Computers. The jury is 'out'.

I'd never have had myself down as a Luddite but I'm starting to feel that way around computers these days. I mean, all I really want is one that works and never breaks down.

This one has been looking a bit dodgy recently when I shut it down - kiss it goodnight and switch off the light. Looks like a problem with the registry files. So I downloaded something I thought might solve it but it seems that somehow I got a copy of the new Windows anti-virus and firewall program. How did that happen? Must have been a 'senior moment'. Now Microsoft and McAfee Marketing Departments are at war on my laptop every time I log on - whichever one grabs control first seems determined to wipe out the other and block access to everything in sight. Ho Hmm!

Somehow software designers don't understand that 98% of us aren't interested in their world or their lives, we just need something that works properly. I mean, how would it be if we were driving our cars along and suddenly a message flashed up on the dashboard "Danger of fatal accident! Pull over now and tighten bolt SD-39 to 55 lbs torsion immediately!" We wouldn't accept it would we? What is so different about lap tops?

Lurking in the back of my mind is the idea that once I've finished my thesis I might just stop using the wretched things. I spend too much time at it in any case. I'm not ready to take a vow (as journalists love to say) about it yet but it suddenly occurs to me as a possibility. I have to start asking myself the questions "Do I really like them?" and "Just because eveyone else is doing this do I have to follow lemming-like into that void?"

Dunno. But keep reading me for now anyway!

The Ornithologist

Here's Pero on a quick excursion along the shed roof. She was up there sunbathing yesterday. Also keeping an eye on the local birds; until now she's not shown so much interest in them but this year she seems to have suddenly worked out what the usual relationshiip between cats and birds might be.

I've been doing some reading on 'consciousness' recently where the author divides our minds into the 'discursive' - where we 'think aloud' to ourselves - the 'practical' where we just do things - scratch, cough or shield our eyes from the sun - and the 'subconsious'. But where do cats 'live' I wonder? They may not have language but they clearly think about stuff, often carefully.

Last night we had a little girl sleeping over and it didn't take a psychologist to see that Pero was just as jealous as any child in the house might be. Everything around her said "these are my people and I'm the Queen here!"

OK Pero, give us a break.

Let's be Professional here

"Professionals" is one of those words that I really struggle with. Originally it meant ... humm ... what was it now? Christian Priests, Doctors and Lawyers I think. Those were the three things you could go to university to study and 'profess'. Then teachers and their ilk got in on the act and the rot set in. Oh! And there was always the 'Oldest Profession' too.

Now of course literally everyone is a 'professional' and not least all those people who do completely routine jobs of work. What used to be 'trades'. Professional eletricity meter reader, Professional telephone sales adviser, professional drain cleaner. Now 'professional' just means 'good' or at least 'not clueless'. Actually now if it even managed to mean that it wouldn't be so bad eh?

Who do I complain to? We ought to have a court to sort out people who abuse language like this that would impose savage penalties. The French do, you can get yourself locked up for using words like 'le software' in publications. But such a court in England would be useless unless we had powers to extradite Americans to stand trial. Fat chance of that; if we left the likes of that to Tony Blair to sort out I dread to think where we would end up. Arraigned in some Washington courtroom for spelling colour with a 'u' probably.

I remember when the Pope went to Ireland in the 1970's watching a programme on the Irish TV where a soft spoken RTE commentator from Kerry was covering the pontiff's pilgrimage to Knock or one of the other shrines along the west coast. Suddenly a crew of about a hundred CBS news gatherers and 'heavies' burst onto his pitch yelling "Hey! Move over for some professionals here for Chrissakes!" Of course those Irish kept the cameras rolling, they loved it. Professional piss-takers to a man the Irish, they have a great sense of fun and humour.

'Professionals' at work again eh? So often good for a laugh.

Compline

I was playing some choral music by Thomas Tomkins while I was sorting out some numbers this morning but I just can’t listen to music and do something else these days. Could I ever? Now if I try I just follow the choir up to somewhere just below the ceiling and play around up there with the ‘gang’.

English sixteenth and seventeenth century sacred music says something to me at the moment that I can’t tell you about, it’s not right to go there mob-handed. But a very ‘visual’ part of it is a kind of perception, a recollection in my bones, of country towns of long ago, like in a fable. Maybe it’s a warm September evening, the heat of the day still in the creaking timbers of the houses along a steep lane that leads to the river bank; the sound of water lapping and horses shifting and the scent of stables and leather and kitchens. Always a moon – isn’t that what we remember? The magic of it floating over the hills, over the clouds. And always too those moors along the dim horizon.

And here we are on our way back from Compline together in the last gloaming of the day, past the stale smell of beer from the tap-room and across the straw-strewn butter market.

Nunc demittis, nunc demittis servum tuum Domine … “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word”

A moment ago the cool of the church stalls, the rustle of cassocks, the moths high above around the sanctuary light. Maybe in this moment – in the ‘Eternal Now’ of this warm early autumn night - Thomas Tomkins is scratching away with a quill writing down the final bars of “We will sing unto the Lord a new song” even as the Lord whispers it into his ear. But that is beyond our horizon eh?

