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.