Something is hatching

Every day Gunch does wonderful things for me and we have wonderful conversations. I have become wholly spoilt and come to expect it. Today he surpassed all expectation. When I arrived through the office door, I still had my teacher face on, having just taught a class. I don't know exactly what my teacher face looks like although I do know what it feels like; it feels stern but motherly, like a nurse in a WWI tent who has seen a thing or two, takes no nonsense from boisterous invalids and will kindly mop the brow of the legless until they breath their last. That's what I want to be, when I am a teacher. How ridiculous.

Anyways, I arrived through the door with my teacher face on and Gunch was sprawled at my desk, looking triumphant, a newspaper open in front of him. This was unusual because generally we respect each other's desks as private space. By meeting at the empty desk in the middle of the office, we allow each other privacy. His mouldy coffee tins and dictionary towers are his business. My celeb blogs and heaps of chocolate wrappers are my business. 'Jemma-san', he said, 'today I have some very very good news.'
'Really?' said I, I know he likes to play these things out at a leisurely pace, 'what's that?'

It turned out to be very, very good news indeed; a bulb of news that, as from-bulb gardeners know, may flower beautifully or sadly come to nought. If it does flower...well let me just tell you!
Gunch had me sit down and he showed me a small article in the local section of the paper. In the picture accompanying the article was a man doing a Kamishibai performance. Kamishibai is my new obsession, the traditional form of storytelling said to have spawned manga. It effectively died with the advent of TV but it can be seen in places like the manga museum (where I saw it) or at little local festivals and events. Before the war it was huge. Every town had several Kamishibai performers: men trying to supplement their income by riding around on bicycles with ingenious, very portable little stages strapped to the back. They would be welcomed at the gates to the local temples by swarms of kids and would tell stories using painted picture cards that slotted into the little stage. The monies were earned by selling sweets. Everyone could watch a Kamishibai performance but buyers got to sit in the coveted front row.

The article Gunch showed me had a picture too. The picture was not a black and white one of a 40s Kamishibai performance, but a colour pic of a performance that happened two days ago at the local medical school, which is spitting distance from my house. The crux of the article, which we read together (so very slowly, in case we needed to build any more tension) was that medical students stand to gain valuable people skills from performance like Kamishibai. It teaches them to chill out and listen and the importance of humour. Nothing new there. Then the article talks a little bit about the performer himself Higeroku-san (a nickname that roughly means Beardy). He is 67 - 'a spring chicken' says Gunch, now 68. Higeroku-san used to work in a collar and cuffs at a desk right here in Mihara. Then he retired and began performing Kamishibai. He travels all around Hiroshima prefecture but he lives in Mihara and produces his work from here.

We finished reading the article. I now knew where this was going and Gunch obliged by leaning back his eyes twinkling. 'Yes, he said, we will make contact with this man and you can speak with him.'

For months I have had thoughts rattling around in my kop - mostly they polarize into two camps - the 'what am i doing with my future' camp and the 'why am i feeling so fucked up in Japan?' camp. Kamishibai, at first abstractly but now I think, pretty concretely, will help me to calm and order my thoughts. As an art form, it neatly and perfectly includes everything I like to do. Making the pictures and telling the story. As a viable theater form its kind of great too. The style of storytelling relies heavily on sounds and gestures and the pictures of course, so it can transcend languages and age gaps quite nicely. Different pictures, or different deliveries can change your performance from playschool fare to serious political analysis or bawdy nonsense. As a proposal to a university it also seems like a pretty good weapon to have. "I want to make cheap, effective, sometimes political, sometimes educational, always relevant, mass appeal theatre and I want to do everything myself and this is how I can do it." l

Then, really the 'why am I feeling so fucked in Japan?' question has had an answer for months but it's very had for me to acknowledge. I am feeling fucked because I am not integrating, I have spent the better part of the year simply adjusting to the horror or foreign cultural terrain and any time left over I have divided equally between avoiding the now less alien but no less terrifying cultural terrain and berating myself for avoiding it. Apart from Gunch, I have no Japanese friends here. Not in any real sense. That is immensely depressing, given the length of time I have been here, and I blame no one but myself.

Imagine though! Imagine if Gunchy and I meet this man (whose real name is Rokuda Genji) and he is cool and he offers to show me Kamishibai, or even just chat with me? It could be the beginning of my next creative endeavour, an endeavour that is inectricable from th place where I am - Japan. Something I can take away and show to people - "In Japan I learned this." . My friendhsip with Gunch will I am sure, always be the most valuable thing I have gained here, but Kamishibai is something else, something quantifiable to people who wear glasses and want to see product and issue scholarships. For that I am very excited. I am excited to have found an art form that makes me excited. For a time, friends, it did feel like those pockets of my brain had plasticized. Did I blog about it? Probably not. It was too fucking terrifying.

Gunch went to find Rokuda Genji in the phone book. Sure enough, he found him. We crafted a letter to him, I wrote in English in green ink and Gunch wrote in his signature dusty pencil on bent and mucky paper. I don't know how he manages to destroy paper, old Gunch, just by holding the stuff. I will give him a pristine pile of worksheets, he hands them to students right then and there and somehow by the time they are in their hands not his, they are water-damaged, torn, bent and covered in mud. It's amazing. Gunch had no doubts that Rokuda Genji will be responsive; he reckons that if this man grew up in Mihara then they probably sat and watched original Kamishibai performers of the town together. He assures me that Rokuda Genji will know the famous Kamishibai story of The Golden Bat - a super hero with a skull for a head. He ended the day's excitement with a (mis)quote from Charlotte's Web - 'life is full and rich when we are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.' He knows that the quote isn't quite right and heas been browsing through Charlotte's Web for weeks trying to get it right. He hasn't found it. He has turned his copy into a frayed soggy mess. But I know exactly what he is trying to say.

skuru festivaru

Hi. Apologies for the absence. Today was school festival - a Potted Sports type affair with copious amounts of fried chicken, lurid slushies as bright as the class t-shirts and other healthy eating options. It was great fun! I ate junk and looked at weird things made by the students. I made my own stamps out of erasers, gambled with cardboard chips and even attempted to solve mathsy brain teasers in the quiz game classroom (aided by two very patient students who had the option of thinking I was dim-witted because of the language barrier or because my maths is so very very kak, regardless of the language in which the problems are presented).

