Water Garden

Lovely hot summer day today and so I nagged Edera into putting her books aside for a few hours and making a trip up to Sawara with two friends - Nakano-san and Suzuki-san.

There are lots of things to see around Sawara, an old centre in the very north of leafy Chiba-ken, and I'll mention a few of them over the next couple of days. But our main objective for this morning was the Aquatic Botanical Garden just to the north of the town across the Tone River.

Until recently this part of Japan was one huge swamp, but it was drained during the Meiji era and is now a fertile plain with rice growing from horizon to horizon. But there's a wonderful centre for aquatic and marshland plants. This is the time to go and look at the irises coming into bloom and in July the lotuses are amazing - we will make another trip up there then.

After the walk we were hungry and stopped off at a nice restaurant in town - the 'Auberge de Manoir'. Hmm ... I remember the time when Edera was very happy to eat out at a Mossburger but these days she's acquiring a taste for good living. It must be the idea of a trip to France coming up soon.

Shopping for Furniture

Today we took a trip over to the 'Hard-Off' recycling store in Yachimata. Edera has had her heart set on a special chest of drawers for kimono all week that she saw there and I fancied a more comfortable chair for my desk.

Well, we came back with a lorry load. Only a very small lorry of course - a neat white Toyota pick-up of the kind that farmers around here always use. It was fun to drive - and using my very best 'leafy Chiba-ken style' farmer techniques I hovered nervously at every cross roads and junction and squinted at passing drivers.

In the back of the truck was the kimono cabinet, a nice oak table style desk I liked and a typing chair. This major investment came to 2 man yen (aboout GBP 100). Last of the big spenders - that's us. We even dined out at a Mossburger shop.

Furniture is something I haven't often shopped for in my life. Apart from a new bed all the furniture I moved to Lancashire with in March is 'hand-me-downs' from close family, mainly my great great aunts and my grandfather. There's some really nice things there - actually my grandfather made the dining table and chairs himself, he was quite a craftsman joiner. When I sit in England reading in the evening it's like being surrounded by the family that once owned them again.

The Alpinist

I woke up in one of those awful sweats this morning. In my dream I was sure I owed the UK tax man a pile of money and I was late paying it. Well, I don't actually owe him anything at all but I had a bill to pay some money they thought I MIGHT owe this year. And it had to be done by 31st May! Good grief!

But after about an hour of tearing around looking for internet passwords and the like to check my tax account it seems it's not due until 31st July - perhaps I can get my tax records sorted out by then and avoid paying anything. Phew!

I ought to take a leaf out of the book of the Alpinist featured above. As far as I can see Pero is totally fearless of anyhing and especially of heights, she might as well be a bird. This aftrenoon I noticed her traversing the 'south face' of the second floor of our house, at one point just making a gravity defying leap between our bedroom window sill and a balcony about a metre away. How does she do that? Ever since I built the shed and the roof over the decking it seems that there's no part of the house she can't pay a visit to - you can see why people talk about 'cat burglars'.

Electric Fans

I've got the fan out this evening - after a couple of cooler days it's become hotter and stickier suddenly down here in leafy Chiba-ken.

We seldom use fans in England. It's interesting to experience just how cooling a gentle stream of air can be, you wouldn't think that just by swishing it around a bit you could arrive at that degree of comfort. After all it's just as warm and sticky as all the other air in the room. Why is that I wonder? I suppose moving air carries away a bit more perspiration from the surface of the skin.

Last year wandering around Cainz Home during the summer I was fascinated by the seasonal fan display. There's a patch of floor space that takes kerosene stoves, Santa Claus suits and the like and in June it's home to electric fans. They are amazingly cheap in Japan. But last year they had some, rather more expensive, 'heritage' designs, 1960's style re-makes made of tin and painted a sickly green-brown. So we can even get nostalgic about old time desk fans eh? I suppose the UK equivalent would be look-alike coal fires.

Once I had a boss at the brewery who bought about 500 little battery operated hand fans and gave them away as 'presents' to guests at a boozy banquet. I spent a whole afternoon fitting batteries to the wretched things and they reminded me of little model areoplane propellors. That's what they looked like to the revellers at the banquet too - inebriated guests were dancing around all night with 'propellors' in either hand singing the 'Dam Busters'March at the top of their voices. After that you can be sure there was to be no more talk of fans at brewery banquets.

Wilko!

End of an era ...

No Japanese class this morning but we went out for some cake (and later some curry!) because Cody is back across the Pacific to Canada in a few days time and shortly down to Cuba to learn Spanish. And at the end of June Joyce will be back to California and Wu-san back to China. Poor old Maejima-sensei will be stuck with just Neale and I, possibly her worst students ever ... if not longer!

Here we all are about to indulge in surplus sugar in a Nepali cafe in Togane. Yummy.

From the left Maejima-sensei, Joyce, a passing bear, Wu-san, Cody, Neale and me

A serious book

I don't often mention books when I write but I've got my nose into one at the moment that I am finding riveting reading.

Actually for several reasons I hesitated to buy a copy. It's John W. Dower's "War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War" and it examines the beliefs that Americans and Japanese once held about each other.

John Dower is an excellent historian and someone who show he really understands the meaning of 'quality' in the way he thinks and writes. In this book he looks in careful, documented detail at the part racism played in American, British and Japanese thinking during the war.

