hair, poems and takkies

i am nearly finished marking all the stuff teachers keep sneaking onto my desk to mark. im actually coming to enjoy marking. the precision of it. i am becoming quite frighteningly precise here. like at night when i lay out my futon and place the air-con remote, my cell phone and a glass of water just so next to my bed. every night. in the same order. and i have started to get to work within three minutes of eight fifteen. and im only due there at eight forty five. weird! but i like it. the new jemma 08. cleaner, more reliable. like bio-fuel.

the student essays im marking, although very basic, are remarkably thoughtful. the topic is 'the moment that changed me the most' and these 16 year old kids are talking about the moment they realised that feeling love isnt the most important thing, one must express it. Or that their parents shout and scold because they love them or that they understand why they are scared of a ringing phone because when they picked up the phone aged ten they heard that their grandfather was dead. Can you imagine my parktown yobs, charming as they are, writing this stuff? theres no machismo in this society. that paired with a built-in contemplativness (the thing which makes internet installation or a trip to the post office so bloody endless) results in these thoughtful self effacing little tykes! and you wouldnt expect it if you saw them. the boys all have long manicured fingernails and big big hair. and baggy pants and the perfect contreposto slouch. the girls have extremely asymmetrical hair that falls in shards over their eyes and all their possesions are covered in shiny pink stickers and both sexes wear cutting edge super kief takkies. purple and neon green nike high tops. black shell toes electro pixel decor. retro puma. the schools here dont regulate hair and shoes as part of uniform. In that Peter Carey I read, Wrong About Japan - he says that yes, Japan is a conformist society but it is also a Visualist society. They develop (or indeed inheret from the west) an aesthetic and then meticulously reproduce it - it is this conformist-cum-visualist tendency that resulted in calligraphy. its also what makes 50 school boys have enourmous, meticulous and identical hair.

gunch today explained to me the haiku. i thought i already knew about haikus but, as always i realised i knew absolutely vokkol. What i always tried to do with a haiku is understand it as a narrative, in time, but it is like a painting, a moment that stretches infinitely only because you can study its momentary-ness in such detail. i think the problem of wanting there to be narrative came from the western tendency to write the poem on three lines. the japanese write only one line (left to right or top to bottom). the haiku itself is picturesque. also, because of the japanese grammatical structure, the thing at the end of the poem might be the subject. when i remembered this, it blew the haiku wide open. they dont have beginnings middles and ends any more than a portrait.

the homogenous

My friday lesson with Gunch consisted of learning the kanji for homogenous and heterogenous. We discussed the benefits of each type of society and the drawbacks. He asked me about South Africa's Unity in Diversity motto and, it was only whilst discussing it with him thatI realised that it was a kind of synonym for integration. Whereas Apartheid was a synonym for segregation. A very obvious parallel perhaps, but I had to be three billion miles away with a 75 year old Japanese man to see it!

The following day, Saturday, I went to Onomichi - a town 10 minutes from Mihara. They are probably about the same size but whereas Mihara is industrial and ugly Onomichi is quaint and arty. I think I have fallen in love with it. There is a wide patch of lawn wedged between Onomichi station and the sea (with regulation breathtaking island view) where you can sit and drink beer (public drinking widely accepted in this wonderful country) and watch the otherworldly go by. The town is also littered with cool little clothes and tsastke (sp?) shops. I bought whati thought was a very rakish Annie Hall type hat which, upon return to Mihara looks a little little silly. I also went to an icecream parlour with friends. While we waited for seating at one of the small wooden tables - need I add they all had a sea view - we noticed something peculiar: all the steel icecream tubs on display had white icecream inside. were the different flavours invisible? Upon odering it turns out thatthe icecream parlour sells only vanilla icecream. the variety comes with whether you have it in a cup or a cone.

heehee
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