It's starting to feel like I am part of the school - not some strange interloper, easily identified by my hair colour, eye colour and aimless wandering about. I still have these traits, but they they are now a known quantity, not so strange anymore. I think that when I felt isolated and unwanted (which was most of the time I have spent here thus far, if I am honest) it was partly because in my head I was expecting certain people to like me for certain reasons. It turns that actually other people like me because of different reasons. You simply can't always choose who likes you and why they should. Another life lesson then. I prefer it when life lessons are accompanied by junk food. Junk food softens both the gut and the blow to one's ego when things, as they invariably have been doing, don't go according to plan.

Yesterday and Today (昨日と今日は)

Yesterday I read all about North Korea on Wikipedia. Today I am reading all about Roe. v Wade. There is so much to know in the world! I wonder what I will read about tomorrow.

The Day Before Yesterday (Ototoi おととい)

I bought a new bicycle. She is an extravagance inasmuch as my old bicycle is perfectly functional. She was a bargain in that she was cheap. Especially bargain-some in that she is extremely gorgeous, much more than my old bike. Pinky (that's her name) also has a useful back ledge, the likes of which I have wanted for some time - good for carrying people or perhaps setting up a tv/dvd system so that, if I ride very slowly people walking behind me can watch movies.

Pinky New Rules (that's her full name) has changed my opinion of myself completely. I have dressed with much more care in the two days that I have had her. Because she is so pink and so beautiful, she stands out anywhere - if I am on her therefore I must surely be extra presentable since heads will be a-turnin.

I made a fool of myself twice in the hour it took to buy Pinky New Rules. Firstly, I tried to ask the man at the UFO home-store when he would attach the chain. A bike needs a chain after all. Luckily my Japanese is so rubbish that it was taking him a good long time to work out what I was talking about. In that time I worked out for myself that the chain is inside a convenient compartment. Amazing what they do on first-world bikes! I kept the revelation to myself and distracted the man with some banal comment so that he would never discover the depths of my Luddism.

Secondly, I was under the impression that I had to go and get Pinky registered at the police station in case she was ever stolen. Dutifully I headed off and spent a happy twenty minutes being amiable with three police officers that looked like huge action figures covered in more detachable accessories than any young boy could ever dream of. The most senior of the three saw to my case. He looked at my registration papers (issued by UFO-man) and my alien registration card - how extraterrestrial this all sounds, looking back. We hit a snag only when he began asking me when I bought the bike where the bike was and where my old bike was. I became guarded because dumping old bikes is, i suspect, a serious felony here and technically that was what I had done - I left it at the Lawson convenience store next to the UFO center. Oh, said I, the old bike is...somewhere. Yes, he persisted. Where is it? shit! I was going down - I broke into a sweat. Senior Action Policeman then called for back-up and brought in Junior Action Policeman, distracting him from his noble task of tippexing out a bathroom mirror in an architectural drawing of a men's bathroom (he was doing it with super-hero level precision). They discussed me and my case, seemingly to decide who would be good cop, who would be bad cop. Like hardened interrogators they kept asking, in slightly different ways - 'where is the bike?' . I could feel my story wilting. Finally I said 'the new bike is here! the old bike is at Lawson! please, please don't throw me in the slammer!' They looked extremely surprised and asked to see the new bike. ONly with pleasure sirs, she is after all, such a beauty! We went outside together and marveled over Pinky. Then we went back inside and Senior Action asked me for the number of my school and the name of my supervisor. I told him everything.

After speaking with my supervisor (laughing even when crime in Japan was, or so I thought, no laughing matter), he handed the phone to me. I was sure my supervisor would then gently explain the protocol for foreigners in Japanese prisons. 'You bought a new bike?' he asked
'Yes,' I sniffled, 'at the UFO home center.'
'Where is your old bike?' he asked.
'At the Lawson.' I said, trying to keep it all under control.
'So everything is OK?'
'Umm..yes. Everything is ok! I promise I won't abandon my old bike!'
'Why are you at the police-station?'
'Um...to register my bike?'
'It is already registered!' he laughed. hahaha! go home!
Relief washed over me. I was not going to be put away for attempted bike abandonment. I handed the phone back to Senior Action and backed quietly out of the police-box, their barked questions and secret laughter ringing in my ears. They had thought I was reporting a stolen bike and couldn't work out why seeing as I obviously knew the location of not one, but two bikes. And I had thought I was going down! Hahaha, Lost in Translation - what fun! Oh Pinky! The adventures we have had already!

thinking about speaking

Yesterday I taught more classes back to back than I ever have before. Gunch had said to me that teaching is a physical labour but I just thought he was being dramatic - turns out tarum tarum, he's right. I had to eat cake between class four and five, just to ensure I didn't pass out.