It's a very painful read in some ways but what I found very interesting in his argument was the length of time it takes for racial stereotypes to emerge. So many of the racist attitudes around in the 1940's actually had their origins in sixteenth century Europe, the Japan of Hideyoshi and the wars against native Americans from the seventeenth century. In a way generations of racial hatred were taken down off the shelf and 'used' against a new enemy - a new purpose for old prejudices.

Inevitably this book is disturbing because as a reader you can see that exactly these same old stereotypes are now being used to define, describe and denigrate new enemies. Like nuclear weapons, cultural 'methodologies' of hatred once invented aren't so easily put down eh? They are one burden that is not so easy to 'lay down by the river side' as you might hope or think. But ignorance of karmic consequence was never any excuse.

Making graceful exits

I had to smile reading the "Guardian" on the internet today. It seems that George Bush has said that he would like our UK Prime Minister - the nice Mr. Blair - to hang on a bit and still be around for the rest of his Presidency. "Don't retire like you said you would Tony!" I wonder what the rest of the UK Labour Party would make of that one.

I seem to remember that Mr. Koizumi also said something about retiring this summer too, didn't he? Where are we with that now I wonder ...?

One thing is sure, it's getting very difficult to make a graceful exit these days and especially if you are a politician. In Britain our leaders seem to end up so hated and despised that even their best friends will hurl clods of earth at their retreating backs as they finally stumble for the door. Everyone loves to think of the 'legacy' they will leave to their grateful successors but the truth is that they can't get you away off the premises soon enough.

I occasionally remind myself of my last days in managerial employment. The project I had been working on for a year was headed straight for the rocks as my bosses failed hopelessly and also totally predictably to live up to their earlier fine words of support. Basically the world had moved on in that time and the little bit of it that had been me was surplus to requirements.There were other priorities.

Well, I hope that I made a graceful exit, it feels like I did. People clapped anyway. When it's time to go it's best just to push off eh? There's so many other more interesting things around, don't ever make the mistake of defining yourself simply by what you do. Let's hope that Mr. Blair and Mr. Koizumi can learn to let go too when the time comes.

A small burial

This afternoon we buried Kuus' bones - it was the 'correct day' for the ceremony. Forty nine days after the cremation is reckoned to be the usual time in Japan. This last month and a half they have been sitting in a white pot, together with his photograph, on the family altar in the corner of our washitsu.

Around tea-time after the last students had left we offered incense and a scripture for him and took his pot of ashes out to a hole I'd dug next to the big bush behind our mailbox. It was his favourite spot for lurking and I hope he would have really approved of it - just a few steps from where his kennel used to be. During the summer he loved to lie in the shade there on hot mornings and watch the world go by on the other side of the fence. Occasionally (and just for fun of course!) he'd give our post lady a quick 'bark surprise'. It was also a great place for him to sit very still and then leap at the railings as canine or feline enemies passed unsuspectingly by.

When we carried his little white jar outside Tora was waiting for us by the hole. I'm sure he knew exactly what we were doing. They were great friends and he was very anxious when Kuu was dying. Afterwards he went and sat in front of the empty kennel for a long time.

Later Edera and I took a walk together around the area in some lovely evening sunshine and seemed to meet about every dog in the neighbourhood on our little trip.

Floreat Castellum

When I was at University back in the 1960's this was where I ate most of my meals - the Great Hall of Durham Castle. The castle once belonged to the Prince Bishops of Durham but during the 1830's it was getting to be an expensive place to maintain and someone hit on the great idea of giving it away to start a new university - at that time only the third in England.

Over the years many other colleges were founded in the University and Durham is now a very big academic centre but this one - 'University College' - was the first. They can't "take it away from us". And 'Castlemen' like to remind everyone else about that too, snobs that we are. I don't think we ever turned out any English Prime Ministers but the college has certainly turned out plenty of well meaning eccentrics down the decades, including me.

In my day it really was men only (well, theoretically you understand, and between 10:00 pm and 7:00 am) but now they also have those wadd'yecall'ems - women - as students too.

So it always makes me laugh when I hear what University College Durham is best known for these days. Can you guess? Go on - take a good look - you have seen this hallowed institution before I'm sure.

You are right! This is Hogwarts! Yep! - the actual room that is used in the Harry Potter movie! You know the bit where they rush through the doors into the hall ...

Two hundred years of the best esoteric scholarship and we finally got put on the map at last by a fantasy story. Of course we don't usually own up to it, but us Castlemen are not above murmuring to others "This is where the Harry Potter movie was made" with the intention of impressing them. Can you believe it?

Kindergardens

Walking the streets around Mihama-ku during the last two weeks I've often noticed the sound of kids. Well, they have to keep 'em somewhere I suppose.

No - seriously - it's not that I don't hear kids elsewhere in the city but they are relatively scarce and in some areas almost non-existent. Japan's 'problems' with an ageing population can be pretty obvious even in urban areas - there are relatively so few children being born here now that in 2006 it is expected that the national population will actually shrink for the first time.

Politicians who all love graphs that go up and run out of imagination when they don't seem to think that this is a huge problem. But actually I can see a lot of potential benefits in having less people around.

Maybe I notice the kids in Mihama-ku becasue there are relatively many more young families in some parts and also the wide planned streets are quiet and noise echoes around the place. If you get a bunch of kids enjoying life in a kindergarden playground the noise carries far.

