There's a coincidence

My friend Rev. Mugo in Edmonton, Canada has just moved her computer upstairs - take a look at http://movingmountain.blogspot.com

And so have I. There's a coincidence.

Changed 'domestic arrangements' mean that we now have the use of the back upstairs bedroom. It is the coolest room in the house and early in the morning the sunniest too. Also it has a distant view of passing trains. Who could ask for more than that eh?

Recently I've been doing my reading up there but today I was determined to get my spare laptop working in there too. I've been eyeing up the possibilities for getting a LAN cable installed and so my electric drill came out and I was soon drilling holes in ceilings and floors.

That was when I made my first mistake. English houses are basically built like boxes - four brick walls and a roof. Obviously if I drilled up through the ceiling in the corner of our room downstairs that would match a hole in the floor in the corner of the room upstairs eh?

Not so. The downstairs room is bigger than upstairs and supports part of a balcony. Eventually after much head-scratching and measuring my cable goes through a hole in the middle of the ceiling and is tastefully concealed in a bit of white plastic moulding.

Anyway, at least I have a connection in 'The Study' now. At last I can retreat from the world like some Carthusian monk in his cell, close the door, put on my slippers and type blogs or whatever else to my heart's content. Watch this space!

Real-and-Imagined Places

The American geographer Ed Soja is always writing about 'real-and-imagined' places. But it is often even more interesting to read stuff that people ahve written about real places they have never visited.

But not always. Sometimes I come across boring work by people who have either obviously never been to the places they write about or if they have didn't learn much when they went there.

But that's not what I'm thinking of here. I'm more interested in what a writer with lots of imagination can believe somewhere to be like.

The Czech writer Franz Kafka's first novel for example was called 'America' although he never went there in his life. Somehow it adds a special quality to his sense of place, which comes from his imagination and not from his perception of reality. But that's all of Kafka eh? Maybe my favourite writer.

One place that I might write about myself sometime that I've never been to is Kerguelen. Where? Heh! heh! If you aren't a map freak like me you probably won't even have spotted it but it's the one place in the world (OK, one of many 'one places'!) that I'd love to visit.

If you have an atlas and open it at the 'Indian Ocean' page and look in the middle but far south, about equidistant from Capetown, Western Australia and the Antarctic, there it is! How could you have missed it?

If you thought Wakkanai or West Hartlepool or Fairbanks was remote take a lookie here! http://oceandots.com/southern/kerguelen/panorama.htm

Down in the "Fearsome Fifties" with an average windspeed of around 100 km.p.h and rain or snow falling on 300 days a year Kerguelen isn't ever likely to make it into the island resort league. It has a population of around 100, mainly involved in scientific work and satellite tracking.

It does have a church though - 'Notre Dame des Vents' - 'Our Lady of the Winds'.

I'd guess in this lifetime writing about Kerguelen from imagination is about as close as I'm going to get to it.

Trip to Yuukarigaoka

Edera-chan had a course over at Yuukarigaoka today. She's studying how to read old Japanese archive documents. As it was her first session, and it's an area we don't know well, we both drove over there.

In Britain a course like this would probably be run by the local Education Authority but here it's NHK - the equivalent of the BBC - who organise adult education sessions.

It was a nice trip, about an hour's steady drive on a hot sunny morning. Yuukarigaoka is one of those places that has been on my 'little list' for a long time. It's one of a several 'new towns' around the Chiba side of Tokyo but it caught my eye because it has it's own dinky railway service. A bit bigger than my track around the garden but not much! It heads north out of the town centre as a kind of monorail and then loops around a park serving some suburban areas. The whole circuit only takes fifteen minutes and there is one train.

Only in Japan eh? It's a kind of toy for people who like "gee whiz!" technology on a modest scale.


Later I headed down to do some trainspotting on the Keisei tracks which was fun too. There was the usual army of engineers and contractors with yellow flags digging up the road near the level crossing I aimed for. I feel there ought to be one of those jokes that starts "How many Japanese workmen does it take to dig a hole in the road ..." but I won't explore that one again tonight.

I liked Yuukarigaoka. I've just been reading a terminally depressing (and often plain inaccurate) book by Gavan McCormack called "The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence". Malthusian gloom on every page. So it was a bit of an antidote today to be out in the sunshine in a new urban area that was actually a nice place. In England or France or America a location like this would probably be a high crime drug strewn wasteland but not here, as a rule. It's people and politicians that screw up places, don't blame the geography.

Blog me, blog my cat

One of Tora's most chararcteristic of characteristics these days seems to be a complete lack of subtlety when it comes to finding laps to sit on. When some of our Junior High students were here earlier this week he even snuck his way onto one student's lap half way through the lesson. How did he do that? He's like Houdini ...

Anyway this morning he was angling to get onto my lap while I was checking my email. I've got a rule now along the lines of 'no cats on laps until the sun is over the yardarm' so I resisted his relentless pressure. He's got a crafty way of just gently touching your leg with those big razor sharp claws while giving you a look along the lines of "We're not going to hurt each other here are we??"

Unfortunately just as this gentle nag was in progress he sneezed. No ordinary sneeze - he has some kind of long term asthma and this was one of his "Pneumatic Cat" specials. He flew backwards like a rocket and somehow managed to skewer my calf as he made a grab for the nearest passing means of support. Which was my leg. I wasn't pleased. I said "Ouch! That hurt a bit Tora!" Or something like that, don't remember my exact words ...

The pleasures of living with cats eh? It occurs to me that Tora is probably the bossiest and most single-minded being I've ever known. We ALWAYS end up doing what he wants to do. But who can resist those big frank eyes and cheesy grin?

Chiba then choir

Our day off so we both went into Chiba today. Edera-chan had to order some textbooks, and then we took a look around the shoe department in Sogo. Afterwards for lunch in the Viking Restaurant on the 22nd floor of Sen City Tower next door.