Flea Market Day

'Flea Market' Day today. Or what in England we would call a 'Car Boot Sale'. Although in fact there are neither fleas nor car boots invoved the process. All the produces got laid out on tables or the floor.

For the past few years Edera has put on this event for the kids in July. They all bring their junk - sorry! merchandise - and sell it to each other. In theory this should all be done in English of course and I did put a few of them on the spot today by asking the price of some items in a perfect cut-glass Oxford accent. Meantime, Edera is busy in the kitchen and then I go and hide in my shed and run a few trains around the garden to bring pleasure to those cute little faces pressed against the window pane. Hmm ....

It was a good day but a combination of fewer Junior High students (and therefore mums) and also it being a weekday made the event not so well attended as last year. But more than enough for Tora as you can see - he vanished into a carrier bag under the table to stay out of trouble. Wise pussy cat.

Let's have a few fantasies

Interesting that in English we use that term "second childhood" in the way we do. Sometimes of course Edera has to be a bit strict with me ... "Drink up your Miso soup!" ... "No! Won't, won't won't!" but that's not what I'm thinking of at the moment.

No, these days I often find myself tempted to play. For example we have a 'flea market' for our students tomorrow so I've spent part of today getting my garden railway running. I've had so much study to do recently that it's months since I last ran any trains outdoors and getting things moving again can involve a few hours of track cleaning and alignment and attention to electrical connections. Anyway now it's in order and trains are once more circling our shrubs. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some pictures.

Of course serious model railways are for grown up men you know. All those technical and craft skills, the knowledge of prototype history and practice. So I have to be careful that no-one is looking when I start to make silly train horn noises and drive as fast as I dare around corners. And it's fun to see the look of suprise on the faces of passers-by as a small train shoots out from behind some flowers. You don't expect it do you?

Anyway after lunch time for my nap but when I got upstairs I just couldn't resist bouncing a few empty PET coke bottles from my study down the stair well to see how they bounced around and hear all the noise. It's a good game eh? They made a neat avalanche. If you had been here we could have pretended that you were a pirate boarding my ship as you stuggled up the stairs against my plastic fusilade.

So maybe you can come around and play sometime, or we can go to the swings in the park. I don't see why kids should have all the fun, do you? Actually if you haven't done it recently it's even more fun playing games when you are a big boy than it ever was when you were little. And no one can make you eat up your miso soup either.

Families and survival

I'm stacking up lots of numbers and statistics around families in my studies at the moment. If you don't watch it some of this stuff can get very 'dry' - I think the Japanese word would be 'omoi' (heavy!).

And it's not always easy to see what lies behind the tables in dusty census reports. For a start by the time numbers get into print they are so 'abstract' that they tell you very little. Averages of aveages of averages! What does it mean to say that the average family size has declined from 5.9 to 2.6 people in eighty years? Actually many Japanese families had live-in servants or employees back in 1920 and these were counted as 'part of the family' so it's not simply that people are having less and less children.

It's really struck me recently just how much our great-grandparents had to rely on their family for survival - much more so in Japan where in the Meiji Era more than 80% were still making their whole living from farming. When all was said and done you had to count on your familiy for something to eat. It's easy to see why rural populations changed so little in Japan over centuries - what was there to be eaten was eaten, there was no extra for additional mouths to consume. On so many hectares you can only grow so much rice. Or wheat.

This is an aspect of the 'average family' we hardly ever think about now. We think of families as parents and children and grandparents who may come together seldom, meet at Christmas or O-bon and pass on property or pay for the next generation's university education. But that's a very modern view of family living. The main purpose of families over the centuries has been to keep the next generation sheltered and fed and alive.

Ticket to ride.

I've just been writing about this on my railway blog (which you can find here but I'm still feeling rather cheerful about it so let's write some more!

A few weeks ago in Tokyo station I noticed a JR poster for rides on their experimental MAGLEV linear motor train. Application for the ticket lottery was on the internet so I applied but not with much hope. They only have three open days this year and there are just 1500 seats available in total. I'm sure that you could fill those ten times over just with railway 'buffs' from the Tokyo area.

But today I received my ticket in the post! It's not often I'm lucky in prize draws but here was a good one to win for me. I have to get over to the test track in Yamanashi Prefecture for 10:15 on the 24th so that will be an 'early to rise' morning for me.

This test line runs through the mountains - and mainly in tunnels - for around 50 miles. Only in Japan would people invest in futuristic railway engineering like this - but actually the test route will form part of the new track from Tokyo to West Japan if they ever get to go ahead with it. Maybe it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel by MAGLEV for me - even if the new route is finished in 15 years and I get to see it I'll be getting on and probably not aiming to travel down to Osaka in a hurry any more! The slow old shinkansen will be plenty fast enough for me ...

Exciting - the idea of running at 300 mph on a train. Back in the 1830's politicians in England worried if people's bodies could really cope with a velocity of 30 mph. Just yesterday I was reading an account of the steam locomotive world speed record of 126 mph back in 1938. One well known recorder of railway matters had been invited to be on that train but missed it because he had to attend a friend's wedding. So - if you are planning on 'tieing the knot' and want me there don't do it on the 24th August please!

