Ghosts for real?

So that's the last of this year's three Halloween parties for the elementary school kids done. A bit 'meatier' today, in addition to the usual stuff a 'haunted room' spot where one at a time they had to find small plastic pumpkins in the pitch dark. Easy enough - Oh! Apart from the ghost lurking in there eh? Just me quietly snuck in there and dressed in a white sheet of course but I'm good at lurking invisibly in corners and then pouncing. And there is always one good 'screamer' to get the excitement going so she was sent in first.

Did you ever see a ghost? I mean 'for real'? They say that around ten percent of people report to having had that kind of experience. Me, I dunno but I think so, I'm fairly sure, say 98%.

It was just after my son Patrick was born in 1976, maybe September. He was asleep in the cot in the next room and for some reason I woke up in the night. Of course there's some chance I was still dreaming here but I don't think so. From where the bed was you could see out into the dark hall and landing. We'd left the door wide open in case the baby cried and I was propped up on the pillow looking out into the darkness. Then I noticed a figure, blacker than the rest of the shadowy staircase area, come silently up the stairs, along the landing towards me and turn left into the room where the baby was sleeping.

That was all there was to it. It wasn't the slightest bit scary or threatening, in fact very still and peaceful. But I immediately thought "Oh! I just saw a ghost!" It didn't suprise me either because his great-grandmother Julia had died suddenly a couple of weeks before, lucky just to see her first great- grandchild twice before she went. So maybe that was her third time eh? Nothing like it ever happened again.

D51 up to Minakami

Nice day out yesterday and we were lucky with the weather too as the tail end of a very wet typhoon had headed through here the day before. It was a trip that we'd had planned for a few weeks up to Minakami in the mountains of central Honshu, a spa resort high in the hills. The autumn leaves were beautiful and the sunshine hot and the air clear and the sky blue - the perfect season for it!

Of course it wasn't just the attractions of nature that we had in mind. JR are running a series of 'autumn special' steam locomotive excursions up into the mountains on the old Niigata main like from Takasaki. This was my first chance to take a 'serious' ride behind preserved Japanese steam.

What an excellent trip. We were away from leafy Chiba-ken by the first train of the day at 5:30 to get over to Ueno in Tokyo for an 8:00 am departure. A preserved electric locomotive took our train of vintage coaches as far as Takasaki where we were coupled up to D51 498 in time for a 10:00 am departure up into the mountains. After a large lunch in a local hotel and a walk around town the 3:20 return departure got us back home just before ten.

OK, I guess 13 hours on trains might be some people's idea of 'savage amusement' but it was a great day out. Lovely to see all those young children aboard getting so excited at their first experience of a living breathing steam locomotive but what really struck me was the sheer number of people along the track who stopped and stared and waved at every level crossing. There must have been thousands of people lining the route just for the fun of seeing a steam train go by, kids just staring in wonder at such a thing. Steam trains figured daily in my childhood but if you are younger than around fifty now in either England or Japan it is just something out of a history book for you or at best day trip out on a preserved line, you don't have memories of the 'real thing' - of the really 'big beasts' at large on the trunk routes. But thanks to this programme of excursions there are a lot more now with that sight and sound and smell filed away in their memory banks.

First Halloween Party

Phew! The first of the 2007 Halloween parties done this evening, just two more on Monday and Tuesday. Edera always puts on a good kid's party. Of course it is no 'chore' for us, we've known many of the students for so long that they are a kind of 'extended family' for us. I feel like I'm their 'English uncle'.

At Halloween we like to include a shadow show. The halogen lamp is dug out of the shed and Edera gets busy with scissors a few days before. Last year it was "Winnie the Witch" which included some 'state of the art' special effects involving crepe paper. Today it was "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". There's a story that really does speak of 'family' for me because it was a popular bed time story for my own kids when they were small.

I just can't resist putting on the 'Big Troll Voice' eh? "Who is that trip-trapping over my bridge ....!" Now I'm a bit hoarse.

