Todai trip

Into Tokyo today. It is the first time in a few weeks that I've been into the 'big smoke' and perhaps the first time this year that I've been there purely to follow my own agenda rather than with somebody else's on my mind. So it was nice to get out on the streets and nose around.

The reason for my visit was a meeting up at 'Todai'. A visiting American professor there has set up some monthly sessions for foreign researchers in Japan to share their work and experiences. It's kind of him and I really enjoyed it. I have to give a presentation myself at the end of September. Of course I'm the oldest there by about thirty years.

'Todai' is Tokyo Daigaku - Tokyo University. In Japanese terms it is Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Harvard all combined in one but much more prestigoius than that. It is one of those places that striving parents cram their hapless offspring for even from conception. Maybe even before conception eh? (I feel a bad old 'insurance policy' joke coming on here ...). Actually the campus reminds me vaguely of Liverpool University or maybe Birmingham, there's a sense of Edwardian earnestnss about it and no surprise because this was one of the institutions set up by the Meiji Emperor on the grand 'Western' model of learning. All those Gothic arches, I always expect a crocodile of gowned and mortar-boarded students to emerge from every doorway singing 'gaudiamus igitur ...'

Afterwards as it was such a nice sticky and sunny afternoon I walked back down to Ochanomizu station on the Sobu line for the train back out to the 'boonies'. 'O-cha-no-mizu' literally means "water for making tea" which I always feel is a neat name for a busy Tokyo station. Around there are dozens of music shops and most specialise in guitars. In fact it must be the 'Guitar Capital of the World' I guess. Or one of them.

Yesterday was a day off in lieu of Saturday for a lot of kids around here. Saturday was 'Open Day' in most local schools when prospective pupils and their proud parents go and rubberneck around the place and see students put through their paces and doing things that they would otherwise not do (what a cynic I am!). "And here is the nuclear physics laboratory ... if you just move down the corridor you will come to the Olympic training suite ..." Schools were ever thus eh?

A couple of years ago I visited M-chan's 'Junior High' to do a 'lesson observation'. It was a mistake with me around to put on a geography lesson. Needless to say I wasn't impressed to see the Mississippi being drawn on the map by the teacher about two thousand miles away from its actual course. He did get it coming out in the Gulf of Mexico though, somwehere around Houston ... for a moment his 'magic marker' strayed towards the Atlantic but then ended up on the right side of Florida. And then to provide some real cultural experience the American ALT gave a short talk on MacDonalds and Mickey Mouse. Well, I guess that's North America done. We all stood dutifully in the corridor and 'observed' away.

One thing teachers do here is make 'home visits'. Over two or three days they call at the homes of each of their students for a few minutes ritual bowing and formality in the genkan, a few words of advice and encouragement. Maybe that only happens in country areas now, in may parts of urban Japan I guess both parents would be at work.

Of course all of these activities and many others seem to attract liberal 'lieu days' too, kids lying late in the futon and getting under our feet, making too much noise on the train.

Anyway, enough of Mr. Acerbic. These mornings at 7:45 am I can already hear the local elementary school brass band limbering up across the tanbo for their annual 'big moment' at the end of term so summer hols must be getting close. ..

Two mysteries solved in one day

Two mysteries solved today, I should have been a policeman. A few days ago I posted about a 'dice mystery' that had me puzzled - an area behind the Chiba police training college looked like a giant green furry dice with the number 'four' displayed. Well, it wasn't a message for aliens from outer space. It WAS a baseball training area. Today I came across a couple of other playing fields on 1990 aerial photos with similar round 'crop marks' that were obviously baseball pitches. But why four on one field I wonder? Must be for synchronised pitching practice ...

But the other, so far unreported 'mystery' really made me laugh out lound when I 'cracked' it. Last week in a 1975 Employment Census report I spotted the term 'Brock' on several of the pages in the English contents translation and I was totally puzzled by it. 'Prefectures and Brocks'. As a long time resident of north Lancashire the word means the name of a local river to me, and in England it is associated with badgers. But usage here tends to follow the American pattern and I was thinking that - like so many other words - it must have a specal North American meaning. I even checked a couple of on-line dictionaries without success.

Then today in another part of this report series I came on a reference to the 'Chiba and Funabashi Brock'! I laughed out loud much to the suprise of the archivist. People usually don't find statistical reports hilarious

Yep! It was just another version of the 'golden oldie' about the 'Japanese General Erection' etc! Back in 1975 someone didn't check their dictionary or get a native speaker to proof their text. But what a whopper eh? This misprint is in half a dozen tables in each of more than sixty volumes of reports issued by the Prime Minister's Office Statistical Unit.

I bet someone was very, very cross when they found out.

