until the bell when they can rush out with the boys and get as close as dammit to the action. The crashing and grinding of cogs and billowing clouds of construction dust do not dissuade indoors. Far from it, they seem to be considered added bonuses.

I am trying to work out what causes the joy in boys who watch machines. Is it the machinery? What about the machinery exactly? Is it the kinetics? It is the horrible metal noises? Maybe it is that construction vehicles with their size and power are today's dinosaurs, simultaneously horrifying and exciting.

I watched for a little bit this morning. It was fun yes, but my admiration lacked focus. Sometimes I was thinking about dinosaurs, sometimes noticing the light and sometimes how impossibly clean the machines were. I also noticed the style of the construction workers' uniforms: they wear loose green pants that taper into four button cuffs mid-calf and ninja boots with the big toe separated from the others. so beautiful. I covet them.

After ten minutes I had seen as much as I wanted and I went inside to read. I had tried, but I couldnt fool myself into the frenzy, the endless fascination being experienced by the boy people.

the colours of autumn

the weekend was cold and grey. On Sunday I had a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs and Hokkaido camembert on thick white toast. The instant coffee could have done with a makeover but no matter; I certainly wasnt venturing out of my cocoon to find the real deal. Celia had left her halogen heater in my apartment; it kills two birds with one stone giving off gentle heat and lighting whatever room its in with Amelie tones. I had watched a movie earlier in the week with Audrey Tatou in it - A Very Long Engagement - and fallen in love with the soldier they called sunflower. So much so that after my toast and eggs I watched another film with the actor in it; this one also in French but with Japanese subtitles - luckily there wasn't much talking at all so I could kind of figure out what was going on... I was actually doing pretty well right up until the end the person who I assumed was the mother sits with the person I assumed was her son in a car. She tells him something that devastates him, he goes pale and cries and then wanders around alone on the beach. and then he kills himself. Clearly whatever she had to say was quite appalling.

After the movie I drew for the first time in ages, tentatively and badly. The disappointment of this was enough to drive me out of the heater's glow and into the city where I found a park that had looked kind of nice but turns out is very very nice. There were gangs of seven year olds playing soccer and mums and dads and an old couple watching the central fountain. I must take pictures of the autumn leaves before they are gone; the park was resplendent with them. I felt very cinematic walking through the trees alone; watching the families and being contemplative. On my way home I saw the old couple from the fountain walking towards the car. The old lady tripped and fell face first into the tarmac. The old man helped her up quickly while I waved my arms around guppying "Are you ok?". Once on her feet again they turned in unison and gave me the dolby hairy eyeball, both of them glaring and shuffling away. Was this because I saw the lady fall and added insult to injury by drawing attention to it? Perhaps they are members of the small but vocal conservative nationalist group that drive around in black SUVs on a saturday morning hollering "Long live the emperor!" "Foreigners, go home!" through a loud hailer duct-taped to the roof. Who knows. They got into his zippy little silver sports car, an unusual car in this part of the world and zoomed off. On my way home I saw the car parked outside the hospital. The incident frightened me for some reason, that I had not helped them and that they had looked so hateful and I didnt know why.

The cold air has been so clear the past few days. Looking at the mountains in the distance, one feels like every detail is more detailed than one has seen before, like the whole world right now is being viewed through a macro-lens. The evening sky is also breathtaking - seven different kinds of clouds in a myriad of colours - pink, white, butter, blue, green and black. Yesterday and again today as I walked out of my office at the end of the day along the fourth floor corridor I could see the sun on my right and the moon on my left, both of them white and the size of grapefruits, one rising and one sinking but for that moment on the same plain in the already busy sky. I will always love a Jo'burg storm sky more than any other sky, but these ones are pretty damn good.

Koyo

Koyo is one of those Japanese words for which there is no English equivalent. It means, 'to view autumn leaves' - long O sound like apple core. like the sound a crow makes. Ko yo.

The leaves here arent playing around, they really are so beautiful! I must take pictures at my new favourite spot (glimpsed a week ago and investigated today). It is a gully running along side the water - you descend the stone steps and find yourself in a little public garden with benches underneath trees that have been trained to wind around the post and lintel of a pergola. From the gully the street and concrete of the city are invisible but you can see trees and leaves and misty mountains. Its really lovely.

Yesterday while I had my lunch a man came and sat next to me. I asked him if my cigarette bothered him (I can do that in Japanese!!) and he looked blank and then said "Chinese!" pointing to himself. Well that was that, we had no language at all in common. But we sat together all the same. He had brought chips for the beady greedy pigeons that were milling about and together we fed them and watched them impose their beady-eyed twitchy hierarchies on eachother. Pigeons really are quite hilarious.

Food here also changes with the season. Like anywhere, the summer fruits have become ridiculously expensive and autumn stuff - naatjies, persimmons and other unknowables - are coming into the shops. Drinks and sweets also change. The cold coffee in the vending machine is hot now and a good thing too! They are nice to hold. There is a boiled sweet brand called Chelsea that is green tea flavoured but, I now find out, only for summer. For autumn, the shops stock Chelsea's fall assortment: coffee and hot milk tea flavour . Yep, ceylon milk tea flavoured sweeties. they are delicious! In the office today my supervisor drew a fish for me that he says is a popular autumn meal - they are long and pointy nosed and cheap. They come cooked whole, skin all burnt and crunchy; I had one today for dinner. All its internal stuff was still intact and infused the meat with such a bitter black bile that it was inedible - possibly my first truly kak meal in Japan.