Anyway - a day off tomorrow and 4:30 am rise for a trip by steam train into the mountains of central Japan. Let's hope today's typhoon shifts away during the night and watch out for some nice pictures ...

His Little Joke?

Studying hard this morning and nose deeply into a book on Tokugawa Japan and the door bell went. When I got downstairs I found a very neatly dressed woman of about fifty on the doorstep. Of course before she opened her mouth I knew just who she was.

Even out here in the 'boonies' we must get at least one bunch of Christians around every month, far more than we ever see on the doorstep in England depite their rarity in Japan. I guess it's just that Japanese people are so polite to them, the risks are lower. It's always fun to see the suprise register on their faces when a big ugly and hairy 'gaijin' opens the door. I'm bad, bad I know but I just can't resist it, sumimasen. I love to play 'dumb' on these occasions. "Nihingo hanashimasen ... sumaimasen, wakaranai ... no speakee Japanese friend ..." And then I try to look like I think they might be here to read the electric meter despite the liberal presence of the word 'Baibaru' in their practiced introduction and the fistful of proffered pamphlets. Like most, she gave up soon enough with much bowing and apologies on all sides.

There's always something so very Monty Pythonesque about these visits. I mean it really is weird isn't it? These she is on the doorstep trying to sell me Christianity and here I am the Buddhist householder in the genkan inside. Somehow we've changed places eh? "Hang on a mo! I'm the Southern Barbarian here and you are the Japanese, there's something wrong here! You have to come and stand inside and I'll hover on the doorstep instead!"

After she'd gone I peered through the lace curtains and sure enough there were three of them having a conference outside in the lane and staring at the house. They usually come in threes. Komatta na? What to do? Well, nothing I guess, if you can't talk to them you can't convert them for sure. That's the trouble with evangelism, you have to be able to argue with folks.

But what was so very peculiar today was that the page which I'd been reading when that doorbell went was all about the life of Aizawa Seishisai, a scholar from Mito. In the 1820's wrote at length about the Western Nations and what he saw as the 'wicked doctrine of Jesus'. Westerners he said "probe to see if a country is strong or weak. If it is weak they just seize it by force but if it is strong then they lead people's minds astray by spreading the wicked doctrine of Christianity ..."

God having a little joke with me about my studies on a sunny morning? Maybe eh?

Memories of painful things

I regularly read a newsletter called 'Japan Focus' on the internet. I'm not always convinced by it's claims to 'academic status' and impartiality but it does sometimes publish interesting and thought provoking stuff. One such item in the current issue is by a professor at Ohio State University. It looks at how the bloodier aspects of recent history - and especially the Sino-Japanese War - are presented in Chinese museums.

One writer quoted suggests that often the the surviving victims of atrocities - those who have suffered the actual trauma in their lives and their generation- very often (not always!) want to leave behind what happened and move on in their lives. It is their children and grandchildren who want to do the 'remembering'. Often this kind of 'shift' in perception has as much to do with the present and future as the past. In sharing a sense of outrage about past atrocities we step away from current problems, even find for ourselves a position of moral superiority. It's a familiar idea in cultural geography, there's a huge industry involving museums, sites and monuments that want to 'sell' you a message. But which message, and why?

The article goes on to suggest that in a curious way the Jewish Holocaust has been an 'inspiration for others' because "almost every community, be it a nation or a religious or ethnic or sexual minority, has a bone to pick with history. All have suffered wrongs, and to an increasing and alarming extent all want these wrongs to be recognised publicly, ritually and sometimes financially".

At times often rather trivial things have happened to me that have triggered waves of anger in me the force of which as sent me reeling. That angry little boy inside. "It isn't fair and it has to be put right!" But of course nothing ever can be restored status quo ante, it just can't, the thing is broken. That's what crying is for.

However that doesn't mean either that there should be no possibility of justice, nor that there is no opportunity for others to make amends, but somehow to really work these things have to be there in the heart of the perpetrator too. Or at least inch by inch I have to learn to let it go myself, then in time I'm not being eaten by it. The more I look at this the more complicated it is.