In my local language class that caters to JETS-like-me, other random English teachers and several Filipino ship engineers and their families, our conversation practice last night with Fukuda sensei turned horticultural. He asked me what I had done on the weekend and I told him that I had planted lavender but they were sick. How, he asked. I was already quite proud that I had managed to say 'lavender sick', - an actual diagnosis in Japanese would just be too much. So I made limp lavender actions with my arms and head, lolling and looking baleful as if in a wet wind. Ah! says Fukuda sensei, you are watering them too much. Guilty as charged, I have been watering them everyday and I told him so. Yes, that is the problem he mused, he then drew a diagram of lavender, the sun, a watering can and various clocks and arrows. And words of course. I learnt the words for sun, grow and plant medicine (which I think might be a 'made up for my benefit' word, not one that would yield any results if I went around saying it at the local nursery). After the plant talk we went on to adjectives and their conjugation and while my friends and language partners The Lithe American and The Happy Brit battled with negative form I withdrew into my head for a quick reflection. I was in Japan. I am in Japan. Me and The Lithe American and The Happy Brit and the funny little community we are part of, are learning - no dammit - speaking Japanese. I struggle to call what I do to the language speaking but if its getting the point across (with some necessary lavender impersonations), then that is speaking. Speaking Japanese? How utterly weird. And a bit great. All these thoughts must have shown on my face because The Lithe American turned and asked 'Having a existential, Jemy?' Haha, yes I said. She said it happens to her all the time too.

Later that night I found myself in a car with two Japanese people and My Best Mexican American. Conversation was lively and multi-lingual. One of the Japanese people there was fluent in English and Spanish, the other in Japanese and Laughing. Had I had my existential then, I think my head would have popped. Four people, three languages? Conversational success to the point of revelry? Amazing. Just amazing. But luckily I had had a few beers, so I couldn't reflect, just participate with a little bit of Japanese, a lot of English and lots of lolling lavender style actions.

kimono

Today I had a traditional day with kimono wearing and tea ceremony. Both were stupendously beautiful and also rather painful. I'm not going to go into detail - safe to say I simply couldn't do either event justice without expending thousands of words trying to capture every intricacy and minutiae. Both felt very formal and I mean formal as in 'concerned with form'. It was fascinating. Overwhelming. Beautiful, so so beautiful. Those kimonos? God, to die for. Look at some pics here.
On me though...eh, let's just say they do not um, celebrate bodies like mine. I had to take off my bra (the first time I have been braless in public since, like, I was 15) and a woman (who, no kidding, came up to my waste) strapped them down with meters of cloth till I was not so much flat chested, that could never happen, but barrel chested. I didn't have breasts, I had chest. Like an opera singer man or a chuffed bird. It was sore (and not very flattering) but totally worth it because I wore something so beautiful and I had the experience of being dressed by two women - it feels totally regal. They way their warm, rough hands snaked and tweaked about was wondrous to witness. Wearing a kimono is not a single garment affair you see, I was wearing at least twenty items of clothing - seriously! And their hands belied an intimate knowledge of the ancient technology of the clothes. The dressing is a necessary accompanying master-craft to the making of kimono themselves, if they are ever to be more than elaborate wall hangings. Being inside that kimono and inside that activity felt very luxuriant and comforting. Sitting in Seiza (the traditional sitting position expected of you at tea ceremony - see here) is the opposite - it is mean and desperately uncomfortable. I thought I would pass out at one point during the ceremony which is only half an hour : 27 minutes too much Seiza. Man, it sucks! Apparently you get better with practice. I'm sure eating forks also improves, with practice.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Today I went to a big book shop in Hiroshima that has a good English language book section. However, and I think I can afford to be smug here - I was not going for English books today. Oh no. I was buying Japanese books! For Japanese people and, and for myself!

I bought a copy of Winnie the Pooh in the hometaal for Gunch's daughter and then I bought myself my very own Japanese book. A manga called Hinachan. I chose it because the pictures are cute but mainly because the writing is really big and there isn't much kanji. Even so, I fear I might still be in over my head - I'll get Gunch to help me out! Being in the kiddies section of the shop inspired me to really hammer at this Japanese - do you know I can read all the Maurice Sendaks, Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eloise, The Shrinking of Treehorn, The Little Prince? All in Japanese. This bookshop had the platonic ideal of a children's section with the one ironic oddity that it was all written top to bottom in a language I can't read.

I can't read now... Maybe soon, or not so soon, I will. I want to read Fantastic Mister Fox with Boggis-san and Bunce-san and Bean-san, one tall, one fat one lean-san! Wouldn't that be amazing? Suddenly another year here doesn't seem like nearly enough. I could spend the entire year just in the kiddies section of Fukuya bookshop rereading all the classics.

confession, maybe to Peter Carey

I have a confession to make. I like cheap, nasty sushi. I'm not sure who it is that I feel am now ready to confess this to - my old self, the sushi snob, is probably as good as anyone. My two favourite kinds of sushi are: a nigiri where the fish has been covered with a thin latticework of mayonnaise that has then been blow torched and 'purorn furai' - a giant maki with a fat tempura prawn inside.