The cheap stockings that you can buy in Kombinis are now thick tights in plum and mustard and brown whereas before you found gauzy flesh coloured ones. Everyone and everything changes with the leaves it seems. In the spirit of autumnyness I went and bought myself a deep green woolen cardigan...that i promtply spilt oily ramen juice on. Bugger it! It was wool! Not knowing what Vanish looks like in this country, I might have to sew a felt bunny (in a warm autumnal hue) over the blotch. The white coat however, is doing well! I have worn it twice and managed to keep it away from food, beer and bike spokes.

I have been told the best leaves will be in about two weeks time so Im planning to go to either Miyajima or a park on a small island nearby called Setoda. Woudlnt one of you love to join me? I can offer you a futon, all expenses paid ferry ride to the Park and some delicious milk tea sweets. Please come and look at leaves with me.

for more autumn pics go here

a sadness

Last I joined Gunch again at his local - Machan's Okonomiyaki shop. When we arrived there were two customers, rather dapper looking old men in suits who were, of course, 67 (Gunch likes to tell me the age of everybody he knows, especially if they are sixty seven). Gunch had brought with him a huge bag of what looked like unopened pistachios. As he passed huge handfuls over to Machan's wife, he told me quietly and proudly that the two dapper customers used to be pro baseball players. To me this made them seem extra dapper. I had had the good sense to bring some South African tourist brochures with me this time and the baseball players poured over them paying particular interest to The Kruger Park. Pictures of lions being watched by tourists are always a winner.

Whereas before Gunch and I had shared an okonomiyaki, this time I had one to myself, Gunch being more interested in Sake. I wolfed it down unaware that it was not going to be the only thing I was presented with. I was subsequently presented with a pile of persimmons and the nuts I had thought were pistachios but weren't anything of the sort - Machan had heated them in a hot pan with salt and oil and showed me how to crack the papery shell to reveal an oily green kernel that tasted somewhere between a mielie and a peanut. When I declined beer (my stomach now fully distended and groaning) I was plied with umechu, a sweet plum wine served over ice.

Gunch drank steadily and when it was time to leave I was glad that we were headed in the same direction because he seemed at risk of toppling over. We must have made an odd pair shuffiling through the autumn evening towards the station; a gaijin girl in her new white coat pushing a bicycle and a sixty seven year old man fumbling his coat pockets for his cigarettes. Gunch has never smoked in front of me before but tonight he seemed not to care, he puffed away telling me stories about Mihara - how he had watched the elaborate construction of the shinkansen, how he new every nook and cranny of the town, his favourite bits and bits that had been destroyed by progressing industries. A few blocks before we parted ways (he was going to stay with his 92 year old father who lives not far from the station) Gunch told me that he might not be at Mihara high school next year. Why not I asked, shocked. He mumbled about not being welcome at the school, too old he said and also mentioned that he was not very well. Seeing him standing there in the dark, a bit sozzled and coughing up his 20 maybe 30 a day habit I was dreadfully sad, bur not surprised. I said "what will I do without you?" and he laughed and shrugged. Then we went our separate ways into the night, him probably unaware of how seriously I meant my question.

Its not that I hate my school. But Gunch certainly is the the best thing about it. My days would be much more grey, my japanese would plummet and my intake of experiences would taper off without his instruction and advice. Also I remember Nana, the lady that worked for my family my entire life, till I was seventeen saying that once you retire you begin to die. With nothing to do and no bus or train to catch first thing in the morning, you lose your focus and life beings to slip through your fingers. I fear this would happen to Gunch. He still has so much to teach the students, to teach me! Its selfish, but I need him. I dont want him to go away.

So I hope it was just the booze talking, but I fear it wasnt. I can picture all too clearly the principal hatching a plan to give this wonderful old man the boot. What Gunch's revelation has done is make me work harder for our lessons. Whereas before they were a certainty I now see them as a precious thing that like world oil, is running out.

.

postcards

I have been teaching the second years how to write letters and postcards. As an exercise they had to write a postcard to me that they could drop in a cardboard postbox outside the Teacher's room. The advanced English class had to imagine themselves in 2010, writing to me just after the world cup (in which Japan had made the final but been narrowly defeated). The basic English class had to write to me telling em about their hobbies and daily activities (apparently what separates the advanced and not-so-good is their ability to imagine in a second language - an interesting thought).

Even though it was work for marks, I still got a kick receiving a tonne of mail this week. I felt like a total celebrity. These are two of the best bits of news I got form the students, the first one being an advanced learner imagining 2010 and the second being a basic learner...

Dear Jemma
How are you?
I am the best baseball player in Japan these days. And I got married.
Love Tatsuya

Dear Jemma
Today I broke my shoulder.
Love Nagata

.

white coat

I just bought a white coat. I think this might have been a stupid idea. Its beautiful yes, a double breasted trench coat that fits like a dream and it was on sale for 25% of its original price. Fitting into clothes here just gives me such a kick; when I put it on I think I 'oohed' audibly. Its really so very very attractive. I can picture it with a scarf and beret. Plus I do need a coat - its getting mighty chilly here. Still all this does not change the fact that its white. Off white. Lands End might call it stone. And its dry clean only.

Have I matured enough to live in a white coat? Can I not spill soup on it or get it stuck in the spokes of my bicycle? Will I be at the dry cleaners every week with some new stain thus negating its low low price?

What a conundrum. I'll keep you posted.

The Spider's Thread

A few weeks ago Gunch witnessed me trying valiantly to teach Keisuke The Lion King, and thought I deserved a taste of my own kusuri. Since, he has been having me learn ( with the intention of reciting) a famous Japanese story called 'Kumo no Ito' - The Spider's Thread. Well, it started out as just a bit of fun, he would read to me and have me repeat the onomatopoeia and easy stuff. I didnt realise things were going to get serious...