Temple visit

Four of us made a brief trip out to a local country temple this afternoon. Only half an hour though as the rest of the gang had music to rehearse but it was nice to get a break in the sunshine and away from this computer.

Myosenji is one of a group of four country temples near here all within about a mile of each other and all belonging to the Nichiren sect. Nichiren was born in the south of Chiba Prefecture so there are many temples in his tradition in the area. He's viewed with some suspicion in the West as being rather xenophobic but around this district it is the practice of country people. I'm strongly reminded of Primitive Methodism in chapels in the Welsh Valleys or the Yorkshire mill towns. I'd guess many Japanese would experience them as xenophobic too ...

We made the trip because the City Office had organised an open day of temples with unusual statues, a chance to go and take a close look. Myosenji was built around 1360 and has some small but beautiful rupas from the Muromachi era in the fifteenth century on the altar. We sat on the tatami and took a good look and ask the elderly priest there about the images and the temple building.

All this made me realise that it is five months since I was last in our temple in England, a long time for me to go without standing in front of a big altar. Usually I get over to Sojiji once or twice a month but it is a long trip and I've been very busy with studies. I'll get some time at the temple when I'm in England next month for sure.

White cells of politics

On the train to and from Chiba archive office recently I've been reading - for about the fifth time - Henri Lefebvre's 'The Production of Space'. It is a wonderful book, absolutely crucial to my studies but also often an incredibly difficult 'read'. As I work my way through it sentence by sentence I've grown to love this erasicble old French Marxist. The most outstanding modern thinker and intellectual I ever read and a real 'man' too though I'm not sure that I would have ever 'got on' with him if we had ever met face to face.

Some of the stuff there that he has written there about the modern state and its 'will to power' has been in my mind this week as I've been reading the UK news about Gordon Brown's 'Coronation' as the new Laour Party leader and British Prime Minister. What I see happening there is quite amazing and especially the way in which - in a country supposedly still constitutionally governed by Cabinet decision - the incoming leadership attempts to portray inself as the 'solution' to the many 'problems' that lie at the door of his former colleague.

But hang on a moment. You already have been in power for ten years. You are the problem. Nobody has been doing this stuff apart from your government you have been a member of. So how can more of the same from you ever be the solution eh?

It has struck me just how basically 'cancerous' all this is. It is as if the ailing 'body politic' just can't stop producing more and more of those white cells, it is the only thing it knows how to do. And some awful tumours are starting to emerge. Scary.

What this world needs is many many more politicians around capable of saying "Hey! But I've had long enough already! Tried my best and we did some good stuff but basically screwed up like you do a lot of the time. I've had a go so now time for someone else to have a turn ..."

Good grief! Some fat chance ...

'Dice' Mystery

I'm deep into my comparisons of aerial photographs from 1960, 1975 and 1990 at the moment. The job is to pinpoint all the sample points I've visited around Chiba and try and work out what was happening there in these earlier years.

Interesting stuff. I've got a nice comfy archive office with a big well lit desk in an air conditioned room to work at and a place downstairs to take my flask of coffee. They even play some gentle 'piped music', who could ask for anything more? Oh! And that is one of the tunes ....!

I've been through all the usual tricks of squinting at adjacent photos to get a 'stereo effect' - a trick I learned as an undergraduate - and I've settled down to the main task, which is likely to take some weeks.

Today I was checking two photographs of the northern outskirrts of the city around Sanno-cho from 1960 and 1975. It still comes as a suprise to me just how quickly Japanese landscapes like this were transformed. In 1960 there are just miles and miles of hatake fields and smallholdings and you have to look twice to be sure than the photograph taken fifteen years later bears any relation at all. Those fields have all vanished and been replaced by factories and housing danchi. But things are seldom what they seem eh? If I'd had a picture from 15 years previously, 1945, the whole area would have been a 'moonscape' of a different kind because this was one of the Imperial Army's largest artillery training ranges. The 1960 'timeless' sylvan scene is just as transient as the others.

One mystery today - an area which I thought was a police training school athletic ground looks from above like a giant dice face with four big circles in the corners of a perfect square. Looks like it is all grass surface but it has me beat. Four baseball training 'hills' perhaps? Suggestions welcome.

Bigger hut than I thought

A reader of Rev. Mugo's 'Moving Mountains' blog just posted a link to the Wikipedia entry for the Gogo-an, the hut where the monk and poet Ryokan lived up in Niigata-ken. You can see it here ...

I've always wondered what it looked like but somehow from his poems I imagined something much simpler, more lightweight. Really just a 'bender' or perhaps a cedar-shingled shack, only big enough for one bed roll and zafu. The place in the photo is only one room but it is quite a large one by Tokgawa era standards - twelve 'mats' by the look of it - and it is very sturdily built. Chiba steelworkers used to bring up their families in the nineteen-fifties in much smaller and cruder prefabs than that although they were probably much warmer than Ryokan's 'pad'.