Free Flight

Down at the beach yesterday someone was flying over on this 'kite', powered as far as I could see by a small petrol engine and a large fan. I'm not sure that it was either totally wise or totally legal because the planes lining up to land at Narita fly pretty low across the coastline here. But I guess he was at least a thousand feet lower than the wheels of his nearest neighbours - the JAL 'Jumbos' flying above him ...

I've always fancied trying one of these. Looks pretty easy eh? Open that throttle, lean back and then up you go. Lean one way and turn left and lean the other and turn right. You would need to have a fundamental faith in technology and the tensile strength of materials though, no room for nervous dispositions around those basics.

My dad still had a glider pilot's licence when he was eighty and used to take people on trips over York. I'm not sure that I'd totally trust gliders over roof tops but something with a few horsepower and plenty of flat soft sand to land on would be ideal.

Perceptions of danger from 'height' are strange. I used to climb a lot in my college days and never worried about clinging ro rock faces with my fingernails but looking out of tall buildings gives me a sense of vertigo, I don't trust man-make structures. Planes on the other hand don't worry me at all.

A note for regular readers: Pressures of study are mounting for me at the moment and over the next couple of months I might be writing here four or five days a week rather than my current six or seven but please check in as usual!

Cake Decorating Contest

Sunny day today and not a cloud in the sky. Honto! Straight to Motosuka Beach after lunch for some 'real time' ornithology and a nicer afternoon you couldn't imagine.

Just right for signing up for 'Team Murasaki Action Sports Icing'. I hope you all have your pens ready. I mean, you are actually members of 'Team Murasaki' aren't you ...?

Today Heat No.9 of the Prefectural Cake Decorating Contest and we are in time to see some real fancy bag work by the Togane wedding cake formation icing team. Those Dorian pediments on the pillars supporting the top layer have been decorated by hand by somebody's mum with no fewer than ten thousand shiny sequins. Yep. They can also offer a service where a small sorbet sculpture of the bride and groom is mounted in the centre with an inscription reading "A Memry of you are Happy Day Kawaii Cute"

Of course in Japan if you are a 'black belt' or higher grade in cake decoration you are expected to keep the tradition of spreading the almond paste and sugar coating with your spatula wearing a classic 'Hiroshige' rubber wet suit.

And so on to the birds ... nice to have a day off eh?

"He's 'gulling' them isn't he?

"Don't ask me mate, I just flew in from Eastern Siberia ..."

Recorder class

Went along to my first 'recorder' class today. I have a series of five booked on Saturday mornings at Josai International University which is just ten minutes down the road from here.
I'm not exactly sure how I got myself on this course but there you are, I paid my fee and even have a brand new plastic recorder to show for it too. I've played the recorder before - I was 'self-taught' about forty years ago but I haven't played it regularly in a long time. I'm taking this class becasue I know K-sensei the teacher and also Y-san, one of the other 'fresher' students learns English with us and so if I get stuck she can whisper the word in my ear. If she knows it of course.

I enjoyed it too - not especially the playing but the whole atmosphere and being a member of a new group. To be honest the musical side and the playing was nothing new at all, I could have done it in my sleep but I learned a lot about musical terms in Japanese and it is always fun to see how new groups relate to each other here. In Japan you always have to make a little introductory speech about who you are and where you come from and live in a rather formal way, everyone is extremely polite - 'dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu' - (literally "please be kind to me!"). Much bowing and nods of affirmation.

I don't even like the recorder that much, it seems a rather antisocial instrument. Squeaky eh? Tora hates it, if anyone gets one out to play he's vanished in a moment, clawing widely at the wainscoating and wailing if the door is closed. But the one thing I do need is something that really exercises my finger joints or they will get stiffer, I have a tendency for it. I did think of arm wrestling or finger puppets (did anyone see 'Thumbtanic'?) instead but in the end the recorder won

We won an award

I couldn't resist reading a news feature the other day about the "Ten Worst Towns in England". I should know better but I just can't walk by eh? It was only ever going to be what it turned out to be, a couple of self-appointed 'experts' from a Channel 4 TV property programme airing their prejudices about the north of England.

