Traffic Direction

All civil engineering sites, building sites, overhead power line work and 'holes in the road' in general in Japan are always surrounded by an army of guys (occasionally ladies!) like this. Call me a 'capitalist' but as a long-time business manager it still shocks me to see it even after years of living here. The first thought in my head is always "who the heck is funding the wage bill for this lot?"

In Britain we protect such sites with temporary traffic lights and you do - very rarely - see those around here too but even they are usually supplemented with half a dozen men in reflective jackets and blue helmets with orange batons that light up and flash at night. The older 'professionals' are like mime artists, you can see them two blocks away as they signal you to halt and then bow in gratitude. Some of the younger, or very old, are not so adept and there is nothing worse than indecisive traffic signals. "Does he want me to stop or not? Oh! No, he doesn't ... but yes! He does!"

Even when they are just lurking by the roadside with never an obstruction in sight, which is a most of the time, they just can't resist waving that baton as you approach to give you instructions about which way to go. "Straight ahead eh? Shucks! I was just thinking of veering right and ploughing across that muddy field but if you insist I'll stay on the road and go straight on ..." It is as if they don't feel they are giving 'value for money' if they aren't telling you what to do and directing traffic, however pointless it might be. They will never get to be company president if they just stand around watching the birds eh?

I tremble to think of the fate of these guys if they ever had to do duty on UK roads like this. I can't imagine that they could even last half an hour without ending up as a 'stretcher case' at the hands of either a careless or irate motorist. People in Japan are so polite.

Windmills

Took this picture walking back from the station after a hot and sticky day in the Prefectural Library yesterday. It's a windmill of sorts - an old 50cl plastic bottle on a bit of wire stuck into the end of a bamboo cane. It is by the lane in some allotments near the river.

You make them by cutting the bottle sides and bending them out to form the 'sails'. There's a bit of a knack to it, getting the angle of the 'sails' just right, but once you've cracked it they are wonderful. As soon as there's a breeze they spin wildly.

I must ask around about them, they seem to be a bit of a speciality in this area and there are lots. Someone makes quite large ones using 2 litre PET bottles and old bicycle wheels and paints them bright colours, there's a few fine examples of those along the fence next to our 'Landrome' supermarket.

I've always guessed that they were 'bird scarers' but I do wonder if there's a more subtle spiritual angle to them too. They remind me strongly of Tibetan 'prayer wheels'. They look wonderful when they are spinning and make a good noise.

So, maybe some of my Buddhist friends would like to try making a few. You could let the wind 'rotate the scriptures' - literally - by putting a verse inside.

"... the heat of fire ... the moving wind ... the water wet ... the earth all solid ..." might be a good line to use eh?

Kujukuri swim

Swimming again yesterday but as we had to go over to Honno for some singing coaching we headed afterwards for out usual pool 'haunt' down at Kujukuri. The pool belongs to a hotel on the coast there and the price reflects the rather remote location - just £2 ($4) for two hours and that includes the sauna and the 'rest of it' too. Maybe around a dozen of us were taking advantage of the large modern facility, but of course in the 'high season' it is busy.

I always find Japanese pools odd becuase they usually don't have a 'deep end'. Kujukuri has a 'slightly deeper' end - 1.3 metres as opposed to 1.2 metres, but even there it just comes over my belly button. No place to show off your diving prowess eh? If you had any ....

One of the guys who turned up to swim had only one leg. I was curious when he hopped to the poolside to see how he would get in and the answer was "with a lot hessle than I did". With my diabetic feet I have to take real care using those metal ladders.

He could swim quicker than me too.

The other quaint tradition in Japanese swimming pools is that once an hour everyone has to get out for five minutes. Of course there is always a watchful attendant around but this is just an extra little safety check to make sure there is no-one on the bottom that they had missed. It's also an excuse for the PT 'tape' to be played over the tannoy and that seems to be the same tape used in all pools too. An enthusiastic instructor calling out over the piano accompaniment "legs together ichi ... ni ... san, arms raised ichi ... ni ... san". His voice has a certain quality - if I say "Mr. MacKay" English readers will know just what I mean.

Changing back into my clothes to get some lunch I was a bit alarmed to see the foot of some guy who was lurking beyond the end of the lockers in the corner of the changing room. But it was OK - you guessed it - on closer inspection it was the one-legged swimmer's artificial leg still in shoe and trousers and stashed carefully in the corner.

Ancestral Excursion

I mustn't make a habit of it but I couldn't resist 'blowing' an hour or two today taking a tour around one of the sites available to check up on my 'ancestors'. They have an offer where you can try the service free for fourteen days, but I'd better remember to cancel at the end of next week eh?

It is something I've been meaning to try for a while. Our UK records are a bit tricky to use because there isn't free access to everything after 1900 - you have to pick your way around the obstacles. But if you can get a fix on where some of your relatives were living at the 1901 Census then you stand a good chance of following the records back to 1851 or even earlier.