Places seldom turn out to be anything like you imagine eh? There's a much earlier Japanese 'classic' about retiring from court life and living in a 'ten foot square hut' - the 'Hojoki' - but I guess that probably wasn't so basic either. Henry Thoreau - now I think he was a man who really DID live with just the basic basics during his two years at Walden Pond - and a contemporary of Ryokan too. His hut didn't survive, there is only a Parks Department 'replica' to rubberneck at, and I'd guess even within ten years of his death there was nothing left of his handiwork. Wordsworth - I was impressed when I saw the little case he carried his spare shirt and underpants and 'journal' in when he walked from Cumbria to Italy. It wouldn't even hold what I usually carry into Chiba library for a day's study.

But in Ryokan's case it makes me realise that there's a so often a mountain of 'myths' there that later generations have built around the reality of the person. You have to be very careful of that kind of thing, it distracts you from what the people themselves realy had to say. And especially in respect of 'the simple life' whatever that might be. We all harbour our particular fantasies about living in small huts with 'just the basics'. Bed, bowl, just the essential Sabbatier cooking knives and garlic crusher and of course the books, couldn't be doing without those or how would we ever pass the golden hours?

Take your time ...

I laughed last week reading a blog by an American lady who lives on an island down west in the 'Seto' Inland Sea. She was writing about building vocabulary when you are learning the language and commented " I'll never forget the first time I went to a city hall in Japan to talk about the national health insurance plan. The man behind the desk explained the whole scheme in perfect Japanese, which at that time was perfectly unintelligible to me...

...As a matter of fact, when you don't understand any Japanese, it's similar to listening to a dog barking. I knew he was trying to tell me something, I just couldn't quite figure out what."Woof, woof, woof," said the nice man ... he went on for several minutes like this before saying, "Wakarimasu ka?" "No, I don't understand." And the man started over again. "Woof, woof, woof. Wakarimasu ka?".

Yep! I know exactly what she means. Japanese lessons too are ever thus for me. In each chapter of the text book the basic 'proposition' is always OK but once the exercises and drills start the slope gets ever steeper eh? "I do not ask to see the distant scene one step enough for me ...".

Her strategy, and again it is one that I have found usually works too, is to look for the kind but slow plodder in the room. Maybe they don't speak a word of English but they love to take their time with people. They enjoy the moment, the fun of trying to get something over to you, because they aren't in a hurry. Travelling on the slow train they have learned to appreciate the view.

Choir Festival

A whole day of singing today, starting with rehearsals just after ten and finishing our concert after five. It was the eleventh local annual choir festival and, I realise, already the fourth that I have sung at. I've been here more than four years already ...

I think this day gets better as the years go by, somehow we are less 'competitive' than we used to be, we listen to each other more. Or perhaps that is just me, I was the one that wasn't listening before. Even so the day is emotionally demanding somehow, we put so much of ourselves into the music, it is like driving on full power and it uses something up inside you. But in a nice way

Amongst the other choirs one small group of ladies got an especially loud clap as they were gently shepherded on and off the stage by the staff. Ther are nine of them left now and I'd guess their average age is already over eighty but they keep going and 'give it some wellie', a couple of them with the aid of a stick

Afterwards our choir clustered around an MP3 player to listen to recordings of our three items and I sensed everyone was a bit at a loss. Why? Nobody seemed to trust themselves to say "that was really good, we grew wings and took off that time eh?" But it WAS good actually. This was not simple music, it was technically, emotionally, spiritually complex and we had no luxury of a cathedral echo' to mask minor imperfections of pitch or timing. But the composer Thomas Tomkins himself would have been proud of us. We sang it not just with skill but more importantly, with hiraeth.

On the way home Edera and I stopped off in a little yato near the house to admire the young rice sprouting in the hot late afternoon sunshine. If you wonder what I mean when I say 'tanbo' here is one in an especially nice bit of leafy Chiba-ken at the nicest time of the year and just down the road ten minutes from our front door. The rice pans look like lakes in the middle of May although there is only about eight centimetres of water. Beautiful eh?

An 'Express' arrives

A big brown A4 envelope from England in the mail box this afternoon. I get one around five times a year and the number on the label next to my name tells me what is inside before I open. It is the latest copy of the "North Eastern Express".

The 'Express' is the journal of the North Eastern Railway Association. It is a good magazine too, born of a kind of passion for tradition and detail that us Brits just love to sink our teeth into. Say for example you want to find out about how railway flour sacks were labelled, or how station 'first aid' drills were organised a hundred years ago, this is the magazine for you. Us NERA members are everyone's worst nightmare at a dinner party, you would hate to be seated next to us.