Born in 1947 I was a post-war 'baby-boomer' - actually the biggest 'cohort' of kids ever to have entered school in the UK when we arrived there in 1952. We didn't have kindergardens at all, there was simply no provision in Britain then. We grew up in those first five years at home and often spent time with grandparents. School - which was a much sterner and threatening environment in the 1950's - was a big step up the 'growing up' ladder.

Would I have enjoyed Kindergarden? I was shy when I was little, actually I still am. I often wonder how I would have got on when I see small kids playing here in big groups. My guess is that I would have found an inseperable playmate, probably a girl, and played very happily with her in the sandpit far from all the socially assertive bunch that demanded and hogged the teachers' attention.

Come to think of it, Edera is probably that person! Discovered at last - a pity we weren't in the same kindergarden eh? But we can still head for the beach with our buckets and spades and a ball to kick around. There's no law that says you have to grow up, even in Japan ...

Unexplained Events

I just love all that stuff about Roswell and the 'X' Files. Hey! Maybe I could do some research into that kind of thing. I mean, there really has to be something out there right? Did you ever see any unexplained phenomena yourself? Really??

Now I have to stop poking fun at the residents of Mihama-ku and I promise I will but a couple of things came up in an otherwise very sweaty and tiring day of fieldwork that really made me smile. They are certainly an interesting lot around there, a touch crankier than other bits of Chiba. It must be living below sea level that does it.

The first incident was in Isobe 5-chome. Part of my work involves photographing houses totally (and scientifically) at random because ... ah! But that's not important for this story.

Anyway, sample point 5291 was the 4th property on the left in the second little street in banchi 29.

Very occasionally you get a sideways look doing this but in general people just take it as part of daily life. But when I turned into this particular street there was a lady about my age with red hair trimming her hedge and for some reason she just froze. A foreigner in 5-29? Incredible! Whatever next? If I'd arrived over the rooftops pursued by the US Cavalry and the Roswell Fire Department I couldn't have made a bigger impression.

As I walked as nonchalantly up the street as I could she ran across to where another gardening neighbour and young child were also standing opened mouthed. And of course at this point I had to pull out my big Canon camera and take a picture of a house a few doors up from them - "like you do". Take me to your leader.

Walking back towards them I wondered whether they would bolt or maybe try out their shears on me so I put in a resolute and cheery "konnichiwa" which made them jump like rabbits and sped on my way.

I bet there's excitement in 5-29 tonight. Here people never let on if they are moving house so now the rumour must be that a gaijin is buying the property at number four and moving in next week.

BUT now here's the curious thing and I'm still thinking it over. Later in the supermarket cafe the tables were turned on me! There I was innocently eating my pasta and gratin when an elderly man slid up to the nearby wash hand basin, looked sneakily around and, thinking no-one was watching, pulled out a plastic bag and filled it about a quarter full of water, slipped it into his jacket pocket and walked away. WHAT THE HECK WAS ALL THAT ABOUT? Your guess is as good as mine. But something is out there. And it's trying to communicate with us ...

"The party 'aint over ...

until the fat lady sings", or so they say. I wonder where that proverb came from originally. And who was that fat lady

Anyway - as you can see, no fat ladies here amongst the combined sopranos of leafy Chiba-ken. This is the 'massed ranks', the many choirs of our area getting ready to rehearse "Amazing Grace" this morning. It's a kind of "Grand Union Station" of singing talent in our area.

There were five choirs taking part in today's choral concert and I was really impressed by how two in particular seemed to have 'come on' since this event last year and gave very classy performances. Singing is taking off here ...

But in Japan we like a good 'massed rank' finale eh? At New Year for some it's even Beethoven's Ninth. For us today a simple but hearty rendition of the simple song with around a hundred voices.

I was rather pleased in a quiet way with this item on the programme. The conductor - a tenor soloist from far away Tokyo - rehearsed us for an hour and asked me to go through the pronunciation with everyone verse by verse. BUT here's the nice bit - we'd been reheasing for at least forty minutes before he seemed to suddenly pick up on the fact that he had a gaijin singing in the back row although I was standing just in front of him. It somehow made me feel that I'd become a familiar part of the scenery and a fixture around here at last

Chamber Music

Well, we made it back safely from our concert in Tokyo yesterday on the last train but one. East Japan Railways don’t quite turn into pumpkins at midnight but to get out to this particular remote bit of leafy Chiba-ken you certainly need to be on the way home from the bright lights by just after ten.

I always feel vaguely nervous about heading for large ‘do’s in Tokyo. What would happen if the ‘Big One’ struck while we were in some vast crowd so far from home? I’m a chicken eh? I know it’s irrational and I’m just about as likely to meet my end in a traffic accident, but hey! That’s what they said about the Titanic too. And today we really DID have a Shindo 4.5 earthquake just as I was taking my after-lunch siesta. Take a lookie here.

The concert yesterday was given by a Belgian chamber orchestra in ‘Tokyo Opera City’ which is a concert hall attached to a 54 storey ‘scraper about a mile from Shinjuku station. A lovely modern hall but for myself I can’t see how they could ever stage opera on such a modern stage. But Edera says it’s all done with smoke and mirrors and they can change the whole of the interior ‘just like that’ as the comedian Tommy Cooper used to say.