Today I managed to learn quite a lot about my mother's family and got two theads back to the 1840's - one in the Vale of Eden in Cumbria and the other mainly in the North Yorkshire moors. Interesting the common ground between them too, clearly both families caught up in the English agricultural 'depression' that came with the opening of the American prairies in the 1860's. Both left hill farming and found themselves heading for the hope of work in the iron works along the Tees.

No two census records are the same - continually moving from rented house to rented house and job to job wherever there was work, sometimes taking in lodgers to make extra money. My grandmother's grandfather went from farming to confectionery to selling coke to being a general labourer. Not what we would comsider a 'career progression' now.

A world of no effective contraception, no fridges, no bank accounts and no electricity. And yet looking at the few pictures that have survived of my late Victorian relatives I can really see myself in them.

A local death

We had another death in our neighbourhood at the end of last week. The wife of someone who lives in the house on the corner across from the old farm died of cancer in her late forties. But it was quite sudden it seems, hardly diagnosed and she was gone. A suprise to all of us.

A fortnight ago an old gentleman in his early eighties who lived in a house just behind us died too. In a way that was no suprise, he's been looking frail all year. He used to share the place with his brother in law and they were great friends - they could almost have been twins to look at the pair. I used to say 'hello' to them when they walked past together in their 'jaunty' style when I was doing carpentry out in the car port. They would look very 'dapper' with their walking sticks and wearing 'pork pie' hats. I always had a grin from them and great interest in what I was making, very kind and gentle people. But then his companion died last summer.

In the few years I've been living here we've had five deaths involving neighbours within just these few little lanes. Usually spring and autumn - at the change of the season. In Britain most deaths are in the cold dark part of the year - especially January - and looking at the hard mortality statistics that is the time when most deaths happen here in Chiba-ken too, although there is a clear second 'peak' at the hottest part of the summer when people's bodies struggle to cope with the humidity.

It isn't my personal perception though. Most of the deaths I've been involved with have come around the equinoxes when the world swings over and the length of the days is changing fast.

Ambient noise

When I settled down to study today it was cool enough to leave the air-con switched off and just open the windows for a change. With the insect screens closed of course. But then the inevitable happened - someone in the neighbourhood started with a chain saw, a petrol 'strimmer' or possibly both. The distant but persistent racket drifted in and out of my awareness as I was reading for about half and hour until I gave in and closed the window and reached for the air-con switch again. Anyway by then it was getting muggy. Still, according to the news autumn officially arrived in Kanto this weekend and we can expect the temperature not to get over thirty degrees again this year. Goody!

Despite the chain saw I realise that I've grown accustomed to noise here in Japan over time. Things that I would have got cross about three years ago I don't even notice now. In England we like our 'peace and quiet' and there is a fair amount of ambient noise even around this village that would have the average whingeing 'Brit' phoning the council environmental health department and writing to the local paper.

Most prominent is the local station, around a quarter of a mile away. There's the 'dong dong' of the level crossing four or five times an hour and the warble of the 'mind the doors' singal before the guard's whistle and the driver's hooting. Then there's the once an hour 'music and movement' broadcast on the driving school loudspeakers across the river as the next class of students are led out to the cars. Five times a day the vllage loudspeaker system broadcasts regular announcements and music to let you know what the time is and there are a fair number of itinerant traders circulating around too selling paraffin or laundry poles or collecting scrap.

All these now I take in my stride from the first train at 5:40 until the last at 12:20 and usually even strimmers and saws too if I'm not trying to concentrate. I'm becoming used to it eh?

Certificates

A couple of copies of 'death certificates' that I had requested from the UK arrived in the post yesterday. One was my father's, and the other my maternal grandmother's. In Japan we don't have the same system of birth, death and marraige certificates that we do in Britain. Here this kind of offical record goes into the household 'koseki' record and it isn't as 'public' as it is in the West for reasons that would be interesting to write about another time.

In the UK you can request copies of all such documents, you don't have to give a reason. There's a great interest in tracing your 'family tree' in Britain which you don't get in Japan in quite the same way. Why is it so important for us to know something about our 'ancestors' even if it is only a name and where they lived?

I was especially curious to see my grandmother's certificate but as it turned out there was nothing on it that I didn't know already except for her precise date of death, 25th February 1960. She had a heart attack at home as she was getting up on a cold winter morning - just like my father in fact. She died rather young and I realised reading it that now I'm one of only two people left who has any memory of her at all. How quickly we slip out of sight eh? But we were very close and I've found that I've thought a lot about her recently and there are more mysteries there than answers for me there. She could be a scary person but, as Mark Anthony says ... "the evil that people do often lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones ..." Or something like that. Now there can't be any answers, only speculation.

Well, to be exact there is a little bit more 'on the record' to know about her but for that I need to track down her birth and marraige certificates too. Not as easy as it looks - wish me luck!