Recently there's been a debate in progress about how we attract 'young blood' into NERA but the short answer is that we can't eh? Who needs the company of old windbags like us, we are doomed for sure. The North Eastern Railway (not to be confused with it's successor, the L.N.E.R.) vanished in January 1923 so unless you are as old as me you couldn't even have had a grandparent who worked for the Company.

That's my link. My grandad was a porter and then a signalman for the North Eastern Railway. He started as a seventeen year old trainee at Thornaby station the summer the 1914-1918 War broke out. One of his first jobs was helping to throw drunken sailors into the compartments of special navy trains bound for Portsmouth.

When I leaf through the 'Journal' - and especially the articles with recent photographs - sitting here in a short sleeved shirt in Kanto sunshine I can't help but think how sad the North East of England has got to look these days. Grey skies and piles of scrap iron. Actually now even the piles of scrap iron have been carted off. What happened?

That's nostalgia for you, it never is what it used to be.

No help here then

Sometimes I see stuff which is trivial in itself and yet has me prowling around the room. I'm well aware of my tendencies in this area and I hope I usually keep them in check BUT (and hey! It's a big 'but' lurking in there eh?) at least I can mention them here on LHIP from time to time.

Here's one that gave a modest 'blip' to my blood pressure yesterday. A fellow (Latin American) student sent out a note to us all about a new internet feature he'd discovered on our university's (in my opinion pretty poor) IT system. If enough of us were interested he'd volunteer to go along and ask our department's IT support 'team' to give us a short lesson in how to use it ...

Within five minutes the following reply had beed posted to all of us by the guy he was looking for to ask for help. I amend it slightly in the interests of anonymity ...

"The service which you refer to is a service which is provided by the central IT Service and as such the Departmental IT Team have no direct input into this facility, nor do we support it."

Oh well, no problem there then eh? Obviously in they don't support it then nothing more to be said...

Did you ever see anything so utterly 'jobsworth' in your life? I suppose so, probably every day

Whose system is this? The University's. Who is paying this guy's salary? The same University. And who is paying this University's fees? We are.

I'm not saying that this guy SHOULD have given practical support for this. For example he could have said "Actually we don't directly support this but contact X who might be able to help you". Or again "Actually we don't directly support this but if you look at this help page it gives full details". He COULD have said either of these.

Somewhere, deeply deeply, I take a very serious view of this kind of thing. It's peculiarly, if not uniquely, a British cancer. I don't hear it much here in Japan, people are more prepared to take their jackets off, they have some notion of the meaning of the word 'team'. There's more than one meaning to that word 'support' too don't you think? If we all shared this guy's attitude life would be pretty bleak.

The caring of cats

It often suprises me - but why should it? - how caring cats can be about things ...

Tora does a very good line in door knocking. He can't 'knock' of course, he has to scratch, but if he wants your attention he can be pretty bloomin' persistent. In fact he can go on for hours.

Last year he suddenly got the idea of 'knocking' on my door if he got hungry during the night, the feline equivalent of "can't sleep - want a glass of water". Some time around dawn there would be an endless scratching until I got up and did something about his needs. He's got very 'canny' though - he realises now that I might divert into the upstairs toilet and so he hovers on the top step until he's satisfied that I'm moving purposefully in the right direction. Then he overtakes me and if he turns left at the foot of the stairs towards the kitchen if it is grub he wants. If he turns right towards the front door he is aiming for an early morning pee and 'consititutional' himself.

I'm not dumb. In time I learned that if I wanted an undisturbed night's rest I should fill his bowl before I go to bed. "It's all done by kindness" eh? He trained me well. We had a few glitches when he decided that just before dawn was the best time to seek out the bad cat down the lane to discuss outstanding territorial sovereignty issues but I got around that one by just opening the bedroom door and going straight back to bed leaving him sitting on the stairs.

The day before yesterday he was hammering away around 4:15 am and I lurched onto the landing to let him out but no - he headed into the upstairs loo and looked meaningfully into the corner. He wanted to let me know that he'd been sick on the mat there, I could see his concern in the way he moved. "Hey Boss! Best watch out over there please! We don't want you getting that puke on your bare toes!"

To be honest I was really touched, there was something really kind in the way he did it. Thank you Tora for waking me up to warn me, you really care about me I know. Me about you too mate!

Is this the 'boonies'?

Into town tomorrow. I've not been into Chiba for more than a month now I've been so busy with loading all this data. I definitely feel the need for the big city. I'm like some country boy driven crazy by life in the outback and now I'm about to leap into the buggy and head for the saloon and trouble ...