Actually it amazes me that this place makes a living, you would never ever know it was there if someone hadn't told you. But it's fun to enjoy their 'all you can eat' Chinese style menu while looking out over the city, and it's usually quite busy. When I first visited this restaurant five years ago Chiba was a 'closed book' for me but since then I've walked pretty well every bloomin' street you can see from up there and now I could bore you right through several tedious lunches enthusing about the city and it's history.

I seem to be one of the few people that really likes Chiba but I do. All cities somehow soak up the nature of their rural hinterland and Chiba is no exception. It's 'nothing special'. Maybe I came to appreciate 'nothing special' at last.

Then tonight back for choir. We are rehearsing three pieces for the Chiba Festival early in June, and one of them is Palestina's "Sicut cervus desiderat ..." Do you know it? It's a setting in Latin of the first two lines of Psalm 42.

"Sic cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum
ita desiderat anima mea ad te deus ..."

in English

"Just as a deer thirsts after running water
So my spirit thirsts after you my God ..."

I've never sung this anthem before I came to Japan but I have to say it's one of the greatest and most moving pieces of Renaissance music I ever encountered. Like other great pieces of polyphonic music it's deceptively simple and you have to sing it at last a hundred times to understand what a sincere and profound object of meditation it really is.

Travels in Vulgaria

Hey! I hope you are all impressed by this map of leafy Chiba-ken in 1920. Today, after about a week of headaches and migraines, I eventually figured out how my drawing and mapping software works! Neat eh? Like all such things it's easy when you know how. Now I can be a consultant I guess!

Just as Edera was setting off to her calligraphy this morning she was muttering something about someone from Bulgaria and I didn't hear her right. I thought she said 'Vulgaria' and of course I laughed like a horse.

Years ago I read an excellent novel by Alan Sillitoe called "Travels in Nihilon". I don't remember the exact plot but Nihilon was an awful country where everyone was totally disrespectful, anarchistic and lawless. Very unlike Japan eh? But by the end of the book you could begin to see why people were trying to break into this country rather than escape from it.

Now Vulgaria - I must patent it quick! Open a Vulgarian website, arrange package tours. Vulgaria will be my mother country in future. Vulgaria is a bit like Blackpool, Coney Island, Bondai Beach but on an infinitely grander scale perhaps. At home in Vulgaria everyone is overweight, suffers from flatulence, wears bright check shirts and Bermuda shorts to go shopping in and masses of rolled gold jewellry . We all talk way too loud. In Vulgaria we laugh our heads off at 'mother-in-law' jokes and buy cheap china dogs and Toby jugs to put on our mantleshelves. The Vulgarian national newspapers have the comic strips and sport on the front page.

But chiefly of course we get terribly emotional whenever we are in foreign parts and have had several beers. Then we stand on the tables and sing sentimental songs by Vera Lynn and wave the Vulgarian flag in an orgy of national pride .

Hmm ... this is starting to sound like some place I already know. Better draw a line there for tonight eh?

Time to plant rice

(posted last night but problems with blogger!)

This last fortnight farmers around here have been preparing the tanbo (rice paddies) for planting. Usually of course it's with small tractors equipped with various kinds of 'rotivator' gear. I'll have to check what the different kinds of tools are called - many farmers use two big paddle wheels at the back to churn over flooded pans without sinking in too far.

Occasionally though I notice someone working over some patch of tanbo with a mattock - I guess fifty years ago most of it was cultivated that way. It looks like hard work.

One thing that's very different in Japan is when this cultivation is done. No rice growing area seems to get ploughed before the start of April, but then it's turned over and flooded within a few days. Once the water is let onto the land the soil becomes a liquid mud and the seedlings are planted out in neatly spaced rows.

In England for arable crops we cultivate the land in the autumn so that the frost can get into the soil and brak it down into a fine tilth. When we think of ploughmen at work it's usually with their coat collars turned up against a November gale. Here in the autumn land lies fallow

As it's been cold here this Spring the tanbo will be flooded rather deeply to protect the seedlings. In a day or two it will be like driving through green lakes down the valley - watch out for some nice pictures here!

Anyway here is one for now that I took on Saturday about ten minutes walk away from 'little house in the paddy' - the afternoon 'Shiosai' is heading for Choshi past some freshly planted tanbo and with some cedar forests behind. Japan can look really pretty at this time of year eh?(

Long Distance Runner

It's the London Marathon today, and Julia's friend Peter has been selected to run in it this year. I'm curious to hear how they get on.

Twenty years ago I would have been rather tempted to train for a marathon myself, although reading the MSN website this morning I see that if I had done so I'd have ended up two centimetres shorter (all that pavement pounding!) and three kilos lighter too! Marathons weren't so fashionable when I was young - perhaps it was the mid eighties before they really took off.

'Marathon' is a word I hear used often in Japan where it seems to describe any race over two hundred metres. What's this instinct we have for devaluing all words that suggest a certain standard? 'Professional' for example once described someone who had an old fashioned university education and followed a 'profession'. In other words he was a lawyer, doctor or clergyman. Then the word was 'stretched' to include teachers and bank managers and the like.

Now absolutely everyone lays claim to be a 'professional'. 'Professionals' like footballers 'do it for money' and for others - "Hey! Look pal I'm a 'professional'" - it means I do it better than you so there!

When I was in school longer races - usually around ten or twelve kilometres - were always known as 'Cross Country' and, though I say it myself, I was good at them. Usually I came first out of all the boys in my age group.

My technique was a bit strange though. I'd run the first few kilometres at a fearful pace, leaving the rest of the pack far behind and demoralising everyone. Then I'd settle into a good steady speed all the way home. I could never manage a sprint at the end - if someone managed to stick to my shoulder at the start of the race they would surely beat me at the tape.

Come to think of it that's been the story of the rest of my life too!

A statistic of another kind

A phone call from England this evening - someone in my family keeping in touch. She's not so 'regular' that you could set your watch by the telephone calls but I hear from her more often these days.