A Japanese shed

'Sheds' has been a theme recently on a web site I visit every day, and there has been a nice selection of pictures of all kinds of sheds in some very picturesque rural locations. So I thought it was time to include a Japanese 'koya' (shed) to add some colour and contrast eh?

No one could accuse these sheds down at the beach at Motosuka of being overly picturesque but maybe they look good if you are hunting for a 'coin locker' or somewhere to take a 'warm shower' when you have just finished surfing the Pacific swell.

Not your 'true shed' though these - more like a lorry container cut about a bit with plumbing installed and artistically painted with spray cans. Nothing wrong with that - half of a friend's house here is built out of such hardware. They have never heard of the 'Town and Country Planning Act' in leafy Chiba-ken.

Summer is on the way out now though. It is 'jumping' on the coast here during August weekends and you'll pay 500 yen to park your car but now it's free and the workmen are dismantling the temporary beach bar and restaurant for another year.

I always like the kind of tacky temporary buildings that you seem to find on the shore pretty well everywhere. Once the people are gone there is something a bit 'surreal' about the whole environment as winter storms loom and a few hungry looking seagulls reclaim the place.

More Japanese sheds soon!

Taking a 'dip'

Our 'day off' yesterday and as I've been on the "it's time I had more exercise" tack recently we thought we would try out the local fitness centre. I can't think why we haven't been there before (Oh! Maybe because I didn't realise it was there eh?) but it is only a couple of miles from here. Usually for a swim we head off down to the coast to a pool attached to a hotel at Kujukuri.

We thought this fitness centre was run by the city council but it turned out to be a tiny part of the Konami empire. In America I guess they are best known for video games but in Japan they have fingers in all sorts of pies including sports clubs and the like. "Sports" would be 'pushing it' for our local centre though - 'fitness' would be a fairer description as the average age of people there seemed to be around late 'sixties'. Not so much older than me I suppose. And it was busy as well, perhaps three hundred cars parked up by the time we arrived at 10:30 am.

And oh! so Japanese too eh? Westerners imagine everything is expensive here but actually far from it. There's a real feeling of 'public benefit' about places like this. Nicely done and well looked after, treated with great care by the customers too. I'm always reminded of public facilities in Britain in the nineteen fifties when people didn't have money and it was a treat to go to a new church or public restaurant or for a week at a holiday camp and still a 'wonder' to be allocated a house in a New Town where you could breathe fresh air and see trees and stuff. There's a strong element of this feeling in Japan I find hard to describe but I really like. A sort of concerned Confucian socialism. Older people know when they are lucky.

And so busy and crowded there too eh? Full of people that had known each other their whole lifetime and most of them eager to sneak the chance to take a close 'gander' at a large fat pink 'gaijin'. ("So big! Segoi! Hard to imagine!") 'The pool was divided into six sections, ranging from 'only walk' on the left in lane one to 'long swim' in lane five. Lane six was full of elderly giggling ladies doing 'music and movement stuff' exhorted by someone's grandson in trunks and with a microphone on the poolside.

In each separate zone 'keep to the right and keep moving' was the rule. I counted no fewer than forty one 'notices' around the pool area listing various prohibitions and admonitions but hey! this is Japan after all. What would they ever do without them? The place would obviously be a bear garden in a minute if people didn't know what the rules were...

Douaniers

Happily dreaming away in my 'post lunch power-nap' today and guess what happened. One of my Japanese friends was just telling us that she "didn't expect that she would be having any more babies now" when - horror of horrors and shock of shocks! I found them!

A whole packet of 'chips' (French Fries) that I'd brought back from England in July! Still down there in bottom drawer of the black plastic filing cabinet that I'd had on the plane, together with some MacDonald's hash browns of about the same vintage (Well heck no! I've never entered a MacDonalds in my life of course but someone once told me in a whisper that they have them there anyway). A greasy packet of uneaten food dating back into the early prehistory of fat and grease, maybe still edible eh? Everyone clustered around. The shame of it.

Including the 'douaniers'. Remember them? The French 'customs' guys from yesteryear wearing their 'kepis' and cloaks and looking bored and ready to pounce on all foreigners that didn't look like they could speak much French. How did they det into the dream? Oh! Of course - French Fries - that explains it!

Douaniers! Where did they all go? Time was when you couldn't get off the ferry at Calais without being 'set on' by a bunch of at least a dozen. Gone to the great Customs Hall in the sky I guess, another great tradition that the European Union has swept away. The Treaty of Rome has a lot to answer for. Time to wake up and go to choir.

Something Missing

Just drove down to the Post Office. I felt there was something strange as I turned the corner near the cemetery but it wasn't until I got to the bridge that I realised what was missing. All the cherry trees on the opposite side of our little Sakuta River have been felled in the last couple of days.

The trees on this side all went about a week ago but I was hoping that the opposite bank might be left in peace. But no chance of that I'm afaid, once the local civil engineering contractors get to work in an area. It would offend their sense of 'neatness' and a 'job well done' to leave trees partly overhanging their project. Suddenly the view is bigger, wider and - less interesting.