Last week was when things took a turn for the worse when, during our lesson, Gunch produced a 'simplified' copy for me. to read. out loud!! Kanji and all!! If you look at the picture above you will have some indication of the Herculean nature of this. We battled through it with me growing ever frustrated and him getting so excited not because I was making any headway but because he so loves the story and the nuances of the words and the satisfaction of translating. He's a dedicated thinker, a real teacher. He would come every day with an updated glossary of new verbs or adjectives or a story that explained a certain turn of phrase. I was in agony because I didn't understand a bloody thing and I wasn't retaining a word he said. The harder I tried, the less successful I became. And my brave face just made it worse because any glimpse of enthusiasm on my part just fuelled him into a greater frenzy of explanation and research. Reading the folio over time became harder, not easier because he was scribbling all over my it with pencil, referencing meaning and pronunciation - obscuring the words I couldn't read with even more words I couldn't read!!

I was feeling guilty and angry, Jesus, did he honestly think I was capable of learning the goddam thing! It was all his fault. It was all my fault. He wouldn't give up and I couldn't give up. It felt to me like this project could be the end of our strange and delicate friendship. To make matters worse he would always absentmindedly end up going home with my pencil.

Today he arrived at my desk with a fresh new copy of the folio that he had reprinted - free from scribbles. He expected that I, like him, had been working on the story all weekend. Handing me the new copy benevolently he asked me to read. I cursed myself for having been so rude about his pencil scribbles.. Without them I had to remember pronunciation all by myself. Now, I was sure, I would be exposed for the revolting fraud I am, I had done NO work at all. He would be hurt and I would be ashamed...grimly I began reading.

Much to our combined suprise and delight, I did it!! Sure, I butchered the thing, but I got through it and even remembered a dozen or so kanjii without prompting!! It was a glorious endorsement of my capability to learn the taal. Somehow, his lessons had managed to get stuff to stick. He knew what he was doing all right. I was so proud of myself and so grateful I teared up. Most of all I was so happy to have pleased my teacher. Its motivated me to make him even happier so I just spent the afternoon working on The Spider's Thread...when I should have been making lesson plans.

I still have a long way to go with the story and Japanese in general, 99 percent I'd say. But I had thought I was nowhere.

Actually I'm one percent of the way there! I hope Gunch will never suspect how resentful I was of him last week and that one day he will have some idea of how grateful I am.

the archival and the incidental

Sorry about the no-writey.

I got my re-contracting papers on friday last week. It was quite a wake-up call. Coz I'm having marvellous fun but this is, I suspect, in part owed to the fact that I believe time to be suspended. While I'm here whooping it up, all you loved ones are in little glass bottles, your faces frozen in the expressions I last remember. Getting the re-contracting papers (and celebrating my three month in Japan anniversary today - hip hip hooray) is time, rudely mentioning to me that it is marching by.

Time moving on should be no problem, or at least no worry, being as it is such an inevitable and irreversible phenomenon. But it worries me here because it feels like I'm not doing anything with it! I'm not learning new things or making new memories (I know this sounds like utter rubbish but bear with me on my anniversary). If I look back through the weeks the only things that spring immediately to mind are sitting at home on the internet, sitting at my desk resenting my co-workers, sitting on trains, sitting in line at the bank. Now tell me I'm being ridiculous. Doing stuff? Im not - I just sitting!! So the sitting is what comes to mind at first, if you say then, but what about the onsen, or Hiroshima or the bookshop I'll go 'jajajaja...and that!'. So its true (or not true - depending what side you are on), I do do stuff.

But then why do I remember the not-doing, not the doing? Maybe my brain has taken the real experiences further away into my memory - currently unavailable - for extra special preparation before they are filed. They are being fired to be extra strong and durable because they are going to be used a lot in times to come- hauled out for anyone with an unfortunate ten minutes spent with me sitting on a train or in a queue at the bank. They have to be properly preserved. Which means at present I'm left with the dross, and as readers of my blog - so are you; right now we only have the cheap memories which in two weeks time will be tatters.

One thing I am wanting share with ya'll is that I have seen at least a dozen students in Japan with grey hair. Not a hair here and there, all my students have that; no I'm talking a dozen full heads silver. The kids, most often boys, can't be older than sixteen. Amazing hey?

spirited away

Legend has it that the best cure for a hangover is a bowl of oily salty ramen and a dip in a 40 degree Onsen. Today I tried this out, and found it to be true.

I went with my Japanese language class to Dogo Onsen - one of the oldest Onsen in Japan and, it is said, the inspiration for the hot baths in the animated film Spirited Away. We drove for two hours deep into the isles of Shikoku. The town of Dogo was totally dinky. Old and well maintained, it definitely had a fantasy feel about it. The Onsen building (pic above) is situated at the top of Dogo hondori (a covered shopping arcade). When I first arrived in Japan I went to and wrote about Mihara Onsen but a visit to Dogo confirmed for me that the bright lights and electric zinging of Mihara Onsen is not what these traditional baths are all about. At Dogo, even though it is really famous and steeped in legend, the bath consists of only one relatively small room lined with shower fixtures and little wooden stools along three of the four walls. At its centre is a deep stone pool and at the centre of the pool is a delicate carved stone fountain chugging water. The pool has a lip that you sit in up to your waist. The stone is hot from the water and perfectly smooth and comfortable (decades of bums have worn it perfectly). The one wall that has no showers is dominated by a blue and white tiled mural. The water and the surrounding harmonize beautifully. You really do feel stress and toxins (and beer) just drain out of you into the water and away. I could only tolerate the heat for about ten minutes after which I trotted kaalgat to a shower stall and rinsed myself with ice cold water from a bamboo bucket.