However I did come away with a sense of pride, a warm heart beating in my breast, because it turned out that the absolutely worst place to live in England in 2007 was the town I grew up in - Middlesborough! So we won at last! We beat Hull and Merthyr Tydfil in the 'final' for the title of 'all round' nastiest place.

What made me feel even more cheerful was that my 'alma mater' - Marton Road Primary School - featured in the 'nastiest town official photograph'. Well, to be honest not the school itself, that was demolished about ten years ago, but the old brick-strewn site where the school used to be with the outline of the derelict steelworks looming behind.

Actually I still feel very fond of Middlesborogh. It never was a nice place ever since it was built around the iron foundries in the 1850's - a kind of English Akron or Yawata. And those were the good days! When I lived there it was a place that you had to be very tough to live in or at least - like me - able to run very fast. But there was something I liked about it, a kind of human honesty that you find in places thrown up around heavy industry, the jobs that not many people want to do. It makes people strong, you often find nice people in tough places.

Sadly it's got a lot tougher since I lived there, with legendary rates of unemployment, crime and drug abuse. If I'd not ended up in Japan and followed another one of those 'roads not taken' instead maybe I would have seen out my days living there worrying about making it better. Because it deserves to be.

Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson

Sometimes the sheer lack of taste I see on the UK version of the MSN 'homepage' leaves me breathless. I should know better by now, but they really 'take the biscuit' when it comes to making bizarre links between editorial and advertising.

Yesterday for example they carried a feature "Why what happened to 'Ming' should concern us all".

If you don't live in the UK you almost certainly won't have heard of 'Ming' but he - Sir Menzies Campbell - was until Monday the leader of Britain's third political party - the Liberal Democrats. He resigned suddenly and unexpectedly and one reasons he gave was that - in our nation which purportedly outlaws racism, sexism and ageism - the first question that he had been asked in his last six television interviews had been "Don't you think that you are too old, at sixty-six, to lead your party into an election?"

In the circumstances he'd decided that he was never going to get treated seriously.

Now, I'm sure you are burning to know - why did MSN think this sould "concern us all?" Age discrimination? Brainless interviewing standards?

Nope. Click on the link and you are taken to a screen that tells you that you too could be out of work in old age so it's time to buy a new pension plan with one of our sponsors ...

I was reminded of that hilarious Monty Python sketch about Arthur 'Two-Sheds' Jackson. The television interviewer, supposed to be interviewing the composer about the premiere of his new symphony, manages to spend the whole alloted time asking the hapless musican about his unusual nickname. "The sheds don't matter" pleads the composer "everyone has got it out of proportion". But it makes no difference. If you want a really good laugh you will find it on You Tube here ...

Genealogy update

Another certificate arrived from England in the post and it has me thinking about parts of my 'family history' again. If you want to find out something about your forebears you have to develop a policeman's mind for sure, things that 'happened' back in Victorian times are often not always what they seem.

I've been itching to see this piece of paper - my mother's parents marraige certificate. I knew them both well. My grandad lived with us for the last five years of his life and died in 1987. My grandmother died back in 1960 but I'd spent time living in her home as a child so she was more like a parent to me. A very unpredictable and sometimes scary parent but the relationship was close and I remember many of the things she told me.

None of those I realise now included anything about her wedding or childhood, nor were there any photographs. But as a child myself I didn't spot the big mystery

And now another fragment of the jigsaw. They were married in Glaisdale Parish Church in rural North Yorkshire on 13 Spetember 1924. He was working nearby as a railway signalman, she was a nurse working in Eston Miner's Hospital. Neither of their families attended - the witnesses are two people called 'Finlayson'.