Sushi snobs would certainly balk at these as they slid past on the belt. I used to be a sushi snob. I assumed no restaurant in South Africa really knew anything about the hallowed art of sushi but I'd still eat it as often as possible. I would begin a sushi meal out (beacause when you eat sushi, by god you will allow naught but sushi to pass your lips) with the pompous question 'How is the tuna today?' The waiter most times would say 'Ja, there isn't any today. Sorry.' and I, the sushi aficionado would then crumple dejectedly over my sparkling mineral water and resign myself to an evening of infuriating limitations. No tuna? Man it sucks living in the third world... While I waited for my order, the amazing sushi I wasn't having would float though my mind on an imaginary round-a-belt. A sushi meal in Japan, I imagined, would be entirely different. There would be at least 3000 varieties of fish on offer, each more beautiful and bizarre than anything available in Greenpoint, Cape Town let alone Greenside, Jozi. I was being cheated out of an unimaginable culinary experience - that not many could handle but that I would not only handle, but relish dammit - all because down at the bottom of the continent, no chef had the balls to ante up and no patron had the stomach to see them. And so as I wolfed down the salmon rolls and salmon maki and salmon sashimi, though I cooed and puffed appreciatively, my mind would still drift not just to the tuna I wished I was eating but the two thousand nine hundred and ninety eight other complicated fishes I was sure I would love, as soon as I had met them.

In Peter Carey's book (that I have mentioned before) Wrong About Japan, his son, a manga and anime freak, comes with his dad to Japan on the proviso that they never indulge the romantic notion of 'Real' Japan. Carey, a total Nipponophile argues against but eventually agrees to his sons terms: they are not to indulge in a single temple, geisha, museum, festival, garden, historic site, painting, kimono or traditional meal. It's extreme sure, but the kid while only 12 at the time must have known what his dad would have done, unchecked. I think the that sushi I dreamt of - all silver tentacles and glistening slime - qualifies as the 'Real' Japan that Carey dreamt of too.

Real Japan... the other two thousand and ninety eight. I have met some of them, and I meet new ones all the time. I'm sorry former me. I'm sorry Peter Carey. I'm sorry sushi snobs all over the world: I don't like them, I kind of hate them. I thought I could handle them but I can't. Alas, my snob-self would die of shame. But, but, but she didn't know! She didn't know about the small fish networked with veins, eaten whole. Her imagination did not extend to the taste and mouthfeel of cuttle fish, that turns into runny dentists clay in your mouth and all the way down your throat. Uncooked crab still half in it's spiny legs. Enormous, inky prawns that look much more like the wriggling robo-virus from The Matrix that squirms its way into Keanu via his belly-button than something you would want to eat.

If I once began in Carey's camp, avidly seeking the Real Deal, then now, after nearly a year in Japan I must say, at least where sushi is concerned, I have crossed over to side with his infinitely wiser 12 year son. And I am so much happier for it. So there aint nothing Real about 'hanbaagaa sushi' - a ball of rice with half a frikkadel and gravy on top. Doesn't mean it doesn't taste (and look) kind of awesome. I think the boy might have liked the resturaunt where it was served up too, it was about as authentic as the sea aroma that comes out of an air freshening egg. Huge and as brightly lit as any McDonalds, the sushi came past each booth on a massive snaking belt. The second best thing was that every plate that came past cost only 100 yen. The third best thing was that there was hanbaagaa sushi and purorn fry and only recognisable fish (the fish I wrote off as dull before I got to Japan) and most of it was covered in mayo. The best thing was the 'express' belt that lay above the regular belt - if you ordered something (from the LCD screen inserted into your booth) it would be whizzed to you in seconds by a train shaped tray on the top belt - bullet sushi. as exciting and exacting as the trains it imitates. The sushi tray stopped dead at our booth, without even rattling a prawn tail.

So that's my confession. What exactly? That I like hamburger sushi. Is that so wrong? Its not like I put preserved ginger on it or anything (I remember hearing a real fucking wanker of a sushi snob once belittle someone for doing that: 'Umm...that's like putting ice cream on your steak' he said witheringly). Loving the Surreal more than the Real. Is that so wrong? The Real is so rich, so textured, so very very foreign. And loving it is just too hard. It takes too long. I would have to eat cuttle fish for months before I learned not to gag and years maybe before I learnt to really love it. I ask you: who has the time for that? Or indeed the inclination when instead there is a deepfry fastfood/sushi. The best-of -both-worlds, a nasty cross breed hammering its way right towards my face on a little miniature train.

gym people

I have started going to gym. Its very odd. But nice. It started when I was deeply miserable and I hated being here so desperately I wanted to rip people's heads off - but you can't. The gym was the next best option on terms of stress relief. I am no longer hating it here by the way. Must have just been the winter.
I'm getting all kinds of new muscles (thanks to my genes, I sprout fat leg muscles by just looking at the rowing machine). I try to stretch them out - make them long and balletic by stretching for at least half an hour. This is also a great time to stare at the other people in the gym. I don't feel bad about staring because they ogle me shamelessly. So I sweat more than anyone they have ever seen. Must they really make me feel so so very alien? I don't know if I will ever get used to these stares.

So when I am staring - getting my own back, there a some specific people I like to stare at the most. The first one is the fittest octogenarian alive. A leetle old lady with a bad pot haircut that can bench her body weight and run on the stair master for what would probably equal forty temples' worth of stairs. She's supple too, folding flat onto the floor between her legs if she wants to whilst staring at my boobs and tummy that prevent me from getting anywhere near that far. Next I like to stare at a man who is square in shape. I think he is a boxer or he likes to pretend to be a boxer. He wears leg warmers and doo-rags and likes to punch the little scrotum shaped punching ball a lot. He doesn't do any cardio, if he did he might loose his perfect rhomboid proportions. There is a very good looking young guy who likes to work on his carves and stretch. I like to stare at him. He is slightly mysterious and very ridiculous because he wears sunglasses and a beanie for the entire duration of his work out. A mother and daughter duo are often at the gym while I am there. The mum wears normal outside clothes - flannel shirts and cords and is there only to look after her daughter who has some kind of muscular dystrophy or something. She's a trooper though, the girl. She does bike, treadmill and stair master for ages in her peculiar jerky way. the mum just sits idly drinking tea. I'm sure she would help her daughter out if she needed it but she clearly doesn't. One of my students has started coming to the gym. No, he has probably been coming for ages but recently our times have overlapped. I guess he's been coming for ages because he is almost as fit as the octogenarian. He likes to walk around on his hands and he does his exercises according to an elaborate set of notes he carries around in a slim red file.

