Senses of perspective

When I worked in business one of my favourite expressions used to be "Let's get a few pegs in the sand around this!" By that I meant surveying pegs - those poles that surveyors use as their point of reference when they draw maps and measure heights. I used to think that once I had some points of reference around a plan or a project then we could soon fill in all the detail and get it sorted. Getting a framework in place was the important thing.

But now I'm not so sure. No indeed.

At the moment I am in touch by phone or laptop with friends all around the world every day. Literally all around the world! In my address book I have people I contact in seven out of the twenty four time zones. As a teenager I'd just phone my friend down the road. Now each time I use the phone or a messaging service I need to remember just how far behind Tokyo time people are living - as we are only four hours across the Pacific from the International Date Line here in Japan very few people are in front of us and see the new day before we do.

Edera and I used to illustrate night and day to students using a torch and a little globe. Night and day are just illusions eh? Day night day night - to us it seems like a sequence, a rhythm, but of course there's only the light and dark sides of a spinning globe. It's all completely relative, there really is no 'peg in the sand' anywhere in the physical world.

I find this in my studies every day too. Whatever you set out to examine carefully, there's never any single reference point to view it from. What can you really ever know? No single answer to anything at all. "It all depends on your point of view" - that's an idiom we use often and without thinking in English but it is literally true.

In Buddhism we reflect on anicca - 'impermanence'. But actually if we don't pay attention it's just so easy to wander through life kidding ourselves that we have a 'sense of perspective' about things. And if days aren't actually days and you can never measure anything from 'point zero' in any case - because there are an infinite number of places to begin measuring from - what 'sense of perspective' can ever exist? It really does all depend on your point of view doesn't it? Whoever said it first wasn't kidding.

Be careful of fire at New Year

The local fire engine in has just gone past the end of our lane. It wasn't hurrying anywhere - the fire crew were just offering their seasonal timely warning to take care to avoid fire and accidents by driving around the area.

Actually earlier this evening I was in the village drug store and I almost walked past the dad of one of our students. I didn't recognise him until he said "Hey! Iain-san! Kombanwa!" He was wearing his volunteer fireman suit and cap. In rural Japan with so many timber buldings people really rely on local volunteers; by the time a professional fire engine arrived out here from town your house would be ashes.

To remind us of the risks of fire at this time of year the engine tolls it's bell as it circles the village, a very loud and also mournful sound somehow and you can hear it over a long distance. It drives the dogs crazy. Kuu used to howl even before we could hear it ourselves but he's getting old and has lost interest now. I think he imagined that it might be a distant pack of dogs running free and he would call out "Over here! Over here!" But they never came for him.

In England we have volunteer firemen in country areas too but far fewer than here. And compared with Japan our fire engines are enormous - maybe the size of a bus. Here they are about the size of an average pick-up or people carrier and a typical crew is four so that they can squeeze down narrow lanes.

I must find out how sea rescue is managed in Japan. In Britain that's a largely volunteer service too, local fishermen and sailors who head off onto the ocean as soon as the 'maroon' goes up and someone is in danger of shipwreck. Japan has just as much treacherous coast as Britain does - maybe my friend Satoko can tell me how it works here once the holiday is over.

What some people will believe

Time for a bit more silliness. It's amazing what some people believe eh? You and me - well, pretty sensible of course, no one pulls the wool over our eyes. But some people believe anything.

Edera mentioned recently that one of her students had told her that when she was in elementary school she was suprised to discover that there were three Mount Fujis in Japan. Three mountains with the same name? But it was true - there was the one she saw in Kanagawa Prefecture, the one in Shizuoka Prefecture and that one in ... um ... Yamanashi Prefecture.

Now the strange thing was that not only were there three of them but she'd noticed that they all looked very similar too. You know the kind of thing, big perfectly shaped snow capped volano cone poking up through the clouds ...

If she'd been able to check it out she'd have found they were pretty well all the same height as well - around 3776 metres I'd guess.

+ + + + +

Someone I worked with long ago went on a marketing trip to Germany. Come to think of it, it really was long ago because he flew BEA (British European Airways) and the propellors on the wings went round and round.

At some stage during this trip he was presented with a BEA desk thermometer. It was a round one on a little round wooden plith to tell you how warm your office was and it looked very smart. He put it on his desk and admired it. Soon his secretary came in and paused to admire it too.

"What's that?" she asked, peering at it.

"Oh! That's a desk speedometer!" he assured her. "It shows me how fast I'm working ..."

"Go on! You are kidding me!"

"No really! It tells me how many jobs per hour I'm working at"

She picked it up and smiled knowingly at him. "No! I knew you must be kidding me!" she added. "See! Now it isn't even fixed to the desk is it?"

Golden shovel in the sky

While I was washing up after lunch a memory of long ago popped into my head and really made me laugh again. That was to do with washing up time too, so maybe the connection of wielding a brush and dish cloth did it for me.

It must have been around 1982 and we were staying in my grandfather's cottage at Nateby near Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria. I had a lovely cocker spaniel in those days, the nicest natured dog I ever met. Her name was 'Crackers' and she would be about two years old.

Early one afternoon I was passing through the kitchen when I noticed that the dog had left her 'calling card' (meishi). Well, that was my grandfather's expression for it. There was a smelly little heap on the tiles near the Aga stove. I was cross for a moment of course but then I realised it was down to me - I hadn't thought to take her out that morning or let her outside after her meal. So I just cleared it all up and got on with something else.

That dog was pretty invisible all day. "Lying doggo" is an English expression for 'keeping out of the way' and she was lying doggo alright. About as doggo as it's possible to be.

But after tea greed got the better of her. I was washing the dishes and she just couldn't lurk out of sight any longer when there was some hope of scraps of food. She crept around the door expecting a bawling out, but I just kept on drying dishes and took no notice.

Nervously she pattered up to the other end of the kitchen and sniffed around the Aga. I'll remember that look of suprise on her face for the rest of my life! Segoi! It's gone! How can that have happened?? Was it all just bad dream? But no - it was here for sure! Hmm ... she gave me a very 'straight' look, as if asking a question, then wagged her tail and strutted off for the next item on her agenda.