Hmm ... well, not the saloon eh? was thinking more of the city library. And not a buggy either ... a leisuely breakfast and the 10:07 'all stations' will do for me.

I have a dim memory once of watching a film holed up in some business hotel in Luton. It was set in Australia and the basic plot was that in this out of the way sheep station peple just got drunker and drunker and drove around the outback trying to find kangaroos to take a pot-shot at. After about an hour I decided that it wasn't a very edifying film to watch, even New South Wales couldn't be THAT bad. But I vaguely regretted after not sticking it out to the end, something MUST have happened sooner or later. Has anyone else seen this movie?

Anyway, you can rely on it, I'm not reduced to that, I haven't got the rifle out of the cupboard yet or un-corked the Jamiesons.

Oh! And once I spent the evening in a bar in Thurso talking to a girl from Caithness who told me about a wonderful dance in the village of Bettyhill about fifty miles away. In the end I plucked up the nerve to ask her if we should drive over there together but then she told me that the dance wasn't until October. Story of my life mate.

Our village falls into this class and category of location. If you don't want to eat udon at the Seven Eleven convenience store or buy some more local grown peanuts from the JA farm shop or train-spot at the level crossing then in fact the only possible excitement left is a trip to Chiba to go to the library in any case. See you in the stacks!

Echo of Confucius

We were chatting with one of our adult students here this morning and somehow the conversation got around to the topic of the relationship between children and parents. Edera-chan threw in some observations about how British kids relate to adults and how subtly different it all is and I also explained the differences I noticed with Japanese kids. It was interesting stuff.

Of course kids are kids everywhere and it is easy to overstate the 'cultural' difference and even easier to see it only from the persective of your own culture, but that is not to say that profound differences don't exist. The topic came up because on the study tape we were listening to an English teenager was loudly claiming that "it wasn't fair" that she couldn't make a trip with her friends. Come to think of it I've never once heard anyone here say that. Our student - she's 60 - didn't really understand what the phrase meant ...

The concept of 'fairness' is a very Western one and I suppose ultimately it is based in Roman concepts of law and equity. However unreasonable or otherwise the expectation might be in the circumstances we expect equality of treatment under the law and our paradigm is the scales of blind justice which we expect will balance. Parents and children are fundamentally 'equals'.

The Japanese way is based much more on the five relationships of Confucian ethics and especially the two relating to parents and children and teachers and students, even if people here usually don't even realise it. On the one hand respect,and on the other hand benevolence. Japanese kids might not like what their parents and teachers propose, but somehow they are more willing to accept that it is well intentioned and 'for their own good'. Which it might be.

Impossible to measure this kind of thing and you could go a long time without even spotting the difference too, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one eh?

Going to a dance ...

... send 'three-and-fourpence'. My grandfather always loved to repeat this little 'urban myth' from the First World War, as an example of how communication can go so wrong. The story goes that this message was passed back from soldier to soldier along the trench ... "Going to advance! Send re-inforcements!". But by the time it arrived at headquarters the message had somehow become "Going to a dance! Send three-and-fourpnce!" instead. Three shillings and fourpence in old money would be worth around 18p these days but in 1914 it would have been half a day's pay.

It has been one of those days for me - bad. Last week I wrote about the misunderstandings around a choir practice run by the 'Tokyo Tenor' and then this weekend it all got worse and ended up with me missing a key practice yesterday evening. The detail isn't important - a gap and a 'carriage return' between a 1 and a 2 meant that I missed the date '12th' in a message from a mobile. Then I was confused about what group was going to meet for what anyway and then I missed out on getting reminded last week. Good grief! If you aren't a 'native speaker' you miss the clues, the detail escapes you ...

Sometimes living in such a foreign culture is like living in a fog. Usually it doesn't matter but then you let people down unintentonally. I guess it is important not to get attached to outcomes, you can only do your best ...

But these things can take on an awful energy when you live abroad they don't have on your own turf. It has to do with something I've mentioned before ... ontological security. In our own familiar little worlds in our own 'place' it doesn't matter if we are just pain dumb, we have the illusion that we 'have it together' somehow. At least until reality eventually comes crashing through the wall. But in a foreign land it doesn't take much to rattle the windows, just the smallest earthquake makes us aware of our vulnerability. We are not as competent as we like to think eh?

Feline News

Since I have begun spending so much time putting data into my computer up here both cats seem to be making my study their regular spot for 'chilling out'. Not only does the room have all the conveniences of sunny spots and cool breezes but there are also a couple of comfortable chairs and plenty of places to hide away in behind boxes and in cupboards. It is all far away from the noisy little kids in the school room downstairs. Also of course there is a human to proffer frequent strokes every time he gets bored.