As you can probably tell from the patrons, this aint no Virgin Super Active Delux. I hope, with summer approaching, that is has air conditioning.

cherry blossom picnic and a bit of badminton

picture c/o Nick Bradley.

(an extract from an email to Mia)

I had a beautiful picnic on top of a mountain this weekend with a big lolloping bunch of expats. We noised and messed and yet the Japanese still love us. We are untrained puppies. The picnic was in honour of the cherry blossoms which are waning now. Saturday was an exceptional day to watch the change - in the morning the entire park was bright and shining with fat petals but as the day progressed the breeze sent them dancing from the branches into our hair and our open beers. By the time we left, late in the evening, the trees were more leaf than flower. Spring turned into summer right before my eyes. It was beautiful. And also cunningly sad somehow. The death that was wrapped up in the life of it.

On Sunday I prepared my balcony for my parents imminent arrival. It was a real dump site with black muck on everything, old cigarette butts and dead plants. Now it has super retro green astro turf on the floor and everything is clean (I even swept the walls!) I'm gonna plant basil and other things once I have properly aired and fertilized the soil in the window boxes (guess who's been reading about gardeing on the internet?). Im also coveting a wooden bench that has been lying outside my apartment building for the last few weeks. It'll go just poifectly with the fake grass. Gunch helped me word a little note that I have now attached to the bench. It says 'This bench is too good to waste! I want it. If it has not moved by Sunday I am going to take it with much thanks." . I attached the last of my South African beaded brooches to the note...just to let them know I am from a poor place but my heart is pure. Gunch says leaving little love notes on abandoned bicycles and furniture and things is not all that unusual and can sometimes lead to new friends. Oh Japan you sweet thing!

Father Brian Finn, Edward Norton's sweet priest in Keeping the Faith says of a little Bonnard in the Met - "Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way." I have been riding past a shoe shop a few blocks from Mihara train station for months now but on Saturday morning, suddenly and for no apparent reason, I really saw the shop and I went inside. It's the kind of shop which would blend in on Diagonal Street or the in Oriental Plaza. The sign that ran across the shop-front lintel was dated and cracked. Shoe carousels made from dry-cleaning hanger type wire carrying non-descript men's brogues cluttered the entrance. Inside I had to walk sideways through the cluttered aisles and mismatched display cases. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with boxes. The place might actually have been made of boxes so that if the it had a closing down sale, customers would literally dismantle it with every purchase.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for but I walked out with two pairs of it. The stock in was so old and neglected that the shop keeper had to follow me around with a damp cloth, wiping the cakey dust and cobwebs off any model I took an interest in (it would probably only take a day or two for him to clean the entire shop but for some reason, this seemed never to have been done). The first shoes to catch my eye that day were a pair of suede boating loafers. The shop keeper, a middle aged, unremarkable looking man who had until my arrival in front of the boating shoes been smoking and playing solitaire on a yellowing PC, scuttled over and wiped them down. Once they had been cleaned it was revealed that the toe walls were crimson and the upper was navy, the tongue and tassles were brilliant white. They were beautiful retro perfection but not retro because they were not made now with a cursory glance back in time. They were made whenever multi-tone suede boating shoes were decorous. They were the real deal. Tragedy - They didn't fit.

With our first interaction - my reaching for a shoe and his bustling up to clean it and then apologise for it's ill-fit - browsing had changed from something I did to something we did together, the shopkeeper and me versus the shop. He quickly proved himself an invaluable asset - he literally knew our opponent inside out and once he had ascertained what it was I wanted (done through instinct that bordered on the telepathic) things happened very quickly. After the boating accident, I went off to have a quiet cry in the men's Oxfords section. Shopkeeper disappeared but not, as I had initially suspected, back to his solitaire. - While I consoled myself he was rifling and arrived in among the Oxfords and presented me with a pair of shoes and a face which said "Like these?". I could see why he might have thought I would like them, they were like the boating loafers in shape. But they were not in essence the same - they were grey quilted monstrosity booties, a style that is very popular
with little Japanese grannies. Shaking my head politely I said "No" and then "Chotto..." which is an often employed Japanese euphemism,
"Chotto..." - "a little bit..." one need never finish the sentence; if you are lucky a listener will get the point . Ah! A light went on in his head - I liked the boating shoes for their je ne sais quoi, not their gestalt, of course! He rushed off and refined his search whilst I employed the I Feel Lucky approach - which in the shop, like on the internet, was frankly baffling. Rounding a corner a few minutes later I found Shopkeeper extracting three apparently identical shoes from a dusty pile. After cleaning the shoes were revealed as a ruby, dutch blue and tangerine orange examples of a patent leather pump. They were beautiful. A person who wore the boating loafer would so obviously wear these magnificent shoes! All real patent leather, all beautiful. Shopkeeper had struck gold. I tried them all on and spent long minutes examining my
self from the ankle down in a mirror deciding which colour went best with my bottom 30cm. I wanted them all but they were real leather and the faded price tag read 9000 Yen apiece. Shopkeeper sensed my simultaneous lust and trepidation. "Two thousand each" he said. Too Brilliant. I chose the tangerine pair (I will no doubt go back next month for the blue and crimson).