I still think that for a moment, just a moment, she thought that a big golden shovel might have come down from the sky in answer to her prayers. Compassion comes in all shapes and sizes you know. But then she guessed I was teasing her; she had the same sense of humour as me and could read my mind for sure.

Spooky stories

In England this was always the traditional time of year to tell good 'ghost stories'by the light of a flickering fire in the hearth and with the wind howling outside. Even Charles Dickens couldn't resist the temptation to scare his readers so why should I eh?

In Japan the impossibly sticky dark nights of August are the time for ghosts to be on the prowl but British our spooks are especially fond of the long dark cold nights of November and December.

Well, I mention this because of a sudden new link with ghosts of the past. A week ago an old university friend of mine found me on the internet. He reads these entries now. Hi Dave. We haven't seen each other for thirty seven years, so in a way we are already each other's ghosts - so long ago! It feels like I only went out for a packet of crips and suddenly it's half a lifetime already.

He's living in New York now.

Back in 1967 (before men had landed on the moon!) we both lived in a very spooky old tower in a spooky old castle near Durham. Now it's the 'Lumley Castle Hotel' but back then it was about as spooky as you could get. It was 'home' for seventy students and really it was a bit like living in a long episode of Harry Potter complete with bats and owls. Gnarled 'retainers' would serve us 'gentlemen' at long refectory tables.

Now, the turret Dave and I lived in was reputed to be haunted. Someone had met an awful end there during the English Civil War. You could only get up to our rooms using a single steep stone spiral staircase. The story was that some years before one student had been following another down the stairs, but when he reached the door at the bottom he found it was bolted - on his side! He'd been following in the footsteps of a Cavalier ghost.

Sitting comfortably? Still OK? Well, here is a personal little ghost story about these same stairs. One winter night when I was walking down the same dim spiral in a gloom so dismal you could hardly see a hand in front of you I was thinking of this old scary story. Just at that very moment a silent white headless form suddenly came around the corner towards me in the dark and brushed cold and wet against my face. "Oh goodness me!" I mused "I wonder what that might be?" - or something like that anyway.

Can you guess what it was? Well, it was another student carrying his drip-dry white shirt up from the laundry room on a clothes hangar.

^O^ as my friend Akko would say!

Singing at Narita

There never seems to be enough time to get topical pictures into proper entries at the moment so here are a couple of 'quick ones' from our carol singing at the Radisson Hotel at Narita last night. A pity that I can't attach a sound file for you all to enjoy eh?

Life of Birds

Tonight let's talk about anything else but Christmas eh? What should it be? Nuclear physics? Ikebana?? Oh! In this snowy season here's an interesting one!

I've never quite got around (yet) to developing a passion for ornithology but birds sometimes draw themselves to everyone's attention, usually because there are so many in a small space. For example not so far from here in Imba-gun there are always swans over-wintering on the tanbo. But in the early Spring they head north for Hokkaido and Siberia and I think eventually breed along the rivers of Kamchatka. I always fancied going to Kamchatka myself!

For a couple of weeks before they leave ornithologists head up there to a site near the Tone River where they congregate with their binoculars. If you look at my little photo on the right of this page you'll see the Imba swans just above my right shoulder

I had a sudden strong memory last week of a winter afternoon in my childhood, perhaps in January 1959 or 1960. As I often did I was spending the day at work with my grandfather. He worked in many remote signal boxes along a railway over the Pennines. And on this day he was at Stainmore - the summit of the line where the tracks crossed over the 'backbone of England'. It's a barren area of moorland and there's a narrow pass there that the railway followed.

That grey snowy afternoon I was standing on a railway bridge looking down the valley, and literally millions of starlings were flying through the pass from west to east. They flew so thick in the sky in dark waves that if you threw a snowball up in the air you could see them part to left and right as they swerved to avoid it.

I've often wondered about what I saw that afternoon. What would made so many birds migrate such a long distance on a winter day? Maybe the corn stubble of North Yorkshire fields had more winter forage for them than the meadows of Westmorland, but how did they know that? And how did they communicate to each other that is was the right time to move on together? So many mysteries eh?

Different kind of Christmas

My Christmases in Japan are turning out to be very different to the ones I've been used to in England. There we really focus on these few days as 'family days'. We might go to a host of Christmas parties and meals from mid-December onwards, but come December 24th we head for home and spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our families. Often these days our holiday stretches right through until the New Year

Of course for some close confinement with our 'nearest and dearest' for a week at the gloomiest time of year and a boring television schedule is not what we crave. The long Christmas holiday is also a legendary time for falling out with spouses, childen, parents and grandparents.


Once I lived in Denmark for a year with some strict Lutheran friends and Christmas was even more traditional there. On Christmas Eve we danced around a Christmas tree and sang hymns and never even smelled a bottle of beer. Hmm ...

Here we seem to send a lot of time at Christmas with others and I like it. Yesterday afternoon we had our party for younger students and the really know how to enjoy themselves, especially with Santa around. Later we were singing, and then on to a friends for a big buffet meal and talking until two in the morning. We were a very cosmopolitan bunch around the table - Japanese, Chinese, French-Canadian and me. More fun than watching the repeats of "The Bells of St. Marys'" on the Beeb!

Fair play for felines ...

Well, there's our busiest party day over. It was really fun - the house full of friends from twelve until nearly eight.

People arrived in two 'waves' - first the English speakers at noon and then from mid-afternoon mainly local Japanese friends and family. So we'd planned the food in two 'waves' too. The cats were very happy to have so much company around the place and it's interesting to watch and see just how many strokes and tidbits they get. Tora has no hesitation about asking pretty directly for food that interests him - which is most food actually. From 1 January I'm putting him on (another) diet.

After everyone had left the cats crashed out in the two most comfortable chairs and slept all evening - that much socialising is hard work for felines it seems.