Afterwards I admitted to a Japanese friend that I was craving ice-cream (I felt guilty wanting such a decadent thing after such a cleansing experience). Oh! she said, its very common to want something milky after going to an Onsen and to prove it to me she showed me the vending machines in the lobby - full of milk both plain and flavoured. She had something better in mind though and took us a little further outside the building to a swanky gelato place with crazy flavours. I had a sea salt soft serve. It was utterly delicious and faintly faintly gritty; a creamy electrolyte feast.

The shopping to be had on the hondori was very touristy and Onsen related. The look of the shops, the lighting and bright omiyage (souvenirs) were pitched to perfectly twang your consumer strings so I duly bought some orange jelly and special mochi balls (sweet rice) - both of which are particular to the region.

On the bus coming home I had a full tummy post Onsen nap. Ahhh, heaven.

are we amused?

I spent the school week doing not much at all. My students were writing exams, I had no classes to teach or papers to mark. I spent the days gently coaxing my ancient work laptop through the internet trying to simultaneously educate myself about the upcoming US election and the history of the Booker Prize. I learnt that even though Obama is a person with personality, once he starts talking economic policy, he's as boring as any other guy and that Booker fans get frighteningly Xenophobic when it comes to Indian winners (Mr Rushdie being the obvious exception). I also fell in love with the new Mac Book and the shiny yellow nano - both of which are on my shopping list - I do like being paid in Yen!

On friday, as an after-exam reward, the students were shipped off to an amusement park and the school kindly allowed me a break from the electioneering and mac perving so onto the bus went I. Amusement parks in Japan, it turns out, are exactly as tacky as amusement parks anywhere else in the world. The same pastiche all faded and rusty. It should look magical but it looks old and depressing. Consequently, all the time you are lying to yourself saying "I feel magical!" No dear, you feel old and depressed. The rides were cool I guess, I crapped my broeks just as I had been hoping - metaphorically of course. The setting of the park was the best thing about it; its in Okayama prefecture, high on a hill surrounded by sea and islands - the breathtaking view I have become so blase about these past couple of months. Seto inland sea? Thousands of islands connected by chugging ferries and bridges glimmering silver in the sun? yawn! I see it like every day!

The park, as some kind of nod to the Brazilian immigrant population of the area, had a mardi gras theme (see creepy guy in header photo - he's the equivalent of the boerish miner outside gold reef city making sure you're tall enough to go on rides). At lunch time everyone in the park made their way to the central arena with their bento or trashy fried foods (theme park food is the same the world over too) for a dancing performance by the parks' mascot - inexplicably its a mouse with an enormous pink head. The mouse danced mournfully to music provided by tinny speakers and a demented shirtless guy on bongos. Then the strangest thing happened - a statuesque Brazilian man came on stage in drag and hosted a bingo game, we had all received bingo score cards along with our entrance tickets. I guess a man in drag is not such a strange thing but his behaviour and how he was received was very strange indeed. He was very pushy and sexually aggressive particularly to the school boys in the audience. Whenever anyone had bingo he would totter towards them in his wedge heels and sit on their laps, flicking his wig in the face and rubbing his fake boobs on them. And everyone loved him! The teachers sitting away from the main area thought it was glorious fun to watch this enormous, muscly man humiliate their charges. I couldn't understand why this raunchy character didnt get up their nose, why he was so unanimously accepted. It felt like someone had hired a drunk prostitute to babysit the neighbourhood kids, and no one batted an eyelid.

I met the performers after the show (they tried to get on the bus and continue torturing kids again, who knows why) and they were all Brazilian nationals, really nice, really genki just trying to do their job. I thought about how I had spent my week at work, feeling mismanaged and spare and out of touch. It didn't seem so bad now, looking at these foreigners who had to wear hot pants and mouse suits in order to get their Japanese work permits. In so many ways Japan is Utopian - things run like clockwork, they think everything down to the last detail and every kind of work and play is structured and available. At some point though you start thinking that someone has to be losing out, all this perfection has got to be at someone's expense.


.

rice picking

On saturday I went rice picking. The farmer who employed us (I never find out his real name, everyone just called him farmer Bill) was a stylish man in his mid forties; short grey hair, shell toes and tan dungarees over a picasso-like stripey sweater. Farmer Bill has two small paddies ten minutes outside Onomichi city. The setting is ridiulously idyllic: mountains surrounding several dozen small farm holdings, each little road between the plots buffered by wild cosmos and other flowers offsetting the now golden rice fields. Farmer Bill sells his rice for premium price because it is hand planted and hand picked - this barely occurs anymore in Japan. He has been using JET labour for many years. I met a Scotsman there who was Onomichi's first JET, ten years ago. He is now married to the farmer's daughter and works at Onomichi university.

Using JET labour means farmer Bill gets free labour and we get the experience: symbiosis eveyones happy!

There were about ten of us JETS and as many Japanesees - locals from Onomichi town. The work was divided down gender lines: boys doing the scything, girls doing the gathering and tying. Once the field is scythed down and the rice stalks bundled, the boys set up metal tripods all the way down the field upon which are laid long, thick bamboo poles. You take a rice bundle and separate it half half, wedging the gap over a bamboo pole. When we stopped for lunch the field had been tranformed into corridors of hanging rice, rows upon rows much like the how they grew except now they are upside down. The work wasnt over strenuous but it was hard enough to make me realise why the Japanese eat every grain from their plate - rice is precious! When all the cutting, bundling and hanging was done we all went around the fields picking up every stalk of that had been left out - not a single grain was left unharvested! It took twenty of us a day to harvest two the small fields. The yeild farmer Bill told us is about 200kgs of rice, which is nothing: I have almost finished a two kilo bag on my own in under three months. And field only yeilds one crop a year.