But the thing I really wanted to see was what my grandmother's maiden name would be. I was always told 'Baldwin' but I already knew that she was illegitimate and that was the name of her stepfather. Her registered name turned out to be her mother's - 'Furness'.

Well, maybe. But the difficulty with this is that as far as I can see there's no-one of her name whose birth was registered in the whole of Britain between the dates this new certificate confirms - 14 September 1897 to 25 February 1898. Either she was born abroad (hard to imagine) or registered under the name of her natural father. Or not at all.

There are still a couple of 'tricks' with the data that I can think of before I give up on it though, just so long as she didn't change her forenames too. Watch this space.

Enter an Audience

I feel like I've been 'banging on' about this recently already but maybe it is just a debate I had with myself soaking in the tub. Anyway, my question is this "Why does everyone want to be a star and nobody wants to be an audience these days?"

I don't think audiences have ever been that easy to find, there never have been armies of people out there sitting somewhere in coaches, engines and heaters running, waiting to speed to your local venue and burst into spontaneous applause as you step into the spotlight. But these days it is just so easy to see the 'perfect performance' too eh? - just turn on the TV or buy a CD or DVD. Who needs to put on their coat on a cold winter evening? In some situations - the dreaded 'school play' being one - it is easy to 'dragoon' parent's and relative's bums onto hard wooden seats for the duration but now, in these days of 'lifetime learning', most of us see ourselves as the 'act', not the 'clappers'.

It comes up a lot for me with singing, I worry about what is in other people's heads. This Sunday afternoon for example we were having a nice time around the piano rehearsing some madrigals and the thought really struck me - "but what are we rehearsing this for? Some concert next month or next year? Why?" There I was in a sunlit room with people I know and love making the sort of harmonies that only come with years of careful practice and so what else was there to worry about. Here we were - we were doing it! Nothing more to add. In fact this was exactly the sort of situation that madrigals were first written for 400 years ago - enjoying yourself singing in sunny rooms with friends and family. Who cares about audiences and (even worse!) competition marks? That way likes not just disappointment, but even madness.

Making music is like making love, cooking a nice leisurely meal, stoking cats and dogs or falling about doing square dancing. You do it with people you care about and as a rule you don't need to do it for applause.

Good grief! I'll probably come back to this one, I can feel the fire isn't out yet ...

Tanuki

Choir practice this week was at the kindergarden run by one of my friends down near Hasanuma. It's a flat area just a mile or two back from the coast, now mainly given over to tanbo or dry field crops but not so long ago a swampy area of forests and bamboo groves. Fragments of wild places are still scattered about the area - a bit like the Camargue in France or the Norfolk Broads - and there are still pockets of wildlife despite the apparent 'wall to wall' horticulture around the place.

Just as we were reversing in to park our headlights picked up some shining eyes staring at us a short distance away across a field. Looking closely I could see the head of a 'tanuki' or 'raccoon dog'. He must have thought our battered Nissan Skyline could contain no threats because he happily trotted right acoss in front of us and I could get a good view of him. As they are usually shy forest dwellers I've only ever seen live ones from a distance before, although sadly you sometimes see a dead one by the road. They are about the size of a badger or fox.

Tanuki have a mountain of folk lore surrounding them in Japan and you see statues both in Buddhist temples and often outside restaurants, where they are usually depicted wearing big conical hats and with a bottle of sake in one hand and an empty purse or 'IOU' in the other. Sometimes the statues sport enormous testicles which are a characteristic feature of real tanukis too.

The tanuki in legend is said to be mischievous and jolly, a master of disguise and shapeshifting but somewhat gullible and absent minded when drunk, which is often ...

My cat Tora is of a variety often living as feral cats around here and known locally as 'tanuki neko' - tanuki cats. Aside from any personality traits resemblances - and the least said of them the better! - I can see why now. His colouring and short tail makes him look exactly like a miniature tanuki himself.