Woke up this morning with a another runny nose but hopefully by this evening my voice will be in trim for our first carol session at the Radisson Narita this evening. This afternoon we have our student Christmas Party. And later tonight Danielle's Christmas Party. Another busy day coming up for me, but not for the cats eh?

So windy

Very windy here in leafy Chiba-ken today. We were out shopping around lunch time for a red 'Santa' shirt but without much success. But I did buy a nice wine coloured one that will do. The wind was whipping up the dust off the dry open tanbo and all the lanes around here were soon littered with broken cedar branches.

Interesting how much the nature of wind can vary from place to place. Here in southern Kanto from December to February we can get strong cold winds that originate in Siberia and find their way over the Sea of Japan. The rich loess soil in this area is soon on the move, a thick red dust in the air that gets through every crack. It's a very dry wind, full of surprises with many powerful little turbulent twists and turns.

In northern England all our winter gales come from the Atlantic and there's still a feel of the northern ocean about them. They flow in quite a different way, like rivers of air with rapids and eddies. Often they bring with them the denizens of the ocean too - lots of seagulls blown inland. The morning after a winter storm you can see flocks of gulls scavenging local ploughed fields for food before they try to head back out to sea.

These flocks of seagulls can look rather funny because they are usually all looking in the same direction. If you are a bird it seems it's dodgily agressive stuff to look other birds straight in the eye, better to keep your back turned on your neighbour.

The sound the wind makes is very different too. In Japan the sudden fierce gusts sound a bit like shrieking demons riding on the wind to me. Our English gales moan and sigh in a musical way, like mermaids. I love to lie awake at night listening to them.

I find myself dreaming more and more of the perfect all-weather coat to roam around in the wind and rain in comfort. Waterproof and windproof of course, and with a big hood to live inside and walk around at leisure in hard weather conditions. I even sometimes imagine a kind of large 'ball' that I could walk in perfect comfort inside, a bit like a tent. Yep! I could play music and have a cup of tea in there and walk the dog while the elements raged outside.

Party time looms

Here's Edera cutting another Yuletide sponge cake. We are well into the Christmas Party season now. We've already had some excessively creamy cakes with our Junior High students but the serious stuff starts on Friday when we have two parties here duing the day - one early in the afternoon for English speakers and one in the evening for Japanese speakers.

Then on Christmas Eve afternoon comes the main party for our younger students. We've taken over the chiku kominkan (community hut) for a couple of hours and I feel a 'Santa moment' coming on around that one. But I have to leave sharp at four to drive over to the Radisson Hotel at Narita for carol singing. Afterwards - back home and off to someone else's Christmas party., where I will be helping Santa out again. If they have all been good boys and girls of course.

On Christmas Day Edera is teaching but we'll get a Christmas lunch sometime, and maybe even open a few presents. Then back to the Radisson again for the second carol concert.

So, a busy few days coming up eh? If I miss any of my ususal entries here I wouldn't want you all to think I was slacking.

I'm a classic introvert when it comes to this kind of thing. I love to socialise but I re-charge my inner batteries by doing things on my own. I think by Monday I'll just be ready to go and shut myself in my shed for a few hours and potter around with tools.

Stages of Life

A pity I didn't have my camera to hand earlier this evening. I was watching one of our young students pick up Tora and it would have made a beautiful photo. He's a very big cat and she's quite a small girl and he must be a few years older than her too. But she picked him up off his perch on our paraffin stove with such care and carried him like a piece of precious porcelain over to a chair where she put him down and gave him a stroke. They were both very happy. Cats eh? Sometimes they are so wise.

I was working in the library again today. One of the 'angles' that's been coming out of my studies is how often changes in the city are related to human life cycles and stages. It's something I'm starting to look at very closely.

It's very obvious in Japan because houses are demolished so soon - the average life of a home here is 27 years. Often when an elderly widow dies the old house is demolished and the family sell the plot. No-one wants to live in a small old-style house with leaks. In England the equivalent might be dividing a house up for flats.

Walking around older parts of Chiba I frequently see plots with Tokyo telephone numbers on - probably sons or grandchildren hoping to get a good price for a bit of land they've inherited. Sometimes out here in the country the house doesn't even get demolished - nature quickly 'takes over' and does the job for the new absentee owner.

One thing that's really striking me is that the categories we assume describe the stages of human life are actually very 'cultural' and have changed over time. For example 'childhood' (as opposed to 'children') is a recent Western and very middle-class idea. Not so long ago, and in many parts of the world still, kids helped out in the family trade as soon as they were able or worked to help the family budget. 'Old Age' (as opposed to 'elderly') is a new idea too - the pattern used to be that you worked until you got sick and died.

This makes me wonder if in Japanese history or literature other stages of aging were employed different from the stages of childhood, adolescence, youth, middle and old age that we all seem to use now. Can any Japanese readers tell me?

Fujisan across the Bay

I had to go over to Kamakura for a meeting today. It's a nice trip but a long one, right under Tokyo on the Sobu Line and then south west down through Yokohama. About fifty miles I'd guess, and nearly three hours by train with two changes.

Luckily I didn't need to be there until twelve so I missed the rush hour, and I was just in time to miss the main evening 'scramble' on the way back too.

Kamakura is a very historic city, once the capital of the Shoguns. It even lends it's name to a whole era of Japanese history. But no time to re-visit any of that today, I had someone to see.

Coming back along our (north east) Chiba Prefecture shore of Tokyo Bay this evening the hills of Kanagawa Prefecture across the water were silhouetted against the last of the daylight. You could see Mt. Fuji very clearly. It's rare to see it from Chiba City - something that only happens a few days of the year when the air is especially clear. Once it was a regular occurence but the atmosphere isn't as clean as it used to be.

Even from a crowded urban commuter train it was a classic Japanese scene. Somewhere I've seen a print of almost exactly the same view by Hiroshige, but from a bit further west near Ichikawa or Funabashi. Perhaps Japan's best known artist in the the West, he illustrated the mountain from almost every angle but seldom came over to leafy Chiba-ken. A hundred and sixty years ago we were the unfashionable end of Kanto for sure, perhaps we still are. The orchards and sailing boats in his picture are gone, but the mountain is eternally the same.