Our payment for the day's labour was lunch cooked by the farmer's wife and served picnic style on the road below the fields. We started with a bowl of delicate Miso and veggie soup - white Miso I think (miso comes in white, red and black ranging from delicate to strong in flavour). then there were two enourmous piles of rice, one salty done with red Azuki beans, the other cooked with edamame beans which turned the rice a minty yellow. We ate the rice with boiled carrots from the farm and braaied salmon that we ripped straight from the carcas with our chopsticks. The carrots, we were told come out of the had been carved so each carrot piece was a heart. The salmon had been marinated in a strong sweet dressing and its juices had dripped down onto a bed of onions and aubergine. it was good. it was really good.

For dessert there were persimmons and as a final flourish the farmers wife brought out a three teir poppy seed cake decorated with frilly pink flowers... She sidled up to me (I was off down the lane having a smoke) and asked softly if anyone had had a birthday recently. Yes, I said, as a matter of fact two Jets just had birthdays.

She was pleased. The cake could now be a birthday cake! She pulled five little candles out of her pockets, placing them carefully and asking if I wouldnt mind walking behind and lighting them so we could sing happy birthday. Thats just what I have come to expect from locals I have met. Not only did the lady of the house do something cook a five star meal for ten gallumfing foreigners but then to think that maybe the beautiful tea cake should celebrate them, in all their gallumfing glory.


.

A fish and a Lion King

Nothing big has happened the last couple of days so I have had nothing much to blog about. I must also admit to an escalating addiction to American shlock TV series - the O.C. I'm in over my head with this one, hours wasted in front of the box. And the video shop just wont quit enabling me! There are still five sparkling unwatched seasons, I cant stop. I want to but I can't.

Still, there are little amazing things, out here, in the world all the time, when I venture out and notice. Like today for the first time I saw the sharks at my local supermarket. Like you would have lobster or fishies in a tank except the tank is a bit bigger and the inhabitants are more belligerent than any fishies or lobster could ever be. Next to the tank are polystyrene pakkies of bits...shark bits. Possibly. Probably.

There is an abandoned lot about about a block from my school and last week it wasnt an abandoned lot anymore but a maze of plastic sheeting and concrete. People are building a house there. The people in question are not construction guys in hard hats and green overalls (all overalls seem to be pistachio round these parts) but a two little old ladies and a little old man. They have the entire building about a foot high already - they tend to it as you would imagine old farmers tending to crops. Slow and peaceful. The fact that they wear those big rice paddy hats only adds to my consternation that they are not growing rice - they're building a house!

The staffroom has moved into quarters at school, the only noticeable difference to my untrained eye being that this new room is carpeted. The change happened overnight. One morning I went to sign the register in the old room and the next day I was directed to register in the new room. The registers were on exactly the same cupboard as before. Every teacher's desk was in the exact same position with the exact same shmattes littered all over - papers, books and toys. The gang of midnight elves that executed the shift must be affiliated with the midnight elves responsible for the overnight transformation of all the vending machines in town. One morning you got cold coffee in a can from the machine, the next, same can, same vending machine: hot coffee. The first time you touch that can it comes as quite a shock...
In the new staff room this evening I checked out, from the corner of my eye, three of my co-workers; one sitting at his desk the other two standing on either side of him, as they watched something play on the seated man's computer screen (I was on the other side of the desks so could not see the screen, only their faces). In unison they laughed uproariously. Their laughter and the new grey carpeting and the fluorescent lights and the shmattes made the scene, just for that second, like a moment from The Office, if someone decided to remake it in Japanese. The standing man on the right roughly adjusted the seat of his pants. It was uncanny and horrifying. I was in The Office but it was in Japanese! I left quickly.

My biggest task this week has been helping a student prepare for a English speaking competition taking place next week. His English is good, and he is smart and expressive but lazy as hell so all the English teachers are very worried. Last year he was also the only pupil at the school to make it to the competition - he did no work and went totally blank when he got up for his recital (in a school hall in front of hundreds of parents, pupils, teachers and three stern judges). So this year the school does not want a repeat. We are doing everything we can to make this kid learn his speech. I'm pretending to know what I'm doing because I should right? With drama experience learning words and so on. Yesterday we were scheduled to meet for an hour or two after his exams - the poor kid is overworked!! He was and hour late for our appointment. When he turned up Kikawa-sensei the teacher in charge, a dear and mild mannered woman, let rip at him for at least ten minutes in rapid fire Japanese. She then sent him away - to bring his friend I discovered - who also got shat on from a dizzy height. The speech kid then sidled up to my desk and said mournfully and in broken English. 'Jemma-san. I am sorry. I lied to you. I said I would come and I didn't. I told you it was because I had to study but instead I went shopping with my friend. We had lunch. I am sorry.' My heart broke. Of course he bunked my lesson! I would have bunked my lesson. The sweet mannered teacher, who is to date the only person I have heard shouting in this country then coaxed Keisuke (thats the kids name) to get out his speech and we could start working. Out of his enormous bag he pulled a dripping, disintegrating piece of paper. His speech was in tatters. 'What happened?' she asked in English for my benefit, and not unkindly (for my benefit too?). 'My tea broke.' said Keisuke miserably.