Riding the wave of this retail success I wandered into the athletic section - could lightning strike twice? I picked up an ancient pair of white asics with gold detailing and looked at the contemplatively. I did not intend to try them on (they were clearly far too big). What I was doing was wordlessly transmitting my intention to buy canvas shoes and what kind I liked to Shopkeeper. Yet again he disappeared. Two minutes later he returned with a pair of plain as jane white canvas takkies. Only their shape and slight yellowing belie their age - they will go with anything whilst adding an air of other-timeousness to an outfit. They fit like a glove and cost me 800 Yen. haha!

I'm never going to buy shoes anywhere else in Japan I think. Why bother? Right here in Mihara I have an undiscovered archive of shoes, old but spanking brand new. There is also a man there who can sniff through the dust to unite me with exactly the shoe I want, like a Saint Bernard finding a nearly expired climber in endless drifts of snow.

Spring's slow approach

I don't know what to write about lately so I haven't written about anything. Many of the things I have previously written about are still happening and although they are still exciting and enjoyable, they offer up no new anecdotes. I am starting to get tired of trying to be incisive in these blogs as, I am sure, you all are tired of hearing me harp on and on about how wonderful this or that is, or what deep revelation I had a the top of some bloody hill. Quite honestly many days are a simple repetition of days I have already had. Things that were new are now repetitive things. Routine. And no one wants to read about routine unless the writer can write like Raymond Carver or Brett Easton Ellis.

Of course everywhere on earth there are people plodding through days doing things they have done already, over and over again. You might say it's not worth mentioning something so inevitable but I think there is a particular pique when one wakes up in the middle of what was anticipated as an adventure and realises they are folding linen, washing dishes, eating soup and riding the same stretch of road day in and day out. Strangely it is in the moments when I catch myself doing something so completely devoid of interest, that I imagine myself in a movie. It's the kind of movie where you meet the characters at their most monotonous, you learn about the minutiae of their lives and then it all gets turned upside down by love or war breaking out or a monster coming out of the sea and tearing through the city for no apparent reason. Imagining that the minutiae of my life might be interesting to the (albeit arty and tiny) audience of a movie makes them once again interesting to me.

I have become intensely aware of the changing season - all my senses are checking and double checking any possible turns or alterations. I want Spring so badly and man, you know what they say about a watched pot! God! It's infuriating!

Today Gunch taught me 'to be or not to be、that is the question' in the hometaal -
that's a nice thing to know isn't it?
生きる　か　死め 　か　それ　が　問題だ。

ferries

I thought a ferry was a small boat, open on all sides, fat bottomed, sometimes with a viewing deck. Some ferries are like this. Other ferries, like the Shin-Nihonkai ferry I took from Tsuruga in Kansai to Tomakomai in Hokkaido are massive ships! Real ships carrying cars and trucks and cargo and other enormous metal things besides. The passengers, like myself, are the least of the ships' concern. The big money must surely be in the enormous metal things it ferries and passengers are an afterthought, some icing on top. This is why travelling by ferry can be so cheap, I think. The trip we took by ferry cost a fraction of an airline ticket and even a train ticket. I am now Shin-Nihonkai's no.1 fan and not just because I'm a cheap skate but because I'm a cheapskate who likes to feel posh.

On Shin-Nihonkai one can feel incredibly posh. Fancy a stroll on the promenade madam? Only with pleasure. The promenade is a carpeted corridor on the ship's port side. It has wicker chairs and tables where you can sit staring out of door sized windows onto the sea. Having never been at sea before I thought sea was blue and quite flat (except for around the edges). Some sea is like this perhaps. Other sea, the sea we sailed, is turbulent and grey. Everything is grey, the sky, the spray and the deep water itself - it was the most beautiful, terrifying grey of all. Thick and dark like graphite, glowing with a matt brilliance on its choppy peaks. I could have looked at it for hours. Staring into the endless deep can make one quite chilly and in that case madam, please retire to the bathhouse. Here, like in traditional Japanese onsen you shower yourself off before getting into a huge communal tub of pleasantly sweltering water. I had that deep, almost painful realisation of a truly unique experience as lay I lay there in a huge tub of hot water staring out of a port window onto the ocean and Japanese snowy peaks beyond.

After a soak, what better than a massage? The ferry's two coin operated massage chairs were my first experience of such things. They are ridiculous! They have metal knobs and twiddlers hidden in their lazy boy upholstery. They start gently and can build to Swedish Masochist levels of abuse. Not only do you feel quietly ashamed of enjoying the touch of a robot, there is, or at least there was for me, the public humiliation of the wobbling and jiggling. In Japan men and women alike are not ashamed of public preening in the windows of trains. Similarly, the shame of public wobbling and jiggling at the hands of a maniacal robot does not phase them (eating whilst walking and drinking standing up on the other hand, are things to be embarrassed about). I enjoyed the chair but not entirely. I couldn't stop imagining what I looked like - the picture was alternately dishonorable and very funny.

Ah, so the massage perhaps not to Madam's tastes. Please take yet another dip in the bath to rid yourself of the experience and then partake perhaps, in a meal from the galley restaurant (paying special attention to the nifty rubber bottomed crockery - so that your soup and coffee don't slide away from you).

Yes, I enjoyed my ferry trips so very much! Thinking back I have almost forgotten the two port towns they left from, Tsuruga and Tomakomai, grubby and sad they seemed to me. The experience was like smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiched between to stale pieces of wonderbread. In such instances, why lament the bread if in your mind, you can simply eat the filling with your fingers?

my adventures in Wonderland

I have just returned from my trip up North - Hokkaido, Nagano and a whole lot inbetween. It was an utterly wonderful week, the highlight of which was Snow Monkeys. Even though I saw them only yesterday, the whole experience has become unreal to me. I simply cannot believe that I saw those creatures, that I could just sit there and be with them! So for now, please look at some piccies and I will write in detail during the week.

new pics

Hello friends. There are some pictures of winter clothes and other bits of my life here, on my flickr account.