Nice to hear some chamber music – they played two of the Brandenburg Concertos and assorted other bits of Bach. A very neat and ‘professional’ performance but I’m not sure that eleven musicians stand much chance to add a lot of ‘passion’ playing in a vast space with 3000 listeners. Someone is going to say that chamber music isn’t meant to be passionate.

I was overcome by a powerful but innocent fantasy listening to Brandenburg 4 which began something like

Lackey: “Mr. Bach has written you another concerto Sire …”
Grand Duke: “Eh? We sent two platoons of hussars over with some cannon on Tuesday! I saw them ride off myself”
Lackey: “(sigh) No Sire, Mr. John Bach the composer”
Grand Duke: “Oh! I see. Ho hmm … better ask him around some time I suppose …”

Ombra Mai Fu

Hurrying around today to sort out a few things before Edera and I head into Tokyo this afternoon for a concert, and one of the things I have to do is order sheet music for someone.

They need some SSA (two soprano and one alto part) arrangements of stuff. It's different from the usual things I'm interested in. This SSA choir music generally has a piano accompaniment. The SATB (four part soprano alto tenor bass) music we normally sing is a cappella (just voices with no accompaniment at all).

One of the items that caught my eye was a version of Handel's "Omba Mai Fu". Do you know it? It's an aria from one of his operas - 'Xerxes' - that completely bombed out when it was first staged back in the eighteenth century. It closed to a chorus of cat-calls after only five performances. Don't call us Gerorge, we'll call you ...

It is such an extraordinarily beautiful and solemn aria that the literal meaning of the Italian somehow always surprises me

"Ombra mai fu di vegetabile,
cara ed amabile,soave più."

"Never was the shade of vegetation
more dear and friendly,more sweet."

Somehow you think that such solemn and divine music as this must be written about one of the great themes of life and death. But then if you have never felt serious gratitude for leafy shade - of which we have a lot in Chiba-ken - then you have never lived in a hot country.

As a Northerner I just can't ever hear this song without remembering - always with a powerful flood of emotion and usually a tear or two - the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing it. She was a local Preston girl, born in Bamber Bridge and grew up in Blackburn, whose professional singing career was spectacular but far too short. She died of cancer at the age of forty one back in 1953.

Even more than half a century on, and despite the age of the recording, I've never heard anyone sing this piece with anything within a million miles of the meditative quality she brought to it. And that first 'O' - you could try for a whole lifetime and not once manage to sing that sound with her power and restraint.

I can't find a snippet of her on the internet but you can find a compilation of her recordings here. A nice present for someone, maybe even yourself eh..?

Rainy Memory

I used to know someone who used to refer to Leonard Cohen's songs as "music to slit your throat by" and it was that kind of a day here today. Grey wet humid monotony in rural mosquito infested Kanto from rainsoaked cedar to rainsoaked cedar. I'm sure you can imagine it. Not even the drama of a good downpour to liven things up. The frogs are happy though ...

It reminded me of an awful school camping trip to Borrowdale in the Lake District about 1962. Even before that big bell tent was up the deluge started and it didn't pause for a moment all week. Did I mention this before? Probably.

Anyway, after several days of incessant rain the tent flooded. It was in a good enough spot on top of a little hill, but that didn't stop the flood creeping up through the groundsheet. Eventually we all made it into a kind farmer's barn.

Now I don't remember how it happened but I was alone in this draughty barn and I had to go outside for something in the farmyard. Well, that was my purpose but a Billy Goat loose in the yard had other ideas. I'm not an expert on goat psychology but one thing was obvious - this one thought I was some kind of serious rival around the place. Or maybe he was just in love with me. I'm told goats can be like that. Whichever it was, he was scary.

He chased me back into that barn and I just got the half-door shut before he rammed it hard. And then he rammed it again - and again. It seems goats don't have a lot of feeling in their heads. He went on butting that door all through a long grey wet afternoon.

Well, at least I didn't have that problem today. Just a couple of felines trying to muscle their way into my study and curl up in my wicker armchair. No chance.

"Internships"

Oh dear! I seem to be off again into another of them good old rows that blow up for me out of nowhere like a Pacific storm. But there's hope! When I get someone telling me that they are "shocked by my distasteful and rather bitter comments" then I know I've drawn blood somewhere.

I'll spare their blushes but here's some public agency in Brussels (yep! A real 'Euro-agency'!) who have advertised recently on an academic mailing list for someone to do some work for them. The "Job Description" (their words) asked for a range of technical and research skills to postgraduate level on a four or six month contract. Salary? 650 euros a month.

Huh? Let's see now, that's about GBP 90 a week isn't it? Or USD 150. To live and work in Brussels? Is that Brussels Belgium or Brussels Sprouts?

When I queried this with them in my usual charmless way I was told that I was a person "unaware of reality" who was "dismissing other people's choices". Not just dumb but selfish too, a 'double whammy' on my part it seems. Now pay attention! "Internships" (note the subtle though soothing medical analogy) as opposed to "jobs" apaprently means that you are bloomin' lucky to get paid anything at all, let alone a pittance. Most people around there won't even let you do it for free if you beg 'em ...

So now, after thirteen years formal school education, three years (in the UK, four elsewhere) as an undergraduate, and a minimum of two years at Masters you may be entitled to ... work for free. That it seems is what 'the market will bear'.