Do any Japanese friends know what this print is called? I wanted to put a copy on this site but I can't trace it.

Sorry, what was that?? Oh! paracletes! Which one was it? Well, none of them of course! 'Paraclete' is a synonym for the 'Holy Spirit' in Christianity, the 'third person' in the Christian Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Sometimes you will see the Parclete depicted in European religious paintings as a dove.

Beware low-flying paracletes

OK some real seasonal silliness today. I was helping Edera do some Christmas translations earlier and I came across this word. I've not heard it for years, in fact I don't know if it's regularly used any more. But every time I see it, it just makes me laugh.

Don't know why. Just the sound of it I suppose, it sounds so like parakeet, one of those lovely parrot-like birds people keep as pets.

I think I could safely bet that none of my Japanese readers will know what 'paraclete' means so here's a few alternatives for you all to consider ...

1. A kind of swooping forest bird from southern Indonesia that lives on a diet of paw-paws. "Look at that lovely green paraclete up in that tree."

2. A material traditionally used for fixing glass into window frames. "Sqeeze some more paraclete onto my palette knife please, this side isn't properly fixed yet ..."

3. A kind of temporary clamp used in surgery. "Nurse - please position a paraclete over this wound before the patient looses more blood ..."

4. A knot beloved of sailors in the days of sailing ships to secure sails. "Stand by to put her to starboard and look lively on deck tying up those paracletes!"

OK. In Japan we like our multiple choice questions to be four parters so I'll leave it there. Of course if you have a knowledge of ancient Greek it's got to be easy eh? "PARA" meaning 'next to', 'beside', 'in front of', 'beyond' and 'a small Yugoslavian coin worth five yen'. And "CLETE" meaning - hmm, well, 'clete' of course.

Answers tomorrow. No cheating looking in dictionaries!

IVC party time

This morning was our Japanese class party time. I headed over to the kominkan (community centre) as usual but this time not with a bag full of books but with the required "500 yen Christmas gift" and a large dish of macaroni cheese that I made yesterday. We bring whatever we can to put on the table together. Somehow I can never get the cheese sauce cheesy enough with the packs of cooking cheese I can buy at our local supermarket. The flour that Edera uses for bread is a bit unpredictable too. But it turned out OK and there was none left for sure.

Our classes are run by the local I.V.C. - a group of volunteers that seem to find happiness in hearing us foreigners massacre the Japanese language. They do a wonderful job of it; I'd guess that three at least have been professional teachers in their time. I sometimes think that I must be a big dissapointment to them all, how can I have lived here so long and yet still struggle so much?

There are a lot of gaijin in our area. Many farmers are married to foreign girls and the local university attracts many foreign students and staff. The classes at the moment consist mainly of Filipinos, Koreans and Chinese together with some American, English and Latin American students too.


I really love going to my Saturday morning classes. So many nice people from different parts of the world. We often hear about the negative side of globalisation - the burgeoning power of multinational companies and bankers and the like. But the other side of this coin is being in groups like this - people of seven or eight nationalities getting on with life together in a harmony that politicians can't create. Twenty years ago it couldn't have happened.

No point in telling you who is who and comes from where. But these are all friends of mine. Hope that you like the pictures

Polluted cities - but which?

Those of you who read my entries regularly will probably have noticed that I don't have much time for most journalists. Here's another example of the kind of stuff that really makes me foam at the mouth and grind my teeth all at the same time ...

An item on the BBC news site today says that Toyota is planning to start building it's Prius hybrid car in China, the world's fastest growing economy but which has five of the ten most polluted cities in the world. Hmm .. really? I can believe it. So that must be Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and er .. Oh! But the article doesn't tell me. No problem, let's check on the internet. If I type in "ten most polluted cities in the world", that should tell us.

Well, twenty minutes later I've yet to find the actual World Health Authority list BUT I do have some interesting news for you. Not only does China have the five most polluted cities but it aso seems it has the four, six, seven, eight and nine most polluted too! I found all these disparaging references on just the first two pages of search results on MSN. It also seems that certain American scientists believe that "China may now be the biggest contributor of greenhouse gases" Huh? Was that a little piggy just flew by our window?

For those mathematicians out there interested in set theory I can also reveal that three of the ten most polluted cities are also reckoned as New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. But hang on a minute, they are all in India ... the plot thickens.

If we can't get simple stories like this straight, what hope for mankind I wonder? We're doomed.

Anyway, on a happier and seasonal note, when I was in Tokyo yesterday I bought myself a new (and massively discounted) camera body in Akihabara. It's a digital Canon EOS that I can use all my old Canon lenses with. It feels great to have a REAL SLR camera again to shoot with. Look forward to a big improvement in the quantity and quality of pictures here, starting today with some of our local elementary school kids fooling around in the sunshine this afternoon.

Work and life balance

Into Tokyo this afternon to attend a lecture in Ichigaya by an American professor. It was on the theme of research into the balance between "Work and Life" for young professional Japanese people.

It was interesting enough but I was a bit disappointed with the limited scope of what she talked about. It was really a lecture about how a couple of companies were implementing new maternity leave legislation. That's surely an important enough topic in Japan but if that was what she wanted to talk about that was how it should have been billed.

The issue of 'balance between work and life' here is far more than just that of course. If I had to draw up a list of serious questions Japanese people face it would be at the top of my list. Working in industry in Britain I had to graft hard enough but at least we all went home around six after a good day's work done. Coming back on the train this evening at nearly ten o'clock the Tokyo evening rush-hour was still in full swing, tired guys wh had been at it fourteen hours struggling back home to leafy Chiba-ken with it all to do again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. How bleak can it get?

One of the interesting points the speaker did make was to underline how much extended family (by which we mean grandmother of course) has supported this crazy lifestyle. But these days grandma probably lives in some distant prefecture or has a career of her own to worry about. This more than anything she thought may start to force a change at last.