Naruto matsuri

A traffic queue had me a few minutes late for my Japanese class today. Traffic holdups are scarce in Naruto but the cause of this one wasn't hard to spot, having sneaked through along the back lane along by the railway. It was a local 'matsuri' - a festival to give thanks for the successful rice harvest. Our class all headed across the road from our classroom in the kominkan to take a peek at the kids in kimonos and the band.

The format of such 'matsuri' festivals in small Chiba towns is very similar. Up front the young men (and nowadays sometimes young women) dressed in white carry the 'O-Mikoshi' - the shrine box which is mounted on poles. Behind come the rest of the gang, often including elementary school girls dressed in festival kimono, pulling the high cart with the musicians on. It is all straight out of Edo era Japan, this sort of thing never changes in the community. I didn't have a camera today but I took some pictures at Chiba last summer which will give you the sense of it.

Actually today's 'matsuri' was pretty well behaved, a very polite and restrained 'do' but then Naruto is like that anyway. Sometimes these events get 'out of hand' and give the local cops a hard time and long may they continue to do so. Most of the Naruto O-Mikoshi bearers were local High School lads but I've seen many such parades where the team are in their twenties and are already stoked up on sake and then the fun really starts. "Enthusiasm" in the original dark Greek meaning of the word - "possessed by the gods". Then they love to throw those beautiful old O-Mikoshi boxes high into the air as they chant and holler and the big ones are pretty heavy, needing twenty or more people to lift them. Dangerous stuff - lovely to watch!

Airbrush project

Most of this year I've been plotting to get an airbrush up and running, and it is amazing just how much time it can take. Back in January I bought one in England, planning to get things set up in the Spring. But it was July before I got around to buying a small compressor at Tam-Tam in Chiba. That was the day that I discovered that kit like this costs less than half the price here in Japan and that I would have been better off getting the brush here too. Then, when I got home, I found that European brushes and Japanese air hoses don't mix either. Two trips to Narita and Chiba in search of the magical adaptor made me realise that nobody sold them, so in September I ended up buying a second - Japanese - brush anyway. Good grief!

Well, now I've worked my way through all the instructions and watched the CD and finally got everything connected, switched on and working. Today I managed to reduce the pressure in the system and squirt some water so maybe this weekend for the first time paint will fly.

This project has of course introduced me to a whole new vocabulary relating to air pressure technology and lots of other words besides. Cotton wool for example - or 'cotton batting' in the USA (and I never knew that either!) is 'dasshimen' in Japanese. I needed to get some to clean the paint cup. Until you have to buy the stuff in a drug store you don't realise how many similar products that you definitely don't want - like baby liners and sanitary pads - are lurking there on the shelf to decieve you.

Getting an airbrush working has made me realise yet again what Japanese habits I'm developing. A few years ago all this would have taken about a week but here time seems to stretch to the horizon, getting all the bits just right is just a part of the fun. Like those guys about my age in Chiba who lurk with their putting irons in the local parks. They've never been near a golf course in their lives and probably never will but they had all the fun of getting the putter and the ball and the gloves and the gold-braided blue hat with 'admiral' and "Cape Canaveral Yacht Club" on it. Who could ask for anything more?

Bullying

One of the kids in this lane is struggling with school at the moment. She moved up to Junior High at the start of the new academic year (in April here) but lately she's been refusing to go. No-one can get the whole picture from her although parents, teachers and friends have all given it their best attention. Bullying of some kind must be behind it, I'd guess. There are a couple of the 'usual suspects' that suggest themselves as the source of the problem but they stoutly deny it and whatever is going on seems to be subtle stuff.

When I was in junior (elementary) school I was badly bullied myself, so I know what it is like to be on the 'receiving end'. And it wasn't just 'subtle stuff' and nasty words either back in the late 1950's. There was nothing beween you and a good kicking if you didn't watch out, both in the playground and walking to and from school. I was unlucky enough to have a mother teaching there too which set me up as a prime target. I was forever being dragged into playground fights. Beyond a certain point 'attack' was the only hope of 'defence', like a goaded animal you would lash out in the hope it would all soon be over and you would be on the carpet in the headmaster's study..