It is all in a good cause I suppose. The Sakuta is a small river, more of what we would call a 'beck' in northern England. It was straightened and the channel was concreted about thirty years ago and I'd guess that was when the cherry trees were planted in straight lines down both sides. Unfortunately the design wasn't really adequate, the 'ditch' that was created was too small. In heavy typhoons it floods easily and some of the low-lying houses down there start to resemble castles surrounded by moats. Back in 1997 there was a really serious flood down stream at Naruto with half the town washed out and this big civil engineering scheme has been a political promise 'on the cards' ever since.

But sad to see such mature trees go and I only hope some replacements get planted when the new dykes and levees are finished. Trees alongside 'works of man' are always at risk eh? How many times in France have I seen the sad sight of mature plane trees planted a century ago along both sides of country roads to shade foot travellers being felled along one side of the highway in a road widening scheme?

Unplanned Excursion

Until you live in a very different culture with a very diffierent language it isn't so obvious that things don't translate in straightforward ways. Dictionaries - big dictionaries! - abound so it stands to reason that if you can say it in Japanese it is capable of being said in English eh? But it never works that way somehow. 'Meaning' is a nebulous thing. Time and again I find you have to watch life like a hawk if you don't want to get taken - metaphorically or literally - somwhere you hadn't planned to go.

Yesterday was a pretty good example of this. At the end of the afternoon Edera wanted to go somewhere that I imagined from what she knew was a local farmers market with stalls or a 'car boot sale' so I said I'd go along. The location was something 'yama' which means 'mountain' in Japanese and I never gave it a thought.'Mountains' around here are usually small escarpments maybe 20 metres high and I guessed it must be a farm at the foot of a small hill.

Until we'd parked up, crossed the main road and headed on foot up a track into the bamboo 'jungle' anyway. Then I realised that this was the 'wilderness', not 'mountain' meaning of 'yama'. Just past the hand painted property sign at the entrance, which sported a little cartoon snake, I stopped dead. "If you think I'm walking up there you must be crazy!" I said and did a 'U' turn. If you don't know me in person I should explain that I have a total phobia of snakes and life in Japan for me is one long 'avoidance strategy' of not going to places where I am likely to meet any. At this stage in the long humid summer that is quite a short list of locations.

This was just the moment when a) I noticed a small dead viper in the lane and b) the white farm pick-up truck driven by a cheerful young guy pulled up behind blocking the lane and all retreat. He guestured that we should jump into the back for a ride up the hill. We bounced through at least half a mile of cedar forests, bamboo thickets and long grass, it was all like a scene from my worst nightmare with no hope of waking. And how to get back?

We eventually came to a clearing where there was a kind of 'hippie-style' micro 'Woodstock' in progress with various 'benders' and stalls around. If it hadn't been for the Amazonian environment and of course complete lack of illegal 'substances' (hey! This IS Japan!) it could all have been happening in Gloucestershire! And if I hadn't been sitting there wondering if I was going to die of fright on the way back I would have enjoyed it.

But luckily my worst nightmare wasn't realised, a kind person drove me back down to tarmac. Maybe if he hadn't I would still have been there.

Take a Leaflet

I was talking with one of our students yesterday morning about her job. She works in a small office where they handle requests for help from local people and match these against the skills of people on their 'books'. All of these helpers are 'silver volunteers' who have retired and are offering specific skills like gardening or dog walking or accounting or homework help. The oldest 'helper' in regular demand is someone over eighty who does calligraphy for people's homes. Actually they are not volunteers either because you have to pay a modest fee which I guess they find helps out their pension.

She was asking me if we had a similar scheme in England. I had to say I wasn't sure but didn't think so. Some instinct tells me that if we did it would soon run into problems with insurance and accreditation ("What if the dog-walker got run over?" "What if the homework helper was a child molester?") But perhaps I'm wrong. I hope so. Japan is supposed to have a weak 'civil society' compared with the West and it is certainly true that government here both national and local dabbles in lives more and there are fewer charitable organisations and agencies. However I think this is often - certainly in the country - because social 'norms' about accepting help are different and people 'watch out' for their neighbours more.

This summer I spent a depressing day chucking away mountains of stuff carefully hoarded and filed away in box and ring files by my late stepfather Bill. I was just astonished at the number of pamphlets and leaflets and the like he had received from 'well meaning' agencies like 'Help the Aged' and the local Social Services in the last years of his life. They were all available on request in Hindustani, Welsh and Cantonese and provided lots of 'information' on the problems of old age and how to 'know your rights' and the rest of it. No doubt their compilation and distribution earned monthly salaries for many 'professionals' in these fields.