There was no more shouting, his punishment and repentance done with, Kikawa-sensei helped him clean out his sopping bag and printed him a new speech. She chatted with him like his sister or his mom; teasing him gently about how lazy he was, how scatty. In Japan, if a school kid gets in a car accident or something the authourities will phone the kid's class teacher before they phone their parents. Thats the level of intimacy teachers and students have. Its remarkable and makes for a very respectful environment, hence the humble heartbreaking apology.

If we had just one more week to work on this speech I reckon Keisuke could crack it. He's doing an abridged story of The Lion King and he knows the movie backwards, he does the voices masterfully. His English is in fact, not as good as I thought, the words he is saying he often doesnt understand at all but he has a superbly fine tuned ear for phonetics and that, paired with his acting ability would, with just one more week - make one killer speech. But the contest is next Sunday. And he has a class trip to Hokkaido all of next week. Kikawa-sensei says he must must practice but come on! He aint gonna do nothing! I know because in his situation I would do nothing! Poor Keisuke!

radiohead

Radiohead in Osaka. Got a nice ring to it I think. I hurtled away from school and two thirty, was in Osaka by five. Was watching the band by eight and home in bed just after midnight. What kind of world is this that I can zoom through such an important experience? I kept saying to myself: take it in! take it in dammit! but there was so much. it was too hard.

If I have asked Toby really nicely and he has said yes, there will be a photo of the concert at the top of the blog? Is there one? I hope so.

The venue was like being in an almond shaped crystal with a thin layer of icing over it. got it? ok good. It probably could hold 10 000 people but was only holding I'd say, maybe 5 000. I was waaaay at the back of the standing section and we all know what that means for a shtoempic, a shorty. No view of nothing never. Ah no! And it is a fallacy that Japanese people are short. Maybe you get less 6ft monsters per capita but everyone is sill taller than me (that is to say they are all over 5ft). So its not like I could see any better here, than a concert somewhere else in the world. Not being able to see doesnt help when you are trying madly to take it all in, drink it all up. But fears of missing the biggest thing to happen to the littlest Jemma were assuaged; I did find a pretty descent angle of visibilty, at the expense of physical comfort, of course. and then the lights went out and the opening band (called i-dont-know-who-they-are-and-

im-sure-they-are-very-nice-but-be-a-sport-and-
piss-off-now) came and went and then then radiohead came on.

There were four different kinds of lights on stage and all of them had so totally transcended the toggle ability of lights, I kinda feel I am insulting them by just calling them lights, such a small word. - first off at the lintel of the stage was a plantation of millions of little lights that could become any colour under the sun - it was the sun! only better coz it could change colours and do things clouds can do as well. Then, hanging down from the roof, running from stage front to back were long dangly tube lights of different lengths that made it look like the band was deep inside a church organ. perched high above, all over the stage were grapefruit bunches of lights. running the length of the back wall was a low bank of fiber optics, i think thats what they were. they were used for general scratchiness, the Kubrick effect. bzzt bzzt, fear, nervousness. that kind of thing. All the lights were synchronised and each song had had a light show delicately crafted to peak and troug
h with the music, utterly transforming the stage. At times it looked like green toxic ooze was bubbling up from thr floor and bleeding over the crowd. At times it looked like they were in a hyperspeed blossom storm. Other times it looked as if the band was in a bleached and blown out victorian photograph - but moving, sometimes it even looked like a rock concert. Above the Kubrick lights on the back wall were three utterly enourmous screens that were used mostly to give video feed of bits of the artists. Thom's head, drummer's foot, Greenwood's fingers etc. The clarity of the images was breathtaking, they could also be twiddled to become monochromatic, blown-out, polarised or whatever. Insta sexy MTV. They crescendo-ed during paranoid android when suddenly everything went psychedelic green pink orange - explosions and seizures of light and screaming jerking close-ups.

From the description above you might imagine the concert was pretty wild, but the funny thing is, it wasnt at all. The reasons for this are multiple. Firstly, it was Radiohead in Japan and Japanese people dont go mental; they might wiggle their bums a bit but thats it. Not that they are bored, just quiet appreciaters I think. Secondly, due to my position in the arena (my carefully chosen spot for maximum visibility), I spent the night leaning perilously over a railing to my right. Imagine being in an aeroplane isle seat, straining sideways to see if the loo is available. Yeah, that was my posture for three hours (but standing). If i rested my head on my hand it was actually quite comfortable but it did mean my bum wiggling, even my clapping and hollering were extremely limited. So a calm crowd and a calm me. Then Radiohead themselves who are chilled out, but happy. Happy you say? Surely no! But Indeed yes! I think I was expecting to see Thom Yorke wheeled out in a chair, twitching a
nd crying but he seems pretty happy, pretty normal. He likes to dance, well twiddle about and laugh and stuff. Just like a real person. Their set wasn't so much sad as dreamy (the other worldly lights and sleeping head angle of mine being contributors). Whenever I did lift my head upright it felt like I was waking up - that sense of where am I? Who are these people? Whats going on? But in a good way. I had it really strongly once when Thom Yorke finsished or started some song with a friendly 'hello. heehee.' it sounded so familiar - like an old boyfriend saying 'hello' just as you wake up coz he was watching you sleep.

The music was awesome　- in Japanese SUGOI, MONOSUGOI - すごい，ものすごい．
Just amazing. Imagine what you would want Radiohead to sound like. They sound like that. But with unexpected details that make you say wow. wowee.