A purrfect feline pitch, don't you think so? And it is nice for me to have company too.

This seems to be the favourite chair - 800 yen in our local recycling shop. I bought it for typing but actually I never get to use it. Whichever cat gets it first clings to it tenaciously all day long, but sometines if Pero is asleep Tora will sneak on and curl up beside her, taking care not to wake her up and get a nip.

Here's Tora keeping an eye on my progress with his usual pussy grin. He is becoming more of an indoor cat since his latest round of battles, I think he must have arrived at an 'understanding' with the bad cat down the road about where territorial boundaries start and end and I think he probably came second in that debate.

Still life doesn't look TOO hard eh? He says 'hello' to his many fans around the world ...

Check-up

A trip up to the doctors this morning for my usual monthy blood test. Actually it is five weeks since I was last there, I'm supposed to go every twenty eight days. I expected a 'telling-off' but there was another slight reduction in my blood sugar so 'sensei' seemed pleased enough. Not very likely to happen again this month though, I've done almost nothing except sat at my computer ...

Interesting how 'thorough' doctors can be here. In the UK they are happy enough to let the 'system' generate repeat prescriptions and the nurse take blood samples. That would never do in Japan, doctors like to be very 'hands on' and check you over in person. Delegation is not one of their skills. Of course I can see the value of it but sometimes it makes me feel vulnerable - it is a rather special case of the 'doing everything in groups' for which the Japanese are of course well known. No chance to hide away with unacceptable sugar levels here, you'll get a serious lecture on your next visit if you don't seem to be taking your condition seriously.

If we could all act rationally and in our own best interests the world would be a better place eh? No snacking, no carbohydrate 'highs', lots of vegetables and the like. I've learned bit by bit to let go of the grosser aspects of it all - the booze and the chocolate end of life - but you can't stop eating. You have to be able to keep a balance, and that is a hard thing to learn with your body.

Luckily there are a couple of 'goodies' I can 'gross out' on a bit if I like. Westerners aren't supposed to like natto - the fermented soy bean concoction we have on our rice - but actually I love it. So when I'm told it is good for me that at least is something I can have a second helping of without feeling ashamed.

Shorts Day

I don't know what the subtle difference is but I have a real problem changing trousers. Shirts, socks, underpants ... they all get consigned to the washing machine every night at bath time easily enough. Years of habit I guess and it is simple to remember as baths here are always taken last thing at night and washing is always done first thing every morning.

But trousers. I can go for days ... uh oh! OK - weeks ... and not change those if I can get away with it. Then sooner or later I forget to bring them upstairs with me and they disappear into the laundry and leave me muttering and cussing the next morning. Maybe a shirt is as much as I can manage at one time. All that rummaging in drawers and looping of belts and change to put into pockets - it is too much for my brain until I have a coffee inside of me.

Today was such a day. Edera-chan had my pale cotton trousers into the tub before I even woke up. But it was a hot morning and the first thing that came to hand in my drawer were my baggy grey shorts so ... today is the first 'Boyscout Shorts Day' of 2007.

I must admit that I like wearing shorts here in Japan - at least until the sun goes down at the mosquitoes wake up. Somehow I look kind of healthy and British and very much the geographer, as if I was about to rush off and map tetse-fly habitats for some colonial administration. Very 'empirical' too, no nasty doubts about ontology and the meaning of things and all that. The names of Capes and Bays and all that stuff - that is what Geography is about. Marx? Never heard of him!

All I need is the pith helmet eh? The coveted 'Solar Topee'

Border Collies

We visited a friend's house recently. It was the first time I'd been there and the weather was so kind to us that we even enjoyed a barbecue oudoors despite a very gusty evening.

The family have a Border Collie and by chance one of the other guests had his Border Collie there too. Two at a time eh? Like we say about London buses - you can wait a long time and then two come together. I never saw one in Japan before.

Border Collies ring lots of bells for me, bring back sights and sounds of childhood in the north of England. Of course we never called them 'Border Collies' then - to us they were simply 'sheepdogs'. You could follow their progress as they herded sheep up misty fells by the distant sound of bleating and the whistling of the shepherd. "Come by .... Go back! Good dog!" But I always was a bit cautious of the ones I knew - highly strung and intelligent working animals. They weren't bred to be pets and you waited until they said 'hello!' to you first rather than making the first move if you were wise.

Having said that the only collie I see regularly in England these days is a working dog - and one of the friendliest I know.