They are both elderly, and not in good health. Every time I hear some news it seems like some other small thing has slipped away. "Silence invading the suburbs" as the poet W.H.Auden described it.

Also, she gets angry easily. "Disgusted of Lancashire" could be her nom de plume. Disgusted with Mr. Blair, disgusted with contemporary Britain, disgusted with pretty well everyone.

Back in November after a spell in hospital she was given a walking frame but told not to use it yet because she 'had to have training'. To use a walking frame? We love Health and Safety regulations in Britain, where would we be without them. And if you had an accident then who would be to blame?

Now in April she's still waiting for that training but of course her legs have got much worse. Her husband's too, now he needs equipment and 'training' too. Someone came with a notepad and wrote stuff down and someone else (who was that?) phoned to cancel an appointment because yet another person was on sick leave and now it's all just a blur for her. A resent full blur.

It's all deeply predictable eh? Somewhere a budget cut, somewhere else a physiotherapist or social worker on extended sick or maternity leave. We spend a fortune on such services, files are openend, case notes and reports get compiled and politicians set targets. But no-one ever turns up, doctors are always too busy to give straight answers. Nothing happens. And of course there are a hundred rules and regulations, none of which are actually there to make life easier for 'patients'. Its a good word in English - 'patient'. You need to be.

Politicians like to tell us that our National Health Service is the 'envy of the world'. When it comes to broken legs and cardiac arrests it is probably pretty good. But if you are old and falling to bits, what hope eh? The phone will never ring. It's an illusion basically, a chimera, a mirage. Sooner or later you will become a statistic of another kind.

Play Hard! Play Fair! Nobody Hurt!

Edera-chan has a beachcombing trip for the younger students planned for Golden Week. I'm looking forward to it - if I'm invited of course!

Anyway, last Wednesday we were looking for kite kits as it's always windy on the beach eh? Even in Chiba-ken the beaches aren't so leafy. We didn't find any kites for samle but I did buy a little bag of split rattan and I've looked around on the internet for some suitable plans. Ho hmm. "If 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans there'd be no need of tinkers" my grandmother used to say ...

All this talk of kites and packs of happy kiddies reminded me of an event I once organised when I was in the 'Jaycees' in South Wales about two lifetimes ago. A nice policeman in the area had just been to America to learn all about 'New Games' which I think was a San Francisco craze in the early seventies. The basic idea was that you had lots of good fun together playing co-operative style games. Their slogan has always stuck in my head. "Play Hard! Play Fair! Nobody Hurt!"

I hope someone has mentioned this concept to the South Korean 'coastguards' recently. The Japanese ones too.

Well we really worked hard at promoting a 'New Games' event with that guy, leafleting hundreds of homes and writing an article in the local paper. And when the big day arrived we hurried down to our local park with a car-load of equipment. I think three kids eventually turned up - to be honest they just happened to be passing anyway and we grabbed them. It's a thankless task organising events of any kind in my experience.

I wonder whatever happened to 'New Games'. Maybe like hula hoops and yoyos they keep on coming around. The idea sounds good but most of the human race seems to like playing on sides I guess, we like to have our own side and then another one eh? It's more fun for the majority scoring in your opponent's goal rather than you all kicking the ball in the same direction.

Anyway, let's hope our day works out fine. "Play Hard! Play Fair! Nobody Hurt!" is a good slogan for us.

Trip to the video rental store

Last night after choir Edera and I watched a film on DVD that our friend Dave had recommended. It's called "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days". It's not a title that I would have picked out wandering around the video store (something I don't often do here) but I really enjoyed it. Actually I laughed so loudly at a couple of points that Tora gave up trying to sleep on my knee in disgust and padded over to a pillow on the floor for some peace and quiet.

I won't spoil the plot for you but suffice to say that the goodies won out in the end. I guess that's no surprise eh?

This is the first item I've got a DVD out from our new local Tsutaya video rental store. We are moving into the new century down here in leafy Chiba-ken. Somehow I got a both membership card AND a Japanese credit card as part of a deal I didn't really understand but it was all free, allegedly. I'll believe it when and if it ever turns up in the mail. Something tells me that when my English name is spotted on the form the offer will evaporate. Not that I would ever use it of course, it would just be fun to have one.

I don't use credit cards much except to buy books from Amazon. For bigger items here I sometimes use my UK cards and it seems to cause no end of problems. I always thought that Visa use was supposed to be truly international but that's not an aspect of the service that they plug so hard these days.

What typically happens is that after making one purchase without problems I find myself the next time sitting in the store for an hour giving someone from a finance company details of my mother's maiden name and my grandmother's birthdate, being watched suspiciously by a store clerk.

Makes you wonder how crooks ever make a living but they obviously do.

"Guns" and "Hundreds"

I was typing away late last night putting some of the old census data I copied last week into spreadsheets. Interesting stuff (well, for me anyway.).

In Japan there is something subtly different about the way people think about 'areas'. It's hard to put into words but I notice it most clearly when I work with old statistics like this.

Back in 1920 when the first modern census was completed Chiba Prefecture was divided into ten 'gun'. Usually this word, which comes originally from Song China, is translated into English as 'county'. That's not quite right - 'county' perhaps like Americans think of them but our English Counties are much bigger and also more important in our history. 'Guns' comprised 'mura' or villages and 'machi' which suggests something a bit more populated - 'township' would be about right.

Back in 1920 there were no 'shi' or 'cities' (again as Americans use this word) in Chiba Prefecture. But as areas became urbanised and cities were designated it was as if they were set up as islands in a sea of rural 'gun' countryside. Or even better they were 'built over' parts of the original 'gun' landscape like rolling out a carpet.

Now most of this Prefecture is defined as 'shi' but there are still bits of the old underlying 'gun' geography left. But not so many. 'Sanbu gun' just became 'Sammu shi' a month ago and you have to head out into the sticks of Boso Hanto to find fragments of the old 'gun' on the administrative map.