It's an old story that we and our forefathers heard before eh? "By gum son! If you won't do it at sixpence an hour there's plenty of starving unemployed miners down in Burnley (sorry, Brussels!) that will!"

One thing I'm very curious about with this one though is how it stacks up with 'minimum wage' legislation. Surely the Belgians have it too, I thought everyone did. If you are entitled to a fiver an hour for empyting litter bins and doing the photocopying how come you get less than half that for managing a website and preparing complex statistics? Watch this space for an anwser.

There's a deeply deeply serious point in all this though isn't there? In a world where a lot of people don't get enough to eat not paying skilled and trained people in their mid-twenties for their working hours is just crazy, it is - to use that over-worked word 'obscene'. If the job isn't worth paying for why the heck are they doing it? Well, I only wondered.

Moonshadow

As those of you who know me already know, I'm not very good in the mornings. Sometimes it takes me all my energy just to get out of bed. But one thing I have noticed is how important that last half hour of rest before I get up seems to have become. My dreams around then have become so intense and powerful and I often recollect places and people long forgotten in daily consiousness.

This morning I was dreaming about a walk I took with my grandfather. It was one spring evening - I'd guess in the late 1960's - on the lane home from Kirkby Stephen to the little village of Nateby where he lived. Probably we were walking the dog but I don't recall her with us.

It was full moon, incredibly bright. Out there in the deep country you don't need so much light to move around easily at night. But this night was so light that you could clearly see every tree and sleeping cow and all the high meadows along the moors of Mallerstang. There was some soft cloud riding the starry evening sky.

I can't remember what we talked about at all, just ordinary things. And at the same time there was another dimension to all this that wasn't so obvious. He asked me if I was "afraid". When was I ever scared of this kind of darkness? We joked about how, when we were ghosts, we would take walks on this kind of night on the hills around here.

When I dreamed about this today it reminded me of that beautiful early Cat Stevens song "Moonshadow". Do you know it? No space for all the words here but the verse I remember best is:-

"And If I ever loose my eyes, if my colours all run dry
Yes if I ever loose my eyes, Oh if! I won't have to cry no more ...

I'm being followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow"

Beware Foreign Devils!

Out tramping the streets of Kemigawahama today and the weather was lovely too, real shirt sleeve stuff without being too hot or humid. I got a full five sheets surveyed - that's more than twenty kilometres of walking. But I'm tired now.

This poster caught my eye in a small park in Isobe and I must admit it did make me laugh. What planet does the author of this stuff live on I wonder? As a 'fully paid up' bearded and definitely dodgy looking gaijin in need of dental treatment myself it had me feeling my forehead to see if I was growing horns! We love stereotypes, real or imagined.

Japan can be a very 'innocent' society sometimes. The possible ethnicity of the portrait probably never even occured to the person who drew it. It reminds me of the pictures of that moody little Italian guy that someone makes a fortune writing about here.

I also wondered what the equivalent would be in a British Park. A 'mug shot' of a big black guy brandishing a bag of drugs I suppose. I'm sure artwork like that wouldn't survive long tied to an English tree. Quite right too.

The really sad thing here is that there's such an important message that won't get across to young kids. It's almost astronomical odds against them being abused or attacked in a park by a Westerner. It is much more likely to be by some sad but innocent looking Japanese guy (or even woman). But kids who see such a poster will learn to discount that possibility.

The other message that goes undelivered is of course that they are much more likely to be abused by someone they know than a complete stranger

Maybe someone else somewhere else tells them that. Let's hope so. In the meantime I'm happy to report than no kids have turned me in to the police as a result of this campaign. So far. . .

From Here to Eternity

I'm not thinking of the Burt Lancaster film - which I enjoyed - or the James Jones novel which I've never got around to reading, but something that struck me during our choir practice last night.

It was an 'extra slot' in preparation for our concert next Sunday - actually a 'combined' practice with another choir. We are joining forces to sing 'Amazing Grace' as a finale at a choir concert and their conductor is wielding the baton.

It was fun. I can take or leave that kind of music but it's OK for a change of scene. It's the first time that some of the other choir had ever tried a song in English and I was soon pressed into service to give some pronunciation coaching. The main problem for Japanese singers is 's' and 'd' or 't' at the end of words - they just don't have terminal consonants in their own language and often can't even hear them.

I was very struck by the last verse in the version we are using. It goes:-

When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun.

That verse has bounced around a lot in my head since. It's a pretty direct poetic expession of 'eternity' eh? There we are singing praise for ten thousand years but actually there's still just as much time left after all that music as when we started. It's not like an hour to clean the windows, a month to paint a house or three years to write a thesis. Or fifty years to live together with someone. No indeed. This is forever. The fat lady will not sing here and the party won't end.

It's a bit scary too. Well, it scares me. What happens if you find singing praise boring after a decade or two, even for God? Are there ever coffee breaks? Suddenly I feel like a small child. No need to glance at your watch to see how much time is left before you go home, you already know the answer.

Strawberry Picking time

Yes, it's that time of year down here in leafy Chiba-ken. We are kind of famous around here for the quality of our strawberries and after Japanese class this morning I came home with Neale to pick up Edera and then we met up with the rest of the gang and headed off to do some serious picking on a farm.