Winter Fashion in Mihara

It's all the rage. If you have a cold, you wear a mask. Yet another example of people kindly thinking of others. And you don't look such a twat, because every third person is wearing one too. I even like this one a little - it's got some ninja styling don't you think?

Nemawashi

Ah Nemawashi! I felt like, after being here for six months I was finally making some real progress when Gunch and Watanabe explained it explicitly to me. Jane Goodall must have felt a bit like this when one of the chimps finally condescended to touch her or feed her or whatever it was. A breakthrough! I was privileged enough to learn it at the feet of not one but two 67 year olds. They told me everything. Nemawashi. I have sensed it and felt its influence. More disruptive has been the influence I have had on those around me because I don't know what it is.
Nemawashi! Let me explain...

The first part of the word Nemawashi (the Ne) is the kanji for root (like the roots of a tree). Gunch explained that when you plant (or dig up to replant) a tree you must work the soil carefully - loosening, digging, turning and patting - in an area wider than you think in order to ensure harmonious planting or upheaval. Nemawashi is groundwork and preparation. Its metaphorical meaning is a beeg part of Japan culture, Watanabe went on to explain (Watanabe, by the way, is the motorcycle chommie who now comes and hangs out at school quite regularly. I thought he was a Yamamoto. Apologies Watanabe!). You see, he began, The Japanese don't like conflict. They don't like to argue or debate. They don't like to antagonize or make anyone feel uncomfortable. Smooth social interaction is the most important thing! So? So before any delicate conversation that must be had - Nemawashi is performed. Days or weeks of gentle groundwork to ascertain every one's opinion and investment in a matter, the various whys and wherefores and then what the best possible outcome will be. With all this Nemawashi-ing, groundwork being so carefully laid, any meeting acting becomes simply symbolic because the decisions as it were have been arrived at weeks before - in a slow and private way.

And this is good thing to learn you may think, for the business world or when I have to say very big things to very important people. This will not be often though. So, a good thing to learn but not of day to day importance perhaps. Aha! Not so. Because, as the two men explained this stuff to me I began to think about something Yoko Jenkin told me before I even got here. What she told me seems to make so much more sense if I look at is through the idea of Nemawashi and the two ideas together promise to improve how I interpret everything and speak to everyone.

Yoko, my Japanese teacher in South Africa was the one who introduced me to the notion of subtlety in language and its paramount importance in Japan. She tried to explain to me the grammar rules for removing the subject form a sentence so 'I'm going to the shops' just becomes 'going to the shops' or even simply 'to the shops'. She said that saying absolutely everything in the sentence was mildly insulting as it insinuated that the listener could not work out these things for themselves. Some pretty subtle stuff. * These subtleties, which at the time just seemed to make Japanese conversation incredibly muddy and round-about, I now see are some of the elements of Nemawashi. That every word is groundwork. When Gunch and Watanabe said that Nemawashi is for saying difficult things, I think they mean, that is to say, Nemawashi is for everything! Because if you are constantly NOT saying something then the interpreter is constantly reading between the lines. It allows both speaker and interpreter never to have to go out on a limb and never face outright rejection of an idea or request. The subtlety gives speakers time to take stuff in and think about it and respond without offense. This might seem like quite a lot of work just to avoid words such as 'No' and for those of us who aren't hurt by 'No', perhaps it is a bit unnecessary. Here though 'No' is considered to be an aggressive word. A hurtful word. An enemy of the peace. For a culture that ascribes 'No' and its friends (the other negative words) such power, one can see why Nemawashi and talking around and around becomes a feasible way to communicate.

Sometimes I think of this mode as wonderful and artful. Its another example of how very deeply the respect and selflessness of Japan is entrenched. Other times I just find it irritating beyond words - generally when I come across new and unfamiliar Nemawashi tactics. Like 'Do you have a watch?' which doesn't mean, do you have a watch. It means 'What is the time?'. Hmmm... Or when I asked my supervisor 'Should I help you clean the classroom?' and he responded 'Maybe you don't have to' which it turns out, after months or guessing, means 'yes'. Ha! These situations are irritating.

Now I must counsel myself to be careful whilst learning Nemawashi and the Art Of Balanced Society Maintenance, not to consider it as better or worse than the way I am used to operating (A mistake I make often - thinking that I have been a total boob until now, and from now on, knowing this one new thing, I"ll be ace!). Nemawashi and the Art Of Balanced Society Maintenance is simply another mode, as different from what I am used to as the languages of English and Japanese themselves. Who knew how much difference and understanding was housed in the HOW? Hell!

*She also tried to make clear to me that present and future tense are in fact, the same tense - hence their conflation in Japanese (I still don't really understand this).

Bullying

My friend works at a different high school in Mihara. I think I have mentioned before how rigorous the streaming is within my high school, well, the streaming happens school to school too with high, average or low academic academic schools. The kids write entrance exams to determine where they will go. If you go to a low or average academic high school your chances of going to university wane dramatically. Mine is a high academic school so kids are encouraged and motivated. By the sounds of it, at other schools, kids are just given up on, as this story will show. This might be why school kids are so stressed out. At every point in their academic career they are writing bloody entrance tests that, they are told, will change the course of their lives... and they actually do. Its hectic. My friend's school is low academic and the kids are more disobedient. By more disobedient I don't mean drugs and knives. But last week there was an incident that blew up into a full scale drama.