In England we have an ancient geography like this that as a visitor you wouldn't even notice now. Back in medieval times our counties were divided into 'hundreds' and these often dated from the eighth or ninth century. Where I lived in Lancashire for example our house was in the "Amounderness Hundred" but that's a name you won't find on a modern map. Originally they were called that because in time of war each area had to find a hundred horsemen to fight for the king.

Ethnic Restaurants

It wasn't on my busy schedule but somehow we ended up down at Motosuka Beach this morning casting a wary eye over the Pacific. Edera has her annual student trip coming up during Golden Week and we she's thinking of beachcombing this year rather than a 'nature walk'. So she had to make sure that there was some stuff there to actually beach comb, and also check wheelchair access. OK on both counts.

On the way back we stopped off at an Italian Restaurant on the road to Naruto. Western readers will immediately conjure up images here of hearty Italian chefs chucking pizza dough around and singing Puccini tenor arias out there in the kitchen. Japanese readers on the other hand will have no such colourful expectations.

One of the consequences of having so few 'gaijin' here is that - with the exception of Chinese Restaurants which seem to be run by Chinese wherever you are - most so called 'ethnic' restuarants in Japan seem to be purely Japanese businesses. In Britain and America of course it's exactly the opposite - and where English waiters do work in such places serving a distinctive national cusine they usually pretend to be foreigners so you can't tell the difference anyway.

Not much point in some middle aged Japanese lady pretending to be from Napoli or Venezia - it's obviously not true eh? In most cases I'd guess that these purveyors of usually Italian or French 'style' fare have never even been outside Japan.

Usually the menus are works of art and the lunches are rather nice but seldom do they bear any strong resemblance to the food in the country of origin. I can't remember the last time I got a bowl of sticky rice with a meal in France or Italy for sure.

Today I had pizza. Why did I do that? I KNOW it's not the same and also only going to be about half the size of a European one but just for a minute I hoped a jolly Roman chef with a few days stubble on his chin would burst cheerfully out of the kitchen laden down with sizzling dishes. But Hey! It turned out to be rather tasty anyway, so who is complaining eh?

Sponsored match

I know some of you are just bursting to ask me so I'll put you out of your misery straight away. Last Saturday Kyoto Purple Sangha lost 3-0 (that's "three - nil") to the Saitama Red Diamonds. Neale said that if they went on playing as badly as that for the rest of the season they are sure to get relegated.

Sounds like the sort of team us self-respecting Northerners will have no difficulty supporting eh? It's the sort of football we love to watch. "Purple Sangha nil..." Yes, it has a certain class...

When I worked for the brewery I once got invited to a football match between West Hartlepool and Sunderland - what in England we refer to as a 'local Derby' between two neighbouring towns. The popular joke about this team goes ...

First Man: "Did you go to see West Hartlepool playing last Saturday afternoon ...?"

Second Man: "No! They never came to see me in hospital when I was bad ..."

Ho!Ho!Ho!

This is the only football match I've ever visited as a "V.I.P." We had 'sponsored' the home team and were invited to pre-match drinks and to a seat in the 'Director's Box'. Actually I think the extent of our 'sponsorship' probably amounted to a few dozen cans of lager for the 'committee' to sup before the game. At that time Hartlepool had been bumping along at the bottom of the Fourth Division for years. They were so poor that to make it up into the 'box' from the "director's suite" (a wooden shed under the stand) you had to negotiate a steep wooden staircase and be vey careful not to put your weight on the third step as it was broken.

What I always remember about that game was the stoic resignation and acceptance in the voices of the two old guys in tweed caps in front of me every time Sunderland sunk yet another goal into the corner of the net. "Well, I could see that one coming a mile off ..." But sadly the Hartlepool 'goalie' didn't share their perspicacity. He had a talent for being in the right place at the wrong time.

After that trip I always had a 'soft spot' for Hartlepool. Maybe sometime soon the 'Purple Sangha' directors will invite me down for a few beers before the 'big game' eh?

For the honour of it ...

Flicking through my academic email tonight after a long trip over to Tsurumi today I was interested to see a circular there from the Institute of East Asian Anthropology.

It seems that the IEAA is about to award this year's Tsu Book Prize for the book that has made "the most significant contribution" in their field for 2006 and they are seeking nominations.

Getting down to the small print though I see that the actual value of this award is USD 250 (GBP 130 or JPY 25,000 yen). Now I know it's the honour of this kind of stuff that is supposed to the thing that matters. But I was looking at sweat shirts the other day in Sogo that cost more than this. Admittedly very expensive sweat shirts eh?

And the other catch is, to be considered for this award you have to send three (non-returnable) copies of the book for considreation to the selection committee. Now as I'm sure you realise hard back copies of new academic books don't come cheap either.

I was left wondering a bit about this IEAA award. Suddenly it felt a bit like those jokes about the Irish winning the Eurovision Song Contest for years in a row ("Hey! Looks like you guys will have to hold this event in Dublin again next year!")

Anywy, if you've been penning any major contributions to East Asian Anthroplogy recently and are seeking rewards or honours now is your chance. And if you haven't you can always buy a lottery ticket. Or lend some money to the British Labour Party ... oh drat! Sorry, it slipped out, I wasn't going to put that...

Truth is often stranger than fiction

My friend Neale turned up to our Japanese class wearing his "Chelmsford City" football shirt this morning. Sad eh? It's almost the same colour as a Burnley shirt (as in "Burnley, nil") which somehow makes it even sadder seen in breezy Spring Japanese sunshine. He was on his way over to Urawa for a match.

I'm not a "football person" and I know absolutely nothing about either the Japanese 'game' or the 'Saitama Reds'. But the thing that really got me roaring with laughter was when he mentioned the team they were playing today - the 'Kyoto Purple Sangha'.

If any of my Buddhist friends think this is a late and elaborate 'April Fool' and don't believe me take a lookie here ...!