Frame at last

Our final Japanese class before the summer this morning. Today we were down to just two - Joyce is packing up ready to head back to California and 'U-san has already returned home to Dairen in China. So it was just Neale and I left for our final lesson from Maejima-sensei on Minna no Nihongo Book II. Fifty meaty chapters of Japanese over the last three years - and so now I know it all eh? I mean, there ARE only fifty chapters!

Only joking! After the summer break we'll probably have to do the whole of Book II over again but at least we can say we've worked our way through it once. AND now I can say that I 'know Japanese' like most Japanese people 'know English' - that is, I can hardly speak a word but I'm getting good at doing multiple choice questions on grammar!

No, seriously now! I swear I'll try harder next year. I feel ashamed to have been here so long and yet able to speak so little. Now that Neale and I are the 'seniors' - a position to take seriously here eh? - we have to shape up and look the part. Our local IVC volunteer teachers have done a good job on us.

I had one nice suprise though at the end of the class today. I got awarded a certificate for not missing a single session this term. A fairly low key achievement you might think but hey! It's the first recognition I ever had for Japanese studies. I'll frame it for sure.

Tomorrow - a visit to Sojiji so probably no blog ...

Yellow Hat

One of the nice things about Japan is it's capacity for providing small but pleasant surprises.

Like this evening for example. This week we've had problems with one of our car headlights. One of the bulbs wasn't working - it still lights OK but it is not as bright as it should be.

So being conscientious citizens and not wanting a tap on the shoulder from the local cops we went over to the 'Yellow Hat'store at Togane. I guess there are originally an American outfit. It's the equivalent here of Halfords in the UK. The bulb was 1300 yen and they would fit it in twenty minutes for 400 yen - about £8 altogether.

Well, twenty minutes came and went, then thirty. We were worried because we had to be back here by 6:20 for a class. Two mechanics were hunched over the car. They came to find us and it seems the problem wasn't the bulb but a fault in the wiring - it needs a trip to the garage.

How much did they charge us for their time? Nothing. Well, so sorry but they hadn't been able to help. And no need to pay for the bulb either, they could use it next time.

I was impressed. You would have had that kind of response in Britain thirty years ago for sure and you might still find it in a small country garage with a kind mechanic. Cynical I might be but I suspect that in a bigger chain operation now it would have been tweny minutes labour and you would have paid for the bulb as they couldn't 'put it back into stock' - lets' say fifteen quid mate!

It's not all about 'margin' eh?

Om Mani Padme Hum

The dew is on the lotus! Rise, Great Sun!
And lift my leaf, and mix me with the wave.
Om Mani Padme Hum, the sunrise comes!
The dewdrop slips into the shining sea!



Sir Edwin Arnold
"The Light of Asia"

Passing on Memories

This is a topic I come back to again and again and there are aspects of it that really fascinate me. One that has been on my mind recently is the extent of 'oral memory', and it's an issue coming up in my studies

We think of a 'generation' as only being about twenty five years between someone's birth and the birth of their first child. On average it's longer now but in both Japan and England it increases only slowly. A 'life span' on the other hand has increased a lot over the last fifty years - in Japan from aound 65 years to around 80 years.

So typically most of us have young adult memories of our grandparents and even fifty years ago we had clear memories of them as teenagers. This strikes me as usually the crucial relationship in passing on memories - and with them perhaps our culture and sense of 'being' and history.

In effect our grandparents - and sometimes our great-grandparents - are like a bridge in time. The transmit to our ears what they heard with their owm.

For example my own grandfather was born in 1898, his father in the 1870's and his own grandfather, who he remembered well, in the 1850's. So there's a direct line of 'memory' that goes back from me through him to my great-great-grandfather's experiences as a child around 1860.

That's a formidable thought eh? Many of us have or recently had some direct oral access to memory of 150 years ago. When my grandfather used to say to me "My grandad used to have to get up at five on the farm to feed the cart horses" he was actually talking about something that happened in Yorkshire during the Edo-jidai or before much of the American west was colonised by white settlers.

When I worked in England back in the 1970's I remember hearing a very old lady on local radio talking about this. I can't remember the exact link but it went something like this. She had been told by her great-grandfather that his great-grandfather had told him that his grandfather as a young man had been a scared young pikeman for King Charles II guarding the city bridge in our Civil War battle there in September 1651. That's three centuries in just five lifetimes.

Well, I think it's interesting. It's always a good time to ask people about their oldest memories.

Impulse Buy

Well, there's my application in at the Immigration Bureau. A nice cool wet day for a trip together into Chiba and for once we didn't leave our umbrellas on the train.

Also the place wasn't too busy. You just can't plan trips there to be 'easy' in my experiece. Go when you would think no-one would need their services and the place is packed out with worried gaijin clutching forms and you sit there for hours. Go again in a peak week in summer for travel and it's deserted.