Because I only know their old stuff, two thirds of the set was just pretty new noise to me (I had to abstain from post concert conversations - 'what was your favourite', 'what was yours' - because I would have said 'ooh! the pink song and the one where the lights went white in the middle' and disgraced myself in front of the die hards). The stuff I did know was orgasmic - seriously: paranoid android, exit music for a film, the bends, idioteque, everything in its right place, airbag and my personal ultimate bestest - climbing up the walls. For exit music for a film there was just a smoky white spot on Thom Yorke. You could have heard a pin drop. And in terms of stamina? Prowess? Tightness? Talent? Aw man, anything I have seen hithertofor (eh?) is just wiped off the map. That man can sing, but fuckoff!! sing. and the instruments are so so tight and everyone plays like seven of them. You can hear they have been together for ages but they still love doing it.

And then it was over and we streamed outdoors and 3 000 of the 5 000 crowd veered right to the demarcated smoking section (there had been no smoking or drinking permitted inside). And before I knew it I was being shooed into a taxi and then dragged through a train station by boys at breakneck speed to make the last Shinkansen home. And then we were on the train staring at eachother in exhausted, elated disbelief. And then I was home.

Weekend of Wonder

Last week I was starting to feel down about being in Japan. I miss home. The monotony of my job borders on morbid. My town is, honestly speaking, an armpit (close to nice places but smelly in and of itself). Jenkin-san had given me the advice 'Stay active, stay happy!' and you know what, that was my problem indeed. Of course I was miserable in my tiny flat watching dvds and feeling lonely and wretched. The job is boring yes, but in my own time, dammit, i gots to do things rather than lamenting. So, from a much happier Jem in Japan, the next two posts are a run-down of my weekend which saved me from getting onto SAA and coming thefuck home. A weekend of new things that are so new I never knew they were there. Look at photos on flickr.com

Enjoy.

Gondry's Japan

At a moment's notice on Saturday I headed out into the mountains to a tiny music festival hosted by various artists, musicians and other cool people from Onomichi - my favourite dinky town ten minutes from Mihara. It was tiny, maybe 150 people in total and, without being too effusive, I have to say it was the best thing I have done in Japan thus far! The setting was too beautiful to be true - a tiny clean campsite surrounded by pines and mountains with a steep slope on one side leading to a deep grey damn. The weather has finally let up and the days were crisp, the night pleasantly chilly. There wasn't a stage so to speak, in the middle of the clearing stood one lone pine tree under which was a wooden bench for musicians (which at night, like everything in this country) was lit spectacularly. It seems everyone who attended brought their own stall or display or toy and everything was free and available at all hours. Under a clump of trees someone had brought two fat white goats who lazed about and made children hysterical with delight and terror. A small wooden desk next to the goat had a notepad and pencil. You would write a letter (private wishes and secrets) and hang it from the trees from coloured string and at the end of the festival the letters were lowered and fed to the goats, your secrets excreted as tiny turds all over the field. A particularly ingenious addition to the festival was a blimp size white balloon made from hundreds of garbage bags and inflated by a fan. Inside the floor was covered with patchwork quilts, the light was clean and surreal. It was like being in a whale in a particularly friendly picturebook. At night the blimp was illuminated with projections from the outside of fireworks, water and trees. You could just sit for hours watching the colours leak all over, every now and again sharp shadows of men with guitars walking around you. There were rainbow hammocks (that were again there, it seems, to delight and terrify children), stalls selling chai and tom yum and curry. There was an enourmous cardboard house lit with dangling bulbs that you could walk inside and decorate with paints and crayons.

If this all sounds psychedelic its because it was! I kept thinking to myself, where are the drugs? people do this without drugs? indeed! they do! which means it had the magic of a hippie festival but none of the filth and none of the sordidness. It was truly truly magical. I'll post the photos on flickr soon and you can see for yourself.

The highlight of the performances was a man in dungarees who did a one-man-band guitar n harmonica puppet show. I didnt understand what he was saying but he was very fervent which made it very funny. I especially liked the two photo cardboard cut out puppets which were mini replicas of himself (big sunglasses, floral hat) with which he did a short but slick dance routine.

Everyone at the festival was so kind and chilled out. Ah! I thought, this is where the cool people in Japan are, the ones who arent teachers and salarymen (who until now, were the only people I had encountered). The food was delicious, the music was gentle and sweet, the stalls really did make you feel like a five year old (except maybe you werent scared of goats). It was like living in the movie Science of Sleep. Utterly surreal. Utterly magical. The best place in the whole world. I almost feel like I shouldnt be writing about it, like it doesnt actually exist, it was just a dream made of plastercine in a forest with a snow white goat.

the elders

There is a group of old politicos called The Elders who I only found out about recently. Its Madiba, Tutu, Jimmy Carter, some Scandewegian, the Ex Irish lady president, a whole bunch.　Because they are old and respected and not technically part of any government they can take a stand against big wold issues and speak their minds freely without recourse. Pretty cool. Well this weekend I hate a date with what felt like Mihara's answer to The Elders.

On friday afternoon, Gunch asked me if I woudlnt mind our daily lesson being a field trip today, after work. I said that sounded most excellent. At five o clock I met him in town and together we walked the short distance to his old friend Machan's okonomikayi shop. The shop is called Sachan, after his wife. It is a tiny eatery consisting of a long hotplate surrounded by stools. There is a wall of manga on one wall for patrons with no one to talk to I suppose, although in this place everyone knows everyone and conversation swings around the little place so rapidly I cannot imagine anyone having a moment, or the inclination to read. There is also a grotty seventies TV mounted in the corner. As it is sumo season, sumo was playing when we entered and it provided mild distraction and a conversation piece to the patrons.