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Purple_Sanga

This team plays in the Japanese First Division, and their ground is in Shimogyo-ku . Well, I never knew that before but as of now I think I'm probably a 'supporter' of any team that has a name like this.

Somehow a whole art gallery full of Monty Pythonesque images bursts into my mind here. As the crowd roars with delight a 'squad' of rather mature tonsured players wearing kesas solemnly processes to the centre of the pitch and makes gassho to their opponents before kicking off! Oh goodness! I'd better desist before I dig an even deeper hole or get myself into even hotter water, which ever is the most appropriate simile ...

But truth is often stranger than fiction eh?

Adding up people

Into the Prefecture Archive Library today to get some more census data. They are really helpful there, perhaps the friendliest bunch I've ever met in a library anywhere.

It was my first trip into Chiba since January and it was nice to be in the old place again. We can't stop knocking it down eh? Every time I'm away for a couple of weeks there's a new hole in the ground or a building site fence sprung up somewhere. I was surprised to see that the big new complex of condominiums near Chiba-chuo station was finished and people were living in some of them. It doesn't seem yesterday since there was a tatty old car park on that site.

In the archive they had tracked down the local census reports for 1925, 1930, 1935 and 1940 for me. This kind of stuff is very rare here and I thought I'd have to go to the National Diet Library in Tokyo to get them. Several libraries have bound photostats of the first (1920) Population Census but I've never seen any of these later ones before.

As always it's like 'touching history' to handle these fragile and yellowing little books. In one of them some long dead official had been working out some totals in pencil in the margin. For me it's like peering into another world - far more so than to handle the equivalent material in Britain. Who was it that once said "The Past is a different country - they do things differently there ..."?

The 1925 and 1935 censuses were pretty basic but the 1930 report is amazing - so much detail on local employment and the shape of typical Japanese families. I'll publish some of it on my own web site soon.

The 1940 Census copy wasn't so old - it was a 'reprint' issued in 1962. I guess all the originals printed were 'classified information' as they wouldn't have been in print until after Pearl Harbour.

Goodness! - interesting stuff! In that year's volumes information on the Japanese colonies in East Asia was also included. The statisticians in Tojo Hideki's office must have struggled to add up their numbers in such a way that they managed to reflect the new realities in their world while producing information that they could compare with earlier reports.

To get around their difficulty they classified people as 'Inlanders', 'Overseas-landers' and 'foreigners'. It might seem strange now but actually in Britain too we used a very similar approach when we classified people as either 'British' or 'Commonweath' citizens when issuing passports. And for pretty well exactly the same reasons too.

Hospital appointment

Off to hospital for my regular diabetic check-up this morning. It was a long time since my last visit - late January - and during my time in England with all that fried food and cheese around I was hardly strict about my diet. So no surprises that my long term blood sugar level is stuck on 'much too high' eh?

I should have gone last Friday but it just wasn't possible, and also they are closing the 'external doctor' service that I'm using, so I suspected we might be in for a long wait and I wasn't wrong there either. In the end we were there around three hours. The system here would confuse English readers but basically they have the equivalent of a 'GP' service on the ground floor of the hostpital building and in future most of this 'work' - including me - will be farmed out to other local doctors.

I came away from this visit feeling very depressed somehow, and it wasn't just the long wait that did it. Nor was it the people there who are pleasant enough and try to do their best. It was something much more fundamental and something that's so often an aspect of medical institutions. The 'system' here has me classified as a kind of ongoing (and dare I mention it profitable) 'problem' that can be resolved by defined procedures and tests. Actually no one even really thinks about my health in a direct sense at all. I'm a data collection project and a medication marketing opportunity. I must sound a bit cynical.

At the moment lots of 'life' feels a bit this way. 'Modernity' promises so much but what does it ever deliver? Do we even expect it to 'deliver' any more? 'Progress' to where exactly? In George Orwell's novel '1984' the 'Ministry of Plenty' produced endless meaningless data in the face of famine.

Even simple flush toilets pollute someone else's rivers and the electric light I read by causes global warming, to say nothing of antibiotics, internal combustion engines and all the rest of it.


Take no notice of me - I'll be cheerful again tomorrow. One of my favorite corny jokes goes "Cheer up!" they said, "things could be worse!" So I did cheer up and they did get worse ...

Asking for 'Directions'

I had an email this morning from Julia - she's on holiday with a friend in France at the moment and as the 'time difference' is seven hours she must just have just sent it before heading off to bed. She wanted me to give her 'directions' as to how to get to a particular railway bridge in the middle of the Burgundian countryside. She's planning a trip there today.

Actually I couldn't remember exactly where she needs to turn off the main road without a map but I'm sure my directions will be specific enough for them to find it. It's about a kilometre south of the Nolay - Autun road near where the road from Epinay crosses it.

It made me smile to think she thought this bridge important enough to show someone else. It has a kind of long 'family history' with us. A small country lane crosses over the French high speed TGV rail tracks in a pretty forest. It's a great place to watch trains - they are frequent and they roar past at about 280 km.p.h. In fact you have to be very quick to get a photo - there's a slight bend so the trains are only visble for two or three seconds before they are rushing beneath you under the bridge.

Julia and I first visited this spot on a trip to France when she was ten and I got a very nice picture of her standing on the bridge with a train coming in the background behind her shoulder. Later, when she was sixteen I took her and her friend Emma to the same place and took an identical picture. That was a crazy trip - we also stood on that bridge at night in the dark singing carols in the rain to appoaching trains. You could see coming over the horizon like thunderstorms because the overhead electrical wires were so wet.

Eighteen months ago we made another trip to Burgundy (my favourite part of France!) and I took another identical picture - so now there are three spanning sixteen years! Julia changes of course - and so do the trains. The old red TGVs have long vanished in favour of more modern equipment. And so - slowly - have the trees in the background. Maybe I should buy a house around here and retire to this bit of Burgundy, then I could watch trains all day long

Married Monks

It's a grey and rainy evening down here in leafy Chiba-ken, and a good time to have one's nose in a book. Today I've been taking a look at one I ordered from Amazon ages ago but haven't had a chance to read before. It is "Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marraige in Modern Japanese Buddhism" by Richard Jaffe

Sounds dull? Well, you are wrong. It's an exceptionally well written work into an unusual but very interesting topic., one that many Japanese don't understand.