It was raining hard as per usual but no worries, all the picking was indoors. Even though we'd been warned it might be muddy actually it was bone dry in the poly-tents too.

It was supposedly the 'last of the crop' but there was still stacks of fruit around. Now Edera is downstairs with blender running and we are wondering what to do with two seriously large 'pummets' of fruit. We have enough here to keep a restaurant going for a week.

Thought you might like to see what the weather was doing outdoors in the meantime too! There's something impressive about a wet day down on Highway 126 - flooded tanbo and dripping wet poly-tents from here to eternity - well, the horizon anyway. You can see why we have so many very happy frogs in our part of the world eh?

When I grow up I want to be...

When my kids were small in one of their poetry books was one I would read to them often. It used to begin ...

"When I grow up I want to be a window-cleaning man
And shine the windows in our street as brightly as I can ..."

Come to think of it I've never seen a window cleaner around Chiba. Well, not quite true - I've seen them in those cages on ropes on high buildings. But I never saw a 'domestic' window cleaner with a bucket of water and a chamois leather and a ladder and a bike. Do they have any in Japan? Or is it that windows in houses here, being usually removable, are much easier to clean? I must remember to ask Edera how often she cleans ours eh?

Anyway that's not what I wanted to talk about! It's one of my many, many innocent enough little fantasises that there is somewhere around here in the Land of Reality where all jobs are considered equal. So for example when a teenager goes along for his or her career advice they have to seriously consider every possible job available and make a 'rational choice'

It would be fun to live in such a world eh? "I've decided that I like working with heads but I've still to choose between brain surgery and hairdressing ...". Or "I got it down to either airline pilot or street sweeper but as I prefer regular hours and no responsibility it was an easy choice"

You could apply this kind of stuff to other so many choices in life. "My son was going to Todai (Tokyo National University) to study Economics and Politics but he went to Narita Commercial College to study cake decoration instead because he could take the later train ..."

My problem is that I still don't know what to be when I grow up. When people ask me I say "wise" and try to look inscrutable ...

Lost and Found

Bit of a chuckle today. Edera and I went into Chiba to pick up some books and visit the archives. We changed to an Uchibo Line train in the main station for the short hop down to Honchiba and about two seconds after the door closed I realised that neither of us had the umbrellas we had started out with.

OK - let's not play the blame game eh?. We were both rather sleepy. But I would just mention here however that they were both hanging from the seat in front of Edera's nose and there are several other 'offences to be taken into consideration' as English lawyers like to say meaningfully.

It was OK as it wasn't raining - well, not until we got off the train again when the deluge began and kept up incessantly for the whole of our walk through town. I think I'm already going down with a chill ...

When we got back to the main station at Chiba we took a dive into the 'lost and found' department pictured here AND - amazingly - both umbrellas had been handed in already. Only in Japan! Two cheap and ancient brollies amongst a daily haul of about a hundred already carefully labelled on the floor.

We were summoned to inspect them by one of the six nice guys in the working there. When I retrieved mine Edera, who has never used it in her life, insisted loudly that it wasn't mine at all ('gaijin in brolly heist, one arrested') but luckily they were labelled from the same train (M328). The times of departure and arrival were carefully checked with our memrories and then, having established title, we had to fill in our names, addresses and phone numbers on the label. And THEN we had to produce our ID's just to confirm that we really were who we said we were. For a second-hand umbrella that cost about two pounds new? It's really true that the Japanese national motto should be "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing properly".

Of course by the the train arrived back here it had stopped raining entirely. Atishoo!

Ignorance is not always bliss

I've just slung those two puss-cats outdoors for a bit to cool off. Rainy weather always brings out the worst in cats, I've noticed it before. Today they seem to have been cussing and hissing each other over various cushions and floor space half the afternoon. Like bored kids.

Tora and Pero. I've been watching the pair of them recently around the house and wondering what goes through their feline minds. I mean, what do they think about eh? What is their 'world-view', their 'model of reality'? They hang around 'their house' all day but have they ever seriously considered the niceties of legal title, the concept of property ownership? And when they sit by that bowl and holler "Food!" do they ever spare a thought for all those links in the commoddity supply chain. I think not.

Basically they are just like kids eh? All this stuff just 'happens'. It's the old 'good fairy' theorem, never doubting that they are loved. They live in a perpetual state of ignorance of the reality of reality.

Hey! I tell you what! It's lucky that we aren't that dumb too eh? I mean, at least you and me know what's going around here ...

Calendar Girls

Someone lent Edera this video recently, so over the Golden Week holiday we settled down to watch it.

Have you seen it yet? Wonderful! I really enjoyed every minute of it. Lovely story, and what a bunch of well known English actresses they got to take part in it too! I was very impressed with Julie Walters' Yorkshire accent - not bad for a 'Brummie'.

If you haven't see it, the film follows the story of a group of 'mature ladies' in a Yorkshire village who decide to raise funds for a cancer charity by making a very unusual kind of calendar. I won't spoil the story for you by filling in any more details, get the DVD soon. Or was I the last person in the world to get around to watching it?

About half way through this story I suddenly realised that it was not fiction but fact , and that I'd read about it at the time. When was it I wonder - 1998? No doubt there was a lot of dramatic licence taken with the facts but essentially the events in the film had happened.