If it doesn't and the national birth rate continues to plummet Japan's future is bleak. I'm told that there are already rural valleys up in Akita-ken where bears are replacing the humans who once lived there.

Is Christmas over already?

A busy 'day off' today - lots of shopping to complete for our various parties for students and friends. Somehow we are having three this year - one for the 'kiddies' in the Community Hut, and then two at home. During the day one for good English speakers of all types and sizes and then one in the evening for Japanese speakers (I think the plan is I just keep pace with the washing up at this second event).

In the afternoon we went over to Yachimata for various stuff. We'd planned to buy a box of golden Christmas candles, but to our surprise Cainz had already cleared away most of THAT old stuff. Apart from a few unsold Christmas Tree lights the space was now being used for a mountain of traditinal New Year decorations. It seems that in the stores here at least Christmas is over and done with. You've heard the music, you've bought the goods, when you consume it all is up to you. Now for the next shopping spree of the financial year ...

Edera says that Christmas doesn't seem to be as popular as it was a few of years ago when certain kinds of cake made a big seasonal hit. Out of fashion already.

People back in England would hardly be able to believe their luck if stores said to them "OK - that's enough! No more Yuletide spending this year please, save your money for next month." In High Streets up and down Britain seasonal acquisition will be in full flood right up to December 25th I'm afraid.

And we still haven't got our seasonal candles. Maybe we'll have to buy some of those big white ones hardware stores sell for home altars and get busy with some gold paint spray.

Pets of Christmas Past

Edera was putting up our Christmas tree and some seasonal decorations this afternoon. It's more complicated than you might think (but then it aways IS more complicated than you think eh?). We have to wiggle a bit of plywood that serves as an extra shelf into the window corner first and that means re-arranging all our things on the window sill. So Christmas tree time is also spring clean time too.

Our tree is a nice green plastic one that lives in a box in the washitsu cupboard the rest of the year. In England we always bought a 'real tree' - they are quite cheap because we use the 'thinnings' from forestry plantations. So in a curious way you are helping support forestry by buying the young trees they have to remove. Real trees are nice but some - especially the traditional Norwegian Spruce - are hopeless for dropping needles in a dry centrally heated room. You soon end up with the vacuum cleaner full of foliage.

As we were putting the tree up today the cats took advantage of the open window to come and go by an unusual route. Seeing them joining in the fun reminded me a bit of "pets of Christmas past."

When my kids were small I had a lovely cocker-spaniel called 'Crackers' and she was a big fan of Christmas trees. She soon worked out that the little silver balls high on the branches contained chocolate. Countdown to Christmas became a succession of sad small chewed balls of silver paper discovered under the sofa while the dog innocently slumbered on in front of the fire. She could have robbed a bank and escaped undetected. How did she get them? That dog must have learned how to use the kitchen steps or maybe even a lassoo.

Her sense of smell was amazing too. Once at Christmas when she was fast asleep I hid a small piece of cheese on the other side of the room. Her nose started to twitch at once, and within two minutes she'd woken up, found it and eaten it.

My old cat Barry was just the opposite. A typical conservative "why can't things stay just as they are?" feline. He hated all aspects of Christmas and especially silly trees in the corner of the lounge, carol singing and gifts. Over the holiday he would sulk upstairs and glare at anything even vaguely seasonal or head outdoors and terrorise the local bird population. But what he really hated the most was when I got my melodeon out and played "Good King Wenceslas". It would only take a bar or two for the cat flap to creak and the white tip of his retreating tail would disappear into the night. You could almost hear him mutter "Bah! Humbug!"

Monorail

Out in Chiba today catching up with some fieldwork. I'm going to have to do a heck of a lot of walking over the next few weeks if I hope to get most of the outlying parts of the city complete before I go to England at the end of February.

It never ceases to surprise me how many former villages have been swallowed up by the spread of the urban area. I reckon in the whole of the city administative area there were nearly a hundred villages back in the 1920's, and about half are now surrounded by new housing. But in most you still meet old ladies in the lanes who must have farmed the land around the place fifty years ago.

Coming home I caught the Chiba Monorail from Tendai to Tsuga - about seven miles. Monorails are great eh? And there are a lot in Japan - out to Haneda Airport at Tokyo and in Western Osaka for example. But Chiba is a REAL monorail - the cars, which are a bit like big buses - hang down from the rails.

The ride was really fun - do people actually just use the monorial to commute into town? It can build up some speed between stations and there's a vague sense of 'fairground ride' about it, but you don't actually experience negative gravity on the descents.

Chiba was looking it's best this evening too, it made me cheerful. A lovely sunset over Tokyo Bay and the big new housing blocks around Inage looking like a scene from 'Star Wars'. Who could ask for more? Modern Japanese cities might not be everyone's idea of beauty, but I like them.

Lovely heat

Our paraffin (in American English 'kerosene') heater is showing it's age today - I must have re-started it at least ten times already. Should I hope it will last through the winter (and risk it breaking down completely over the New Year holiday!) or just 'bite the bullet' and buy a new one now? More expense eh?

And why don't they ever make things to last any more? - we only bought this five year ago! Hmm ... well, I think I know the answer to that one thanks. Time was that a heater like this would have lasted about half a century at least; now you hardly have it out of the box before it's on its way to the tip.

But I must admit that a few of today's shut-downs might be due to delinquent felines. Tora likes to doze on top of this stove all day and when he isn't falling off in his sleep he's fooling around with the on-off switch with his paw.

Down here in leafy Chiba-ken we have quite mild winters - VERY mild compared with the snowy north-east of Honshu and Hokkaido. But I've never been so cold living in houses anywhere as here in Japan. In REALLY cold climates things are designed to cope with the temperatures. In Britain it's no colder than here AND we have effective central heating and cavity wall insulation that keeps the whole house warm in winter.

The standard in Japanese homes seems to be just to have a little pool of heat in the living room and the rest of the house is like an icebox, especially at night when the sun has vanished and clear skies bring a sharp frost.