Once I have a ticket from the Immigration Office 'queue machine' I usually go up to the City Information Office library on the next floor and copy some statistics so these trips are never wasted for me. That's what we did today, and then got a bite of lunch before out number came up.

Later in Sogo I made an impulse buy - a new party dress for Edera! I saw it in the sale and I thought that it was 'just her' - the shape, the colour, everything. So I made her try it on then and there and it looked even better than I thought.

Now we'll have to find some parties to go to eh? In England it would be no problem - perfect for noisy Saturday nights out dancing or taking in a meal in a nice pub or restaurant. But what here? No one down in leafy Chiba-ken goes to rowdy parties or am I missing something? It's the kind of thing that nice young ladies might wear to give a piano recital or to go to tea with their professor.

Anyway - if you have a noisy party planned and want to invite us feel free! Now we have the dress we need an excuse to wear it!

A few forms

At the moment I'm starting to re-apply for my Japanese residence visa. I've had to do this every year so far but I'm hoping that this time they will give me a three year extension. Tomorrow we are off to the Immigration Bureau in Chiba with a fistful of forms and papers.

Today in preparation for the trip we got a current copy of our 'koseki' from the local town office. This is the family registration document that acts as a kind of ongoing birth, marriage and death certificate for everyone in the household. Actually ours was wrong. Last year, after my visa was renewed, it seems that I should have gone back to the town office again and had my record changed there. A pity no-one mentioned it to me then but no problem, it was corrected in a few minutes.

This little episode pointed up for me the often invisible yawning chasm between Britain and Japan and how we think about "The State" and all things 'offical'. In Britain we have no equivalent of the koseki though I'm sure every policeman and bureaucrat would love it. We put on public record various life events - we have to register births, marraiges and deaths for example. There are other ways - tax and health registration and driving licences for example in which the state demands to know about us. But, despite Mr. Blair's blandishments and efforts to introduce ID cards, we still have no one official central record of our exstence and relationships. Actually over the centuries people have given their lives to prevent that kind of state power over individuals. Basically a lot of us wouldn't trust them an inch. We are of a mind with Emerson who once observed about someone that "the louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."

In Japan on the other hand you except it as both natural and reasonable that the state should know exactly who you are and where you are. You have had something equivalent to the koseki for centuries. I'm sure most people here would say - just as they did in England in our recent ID card debates - that only criminals and bad people have anything to fear from such a system.

Well, need I point out the obvious weakness in that argument? What happens when the criminals and bad people are those in charge of the state? The German police residence registers in the 1930's made the arrest of Jews a very straightforward task.

Two different views of 'reality', and there are 'pro's and 'con's for each.

In my studies I find myself thinking about 'The State' more and more these days and wondering what the heck it actually is and what is going on? Is the Japanese or British state actually 'Japan' or 'Britain' do you think? They like to say so but if it all disappeared in the night would you or I be any less Japanese or British? There are certainly some things that we need states for and public order and safety is perhaps their oldest and most useful task. But what about the rest - can't we just sort out our lives together without them?

Here's a question for you - if you could sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and design Japan or Britain or America again from scratch - is what the state has created around you now in Tokyo or Manchester or New York what you would like to end up with in your perfect world? It's a fair question eh?

Cuckoo Clocks

Here's something with neither a beginning nor an end but it's been on my mind today.

I'm usually a late sleeper and our neighbours are awake very early in the morning and with two kids in the house and all the opening of shutters and doors and setting off for work my last hour in bed is not always quiet. But it doesn't worry me, somehow in villages community noise is normal part of the scene. First the cock crowing, then the dogs barking, then the rest of us.

One thing I always hear from their house though is a cuckoo clock sounding off at six. The rest of the day I seldom notice it but that cuckoo is a kind of alarm for me if I'm not awake already.

I've not come across many cuckoo clocks in my life. They get a star mention in the movie "The Third Man" of course. And someone - somewhere - that I know or knew has one but I just can't recall it (Hey guys! If it is you put me out of my misery please!)

But one little story keeps coming into my mind. I wonder if my mother remembers about it? I'll have to ring her.

Way back when I was small my grandfather was a great watch and clock repairer - it was not just a hobby but a second income for him. And in a cardoard box on a shelf in his tiny workshop were the 'bits' - the 'remains' - of a cuckoo clock. I'd play with them sometimes. There were two small bellows - the 'cuck' and the 'coo' - the usual selection of cogs and a small wooden Swiss chalet style clock face.

This clock had met it's end it seems when my grandmother, who could be pretty moody and unpredictable, hurled it to the floor. Maybe it was dumb enough to 'cukcoo' just as she blew up about something. But there is my question about this - how come it got broken? Was it just that it drove her nuts or is there any truth in another little memory? Somehow I have the idea that someone she didn't like bought me this clock in Switzerland when I was a toddler. But who would we know that went to Switzerland - it might as well have been the moon for us back in 1950.

Oh well - I only mention it because it pops into my head every time I hear the one over the road. But interestingly I realise that, amongst all my boxes of bits that now live in Lancashire, I've hoarded that cheap little wooden Swiss chalet style clock face my whole life. There must be a reason.