Later I came across 'bullying policy' as a school governor in England. It is our British way to naively hope that we can legislate against everything eh? Really the only hope of stopping some children vistimising others is for teachers to be vigilant and not to hesitate to intervene. It takes courage, not policies.

I've been impressed by how gently this case here is being handled. Officialdom in Japan follows a distinctively Confucian model. The appearance is always one of unquestionable power and authority but in practice people 'pull their punches' and often act with wisdom and discretion. In Britain we are more likely to get sucked into the legalistic aspect of it all, duty of parents to ensure school attendance etc.

But which of these two approaches would produce a result in getting M-chan back behind her school desk I'm not sure.

Finished the Book

As I thought, I soon worked my way through that copy of "Japan's Longest Day" that I bought last week. In Japanese it is published under the same title - 'Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi' - and it is a piece of research covering events leading up to the surrender of Japan and Emperor Hirohito's famous broadcast on 15 August 1945. In particular it focuses on the cabinet's attempts to avoid younger army officers rebelling and insisting on the fighting continuing.

In the event it was all a very close run thing. Some junior officers did attempt a coup d'etat and the night before even took over the palace grounds in Tokyo but just in time the rebellion was checked by a senior general going and speaking directly to the soldiers. I couldn't put this book down, if you can find a copy it is well worth reading. Interesting too for the photographs of the main 'players' in this drama. Serious, concerned faces from another world and time yet also images of men that you feel you might have met in other circumstances, maybe carrying a briefcase on a crowded Chuo line train or a manager in the post office.

These were men who had deeply, so deeply come to believe in one the one path taught to them as 'the honourable thing' that they had arrived at a place where they just couldn't see beyond the awful rationalisation that they had to go on fighting. There was just no other possible option and anyone who suggested that there was must be a traitor.

I was reminded of an English wartime poem by the Cornish poet Charles Causley. I can't remember the title but it was in a book of children's poems called 'Figgie Hobbin' and it was about his experience as a raw navy recruit of walking along the sea front in Yarmouth in his new sailors' uniform with a friend from barracks. Two passing children said something like "Hey! Look at those two sailors guarding England!" and he looked around to see who they meant but then realised with a terrible shock and sense of responsibility that the kids had been talking about him and his friend.

Early Risers

Saturday morning I was woken up at six by the sound of artillery fire echoing across the village. It wasn't an SDA regiment of course, just the start of the local elementary school sports day. They love to set off these giant size firework 'bangers' to wake everybody up at dawn; every school does it and it is always at six, to remind all the kids in earshot to hurry down and join in the fun. Or perhaps it is more a case of "get down here quick and get your stall or event sorted out".

This kind of stuff would be inconceivable in Britain, explosions at any school in Lancashire at six in the morning would quickly draw an armed response from the anti-terrorist unit at the nearest police headquarters, the place would be surrounded in seconds by policemen with machine guns and loudhailers. But of course for us it is no surprise. Even if you don't have sons or daughters at the school you couldn't have helped hearing the student brass band practising "She wore a Yellow Ribbon" from seven every morning for a couple of weeks beforehand through the open gym windows.

We are a nation of 'early risers'. When I first came here I couldn't believe that people thought it was OK to phone and hoover the house before seven but know most mothers have already been up hours before this to prepare lunch boxes for pupils and fathers and get the washing done and the futons hung out. By the time I get up the day is half over.

When I first came to Japan early Spring mornings - and by early I mean fifteen minutes after first light and long before sunrise - were often disturbed by crop spraying in leafy Chiba-ken. You knew it was about to happen because white flag markers for the pilot would appear around the 'tanbo' and warnings to keep kids, pets and yourselves indoors were broadcast over the village tannoy system the evening before. But it still used to make me leap out of the futon when a 'chopper' would suddenly burst on the scene at tree top height in the half light, like some scene out of a James Bond movie. Fortunately this brand of unecological 'savage amusement' has now been discontinued around here, the 'green tendency' has won out at last.