I know things are bad when I find myself circulating through the same four or five thick shirts and avoiding taking a shower in the chilly ofuro in the evenings. We just don't have the luxury of radiatiors - why is that? Risk of earthquakes I suppose.

Anyway - just over a week to the solstice, then things will start to get better.

Santa at Ooami-Shirasato

Oh! Here we go! I promised you some Santa photos "earlier than you might expect" and it's true! Here's the first of what will probably turn out to be a large and boring seasonal crop. It's the 'genre of the moment'; maturity is beautiful I'm told.

Yep! I handed out my first sackful of presents and my first "Ho!Ho!Ho's" of the year at a party down in Ooami-Shirasato. It was being organised this afternoon by one of my friends from the choir, S-san . Edera ('Santa-san no okaa-san' - Mrs. Santa Claus ) and I hurried down there when my last Japanese class of 2005 finished at the kominkan.

After present opening we stuffed ourselves with pretty well everything going and then turned our attention to some Christmas songs. The Yuletide music selection in Japan is dominated by American songs like 'Jingle Bells' and 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'- no good genuine British stuff like 'Good King Wenceslas' and 'Hark The Herald'. But we got everyone going.



Interesting how the kids reacted to me. The girls in particular were deadly curious about my beard and wanted to feel it for themselves. Beards aren't unknown in Japan - we have two friends with one around here - but they are much rarer than in Britain. So this was a great opportunity to touch one (and not just for the kids but a few of the adult organisers too!)

One of the girls said to me 'you are serious!' For a minute I wondered if she meant that I was a rather miserable looking old git to be a Santa, but then I realised that she meant my beard was a real one - not cotton wool.

Yes, it's a real one for sure.

Well known facts

The other night I was sitting in the washitsu with Edera watching - for the 'umpteenth time - the DVD of 'Caberet'. It's one of those films I can watch again and again, it's a masterpiece for sure. Have you ever seen it?

In the film credits it is now described as 'based on the story by'Fred Ebb'. But that's just %£"*&£! of course! Fred Ebb took his original stage musical storyline from the autobiographical novel 'Goodbye to Berlin' written by Christopher Isherwood. He was a friend of our English poet W.H. Auden and studied in Berlin in 1931. Isherwood had his own intimate experience of the pre-war Berlin world that the film portrays. It all has a kind of gripping sinister and uncomfortable magic to it; as the audience we already know what the future holds in store for the characters in the tale but we can't warn them.

Well, this time I particularly noticed a conversation in which a publisher was explaining some "well known facts about Jews". He managed to have them as both communists and international bankers in a single sentence. Hard to believe anyone could even say something so dumb, let alone believe it.

But it's interesting just what we can and do believe about others who are strange to us eh? Today when I was walking Kuu I was trying to remember "well known facts" that I picked up as a youngster about Japan. From someone, somewhere. I'll have to make a little list but amongst them for sure was that "Trains in Japan are so full they hire strong people to push you through the doors". Well, of course there was once an element of truth in that one, but we are talking Shinjuku in the rush hour, not rural Hokkaido on a snowy december afternoon.

One I'm sure that many English people still believe is that all Japanese workers rush out into the company car park in the morning before the start of the shift and do physical exercises while singing the company song. It's a "well known fact"! I did once come across the "Chiba Song" in a 1950's copy of the city 'Statistical Yearbook', but I've yet to see a bunch of happy workers all out here at 7:30 am singing their lungs out. Did it ever happen? If so, when and where?

Last August I read on the BBC website that everyone was eating whale flavoured ice cream in Tokyo in the hot summer weather. Well, if they were it all passed me by - perhaps because I didn't know the kanji for 'kujira'. All I ever came across was strawberry or green tea flavour.

I wonder what stories Japanese readers were told about us in foggy and rain-soaked Britain. What "well known facts" do you know about us eh?

Let's face it, most of this junk is spread around by lazy journalists short of a story, but it's amazing how enduring it becomes once it has the status of 'urban myth'. People are generally decent and considerate the world over but you'd never think so when you open some newspapers. We can have a good laugh at the stuff we know is plain silly, but what about the things we are told about places and events quite unfamilar to us?

Christmas post

Today has been my Christmas card writing and parcel wrapping day. It seems early to be doing it for me but I guess not - just seventeen days to go eh? I was never a good planner.

Part of the fun for me here is writing our address in kanji on the back of envelopes. I can remember it OK but of course my writing is like a child's - they must have a good laugh down at our local post office when they see it.

And then there's the 'ordeal' of getting the stuff actually stamped and paid for. Inevitably there's going to be some strange rule that I don't understand relating to width of envelope or whether or not there's a letter enclosed etc. But the girl on the counter always seems pleased to see me, I suppose I'm a bit of a challenge.

When I was a student in England back in the 1960's we used to apply for 'Christmas jobs' as temporary postmen delivering the mountains of extra mail that were moved around in the fortnight before Christmas. In those days of cheap postage and before e-mail was around an incredible amount of post was sent. On the 'rounds' I delivered I'd sometimes be putting ten cards through someone's letter box in the morning and then again in the afternoon.

Of course in Britain our letter boxes are in our front doors so you have to watch our for houses with dogs who lurk in the hall and make a grab for letters - and your fingers - as you slipped them through. I had one large Alsatian who would go crazy to get me and I got so fed up with it that I used to hang onto one end of the envelopes outside and let him shred the other on the other side of the door. But somehow despite the piles of shredded mail his owners never took the hint and shut him in the kitchen when they went to work in the morning.

Weeks before Christmas a schedule of 'last deliveries' was published and for some Christmas mail to BFPO ('British Forces Post Offices') in Brunei or Polynesia you had to get mail sent by late November. Us strong lads had to tie up the sacks in the loading bay for delivery to the station and loading onto the special night mail trains. In those days mail bags in Britain were made of heavy canvas and sewn by prisoners in gaol.

There are still students employed in Japan to handle the New Year postcard rush but in Britain I think it's now only a memory - higher prices and e-mail have made the Christamas post only a shadow of what it used to be.