Sounds of Ghosts

I was just looking for something in the car this evening when I noticed how loud the cicadas were becoming in the dusk. They are so loud down here in leafy Chiba-ken eh? The sound of the Kanto countryside in late summer. They have been active for a few weeks already but the last two weeks of July and and early August is when they are at their best.

There is one particular species here that is so loud, and has such a crazy and 'mechanical' call, that in my first year in Japan I thought that it was something going wrong with our electricity supply.

Cicadas in the hot dull soupy evening gloom is surely one of the sounds of ghosts calling around here. The humidty dulls all distant noises, removes all sense of dimension and direction to the hearing. And then the strident sounds of cicadas fill all the airless dark space under the trees, moths gather around the occasional light in the lane. O-bon has come. Dead relatives will return now to see how we are getting on.

Interesting how every culture and place produces it's own spooky times and sounds like this. With us in Britain it's the dark nights and howling gales of October and November that invoke this sense of haunting. Here it's the airless darkness of summer nights.

Washout

We've just had a reasonable sized thunderstorm down here in leafy Chiba-ken. Nothing too dramatic but enough fork lightening around for me to take my lap top down from my eyrie upstairs into the kitchen and do some reading until it had passed. Better safe than sorry! I've had a computer 'zapped' once before!

I was telling one of our students this morning about memories of a storm when I was a child of maybe six or seven. Was it really so bad as I recall or was it just that I was so young? I don't know - and I keep meaning to read up the local newspaper archives - the 'Teesdale Mercury' - to check the reality against my recollection.

It was probably August 1953 or 1954 and I was staying in Barnard Castle with my grandmother. We headed for the 'Mains' - the old town 'demesne' fields down along the river where there were marquees and a show ring and lots of livestock. Also I'm sure a gymkhana in progress with ponies around and I think perhaps a ploughing contest too. In other words a typical North of England small country town 'show'.

Then at some stage the sky turned very dark and a great wind started to blow. It was like something out of the Bible! Pure 'Old Testament' in fact! Lightning flashed and thunder rolled and some terrified horses started to bolt. There was pandemonium, people running everywhere trying to find shelter and safety. I remember us getting soaked as we ran for the gate near the road, perhaps we took shelter in the gardens of the Bowes Museum.

Vivid memories - but how true? Was it just a sharp summer shower seen by a little boy or as dramatic as I remember it? When I get a chance to check out the "Teesdale Mercury" I'll let you know!

Redcar Beach

Wrrr ... hot eh? Surely it can't get any worse. The cats have been like reclining statues all day, splayed out on any shady bit of concrete or linoleum or parquet floor. They do move around from time to time but not so much that you would notice. Edera was muttering something about buying a portable air conditioning unit for me to use upstairs but they are probably sold out already.

We never had these kinds of problems when I was a kid. A few times in the summer we'd catch the train down to Redcar or Saltburn and cower behind a wind break on the beach admiring the steelworks on the headland and building sand castles with our gloves on until the tide turned and we could go home without loss of face. That was our 'holidays'. Heatstroke was never a problem on the Yorkshire coast; sales of solar topees to guard against sunstroke are infrequent where I come from.

Actually it was considered rather cissy in our family to admit to liking the 'seaside' as my grandfather scornfully referred to it. The 'seaside' was where 'townies' went on boozy day trips, real men liked the mountains and moors and cold showers. Perhaps this was because there aren't so many really nice places along the north east coast of England. At Castle Eden Dene for example, said to be once a famous beauty spot, we spent about a century tipping coal slack from a local mine into the sea. It didn't do much for the look of the place but one good thing was that it was easy to make a fire if you got too cold while enjoying the sea air. Everything you needed except matches could be found right there ...

What do I mean , "'if' you got too cold?" Once you got down to the beach you got a good fire going fast, it was your only hope of survival.

Anyway, I had a good laugh tonight. Surfing around on 'Redcar' on the internet I see a local resident's group in the town is objecting to a big offshore 'wind farm' because the turbines will 'spoil the view'

Run that one by me again ...

Lotus Blossoms

Our day off, so we headed up to Sawara to see the Water Garden there with a neighbour of ours. This botanical garden is a couple of miles north of the Tone River in a vast area of lowland rice fields. Even a hundred years ago it was inpenetrable esturial swamp, the hard labour needed to first cultivate this land is unimaginable. It reminds me a bit of the English Fens but it is infinitely sweatier!


We hoped to catch the lotuses in the Graden on a good day and we weren't disappointed. Nearly thirty degrees and humidity so high that it was drizzling slightly. It was just what lotus flowers love - if not photographers. A bit like being hit with a pillow that has just been soaked in a warm bath. OK if you relax - and like that sort of thing.

Here are just a few of today's images. In Buddhism we think of the life of the lotus as teaching. It's a plant that grows in murky and ordinary water, it's roots are nourished deep in the black mud beneath the pond. But it rises out of that (not 'above it'!) to blossom into something of perfect beauty. Yet root and flower are the same life. There are lotuses in real life everywhere around us eh?