And yet I have to say from my own close observation that not one of them was ever the least bit of use for finding help for him with the really essential things like getting shopping. He'd have put them to better use making a fire with them to keep warm. In fact the areas where he - and most old people - need help were all specifically excluded from the help he could hope for. ("What if the volunteer ran off with the shopping money, who would be to blame?"). The only help they ever had was from hard pressed friends and family members. Basically he died surrounded by a 'community care' structure which kind of promised him everything and yet did nothing to help at all.

Normal Service

I'd planned today to write about an e-mail that I had this morning from the 'Webteam' of North Yorkshire County Council. Yesterday I tried to contact the Registrar there by e-mail for a copy of a death certificate and found myself 're-directed' (never good news eh?) to another part of their web site where there was a six part electronic form I had to complete about 'the nature of my query'.

Good grief! I waded through the screens of questions anyway because I figured that it was still going to be a lot quicker than hanging in some queue waiting for a 'service desk' operator to pick up the phone. Until I came to the part where I had to put my address. When I put in my Japanese postcode it stalled completely and told me I was wrong. Invalid mate, you are invalid! North Yorkshire had happily tried to validate my Chiba postcode against the full list of half a million valid UK postcodes and decided that I was a fool and there was no way I could continue.

In the end I got around the problem by entering a valid but completely spurious postcode for Lancashire in the box and then adding an acerbic note in another question box saying that the code was junk and telling them what the real one was.

A minor point I guess, happens all the time on the 'net'. Badly planned half-done official junk. Obviously no one in North Yorkshire County Council had ever thought that someone from a foreign land might ever want to get in touch with them. All they were concerned with was 'validating' some data, goodness knows why. What good did it do them after?

Today I had a 'system generated' (do not respond!) email back with an eleven character reference code telling me that the Web Team (sounds like a flock of ducks to me) would respond to my query "within three working days". Three DAYS?? I guess they must be 'on their break' eh? Or maybe migrating south.

But rather than just finish sounding a tad judgemental here I'd also like to add a note of comparison by mentioning what happened here a few minutes ago too. I got back home at 5:30 pm and there was a card in the mail box to say that the postman had tried to deliver a registered letter from England a couple of hours previously. Edera got on the phone to post office about a mile away to see if there was anyone there so that I could go down and pick it up (this is Saturday!). The helpful clerk said that there would be someone around there until seven but not to worry - a postman would be back on his motorbike soon so they would drop it round to the house again for me shortly.

Memorial Book

On our home altar we have a small folding memorial book in which we keep a record of the names of those dearest to us who have died. I don't know what this book is called in Japanese, but it is organised on a 'page per day' basis and there are 31 pages in the book. So for example everyone who died on the seventh day of the month goes on the same page, along with the month and year in which they died.

I've seen them on other home altars around here, but then this is a fairly 'traditional' country area. Back in the first half of the twentieth century families in Japan were still organised on very traditional 'ie' or 'house' lines, with the family heirlooms and altar being passed from head of household to head of household. So I'd guess that once such books recorded the deaths of ancestors for generations back, and many people still have that information. It also ties in with the Buddhist tradition of having annual 'memorial' ceremonies for many years after someone dies.

The 'House of Robinson' is not one that you can trace back to Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Battle of Sekigahara (as far as I know!) but I like having this book on the altar. Everyone should have something like it, even if there are some yawning 'gaps' in what you know about your family - and there are certainly some of those for me!

I don't make a deliberate practice of going into the 'washitsu' every morning and ringing the 'inkin' or reciting a scripture but that doesn't mean that it doesn't regularly get 'looked at'. Ours includes friends and pets too, which is probably very unconventional, but not so many ancestors on my side as yet. In British culture we don't remember dates of death for long apart from inscriptions on headstones - birthdays are the familiar dates for us. So it will take a bit of research and certificate ordering from the Registrar's Office to even get back to four grandparents and eight great-grandparents on my side of the family.

Anxious Moment

It didn't strike me at the time but it was an old-fashioned railway waiting room by Japanese standards. Especially that big old painted oak table in the centre. And the lighting wasn't good either, more like the kind of place I would have expected in Britain fifty years ago. But only twelve minutes to wait until the last train so not too bad.

Just time to do some checking. I carefully opened the big plastic kit box containing the parts for a large model of a sailing ship and started to check them off carefully against the diagram on the instructions. But I hadn't got past the mizzen-mast top sails before I realised the train was due and I'd better get it all put back into the box fast. Of course it didn't go back in as easily as it had come out. As I hurried someone called from the platform "Hey! The train is arriving now!"

I hurried out with the big box and my case and hurled them onto the train through the nearest pair of doors but then I realised that the other bag was still in the waiting room! What a fool I'd been! "Please wait just five seconds!" I yelled to the guard and rushed back to get it. Darn! The door had blown shut with the wind! I struggled with the shiny brass knob but I couldn't grip it. Why was I wearing these yellow shiny sheepskin mittens anyway? I was dressed as if for a trip to the Arctic ....

Thankfully the guard blew his whistle and I woke up.