Well, these two in Japan were both very sociable dogs as well, perhaps they are bred for sociability rather than sheep pursuit skills here. In fact come to think of it I've only ever seen one sheep in Japan too. It was also unusual to see dogs in the house here, and nice. One in particular took a shine to me and I took a shine to her and even taught her some simple English commands. We kind of 'got on'. Perhaps it was in her genes eh? - Maybe there's some deep canine memory of damp moorland and Swaledale ewes lurking between her ears ...

Exam 'howlers'

Someone sent me an email with some examination 'howlers' this morning. It wasn't the usual stuff - the material had been scanned and included some very amusing sketches.

I think my favourite was a long question about telling the sex of a kitten in the absence of cytological laboratory equipment. Presumably the examiner had some complex hair colour relationship based on chromosomes in mind as the answer but the student had suggested that the easiest way might just be to turn the kitten over and look.

I was probably quite lucky with exams, I can only remember desparation setting in on a couple of occasions. One was in infants (elementary) school and involved a 'long division' test. Not understanding it at all I vaguely hoped that drawing some flowers for the teacher might do instead, but it turned out that extra effort in that direction in maths class didn't earn any extra credit in the art lesson. Worth a try though.

The other was more serious and could have cost me my place in secondary school, college and so in life generally. Somehow I just got completely lost with Latin and the more I struggled the deeper I got into the quicksand. I can see now that the teacher there was pretty poor. He either noticed my difficulty and did nothing or simply didn't notice. One way or another I ended up after eight months getting 15% in the end of year exams. Amusing to think of now but it could have been the skids for me if I hadn't done well in geography ...

That was the fashion of teaching 'bright kids' back in the 1960's - sink or swim.

Narita Platform No.1

Narita town JR station isn't one I often use. Catching the train there yesterday to watch M-chan playing in a soccer game it struck me that it is almost ten years since our 'Narita Express' drew up there briefly on the way from the airport to Yokohama. That first morning in Japan.

I don't think Platform No.1 has changed very much in the intervening decade since we rubber-necked at our first Japanese station. It still all looks vaguely like an Engish junction of yesteryear with a book stall and iron railings and a long canopy to provide shelter for passengers. Most 'Narita Expresses' roll through town without stopping but ours must have been one offering commuters a quick - if expensive - ride into Tokyo.

Me on the other hand - how much have I changed in ten years? Impossible to imagine back then that in the future I'd be heading off with my Japanese niece to watch my step-daughter playing soccer for a Narita High School team in the national competition eh?

And if things changed that much in ten years what about the next ten?

Theorising the experience of change has turned out to be the central point of my studies. Change usually seems to involve a cumulative and often un-noticed stream of 'differences' that are insignificant in themselves until ... until something big and irrevocable, often 'unexpected' happens. The building decays slowly and then ... a gale blows it down 'without warning'. But actually all change, even in the minutest apparently insignificant things, is irrevocable.

So, watch out.

Return of Tokyo Tenor

Living here in leafy Chiba-ken makes me realise that even in an English speaking environment I probably fundamentally misunderstand most things most of the time. Even apparently simple conversations can take on a life of their own eh? "Promise" and "be there" and "6:30 PM" all mean different things to different people. But here out amongst the frogs these semantic cracks can be like the Grand Canyon. And the inevitable missing jig-saw pieces are somehow always those vital bits with the picture of Jesus at the Last Supper, or the one with Nelson on at the Battle of Trafalgar ... if they are not there you just don't get it.

Tonight for example we had 'mens choir practice' - "kyo no ban Iain-san! Roku-ji kara .." I dutifully went around to S-san's 'van body' shop where we sing but it turned out not to be there at all. It was at the theatre - and when I got there I discovered that it wasn't the 'three of us' men's choir I'd imagined but a male voice choir of around twenty 'volunteers' and of course I was late.

They had started singing already - but not the bit of music I'd been given. That was 'Thousand Winds' but this was a folk song called 'Wakamono-tachi' I'd never seen before. I bluffed my way though pretending to have a copy in my folder until the break arrived and I could borrow some music. "Young people let's follow the road of life ...when the sun rises tomorrow we'll go on our way ...". Gripping stuff. At least it had a tune you could hum.

But the biggest suprise was that the "Tokyo Tenor" was conducting us. I haven't seen him about the area for a couple of years and I'd quite forgotten about him but he hasn't got any better.
What is it about short wannabe 'semi-professional' tenors? Italian, Welsh, Japanese - they are all the same eh? They just have to sing everything as if it was an aria from the climax of a Verdi Opera, no other interpretation is possible. But the Tokyo Tenor has the additional very annoying habit of breaking in every other bar to harangue the choir about vocalisation - "Not Lrh Lrh Lrh! .... LIKE THIS - LA LA LAAAAA!!!" This would be a bad enough bit of discouragement to dump on his students even if they were singing 'Lrh Lrh Lrh' in the first place. But actually they are singing fine, he just wants you to appreciate once again his beautiful epiglottis and masterly breath control.