This morning I found myself remembering the short scripture we say after meals

The universe is as the boundless sky
As lotus blossoms above unclean water;
Pure and beyond the world is the Buddha Nature of the trainee;
O Holy Buddha we take refuge in Thee.

Evening stroll anyone?

The rice around here is really thickening up now and if you've never seen a tanbo ripening - well, it's a treat you have in store! To Japanese readers this is an utterly familiar kind of scene, but for most of the rest of you who have never visited here's what a Japanese mura - village looks like around here. It's just over the hill from our house and part of our district which is called 'Mori' which means 'Forest'

The tanbo in the foreground was planted with seedlings in a couple of inches of water in early April. Now the pan has dried out and the rice crop is ripening in the hot weather - if we get sun during the first couple of weeks in August this will be cut by the third week of the month.

Behind is a typical string of country houses in this part of Kazusa. All wooden of course, brick wouldn't last five minutes here. The house with the hip roof is a very characteristic farmhouse. And behind are the cedars that are grown to provide the timber for building. Most 'villages' are actually long strings of houses running along the north or west sides of the tanbo so that they get the sunshine for airing the house and drying clothes and bedding - the aspect of housing is very important in this humid climate.

This kind of small valley is called a 'yato' and is very frequently found across lowland Japan.

Pretty isn't it? Most Westerners think Japan is one big ugly city but actually nothing could be further from the truth. But beauty here often tends to be 'small scale' and unpretentious, people don't go in for 'big views'.

Choose Freedom!

One thing I notice a lot these days is the use of emotive language to try and sell me something, even if it's only someone else's dream. And the place I notice this most is in the many phrases I hear where there simply isn't a logical opposite. If you can't express an alternative, what's the purpose of saying someting in the first place? You might as well walk on one leg.

There's a good example of this on my computer. The Toshiba 'Sceen Saver' has four photographs presented against a black background with the admonition "Choose Freedom!"

What's that supposed to mean? Do they believe there are lots of people out there scratching their heads and muttering "OK guys! What's it to be? Freedom or Slavery eh? It's a tricky one ... hey! Let's ask Toshiba!"

Is 'Freedom' a brand? A kind of chocolate perhaps? It seems to me that you can have the freedom to do, or not to do, something. And you can be free from something - hunger for example. But you can't 'choose' to be 'free' or even 'be free' - other than in the restricted meaning of not being locked up in prison.

What's also curious to me about Toshiba's 'freedom' is that it's equated with solitude. The four photographs illustrate 1: A man hauling sledges across arctic ice 2: The vapour trail of a fighter plane across the sky 3: A single hut in the jungle and 4: A man on the top of a hill typing in his laptop above the sea (or is it clouds?). Is just being alone really to be free? Isn't that like saying to be rich is to be happy? Do you think that to be wise means going somewhere where no one will pester you and be a nuisance? Where the neighbours don't cook fish late at night and play pop music too loud?

Anyway, I only wondered.

Tramping Tokyo

In case you are wondering why there was no 'Blog' on Friday it was simply that I had a busy day. My passport had hardly any free pages left for visas and I'm hoping to get a three-year extension this time so I went into the British Embassy to appry for a new one.

They cost 19,000 yen now! Good grief! For a 32 page book when all is said and done. But it was a pleasant walk over there from Tokyo Station. It they could have let me take the short cut through the palace grounds and gardens it's only about a mile and it would have made an interesting trip too! As you can see from the photograph the Imperial Palace is located on what was the vast site of the shogun's Edo Castle and it makes an unusual enclave of peace and greenery in the middle of the city. The British Embassy is just over the road from the west gate. But to walk around the perimeter outside the moat more than doubles the distance.

Business done there I headed to the National Diet Library in the hope of finding some old housing statistics. It wasn't anything like as difficult to get into as I'd feared - much easier to use than the British Library - but I couldn't find the stuff I needed, their catalogue system beat me in the end.

And finally a five mile hike across town (I love long walks in city streets!) to Aoyama University at Shibuya where I met up with some friends from our choir. St. Catherine's College Cambridge were doing a choral recital there so we all piled ino the chapel to escape the Tokyo rush hour and listen to some of our favourite Byrd and Gibbons.

It's a small world these days. Not so?

"Recognition"

Amazing the stuff that goes on inside your head and you don't even know it's there. Where DO our dreams come from I wonder? I can understand why people get so fascinated by them and ponder their 'hidden meaning', although my grandad used to insist that they were merely a result of eating too much cheese too late in the evening. "What? Is that Cheddar?!?" was his response to a whole range of big unanswered questions about life.

Last night I dreamed that I was back at work in the brewery and we were having a big sales conference in a hotel. Hundreds of staff were clustered in the hall for the 'Celebration Party' and during the evening the Managing Director (somehow a 'composite' of three of my former bosses) stood to make the 'special anouncement'

"Tonight I'd like to recognise the talent and efforts of someone who gives so much of himself to this business. Really, without his legendary skills with numbers and his understanding of the beer market I don't know how this company would even survive. You all know who I'm talking about! Iain - please step up to accept this large, expensive magnum of champagne in recognition of our respect!!!"