What really struck me about 'Calendar Girls' was that the idea was 'original'. It wasn't nuclear physics, it didn't earn a Nobel Prize and there was no seven year financal plan involved. But an original thought is an original thought eh? No matter how big or small. And we can all have one too.

Mihama-ku

Out doing some fieldwork today. Must have walked around fifteen kilometres and I really needed the exercise too, I would have gone crazy if I'd sat around with my laptop for another day. But it was hard going and I hobbled home from the station. A nice hot bath for me tonight.

I haven't quite got the 'measure' of Mihama-ku yet. It's around 20 square kilometres of absolutely flat land reclaimed in the last forty years from Tokyo Bay. Most of it looks like the picture - mile after mile of bog-standard JHC (Japan Housing Corporation) rented public housing.

This is a really standard block. Five storey (not too high in the sixties because of quakes) so no lifts. Three staircases on the north or east side, two apartments per floor equals thirty apartments, all of which have a balcony looking south or west to catch the sun and dry washing. There must be dozens, even hundreds of identical blocks in Mihama-ku... I'll have to count them soon.

To me they feel like they should be in central Europe, or maybe the former Soviet Union. But anywhere else but Japan they would be a mess eh? Here they are usually very well kept and peaceful areas.

Boring? Boredom is in the eye of the beholder mate. If you think areas like this are boring you need to look at what is going on more closely.

Men versus Women

No, I haven't suddenly got an ambition to write a 'lonely hearts' advice column. I would be good at it though eh? Every time I look in the mirror I think "Great counselling material there". I just need one of those "Psychiatric Help 5 cents" signs and I would be in business in a minute.

No, no! What I want to write about toight is some work I've been doing on Japanese national population statistics. Usually I have my nose well into local leafy Chiba-ken material but today I've been looking at the 'total Japan' data from 1872 to 2005.

What interested me most was the relationship between males and females. Biologically speaking across the world there are usually around 1004 men born for every 1000 women because males are inherently slightly less stable organisms. But because men live slightly shorter lives if you count the whole population at any time it's usually around 990 men per 1000 women.

Except here. Wow! What interesting data! Back in the 1870's there were around 1025 men per 1000 women. That must be due to a surplus of older men because back in the Edo era in the 1830's female infanticide was still happening. Then by 1900 it was pretty well evened out to be the same as everywhere else.

After the War there were inevitably far few men than women - the all Japan figure dropped to 953 men per 1000 women by 1947. But here's the really interesting thing. With more new babies being born you would expect that ratio to improve again over many years - but it doesn't. Not at all. In 2003 it's almost exactly as it was in 1947.

Now the only way this could possibily happen is that adult male lives have gone on getting shorter and shorter relative to women. How do you think that could happen? Too many dangerous sports maybe - hang gliding, crocodile hunting and the like?

Not likely. You are all working too hard - that's what. Everyone knows about the extreme cases of karoshii - death by overwork - but here's concrete evidence that endless days and nights in the ofice are going to kill you about as quickly as cigarette smoking or a diet of cream cakes.

Well, I only mention it ...

The Old Man of Hoy

Writing a couple of days ago about the Hokuriku coast put me in mind of my second 'job' back in 1971. For a year I worked as the 'tourist officer' for the Orkney Islands, running a tourist information centre there and preparing guide books and the like.

Amazing to think how utterly unprepared I was for that kind of responsibility and also that it would never occur to anyone in those days in that kind of a place that a 24 year old might need a bit of guidance on the job. But it was fun, despite the maelstrom of local politics. That's small places eh? Like big ones but worse ...

Orkney is off the north coast of Scotland. Actually it was much more like parts of Hokkaido than Hokuriku. Say Shiritoko - but actually much further north, in east Asian terms about the same latitude as Kamchatka. And almost completely treeless thanks to the winter gales.

But it did have an important local ferry service over to the Scottish mainland and also in those days a boat to the northern islands of the group too. When Orcadians spoke of the 'mainland' they always meant the largest island in the group - the neighbouring island of Britain was always simply known as "the south"!

To get from Scotland across to Orkney in winter was a dodgy business and sometimes the "St. Ola" didn't sail at all because the weather was so bad. But it was an interesting voyage over from Scrabster to Stromness. It went past some of the biggest sea cliffs in Europe and also the 'Old Man of Hoy' - a sea stack as high as many of New York's skyscrapers.

Orkney is a great place to visit especially if you are interested in bird watching or ornithology but give it a miss in winter!

Image thanks to the Reading Mountaineering Club site

Golden Week

I knew summer had come this afternoon when I opened the window to let a bee escape. It was one of those bees around the size of a sparrow we get here and it was keen to be back out in the open air. I was keen that it moved on too! It looked out of place in our dining area.

This is the last day of Golden Week of course. Somewhere out there in the rest of Japan people are starting to head home on packed long distance trains. The Tomei Expressway will be one long car park from Nagoya to Yokohama. But it's peaceful enough down here in leafy Chiba-ken, progress like that passes us by.

For lunch we headed out to the 'Viking' restaurant at Naruto. All you can eat for ninety minutes 1,400 yen. A bargain eh? I like to think that one of these days I'll finally be able to eat in one of these places gracefully instead of like a timber wolf in winter or a bear after hibernation. Would our Queen stuff herself just because she could? I think not.