I've spotted the Tokyo Tenor's weak point though - as long as you sing very loudly he thinks it is wonderful. It doesn't even have to be in tune. So now he gets both barrels from me every bar of the way. It's fun to really holler from the back row. If I sang that loud for M-sensei she would fall over with fright.

Jizo by the road

I came across this picture in a set I took in Chiba back in February. It is a small roadside Buddhist shrine in Yukou-cho just a few hundred yards from Higashi Chiba station.

A pretty ordinary statue in a pretty ordinary bit of town eh? The small bridge and busy road in the background were built in the 1960's. Before that it was wall to wall tanbo here with only the frogs and rustling rice stalks for company. So this shrine can't be more than forty years old.

The small statue is of the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, or 'Jizo' as he is known in Japanese - a name that can be rather confusing for Westerners. In Mahayana Buddhism Ksitigarbha is said to have taken a vow that "Not until the hells are emptied will I become a Buddha; Not until all beings are saved will I certify to Bodhi."

Over the centuries he has come to be seen especially as the patron of those suffering in one hell or another, and particularly of still-born foetuses and young children that die before their parents. Sometimes you see Jizo wearing the bib or in the company of the favourite toys of a dead child.

He is also the 'patron saint' of firemen and of all travellers who face danger on the roads. In one hand he holds the monk's shakujo staff, and in the other a wish-fulfilling jewel. If you want to know what these represent you will have to find out.

There is something about this particular representation of Jizo I really like. How did he come here? Who changes the bottles of water, those plastic flower offerings? Questions, questions.

When I first found him some years back he lived in a plywood box but that fell to bits and only the rusty iron frame you can see is left. Behind him is a big deep land drain supported by steel piling and just over the busy road a filling station and a Denny's family restaurant. As good a place as any to sit in eternal mediation don't you think?

Holy Lord Jizo we take refuge in thee ...

My social life

Open house today, and the place has been filled either with music or the sound of laughter and conversation for the last twelve hours. The 'recorder gang' have been here working through most of their repertoire but at 11:00 pm everyone went home.

Nice day, I like the house full of people and music even if it does put some pressure on me. I realise I'm a natural introvert these days, I like company but I charge up my batteries when I'm alone. Trying to follow the flow of conversation in Japanese can be hard work too.

Long ago there used to be a tradition of 'piano murders' here, night shift workers driven crazy by dutiful teenage neighbours practising the piano every day when they got home from school until something snapped. But I don't think we've been that bad. And at least no-one played 'chop-sticks'. No-one has called by to terminate us so far.

Socialising in Japan is quite different to the UK. Hard to put your finger on it but it is mainly the way people stay on, there's not quite the 'pace' in Japan. Eat slowly, chat a lot, drink tea. In Britain we tend to fuel social events with alcohol and build up to a climax at the end. Here if you drink (and I don't) I tend to have your fun in the middle of the dinner and then sober up. And people have the art of politeness along with friendship - formal yet informal. Or should that be the other way around?

Anyway, off to bed now for a quiet hour with a book ...

Population again

Following the item I wrote last week about Japan's shrinking population I've just been reading a new article in the 'Japan Focus' newsletter. (see here) It is based on very recent Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR) forecasts. The author confirms that the native Japanese population is already declining but that the 'grand total' has been held up by the number of resident foreign nationals moving here. Overall they expect the population to shrink 20% by the year 2050 - and that is a rather 'modest' estimate of the potential decline.

Interesting stuff. Of course the Japanese government could turn around and say to a few of it's crowded East Asian neighbours "Hey! We have a shortage of people here! Fancy sending over some of your own excess population to use the space then?" But somehow I think not eh?

And it isn't quite that simple in any case. The face-saving increase in 'resident foreign nationals' in these statistics is not retired Anglo windbags like me, no indeed. The most of us 'gaijin' living here are the Filipino and Chinese wives of Japanese spouses and their childen are of course counted as being 'Japanese'. But how Japanese is that exactly? It is one thing for bureaucrats to optimistically enumerate them as such but how will the kids themselves feel about who they are and their maternal grandparents and cousins when they grow up? As usual 'officialdom' only adds up the bit of the picture it wants to see.

Another question that politicians are going to have to grapple with is the plummeting value of residential property in all those parts of rural Japan where no-one wants to buy a house any more. Take a train through remoter Tohoku or Hokkaido and you can already see older wooden houses just overgrown and falling down. The parents have died and their heirs can't sell. But how long will voters tolerate that kind of erosion of family wealth?

There will be no shortage of strong opinions on these two topics over the next few years.