It's Santa!! Get me out of here!!!

Wednesay is 'day off'day so over to Narita to do some shopping. First to 'Joyful Honda' to buy sixteen Christmas cards (are you on my 'little list' eh?) and then to Aeon shopping mall to look for - oh! But of course that would be giving away state secrets ...!

With Edera in her kimono it was fun walking around doing some 'window shopping', and we had a nice lunch in a booth in a Chinese restaurant. But it really struck me today how every Wednesday out seems to involve shops. When I was a child a trip down the shops was a chore, not fun. A trip to the river to go swimming or a walk in the woods was fun. But now it seems to be the only thing left to do in the world.

I've also learned that Edera needs careful watching on excursions like this. If she once gets out of my sight it can take hours to find her. She's the perfect 'impulse buyer' too, a salesman's dream, walks around in a daze. She only has to see some display of industrial spanners or lavatory brushes to say "Oh! I was thinking of buying one of those for A-chan just the other day ..." Now I sit on her shoulder, if we were handcuffed together we couldn't be closer.

But I had my first 'hit' of the 2005 Santa Season today! We were going down in the lift in JusCo when two women and a small boy in a push-chair hurried on board as the doors were closing. That small boy got in a bit of a panic at suddenly finding himself in an enclosed space with Mr. Claus, his worst nightmare come to life. Yep! This year I'm THAT convincing it seems. I'll post a picture soon.

Lucky I didn't have my 'black book' with me or his name might have gone in it ... so be careful you are all good boys and girls out there!

Dark days

This time of year seems to "get to me" more as I get older. At least here in Japan we get quite a lot of December sunshine, and we don't have those nightmare 'potlatch' aspects of Christmas present buying to struggle through yet (but they are coming eh?!) On the other hand there are long hours of catatonic NHK New Year holiday shows looming on the broadcasting horizon. Probably I'll just retreat into my shed and type away at my thesis

Anyway, I do have some 'Santa Claus' appointments to look forward to. Did I mention that I've got a seasonal job as his 'chief helper'in leafy Chiba-ken? My first 'appearance' is next Saturday and I've been growing my hair and beard ridiculously long so that I look the part. Over the holiday season I was thinking of having some fun putting on a red anorak and glaring at all the little kids on the trains muttering "I hope you've been a good boy sonny!" French Santas adopt this strategy - once I stood in the snow in Dijon for nearly an hour watching Santa berate local kids from the roof of the Hotel de Ville.

When I was in my twenties my second job was in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. Orkney is a long long way north, in summer it hardly gets dark at all but in winter - good grief! Around the solstice it wasn't getting daylight until after 10:00 a.m. and by 2:00 p.m. it was already almost dark again. No wonder people up there sometimes get a bit 'eccentric'. And the gales - just amazing - like a typhoon but every day of the week. It's the only place I've been blown off my feet and had to move the car around the house in case the wind tipped it on it's side.

So let's think on the bright side on this gloomy Tuesday in Kanto; there are many colder darker stormier places we might be. And in some of them you have to rush out and spend a fortune on tacky presents too!

Peace, peace

When I first came to Japan and started taking photos of people - friends, groups and the like - I was very surprised at the way in which eveyone suddenly made 'peace' signs at the camera. It doesn't matter where you go or who you are having your picture taken with does it? Scientific studies have confirmed (I counted them myself!) that 97.2% of all Japanese people make a 'peace' sign to the camera the instant that the lens cover comes off.

Of course if you were having your photo taken with, say, Mr. Koizumi, or the President of Toyota for example, it's possible that they might resist the urge to stick their fingers in the air. Recently a I saw a formal group photograph on a wall of the senior monks at a temple here and they weren't making 'peace' signs either. But I have a lurking suspicion that they might have been underneath their rakhusus - you couldn't see because their hands were hidden.

American and European readers will already be confused because they have probably never seen this gesture. For their benefit I'll explain that a 'peace' sign is made by sticking two fingers in the air towards the camera.

Now, for Japanese readers I should also explain that already most English readers will be laughing. For us it's a gesture always associated with Winston Churchill, his famous 'V for Victory'. But the sneakily funny side of it for us is that if you were to mistakenly turn your hand around with the BACK to the camera then it's a VERY rude gesture indeed. When I first saw people doing it here I did vaguely wonder if they didn't approve of my politics or haircut but then I realised that so many people couldn't possibly hate me. Hmm ...

So, I wonder if anyone, especially on my Japanese Mixi site, can tell us where this 'peace' sign first came from? And is it used anywhere else these days? Let's hope someone knows something about it.

Gagaku - 2

This is a short note for those English and American readers who wrote asking about gagaku recordings.

I asked at the shop at Sojiji today if they had any recordings of the Sotoshu band and they have never stocked any. It's possible they are available elsewhere and I'll do some asking.

Edera has checked the internet and these two pages have interesting links to picture files and music files of both instruments and pieces. Of course if you don't have a Japanese browser it will be completely 'pot luck' what you hit by poking around and clicking but you might get some good stuff

http://www.coara.or.jp/~doraemon/gagaku/gagaku-top.htm

http://www.coara.or.jp/~doraemon/gagaku/neiro.htm

Finally I see that if you enter 'gagaku' on UK Amazon (didn't check the American site) there are at least two CD's there - one is available very cheap.

Hope this helps

in gassho

And greasy Joan doth keel the pot

I sometimes fancy writing the definitive book about a really obvious and yet unusual topic, something that no one has ever picked before. Of course all the gratifyingly obscure things like 'fashions in mascara' or 'lace making in medieval Luxembourg' were done long ago, no chance there. Whole armies of academics are picking over those. But I think I have a good one in mind ...

OK, as long as you promise not to beat me to the publisher's door here it is! I think I'll write "A short history of washing up".

Of course it won't be short - that's just a bit of fashionable self-deprecation. It will be a VERY expensive 'coffee table' production with colour illustrations by some fashionable European art photographer. We'd have washing up in the smartest French hotels, washing up in Tibet, washing up in sixteenth century Flemish art (I can think of at least two examples in Breughel alone!) and a complete survey of international techniques at the kitchen sink.