Where do all these anxiety dreams come from? Sometimes I remember them and sometimes I don't but in our dream worlds there is always this kind of low level anxiousness around. At least there's that surge of relief afterwards when you realise that you don't actually have to solve the problem that's been harassing you for the last ten minutes eh? If only life could be that way....

Not the day I had planned

Into Chiba this morning to do some pretty obscure shopping errands (my airbrush compressor hose needed an adaptor!) and also to re-register at the university library and have a nice junk food lunch too. But it never worked out that way. No sooner had I struggled on the train into town and through the rain to get down to the shop near the port than ... I remembered that I had left the kettle on the stove when I came out of the house.

Well, maybe. Who can remember such things exactly? I remembered filling it, and putting it on. But not drinking the coffee. I'd had to go to the loo then sprint for the train. The pesky voltage in Japan isn't enough for the kinds of 'auto switch off' electric kettle so ubiquitous in England so we have one we put on the gas. I'm always forgetting about it.

But not when I go out of the house for the whole day and Edera isn't in either.

So, theoretically speaking, what's the worst that can happen when you leave a steel kettle on the gas stove? First it will run out of water, then get very hot I guess. But then what? Well, maybe there might be an earthquake, the house would catch fire from the red hot steel rolling around on the floor and the whole neighbourhood would burn. For example.

So it was straight back to Chiba station and onto the train home feeling pretty bloomin' cross with myself. Luckily I had a nice chat with a Canadian girl on the way back which cheered me up eh?

The house was still there and ... next to the full kettle on the un-lit gas stove was the cold cup of coffee that I had forgotten to drink.

There's a moral in here somewhere about the importance of being mindful - don't you think so? Not hidden too deeply either eh? Something on the lines of 'pay attention to what you are doing otherwise life will rapidly re-arrange your day for you'.

'Tyro' Ornithologist

In line with my latest 'pledge' (I think that is the word that politicians use these days) about getting out more after lunch I took myself down to Motosuka Beach for the second part of the afternoon today, even though it was a bit rainy.

Apart from the pleasure of walking by the Pacific (the scariest of oceans somehow!) in shorts and short sleeves on vast and deserted misty beach on a humid afternoon I also like watching the birds there these days. I'm a complete 'tyro' ornithologist and can hardly tell an ostrich from a nightingale but I can see it's fun. Also, however many books you have (and I have two, an English one and a Japanese one) you can only learn it as a skill, by doing it. There's the pleasure of watching what they do and also I can already start to notice differences in birds by age and - presumably - gender. Maybe it will be my new 'shumi'.

Birds are really social too eh? It is interesting to watch the small groups forming and breaking up as they search for food along the shore. They all view me with suspicion of course.

So here's a couple of my pictures today. What are they? I'm not sure! Little grey birds eh? No, I think the ones above are 'daizen' or 'chidori' (grey plovers) and the ones at the botom might be 'aoashishigi' (greenshanks). Anyone got any other suggestions?

By the way ... what is the difference between a 'pledge', a 'promise' and a 'vow'? Feels to me that these days politicians definitely avoid making anything as rash as a 'promise', they are more into 'pledges' of a specific but meaningless kind ("If elected I pledge now to reduce the number of pink postage stamps issued by at least 7% over three years" etc.). 'Vows' on the other hand are best avoided too - they are what you make when you get 'found out' ("He vowed to fight on until the conviction was overturned ...")

Oh! But that isn't what I wanted to talk about eh?

"I'm telling you now, our next nest is going to be somewhere more convenient for the shops."

Daily Schedule

I'm finding that 'shaping up' to the mountain of work I'll have to wade through this year (and can you wade through mountains?) to get my thesis written is making me think more about how I organise my days. I can see that I've got into the habit of using days for just one thing - today 'study' - tomorrow 'Chiba' - and so on. It is a characteristic of 'retirement' I'm sure and perhaps not a good one. I'll only finish what I have to finish if I get back to a good attitude to working so I need to re-think all that.

I find now that I have most of my creative energy for writing or reading available in the mornings, and it is best that I set aside nine until twelve for 'Category A' tasks and ONLY those - the stuff that I need to be alert for. It suprises me because usually I'm terrible first thing in the morning, I need space to get moving, but once breakfast has raised my blood sugar it seems to be my best time for mental work.

If I'm at home I generally take an hour's nap immediately after lunch and that gives me some good energy to use until early evening - but not as focused as the morning slot. So maybe a few times a week afternoons are a good time to take some outdoor exercise.

Evenings - spend some time downstairs away from my study - and especially after classes have finished in the school room. Learn to put stuff down. Maybe even spend some time using my hands in the workshop.

I'm still feeling my way with all this and my body has opinions of its own about when and where to rest. But it feels better to have a 'timetable' in place

'Dee-Dee'

More than a bit sad tonight. I've just heard that Julia's dog Darcey had to be 'put to sleep' yesterday. She's been suffering from various 'lumps' recently but this week she deteriorated fast. A scan showed that she had malignant tumours in her liver and spleen.