I make my way across the room surrounded by the applauding crowd. But, this being a dream, the inevitable doubt crosses my mind. Is it REALLY OK to go onto the stage like this, just wearing my dark blue underpants ...? Maybe I should tie a napkin around my waist too, like a loin-cloth? And yet nobody seems concerned eh?

Now what was odd about this dream for me wasn't my virtual nudity, which is rather understandable with the current heat and humidity, but this business of 'recognition'. No one ever gave me 'recognition' like that in my whole career, to get that kind of champagne treatment you had to make a very visible 'big production' of being an early starter and a late finisher and of having no interest at all in your family or personal life. And that was never me. Could I really get so excited about our brand of low calorie lager leaping forward to capture seventh place in the market category in the East Midlands? "Are we ready for the 'big push'? We'll be in Leicester by Christmas!"

And yet ... and yet! We all feel motivated by praise eh? Feel a sense of being valued, even when the penny finally drops and we realise at last that we don't need somebody else to tell us our 'value' and that our true worth is in fact 'beyond price' and always has been.

So maybe this dream was more about me awarding a bottle of champagne to myself. 'Paid work' and 'careers' are a hard thing to put down and move on from and it's a subtle process. So it's never too early to start to learn the obvious truth that you aren't the job that you do. Give yourself a pat on the back anyway.

The Wisdom of Animals

My grandfather sometimes used to love to talk about what he called "The Wisdom of Animals" and of course as a young child I would love to hear about it too. Maybe as we get older we notice more acutely just how subtle animals are in their thinking and behaviour. It's hardly a surprise is it - I guess they managed to survive a long time without our assistance eh? But it is nice to watch.

This morning for example our younger cat Pero was keen to be let out onto the upstairs balcony (from here her various mountaineering routes lead everywhere!) She made a polite half-hearted attempt to open the mosquito screen with her paw but she kept taking furtive glances at me to judge my reaction nicely. She'd figured that too much scratching and the older human gets cross, not enough and he doesn't take any notice. When she saw she'd caught my eye she gave a whisk of her tail as if to say "What? The other human allows to do this!" like some sulky teenager. I almost burst out laughing...

Just coming back from a trip to use the photocopier in the Seven Eleven I spotted Tora holed up in an old concrete sink at the side of the house under a bush. He's really getting old now and this heat must be getting to him. But he'd very cleverly made a note of the coolest place he'd come across and as the temperature and humidity rocker that's where he takes refuge.

It makes you wonder about all those aspects of feline geography that you've never noticed. What else do these two smart cats know about that has passed us dumb bipeds by?

Birthday Boy

OK I'll own up to this. I'm a birthday boy today. Huh? Do I HAVE to tell you? You'll be shocked - I am. I'm fifty- er ...

What's that?? OK! I'm FIFTY_NINE!! OK - satisfied now?? Apart from the few really serious old-timers that read this (and hello there Norman!) I feel reasonably old and creaky, like a lighthouse that has endured many storms. Old enough! But not as old as I will next year eh?

Lots of 'pressies' and cards this morning but I must admit I'm a bit disappointed becasue the regimental military band hasn't turned up so far. I was lying awake a few nights ago remembering those days when our Queen's Mother was still alive and a hundred years old and living in St. James' Palace just around the corner from 'Buck House'. The cavalry band of the 'Royal Scots' or the 'Blues and Greys' used to ride past playing "Happy Birthday to You" and everyone would call out "God Bless you Ma'am!" in fruitly but obsequious accents and she would come to the gate to receive bouquets from little children. The BBC Royal Correspondent would explain that we all loved her because she was like "Everybody's Grandma" (except mine that is - I never remember her wearing a crown ..)

On the other hand the TV satirical programme 'Spitting Images' used to portray the Queen's Mum as a racehorse owning 'nutter' with binoculars hanging around her neck and a hip flask stuffed in her pocket. I could never decide which of these contrasting images was true. Maybe both. My grandfather once made her a cup of tea around 1920 but that's another story.

Is that the jingle of cavalry harness I hear in the lane now and the distant sound of bugles? Hmm ... maybe not. Or perhaps the Hyuuga Eelementary School Brass Band is heading over here instead to serenade me. I'll let you know if anyone turns up ...

A good vintage

Writing about blood types last night reminded me of something I saw on TV back in Britain years ago that really made me roll around on the floor laughing. It was one of those very silly "Candid Camera" or "You've Been Framed" programmes which of course I don't usually enjoy at all. No SIr! Not me! I don't watch silly stuff like that. And if I did happen to see it I wouldn't laugh at it much. Usually...

Anyway it was the program with the host with the beard and poppy eyes who comes in just when it can't get any crazier and says "You've been framed!" Who was that?

In this particular programme a young man had gone for a temporary job in a hospital and on his first day he found himself working in the laboratory in the blood donor unit. His boss, who had a strong central European accent was called Dr. Voldenscneider or some such. All pretty predictable eh?