Japan is unique in that Buddhist clergy here can marry. In 1872 the Meiji government passed a regulation - the nikujiki saitai - permitting monks to marry and eat meat. But actually they were really recognising something that had been taking place regularly for the previous 1200 years. Apart from the early Tokugawa Era - when with characteristic severity it was forbidden on pain of death along with a lot of other things in life! - clerical marraige has been an enduring feature of Japanese Buddhism.

Maybe one wider reason for this is the importance of family continuity in Japan. There has always been a strong tradition of 'hereditary' change in society, that sons inherit and learn the trades of their fathers. And in the end temples have been no exception. That's something that doesn't apply in China or Sri Lanka. Also there's a strong 'pastoral' tradition here that comes mainly from the inportance of family connections with temples for funerals.

In Britain we have never had any tradition of 'inheriting' churches. In fact it's unimaginable to us, churches were always community and public buildings. In history though often some local landowner would have the 'gift' of the 'living' a church in the area offered to bestow on a clergyman he admired. Even if priest's sons became priests in turn themselves it would usually be somewhere different to their childhood home.

Another Turn of the Screw

Shinta-kun turned up for a game of chess this afternoon - it's the first time we've had a chance to play since the start of February and he's obviously been brooding over possible ways of beating me. Ho!ho! One day maybe if he gets a lot craftier.

As today was the 'start of the new term' I added a new rule to our game. From now on, once you have touched a piece you have to play it. There's no changing your mind. Another 'turn of the screw' and added pressure for him.

This is just a standard chess rule of course, but so far I haven't been that strict so that he could get the hang of the basics of play first. Now he'll have to really think with his head instead of his fingers. So at last we are pretty well playing standard chess rules except that we haven't covered what happens if you get a pawn to the other side of the board yet. Oh! And the 'en passant' move whatever that is - not sure I understand that one myself.

English souvenir and cheap china shops often have a cheerful little notice next to their fragile wares that reads

"Lovely to look at, nice to hold,
But if you break it, we say 'Sold!'"

I couldn't help but think watching Shinta-kun sitting on his hands to keep them out of mischief how difficult the rest of our lives would be if we had to live by a rule of 'not touching' until we were absolutely sure what we were going to do. No feeling of stuff in shops, taking books off the shelf to see what is inside or picking up packets of anything to take a peer at their contents.

I guess I make my mind up with my eyes first, my fingers second and my then senses of smell and taste long bfore my brain ever wakes up and says "OK guys! What's it going to be then?"

How about you?

Goodbye Kuu

Today we took Kuu for cremation. It was beautiful weather for it, a real Spring day full of bright sunshine and breezes.

The animal crematorium is only about twenty minutes drive from here and thanks to a good map we found it easily enough. It's actually a rural Buddhist temple which has had special facilites added in one area for animal funerals.

Japanese friends will have to please excuse me talking about this in some detail but the experience was so different to what happens in England that I know some Western Buddhist friends who read my 'Blog' would like me to share my impressions with them.

In Judeo-Christian theology animals are traditionally considered as being distinct from humans in the sense that they "have no soul". I could never understand how anyone could believe this and I'm sure this is changing a lot but in our culture. Nevertheless it's still not common for animals to have a funeral. There are animal crematoria but I've never used one.

Our old dog Crackers had a Buddhist ceremony and burial up at our temple in Northumerland, a place she'd visited often and really loved. Our cat Barry, who was killed on the road, was buried in our large garden which I felt was the place he loved best. As with Kuu, I recited some suitable scripture myself.

My guess is that where animals do have funerals in the West usually they will take the form of a short homily where someone will speak about what a loving pet they had been.

I haven't been to a funeral here yet for a person but I'm sure that today's cremation was very like attending one and that no big distinction is made between animals and people. And it was a much more 'hands on' ceremony than anything I've ever experienced before.

We didn't ask for sutras to be chanted so Kuu was simply placed next to the altar and we offered some incense together. After a while we moved him into the room next door which was where the incinerator was. I took him from the box we'd carried him in and laid him in the kiln carefully. Then while we offered incense again the priest closed the door and lit the furnace.

In Britain this was something that would never happen - at funerals for people there during the ceremony the coffin slides out of the chapel behind curtains and there is no contact at all with the actual process of burning.

We were shown into a waiting area with many memorials to pets where we could sit quietly toegether. After an hour we were called down to collect Kuu's bones which ad been placed in a tray on another altar. these we had to pick up with special hashi (chopsticks) and put into a jar to bring home.

Again this was very different - in the West we usually pick up the ashes or have them delivered some days later. Also, in England the bones are ground to a powder before they are returned to us. We thanked the priest and his assistant and brought Kuu home again. Now for forty nine days he's on our home altar in the corner above the TV, next to my father's eihei.

So, there's the whole history of our day. In some ways much more direct than what I've experienced before but it felt fine. I was reflecting driving home that now in my life I've so far said goodbye to four people and three animals that were deeply dear to me. Each time there is grief but maybe now I hope I look at what's happening more carefully.

Are Japanese cities changing for the worse?

A reader from Shimane-ken (hi Jason!) has asked me what my thoughts are on the book "Dogs and Demons" by Alex Kerr and what I think of his basic assertion that Japanese cities like Kyoto are changing for the worse.

Actually I've not read this book yet - it's on a long list I'm working my way through this year. Buy hey! Whenever did that prevent a cheapskate academic like me from 'sounding off'. I've read the reviews 'ain't I? My two pennyworth is as good as anyone else's.

Hard for me to answer a question like this except straight form the heart and I really could write a whole book on this topic already. So many angles it's hard to know where to begin but let's pick out one or two ...