Teachers got wind of some bullying going on in the first year group, no one owned up so they decided to investigate. This involved cutting every period last Wednesday short by ten minutes so that at the end of the day there was a hour or so free. In this time, all the first year students were locked in their classrooms and called out one by one to be interviewed by a panel of senior teachers. When the interview was over they had to go home, missing whatever clubs or sports they had, so they wouldn't get to consort with any possible accomplices. My friend and her supervisor were discussing this bizarrely militant arrangement - her supervisor asking if this was how it was done in America. No, my friend said. In America you could see the bullies quite clearly: they were knifing people in the corridor. Oh, said her supervisor. Then my friend asked, tentatively, what would happen to the bullies when they were found. Would they, you know, get hit? Emotionally, yes, said her supervisor...how ominous.

I spoke with my friend again today and apparently seven boys have been apprehended. The charges were intimidation and stealing money from weedy kids. All seven said they had been receiving instructions from someone higher up (whether in the school or community it wasn't clear) and now the school is expelling them. Of course, stealing from and beating up little kids is not behaviour that should be encouraged. But expulsion? Really? They will have to go to night school now or find jobs, according to the supervisor. No second chances. When my friend asked if there was a school counselor and shouldn't they step in, she was told yes, there is counselor but their job is to protect the good students. So for seven 16 year old boys, that's it. Seems its all fun and games until someone, you know loses an eye or 1000 yen.

Playing Hookie

Today I bunked the two periods after lunch with Gunch and his motorcycle chommie. We went to a swanky Italian resturaunt on the other side of town and ate at a leisurely pace, they drank wine. I wanted to but thought it would be pushing my luck to arrive back to school late and drunk. The meal was delicious – a small salad followed by a small helping of pasta with fresh mushrooms and parma ham. The main course was a little helping of osso bucco, a tiny medallion of steak, a square of silvery fish baked with carrots and tomatoes and an espresso cup of hot leek soup. Dessert was one strawberry, cream, almond icecream and a sliver of apple tart.

The men spoke about their respective work. Gunch mourned for the days when teachers were broad-minded people (the seventies apparently) and Mr Motorcross (Mr Yamamoto…I think!) told me that he likes his job because when he discusses it with his wife she doesn’t understand what he is talking about. Mr Yamamoto is a Christian (Shinto father, Christian mother) and is currently very interested in Jews – how they are different form Christians and what our ‘big book’ is called. I felt like such a sneak sponging such a fabulous lunch and being mostly unable to answer his questions in return.

my favourite class

I have just finished teaching my favourite class. They are second year students and I normally only teach first year students. I have only taught them once before, just after I arrived; I remember it was stiflingly hot. What makes them my favourites is hard to categorize but the feeling was instantaneous when I first taught them. Their focus is absolute but more than that, I can feel that they are with me, not against me (anyone who has faced a pride of teenagers will know the visceral distinction). They are a smart class but not too smart – the really smart ones have been bogged down by their book knowledge whereas my favourites are still agile of mind, making them more dynamic than the really smart ones. Smarter than the smart ones. I can play with them. They are a joy.

So I was walking around my favourite classroom (because it houses my favourite class) and all of a sudden a sadness began to seep in like the leak at the bottom of a boat. I felt a slight sogginess initially through my socks but the sadness’ progress was steady and by the end of the lesson I was sloshing around, knee deep in it. Let me say here that it is not entirely unusual to have bizarrely intense feelings come over me here in Nippon. It happens on my bike or mid conversation or at home or whenever – one minute I am feeling thusly and the next minute – the converse of thusly. Its alright, proof of sanity rather than madness I think. As an extremely irritating hippie once advised me, I usually just ride the wave, babes. Today however it irked me and I wanted to know why I suddenly felt so sad. Here are my thoughts.

The sadness was about Hiroshima and the bomb. This in and of itself is not so strange, because it is a desperately sad thing. It is strange however that it happened in class and not say, last weekend when I was in Hiroshima city for a conference. I know that when I say the Hiroshima to people outside of Japan it must still carry the taste of the bomb and the tragedy but to me the name only signifies the place. Hiroshima is just a city now – no connotation, it is where I can go for better bars and shopping and conferences. This time round I even arranged to meet with someone at the A-bomb memorial because it is central and convenient. When I went there I barely looked at it, its significance did not even register.

Maybe the fact that it didn’t register must have registered because sadness seeds were surely sown. It was not coincidence either that the sadness happened when I was with my favourite class. In fact I'm certain that they triggered it. They trigger it partly, I think, because the last time I taught them in sticky July and August, the significance of where I was and what happened here in August 1945 was very present, exacerbated by my reading every bit of info about the bombing I could get my hands on. It was then that I began reading the series Barefoot Gen – a manga about the bombing and its aftermath. I’m still reading it now but I am wary of it. The simple, cartoony pictures have a way of getting under my skin, it’s very disturbing. I made the mistakes, at first, of reading it while eating, while sick and with company. Now I only read it when I am feeling in top physical and mental condition, away from any food or people. Yes, so in part I associate that class with that time and therefore with the book. But deeper than that, the feeling of joy they give me feels inextricably linked to the horror I feel about the bombing. Like they are a memorial - is that morbid? That they are there and happy and smart and that they are people - diverse, interesting people as much as anyone anywhere makes me think about the bomb. People who drop bombs cannot think of their targets with the affection I feel for my favourite class. If they did, they wouldn't drop bombs.

But of course you don't hint that any of this is going on. You just wander around and teach as per normal while all these wild feelings bump and squeeze inside.

india photos

Hi.

I have posted photos from my trip to India here.