Eight years old. No great age for a dog but 'flat-coats' are susceptible to tumours it seems.

Darcey. Darcey-Dog. 'Dee-Dee' to her many friends. A dog-lover's dog. Big black aimiable giant with a heart of gold. You could roll around on the floor with her for hours. Her sense of fun was just amazing. Cheeky, obsessed with food, she could hear a sweetie paper at two hundred metres in a hurricane.

And so full of energy. If you walked one mile with her she would run at least ten and swim a couple of extra miles too if the opportunity was there. Stick chaser; duck scarer, a jumper into rivers and canals and licker of faces and plates. Her big tail sent crockery and small children flying.

I was lucky to have had a friend like you. Too 'full' to write any more at the moment.

CSS - "Creeping Schoolboy Syndrome"

Good grief! Start of the new term here (but in Japan not 'academic year' - that starts in April) and the hearts of all good men and true must turn towards Japanese language classes again. What is that line from "As you Like It" ...

"And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school"

I don't know about the shining face in the morning, 'grey' would be a better description of mine, but Shakespeare certainly captures my mood with the "creeping ... unwillingly to school" part.

I'm not a success with Japanese. Why is that? Dumbness? Lack of talent? Laziness? Yes, all of those for sure ... and yet ... somehow each year - and a tad magnificently I like to think, like Landseer's 'Stag at Bay' - I screw up the nerve to thrust my fingers back into that flame once more. Is there no end to my naked courage?

Last term my 'partner in crime' in study and I just got completely lost in our allocated group. Back-squadded yet again and made to stand in the corner in our dunces caps, we finally just lost the plot somewhere between 'nagara' and 'doko kade'. Sad, sad,sad. Renshu shimashou?? We looked ahead willingly enough like the trusty beasts of burden we are but there was no spoor to be seen in the long grass, no vestige of a trail ahead. Just a limitless and featureless horizon and the worried questioning gazes of our teachers and fellow students. We glanced at each other and muttered "We are going outside ... we may be some time ..."

So wish us luck over the next few weeks as we head once more into that oh! so familiar breach ...

'Fitow' Looms

The wind is beginning to rattle the shutters of my study, and I see from the JMA forecast page that we can expect our first typhoon of the autumn here this evening. The latest 'plot' suggests that tropical cyclone 0709 'Fitow' is already over the Gulf of Sagami and will head straight up Tokyo Bay towards leafy Chiba-ken. You can see its progress here

It's the season. Most of the stronger typhoons arrive here at the end of the summer, and with the hot weather we've had this year we can expect some powerful ones. Our neighbourhood is on the lee side of a forested hill so we are usually quite sheltered here. Touch wood. As someone accustomed to Atlantic winter storms it always suprises me how quickly they can move in and move out again. By the 'early hours' this storm is expected to have moved well up into northern Honshu.

This house shakes something awful in a typhoon - the shutters rattle and the timber walls are shaken by the force of the gusts and you can't tell whether it is a typhoon or an earthquake - or both!

I've lived in some windy places in my life. Long ago we used to live in Orkney, one of the more exposed of island groups off the north coast of Scotland. That was a place where it was definitely worth staying indoors on stormy nights. Not that I did. A really good 'blow' was enough to get me down to the shore to admire the mountainous seas rolling in any time.

Maybe I'll go down to Kujukuri to take a look at the sea later. But anyway, the cats are 'grounded' until further notice. It is a night in watching television for them eh?

Pushing the Button

OK - so after Quasimodo's replacement I promise that this really is a true story and one told by my grandad too so I'd guess we are talking of eighty years ago here ...

My grandad was a railway signalman, a great job of the kind that you don't find much now - at least in Britain. Of course working in some signal boxes as busy stations must have abeen pretty stressful life but working at some small station out in the country, or at a lonely junction up in the hills with maybe six trains a day - heaven! Plenty of time to sit aound, read books, polish the levers and drink endless cups of tea beween the trains chuffing by. I spent days and days in such places as a child.

If you have never been in a signal box take a look at the photograph (from the Bluebell Railway in Sussex!) The big levers below move the points and signals to control the trains and up above that is the 'instrument shelf' for the 'block telegraph' and other safety instruments. Above that - the 'track diagram' to tell you what all the levers do.

Now once my grandad was working somewhere - I think Hopetown Junction at Darlington - where the the man who worked the other 'shift' had only one arm. He'd lost the other in the First World War. And my grandad became very curious about one thing. This colleague had immense strength in the one arm and could pull heavy point levers with his one had where everyone else had to use two. But for just one special train movement every he had to press a button up on that instrument shelf at exactly the same time as pulling the lever underneath.
How did he do that? With just one hand?

One day my grandad contrived to stay there late until the first train of the man's new shift arrived. His friend reached for the lever with one hand and .... leaned forward and pressed the button with his nose!

For weeks after that my grandad tried to press that button in the same way but he never did. All he ever managed to do was hurt his nose and get a nose bleed.