When I first moved here from England there were many superficial things that struck me as 'ugly' (but also often 'interesting' too) about Japanese cities. So from an aesthetic angle for example - to English eyes - Japanese 'street furniture' and especially the maze of overhead lines, poles and transformers is unsightly. We bury most of ours, so the place looks a lot 'neater' but then we have to dig far more holes in the road afterwards. Anyway, buried utilities wouldn't be a good idea in such an earthquake prone environment. Also in many parts of Europe - such as small Irish towns for example - overhead supply is the norm.

It's much more subtle than this though. Few of the 'rules' of European city layout apply in Japan and there is relatively less interest in the appearance of circulation space here too.

The sheer amount of coastal land reclamation that has happened also has such an impact on places. It feels to me that after the loss of Manchuko a new version of it was built around Japanese shores just to keep planners and politicians happy.

I sometimes go to the shrine at Inage just to meditiate on the reality of it. When I was in High School this place still overlooked the beach and Tokyo Bay and people came here for seaside holidays. Now it overlooks the coast highway and the city environment (mostly public housing) extends to the far horizon. More than 20 square kilometres of sea were filled in here and built over. If you look at the whole of Japan in the 1960's more than 600 square kilometres of new urban space was taken from the sea - that's the size of a new small Prefecture. And when you look at for example at Hiroshige's engraving of this scene as it used to be it can seem shocking price to pay for 'growth'.

On the other hand more than anywhere else I've ever got to know well Japanese urban space really 'works'. Generally it's clean, fairly graffiti free, well looked after and you can move around pretty well anywhere and feel completely safe. Usually you can move around easily too. Where else can you say that about in the world?

And when you really look at it, despite the modern designs and plastic components, much of it - well, at least the timber framed built parts of it - still have very strong 'cultural' links with physical forms of the way people's grandparents lived. Not always - it is changing - the move to Western-style individual 'study bedrooms' for kids and all the social change that implies for example. But under the skin it feels to me that the changes are not as big as observers imagine. And certainly not all for the worse.

At least most people get a reasonable share of private space now. Property lives are so short in Japan that it's easy to forget that the reason you don't see older buildings in cities often is because those that survivied the War or were built soon after were often so small and of such poor quality that the only thing you would ever want to do is knock them down and build something better.

Goodness - hardly even begun to scratch the surface of this question but better leave it there for tonight before I send everyone to sleep ...

Some sad news

Sad to say our dog Kuu died this afternoon.

He was a good age, thirteen or fourteen, and he'd been ill for about a week. Actually he's been ailing little by little for some months, and I could see he was no longer walking straight or eating with much appetite. But all through the winter he's been in good spirits when I've taken him out for his short trips around the block twice a day.

Last Saturday on the way back from his evening walk I felt a little tug on the leash as he suddenly slowed up. It was hardly anything and yet I could sense something very different was happening. Within a day the energy seemed to just desert him completely.

And yet these last few days he hung onto life tenaciously. Now today it seemed it was time for him to let go and we were able to be with him those last few hours.

Kuu was an outdoors dog. His kennel was like a tortoise shell or a nomad's tent for him and on rainy days he'd just sit there for hours watching the world go by. Although he hated to get his feet wet it used to amaze me how hardy he was, the way he could happily either curl up in the snow or pant in the shade under a shrub as the thermometer went over thirty five.

Sometimes you could almost forget he was there, but exactly at feeding or walk time he would soon remind you. His timekeeping was amazing. And you always got a big welcome home when you came back - he could recognise the particiular sound of our car engine before I could even hear the car coming.

So much I could write about Kuu even in the few years I've known him. But that's enough for now.

Changing Season

It's interesting just how many weeks of the year seem to slip by with apparently little happening and then a lot of change seems to get packed into a few days. I think this is probably more illusion than reality - we just aren't as "tuned in" to noticing change happening at other times.

Anyway you would have been hard pressed not to notice the seasonal changes going on down in leafy Chiba-ken during the last few days. Within a week the cherry blossoms have come, been at their best and already begun to fall.


This morning we headed over to Togane to do a bit of blossom viewing. Edera actually wore a kimono for the occasion but she's a bit shy of me posting her picture here so you will just have to make do with some pictures of the blossom instead.

There's a very pretty lake at Togane on the edge of town. I haven't checked out the exact history but this was a popular place with the early Tokugawa shoguns and I can see why. At this time of year it's just a blizzard of blossom blowing over the water surrounded by forests of rich green cedars.

Now the other two things I noticed about this week are these. Sitting reading on Tuesday I saw my first mosquito of the year floating past outside the window and I've seen two more since. And at night those frogs have started to croak eh? I first noticed them on Sunday. I wonder where they are hanging out at the moment. The tanbo haven't been flooded yet or even ploughed around here so they must be in the long grass around the ditches I guess. In a couple of weeks time they will be louder than the 'Hallelujah Chorus' out there on dark nights.

Does anyone know what it means?

Today my entry is short and also early! We're going into Tokyo to do some shopping as Edera needs to buy some books for her classes. Me, I'll just tag along for the ride but I'm sure I'll find something to buy somewhere. Afterwards - choir!

I seemed to spend all of yesterday reading books that I didn't enjoy but ought to have read already, specifically one by a "well known American geographer" who had better remain anonymous because I know my friend Neale who sometimes reads this blog likes his work.

At one point, having read a sentence five times and still not having the slightest idea of what the author was trying to say, I did start to wonder. How come a bunch of so many words could communicate so little. I'm used to reading hard stuff that can be a bit like peering through smoked glass, or even the kind of beaten glass you find in bathroom windows. But this was more like trying to watch butterflies through a concrete wall.

Did the author really know what he was talking about here? Or was this just some kind of verbal 'log jam', a great mass of word timber stuck on some river in Canada waiting for a flood to loosen it and wash it away. Until now I've given him the benefit of the doubt that at least HE know what e was talking about but now I'm not so sure. Does anyone know what it means?