I keep meaning to find out why these places are called 'Viking' here. Does anyone know? It's your 'project' for this week! Maybe back in the Meiji era some Swedish restauranteur had a smorgasbord place in Tokyo and the name has just stuck. I've used them in America where they had 'ace' salad bars. Recently there seems to be a crop of Chinese 'all you can eat' places in England too but it's still a rare format there, us Brits can't be trusted not to fling ourselves on the groaning trestles in an orgy of excessive and uncontollable consumption.

When I used to work for the brewery we'd often hold 'all you can drink' events at the brewery and some people even did that too. They never learn eh?

Coastal Traffic

At the moment Edera and I are doing some research into the life of a Japanese monk who was very important in the transmission of my own particular 'tradition' of Buddhist practice to Britain and America. She's doing the hard work of basic translation and then I'm thinking how the material could best be presented in English.

Neither task is easy. The material we have is written in a rather formal and polite style that doesn't translate easily and is studded with the names of very small places and long dead people in kanji. As Japanese readers will know, that is a real challenge. How to work out what their pronunciation should be so that we can represent them in Roman letters?

But one of the things that already fascinates me as a geographer and historian about his biography is the way as a teenager he moved around the Hokuriku area - the Sea of Japan coast - back in the 1890's. In those days the railway from Niigata down to Kanazawa hadn't been built. If you wanted to travel you got a boat. And if you couldn't afford a ride in one, or if the weather was bad - you walked.

There's a whole vanished world in this text - days when people caught small boats from small ports like Noetsu or Fushiki and basically trusted that they would reach land again. What sort of boats were they? Open boats with sails? Small packet steamers? Were they traditional Japanese style or Western-style hulls? For sure the business they were in was the last moments of a long coastal trade in people and tribute rice that stretched back into the Edo Period and even earlier. Within twenty years of this man's youth they had probably all gone with the coming of trains.

If anyone has any references or contacts on this I'd be really interested.

Big Day Out

Today was one of the 'Golden Week' holidays and at this time of year we always organise some event in the open air for our students. Usually it's a local 'nature hike' but today for a change we tried beachcombing down at Motosuka.

As you can see the weather was just perfect - the wind a little cold perhaps but then when isn't it on the beach? Under the guidance of a local teacher and beachcombing specialist we trawled along the high water mark for an hour and then sat around and looked at what everyone had found.

We really enjoy this day - I suppose many of our younger students have become just like 'family' to us and it is fun to hang out in a bunch. My brother-in-law and his wife and my young niece Anna also came over from Funabashi so it really was a kind of family day too.

Interesting how some of the kids didn't seem to have visited the beach before very often. Maybe if you don't make the effort it's not somewhere you end up at even if you only live a short drive away.

When I was a child we sometimes made it on the train down to the beach at Redcar or Saltburn and paddled in the chilly grey North Sea admiring Dorman Long steelworks on the horizon. Much as I love my native North East England I think I prefer the azure Pacific on a sunny May morning! You can take being beyond descriminative thought too far eh?

Donner und Blitzen!

Crumbs! We had a heck of a thunderstorm here this morning and it seemed to creep up on us out of nowhere.

I was upstairs in the 'new' study and the sky got darker and darker. In Britain generally thunderstorms don't catch you unawares, you can spot them arriving for days. But in Japan they roll in with not more than five minutes advance notice.

I'm not really 'scared' of thunderstorms but sometimes you just can't help but notice the awesome power there eh? Anyone who doesn't feel nervous is a fool - anything could happen even if it probably won't.

It felt like that today - I felt 'close' to the action somehow. Too close. Just some 10 cm square structural timbers and two sheets of plywood between me and several million volts striking the ground at random. Hey! I'm a statistician you know. But I unplugged the laptops and got on with sorting out some piles of paper.

And then the electric power went off.

Edera was across the hall in the Japanese-style bedroom sorting out some things and it was even darker in there. I went to see how she was getting on. When I came back to the study I was hardly through the door when - wham! There was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder that were absolutely simultaneous. It must have struck the ground within 50 metres of the house. I jumped about a metre off the floor and said "My goodness!". Or something like that.

Anyway as you can see we all survived. At least I had the last laugh. In England we say that summer is "three fine days and a thunderstorm" but it seems that down here in leafy Chiba-ken it's just one fine day and a thunderstorm eh?

First of May

First of May already eh? It's been pretty warm today down here in leafy Chiba-ken - it was forecast to go to 26 celsius but maybe the lovely breeze kept it a few degrees cooler.

Anyway I thought that it was about time that we had an update on countryside affairs so early this evening Shinta and I headed off on a quick photographing expedition. OK I admit it - I also had it in mind to try out my telephoto lens on the 4:40 'Shiosai' and as you can see it made a nice picture bearing down on the level crossing on the Togane road. It's a location I've been intending to try out with my camera for ages.



Lots of birdsong around and even more frogs in good voice. Perhaps 90 percent of the rice is planted out now and the tanbo make a lovely sight, like balding green hedgehogs. Watching them planting by tractor - an amazingly skilled job to keep the rows straight in all that mud - it makes you realise what hard work this must have been by hand.

It's going to be a hot and sunny week so the seedlings should get a good start. AT the moment it feels like we are living in the middle of an ocean of small green lakes but by July the land will be drying out and the rice will be waist high.