A 'sitting place'

One web site that I visit daily (see here) is featuring a short series of photographs of sheds at the moment. It reminded me of some pictures that I took recently down at Kure.

It is what used to be - I guess - a standard navy 'sentry box'. Perhaps it is or was a standard across the army here too. I've certainly seen some rather like it, if not so antique, dotted around various factory gates in Chiba.

I took the picture because it struck me as a perfect design for a small meditation hut. "Dont meditate in draughty places" said Keizan and here is a small but comfortable space to spread your zabuton and place your zafu or seiza bench out of the wind and rain but still in the 'open air'. And if your legs are past all that and you have to use a chair like me, plenty of room for that in there too. And on spring or autumn afternoons plenty of sunny corners for any sun seeking felines to look in and keep you company.

In Japan I think that the 'mozzies' would soon find you if you didn't burn insect repellent as well as incense but I'd like to try one of these in northern England. Of course you would have to think about 'aspect', especially in a more open places like moorland. It would be nice to face south west but the direction that the rain comes from in Britain.

Maybe I'll run a tape measure over one and get my tools out soon.

Quasimodo angle

This last few days I've been watching out for bells. Something with a tasteful sound, maybe one of those Swiss cow bells would do. Tell me if you see one. We need it because I'm getting deaf - when Edera calls me for lunch I can't hear her if the air-con is on upstairs - which it always is of course. So we need something that I can hear - one ring for "lunch is on the table" and two rings for "I'm going out now"

Actually she's also getting cross because I never hear her come home either. Like every other Japanese household we politely call out "tadaima" when we come back into the genkan and whoever is about to welcome us home calls out "okaeri" in cheerful reply. Lately I've been missing out and also missing the post lady when she comes too. Can't expect her to ring a cow bell but I solved the 'okaeri' angle by stacking two empty lemonade cans on the inside of the front door handle. Now when someone comes into the genkan they go clattering down onto the tiled floor which even I can't miss and I holler 'okaeri' at the top of my voice from upstairs. Makes the cats jump eh?

Talking of Quasimodo (which we were, kind of ...) did you know that after his death the bishop sent word through the streets of Paris that a new bell ringer was needed. He decided that he would conduct the interviews himself and went up into the belfry to begin auditions. After observing several applicants demonstrate their skills, he had decided to call it a day.

Just then, an armless man approached him and announced that he was there to apply for the bell ringer's job. The bishop coildn't believe it."You have no arms!". "No matter," said the man. "Watch this!" And he began striking the bells with his forehead, producing a beautiful melody on the carillon.

The bishop was sure that he had found the replacement for Quasimodo, but suddenly, rushing forward to strike a bell, the armless man tripped and plunged headlong out of the belfry window to his death in the street below.

The stunned bishop rushed down to his side. A crowd had gathered around the fallen figure, drawn by the beautiful music they had heard only moments before. As they silently parted to let the bishop through, one of them asked, "Bishop, who was this man?".

"I don't know his name," the bishop sadly replied, "but his face rings a bell."

Oh! And that reminds me of yet another true story but it must wait until tomorrow ...

Dodgy Academics

Today I have a dose of what a friend of mine recently described as GOMS (Grumpy Old Man Syndrome). I've learned from bitter experience that at such times it is best to 'do nothing' until the clouds have passed, but at least I can have a gripe here. So apologies in advance to both all academic and all American friends and readers eh? Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I just got a 'circular' about an academic meeting later this month. I was scheduled to be 'presenting' there but not any more it seems, I have been dropped from the programme in favour of someone else. In a way it's a blessing because I would have been pressed for time to prepare but it does dint my confidence a bit when I feel I need cheering on towards that 'finishing line'.

Who knows why but it was deliberate for sure. At the last meeting I could sense the superannuated American professor who organises these bashes shifting his ground. I explicitly reminded him of our agreement but he's changed it anyway. Maybe just lack of organisation skills (a possibility!), maybe he didn't like my face (also possible!). But on the evidence my best guess is that he had his ear bent by some old chum to 'slip in' some 'rising star' student and it was just convenient for him to overlook a commitment he had already made to someone else.

It isn't the first time I've experienced similar stuff from academics here and always American it seems. It's a small pond for them and something of a ghetto for the 'Old Japan Hands' as they like to refer to themselves and there are certainly some around who behave like the 'Occupation' had just ended. Often the stuff they have written isn't so good either. You discover the hard way those that aren't to be trusted.

I think I was probably lucky to avoid an academic career. If the dice had fallen slightly differently I would have had one and probably hated it. Coming to research at my age it has to be purely for the love of knowledge because there are certainly no other rewards to be had. I meet so many in the vocation who have just 'lost their vocation' but still have babies to feed or mortgages to pay. Like priests who lost their faith. What will you give me for a barrowload of ageing and bored academics? Not a lot eh?

I could write much more about this theme but better stop there before a brick comes through the window.