Surely to goodness if you have something to say you ought to be able to explain it to others clearly. If not, we are all doomed.

Anyway a trip to Tokyo will give me a break from books.

You can plan too much

Here's another photograph that I found in a box on my latest trip to England. I took it in Hungary during a visit there in 1977.

It's a grave headstone that I noticed in the grounds of the cathedral at Miskolc. It's not a big building - more like a large parish church. I seem to remember that it's on a small hill away from the shopping streets with quite large grounds and a big cemetry from which you can overlook the city's industrial area.

But if you look closely at this stone you'll see that the last two digits of the year of death have still to be carved. The '19' has been cut in stone but not the rest. This grave is as yet uninhabited. The couple that own it are still out in the city somewhere about their business. I guess they always wanted to 'get planted' here so they have bought the plot, the stone and even had inscription carved apart from the last bit of the date. After the funeral the mason will whip out his chisel and finish the job.

I have a friend in Lancashire well known for her passion for saving money who bought her own coffin when they were 'on offer' at a very good discount years ago and kept in under her mobile home for years. But when she came to move house it turned out to have rotted after all - if she'd gone ahead with her plan to use it she'd probably have ended up on the crematorium floor. So in the end it wasn't a good buy eh?.

I've always worried about the outcome of this headstone case. It seems to be a terrible 'hostage to fortune' to me, just tempting fate to grant you a long lfe so that you'll have to do something about the '19' you already had carved. Maria Szabo for example would only have to live to 84 - back in the 1950's that might have seemed hard to imagine but with the advances of modern medicine ...

I wonder if as the millenium approached she lay awake at night thinking "Good grief! I should never have had that '19' carved ... the expense of it all now!"

Yes, you can plan too much. One day I'll have to go back to Hungary just to see how this story ended up.

School uniform

Into Narita today to pick up M-chan's new school uniform at the Bon Belta store. The new school year starts later this week and this store has a whole section there devoted to supplying uniforms for ten High Schools in the area.

And they don't come cheap do they? There's no-one out there saying "Hey! Parents have a hard time forking out for this stuff - let's offer them a helping hand with something low budget for a change".

In Japan you just love the detailed distinctions between local schools - and when it comes to variety in uniforms that's where the cost lies. In Britain now around 90% of uniforms at least seem to consist just of black blazer, grey trousers and a white shirt or blouse. You can buy this stuff cheaply enough in ordinary clothes stores, usually for less than half what you pay here.

And for most girls in England skirts and dresses are now just part of history - I noticed this time at our local school in Garstang that even there they were wearing trousers too. The main school uniform issue for us - and there is a case going through the courts at the moment - is how far schools should allow Muslim girls to wear traditional clothes. I can't imagine this one getting far in Japan, even in Narita.

Of course we still DO have schools in England with outrageously expensive uniforms, with violet blazers trimmed with navy blue cording and boys wearing top hats. But these are usually just for the outrageously rich who can afford such stuff

In the band

Here's a photo I turned up in a box during my recent trip to England that will give some of my friends a good laugh. It's me in my band uniform with my big B-flat Bass. I'm posing in the garden of our house in Ifield, Crawley and I'd guess the year is 1963 or 1964.

I can remember getting into trouble from the neighbours for practicing this instument at home but what puzzles me now is how I ever got it to and from band practice which was held about six kilometres away. Did I carry it on my back on my bike? Probably. I don't recall. We must have led charmed lives in those days.

When singing in our choir at Nogiku Plaza, and especially in the occasional concerts that we do with our excellent brass band here, I often remember those teenage years that I spent in the Copthorne Silver Band in Sussex, England. Kids then were really encouraged to learn to make music - in our school choirs and orchestras, in the County Youth Orchestra and in the church choir and band. It's where I first learned to love music making, something that has now much later become very important to me again here in Japan.

The band used to meet in a draughty village hall near St. Nicholas Church in the village of Worth. Now all this area is part of a huge 'New Town' development but when I lived there that was only half complete and Copthorne and Worth were still farming villages.

I can remember very little detail about those years, but I do recall with a smile some of those often eccentric Sussex countrymen who loved to play instruments and helped me to do the same. On one occasion we took part in a big band festival in Tunbridge Wells and I think that must have been the first time I ever took part in any kind of stage event. On the way home of course the bus stopped at a pub for the men to sink a several pints of beer and as an under-age sixteen year old I was told to stay on the bus. But someone remembered to bring me out glasses of lemonade and packets of crips. These days if we go on the train take part in competitions in Chiba or Funabashi I have to make do with bottles of green tea and rice balls ...

Cherry blossom

We have had a couple of calmer days here in southern Kanto and the blossom has started to look pretty good along our Sakuta River. Actually 'river' is a bit of a grand term for it, it's more of a 'stream' or even 'beck' by northern English standards and like most Japanese rivers was long ago corraled within concrete levees. But at this time of year it looks beautiful.

I thought that the blossom would be wrecked this year. On Wednesday and Thursday the wind was very fierce but luckily the buds hadn't opened. If it's still around next Wednesday we'll take a look at the big tree up in Imba-gun, always a lovely sight.

It doesn't last long does it? That's the charm and symbolism of it for us. I remember once when I worked in Cardiff in Wales a spectacularly beautiful display one year that vanished in about two days because the weather was so stormy.

In Japan the 'cherry blossom front' is tracked closely spreading north from Kyuushu and up through Honshu. But today I found myself wondering how it spread across the whole northern hemisphere - is Tokyo in bloom the same week as Paris or Washington for example? That would be an interesting project for someone to set up on the internet. And where are the furthest north cherry trees? Iceland? Kamchatka? Alaska? When do they blossom?

After a week of awful jet-lag I'm also a bit curious as to how it all works in Australia, where I guess blossom time is in October. The first trees there must have been taken from England and travelled for months on a sailing ship but how does a tree decide when Spring is? Interesting question.