His job was to label the incoming containers of blood but as the day wore on it became more and more evident that his dodgy boss had more of an interest in all this blood than simply putting it in the deep freeze. He kept holding it in glass jars up to the light to admire the colour and, by mid-afternoon was taking furtive sips of the stuff and saying things like "this one has quite a good bouquet" and "a rather flinty taste on the palette". It was just raspberry juice of course but the young guy really thought that his boss was sampling all this human blood on the shelves like a wine conessieur. Eevery now and again he would be pressed to taste a little himself but of course refused muttering that "he didn't usually drink blood during the day".

The fun all ended with the good Transylvanian Herr. Doktor staggering out of the deep freeze sporting large canines.

Oh well! It made me laugh anyway! If anyone wants to 'set me up' you could do worse than get me sampling some A+ red stuff straight from your veins. Heh! Heh!

Blood Groups

I was drinking my coffee this morning from a small mug. I've got to cut down of the caffiene somehow eh? Anyway this small mug is a Norakuro mug - a once familiar Japanese furry animal cheeky cartoon character although I suspect this mug is getting a bit venerable now . I don't remember seeing him on TV for a while.

For some reason I was reading the back of the mug (perhaps because it's in Roman characters so I can!) and I noticed it says "Boku wa Norakuro-kun desu. Ketsuekigata wa 'A' yoroshiku." In English this literally means "My name is Norakuro-kun. My blood group is 'A' if you please ..."

Huh? It's an unusal message to find on the back of a child's mug. I can't imagine it in England. There a child's cartoon character is more likely to be muttering "Don't blame me! I didn't vote for Tony Blair!" We all live in our own cultures.

But what is this obsession everyone has in Japan with blood group? Here your blood group is taken as an instant (and infallible!) guide to your character and lifetime prospects. I suppose that Signs of the Zodiac play a similar role for Europeans but it's not quite the same somewhere. There's a sense of 'pseudo-science' about blood groups here that birth dates don't possess.

I must look into this, because it really struck me today how strange it was - that this must be a very recent thing. After all, until the arrival of Western medicine in the 1870's no one in Japan knew what blood groups were. So somewhere a fascination about divination and assessment based on blood type must have taken over a much earlier Japanese tradition. But what was it? What's the history? I'd guess it must be something to do with social castes, the idea that samurai blood and farmers blood is somehow distinctive. Anyone any ideas?

Oh! In case you wondered I don't even know what mine is. It's not something that we ever take any note of. I'd guess it's O-Positive. Well, whichever one is an indicator of sincere, intelligent, talented, kind and modest people - that will be the one eh? How about you??

North to Wakkanai

It must be this hot weather getting to my brain cells but I was dreaming today about the trip I made up to Wakkanai in October 2003. I've just been writing on my railway 'blog' about it.

Ever been up there? It's a long way eh? I think that I got into town around 6:00 and left again at 8:00 but maybe I already saw the whole place. As we headed north through the night from Sapporo the snow started to fall more and more heavily and it was thick and crisply frozen on the ground when we arrived - it must start snowing around the end of September I suppose. The sea looked dark and cold and they have a big wall on the outside of the harbour as a protection against tsunami too but somehow it didn't make me feel so safe.

Wakkanai reminded me of that 'Northern Exposure' sitcom about Alaska. If a moose walked down Main Street it would be no surprise. Road signs are in Japanese and Russian, the only place I ever saw that. From Cape Soya you can see Russia on a clear day - I'm told.

There's a crazy streak in me that could be very happy about living somewhere like Wakkanai. You think it's the edge of the world but then someone has to live there and why not me? A great place for Cloud Watching Society members to hang out and if you've seen enough clouds there's a lot of Wave Viewing needs doing too. But I don't think Edera would be easily persuaded do you?

Oh! And then even further north there's Sakhalin ... but more of that later!

Thanks to Reggie for a picture of Cape Soya - there are many more of the area on his site

Living with Heat and Humidity

Summer is by far the hardest time for me here in Japan. It's not the kind of weather my body grew accustomed to in Britain for more than 50 years and I suppose that I just don't have any natural 'framework of reference' as to how to live with heat and humidity in a relaxed way.

Heat for us in Britain - and we do have SOME hot days! - is usually associated with sunshine. Here that might be the case in August but now it's often associated with dull days too. I look out of the window and it looks like is should be November but it feels like a Turkish Bath. It catches you unawares, your shirt is soaking with sweat and you wonder why.

I'm using an electric fan a lot. That's interesting too - that extra turbulence makes a lot of difference. In England we hardly ever use fans - maybe only in a badly ventilated offices - and I'm impressed by how much they help me. How do they 'work'? I must get a physics textbook! Often I can feel condensation droplets on my hands so I guess they produce sufficient cooling to generate a little 'artifical rain'.

The cats also have a hard time in this weather, or at least Pero does. Like me she sits around in a cross, bored and listless way looking like she's sick. Tora seems much better built for Japanese Julys despite his age and weight - he heads off to sit in the long grass in the garden and he's out there most of the day. He's used to it.