Okonomiyaki, incase I havent explained previously, is a Hiroshima prefecture speciality. Batter is poured onto the huge iron hotplate and gently moulded into a paper thin crepe. on top is piled a mountain of cabbage, noodles, fish, meat and veggies. Once these have simmered down an egg is broken on top to form an omlette covering. Its doused in sauce, decorated with ginger, you are armed with a spatular and it used pushed toward you with a giant spatula. Voila. Dinner. The okonomiyaki Gunch and I shared had cuttlefish and strips of pork. It was delicious.

Gunch is 67. Machan and his wife are also 67 and they have all been friends for 50 years. Everyone else who came into the shop was introduced to me as being an old friend of Gunch's too and they all, it turns out were 67 with the exception of a tiny little old man who looked like a bean with enourmous spectacles who didnt like the fact thatI ate left handed. This bean could have been 95. He wore bright blue plaid golf pants. 67 year old no 4 wore a battered straw hat that made him look like he should be in the Caribbean. Machan had a pale yellow polo shirt and the beginnings of a Tom Sellek moustache.

Initially I did what has become my routine introductory performance. Lots of smiling, yes, I am from Africa! It is far, seventeen hours on a plane. Machan was particularly interested in South African currency and how long it took my to save the money to get to Japan and how much beer was in South Africa etc. Straw hat knew a lo0t about South Africa: Kimberly, the Cullinan diamond and Gary Player. But soon enough Gunch put an end to the prattle and settled down to our lesson which he scratched out on folded up flyers and bits of napkin (which I now have stored in a box of my most precious possessions). He explained to me that although you get okomiyaki all over Japan, the people of Hiroshima have a special attachment to it and he asked why I thought this was the case. 'Because!', he said (before I could answer), after the devastation of the war, and the bomb, people in Hiroshima had nothing to cook with, and nothing to eat with. Everything was destroyed. With no pots, no pans, no nothing they took to okonomiyaki because it requires no utensils at all and can be compiled out of anything - an egg, a scrap of fish, a bit of flour. He told me about his experience of the war; how his father (92 and going strong!) had not joined the army because he was a railway man; a valuable and necessary profession during the war. They had suffered massively from food shortages, everything that could be eaten was sent to the army. People had barely anything. I have just finished reading a manga by a man named Nakazawa called 'Barefoot Gen' about living in Hiroshima during the bomb and when I mentioned this Gunch nodded furiously. Yes, yes, he was just like Barefoot Gen! Ah! says a man with long orange hair and fingernails sittng at the other end of the shop, Barefoot Gen, yes! He read it in high school. This is how the evening progressed with people all over the tiny shop putting in their two cents worth and laughing while Machan furiously produced okonomiyaki and his wife poured beer.

I enjoyed myself most when my presence was forgotten and I could watch all the people just talking amongst themselves in rapid fire Japanese. I think they spoke for some time about a Russian competitor in the Sumo tournament. Gunch told me too about the throwing of salt I had witnessed at sports day that is an integral part of Sumo - it cleanses the arena and is a most ancient and respected tradition. Yes, its true the Bean concurred.

When we left Machan and his wife greeted me so warmly! Gunch told me that Machan had said I was welcome to come without Gunch as often as I could. I think I have a fan!

sports day

For the last two weeks the students and teachers have been abuzz about sports day - making posters, rehearsing all kinds of dancing, cleaning the school. Last saturday the day finally arrived, the typhoon had passed, and sports was on!

The field (which is just sand really: an athletics track cum baseball pitch) was surrounded by tenting for the crowd (parents, teachers and honourable board members). At one end the tents gave way to a make-shift archway, decked in paper flowers where students would come through for races and events. the sports coach stood at the gate with a clipboard making sure everything was in order and throwing a handful of salt after each set of participants passed through. I have heard of salt throwing before. It is apparently a big part of Sumo ritual too but of its exact significance im not sure.

Events began with speeches from the principal, en masse radio exercises (kind of like a warmup done to music that is done country wide to a radio broadcast) and much bowing. It was blisteringly hot, I was so thankful to be in the shade of the first aid tent (where my seat had been placed) but the students standing in neat rows in the middle of the pitch doing exercises didnt wilt at all. They were precise as soldiers.

The events were a combination of your usual relays, hurdles and hundred meters and then more inventive and downright peculiar displays. I say the regular relays, nonthing was regular in fact because at the start of every race, with the pistol, music would start, like chariots of fire but played on a casio keyboard and ten times faster. at first I couldnt stop giggling, it was just so silly but I must admit, by the end I quite enjoyed the exitement it added to each event. The more peculiar events included a jump rope competition where an entire class of twenty five would stand in line and try to simultaneously jump a very very long rope being weilded on either side by, what I imagine were the longest limbed in the class. There were also obstacle courses which included bicycle wheels under nets, four legged races, crawling and sacks, all rather treacherous - and seemingly more tracherous due to the danger music. At my school, which like most in Japan is co-ed, the pupils, I think from shyness, kind of naturally divide by gender. In class they never sit together, talk to eachother or work in intergender pairs. At sports day however, some of the events forced mixing (like the four legged race where a gangly boy is tied to a little girl on either side of him and forced to hold on for dear life). There seemed to be a natural joy and relief in all of them, to finally be able to play with those other people that they see all day, every day but never have any interaction with.

My favourite favourite race was one where students had to run 50m to a baseball bat, lean over and balance their forhead on the unturned bat and spin around ten times. they then had to run another 50m to the finishline but were so gaga that they ran into eachother, fell down or went screaming into the side netting. It was bloody hilarious, like watching drunk babies. Another favourite was a bizarre team event where one boy had to be dressed in drag in two minutes flat by four tittering girls, then the boys got together and did an elaborate and extremely well rehearsed back street boys dance routine complete with the splits and breakdancing...Old boys rugby at Parktown is certainly was not!

.