I mention this latter because in our household cultural differences around washing up loom large sometimes. It just amazes me how much Edera actually makes. Me, I can cook a banquet for a dozen guests and all that's left in the sink to be done is a teaspoon and the cheese grater. Edera makes miso soup and rice for breakfast and every piece of crockery in the cabinet is left in a mountain in the sink in need of attention!

In England we have sensible ideas about filling a bowl with water and just washing the stuff then drying it. In Japan all the scraps go down the sink into that big garbage collector and you have to rinse everything off under a running tap. As if a few soap suds are going to poison you for goodness sake! Well, I rest my case, there's a whole chapter sketched out for you before we even get onto soaps, detergents and utensils.

Where does pot keeling and greasy Joan come into all this? It's the cultural angle of course, a bit of Shakespeare to make everyone feel cozy and well read. From 'Love's Labours Lost', and very appropriate for this dark and chilly time of the year too.

When icicles hang from the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who;
Tu-whit, tu-who - a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Night Walks

When I was younger and the moon was full I used to love going on very long night walks. Thinking about it I sometimes took silly risks too. Once I had a temporary job at England's biggest nature reserve high in the Pennines and I remember a whole week of walking across remote mountain and moorland on my own with only the moon for a company. Luckily the weather stayed fine - if the night had suddenly beome dark I would really have been stuck.

Later, when my kids were growing up in Lancashire, I would walk country footpaths in the night, across fields and through woodand. I'd often hear foxes barking close by, and scare cows in the dark as I strolled past them. "They are more scared of you than you are of them" my grandmother ued to say and it's true!

Hey! Do you think I'm really a werewolf?? This beard would be a good disguise, you wouldn't notice the hair growing on the backs of my hands after sunset so much. And I like wearing black clothes and looking kind of Transylvanian.

Sadly there's not so much scope in leafy Chiba-ken for midnight walking. But during the winter I generally put my coat on around 10:25 and make a circuit of the village. If I time it correctly I just get to the level crossing to see the 'Hometown Shiosai' speeding by on it's way out to Naruto - the last express of the day from Tokyo. It seldom has more than a dozen passengers and it might not have the pedigree of a Budapest-bound Orient Express making firey progess along the Danube in the small hours. But it still has an air of romance for me as it hurries past the orchards and tanbo towards journey's end.

Leaning a language

Edera and I were talking today about language teaching and learning. We have one student who comes on Fridays to learn Japanese, and in a few months she's picked up as much as I have in years!

Part of the difference is that she's in her twenties and I'm not; and another big difference is that she studies Japanese hard and I don't! Actually at the moment I'm learning Chinese quicker than Japanese sinmply because I know I'll get an earwigging from my teacher if I don't do any homework!

And that got us onto a topic I wanted to share. As a European it really astonishes me that Junior High and High School students in Japan don't learn Chinese or Korean - but especially Chinese. Why is that?

In English secondary schools for at least half a century everyone has had to learn French for a minimum of three years. In the better schools students whose 'major' is languages will study at least one other - usually German but often Spanish, Italian or Russian. In a handful of schools specialising in languages Japanese might be taught too.

This isn't just a matter for us of language skills - it's an issue around the whole business of culture and communication. In Europe we travel in each other's countries all the time, you would be thought poorly educated if you couldn't order a meal in a French cafe or read road signs. We might not always like the French en masse - but at least we know what they are talking to us about!

Thinking only of the importance of Chinese customers for Japanese business it's astonishing that kids here don't study basic Chinese alongside English at school.

But it's much more than just that isn't it? If you can't speak each others' languages what chance of any communication at all? You simply have to rely on what you read and are told.

There are so many interesting things to see in China and Shanghai is less than two hours from Tokyo by plane. Yet only a tiny fraction of Japanese travel to China compared with Europe or the USA. And yet so much Japanese culture was moulded by the experience of Tang and Song thinking and art and language.

Well, as a practical matter of fact I just mention it. I think youngsters here ought to be learning Chinese.

Before your very eyes

When I was a small child there was still a lot of older comedians around on the radio (no television then!) who had started their careers of the stage in the old 'Music Hall'. It seemed that they all had some particular inane 'catch-phrase' that they would use to make their audiences roar with laughter. For example two I can recall are "Can I do you now sir?!" and "Be soon I said, be soon!!" I wonder who said these. Later there was "Nice to see you - to see you nice!!" and one used by the comedian Arthur Askey "Before your very eyes!" which has a mysterious hint of a magician pulling a rabbit out of his top hat.

Today I was in Chiba University Library and later in the Prefectural Archive Library (my favourite! - it is just so relaxed and friendly! Nobody rushes, in fact this afternoon I was their only customer.). I had the photocopiers running hot in both places getting heaps of information from old census reports. At the Archive I was usingthe 1940 'All Japan' volume; interesting because it includes a lot of the rest of East Asia too. The 1950 volume was maybe the most interesting though - such a very cheap and fragile printing and binding that I had to take great care with copying. In a way it said more about the austerity of those times than the statistics inside did. Precious items, I always feel a bit 'in awe' handling such old originals that express so much about their time.

One problem I've been struggling with recently is that those old statisticians who compiled all these tables of information just couldn't stop changing their rules. For example in the 1950's many 'mura' (villages) have separate data but by 1960 they had been consolidated into bigger 'machi'(towns). In every census someone has changed the way in which people's employment is counted and trying to get a view on how work has changed over 50 years is a real struggle. Sometimes you can 'compare forward' but you can never 'look back'.

But now I've realised - why ever didn't I notice this before? - that in my research about how change happens these 'problems' with data aren't problems at all! They are a big part of the answer! The fact that they counted candle makers in 1950 but don't now, and that there are now seventeen categories related to domestic and household appliances when there were none before 1960 - that's kind of significant isn't it! I was trying to get the numbers to add up while the important thing to see was that they never could. And it was there all the time - before my very eyes!