Longest Day

I had a book delivered in the post yesterday which I just knew when I ordered it that I wouldn't be able to put down and so it has turned out. It is "Japan's Longest Day" published by the Pacific War Research Society. It gives an account of the 24 hours leading up to Hirohito's surrender broadcast in August 1945.

I'm only half way through but it is certainly gripping stuff. Meticulously researched, it explains the almost insurmountable difficulties confronting the Cabinet and the Emperor himself during the process of surrender. Even though it was very clear to them what needed to be done the risk of more junior army officers simply refusing to obey orders and even succeeding in assassinating all those who were 'misleading' the Emperor was ever present. They had an unshakeable belief that surrender was just impossible to do with honour, even when they were ordered to do so.

I've been trying to think of similar moments in Western history and I guess most of them are related to civil wars - both the American Civil War and the fighting between Parliament and King Charles in England in the seventeenth century. At the time even one of Cromwell's generals, William Waller, referred to that fighting as a "war without an enemy". Some of those were 'close run' situations too, though not perhaps with quite the disasterous potential for human suffering that was lurking in August 1945 if events had taken another turn and the surrender had not been achieved.

Private Lesson

Good grief! Two hours of M-sensei all to myself this afternoon. Usually there are four of us in our cheerful little Japanese class but this is a public holiday weekend and so two of the group bunked off to Osaka on the bus - 'savage amusement' if I may say so - and Neale had something up in Shibuya.

And then there was just me, left there pinioned against the barracks wall in the beam of the powerful searchlight. It's like that song about " ... ten in the bed and the little one said roll over ..." and I was the one that fell out. I did seriously think of feigning sickness and sitting out in a lay-by for a couple of hours but in all conscience I couldn't. See how Japanese I'm getting! Scary! Yakusoku ga shimashita - I promised.

I always find - don't you? - that in these situations if you just get on with it and do the decent thing and accept what's coming then - it's even worse than you imagined. Huh! No - only joking. Actually we had a nice lesson today, M-sensei has helped me with Japanese for more than three years now and she's a really good and patient teacher and she made the exercise we did on learning kanji related to travelling situations like a chat between friends about what to see around Kyoto - which is what is was eh?

Out of Business

There's a curious impression in England that Japan is a 'rich country' and in terms of 'Gross National Product per head' these days it is certainly true but like all averages that doesn't easily translate into the lives of real people. Out here in the country it is really only during the last twenty five years that most people have enjoyed a comfortable standard of living.

Here's an interesting and very typical example of a village shop not far from us, just a few lanes north of here. A single storey timber frame building with tin walls and a tin roof and sliding wooden doors in a cedar frame. Inside I'd guess a concrete floor. This kind of fascia, which might feel like it should be out of a 'Western' movie was very typical of small Japanese shops and you can trace the pattern back into the late Edo period.

When I first came here four years ago I'm pretty sure this shop was still just trading, maybe selling rice and 'dry goods'. Then the elderly owner who lives in a small house to the right stopped working and now it is getting derelict. It is a common pattern around Chiba and across Japan, buildings decline with their owners. You can see the problem would-be conservers of the built environment have here. Who (except me!) would be crazy enough to want to preserve such a building and why? But in twenty years,at the most thirty, these will all be gone, a whole crucial century of Japanese venacular building history vanished. You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

How old do you think this is? You might be suprised. I'd guess built between 1958 and 1965. Yes, as recently as that this was the only kind of property that small merchants could afford to build around here

Spem in alium

Just before we went down to Hiroshima for Obon we had a CD player fitted into the car to replace the worn out old tape deck, so now I can't resist listening to music when I'm on the road around here. This last week a compilation of Thomas Tallis' church music has been in the glove compartment and the first track is his anthem 'Spem in alium'

If you have never heard it go and buy a copy now, or get one from Amazon. I sing a lot of polyphony these days but 'Spem in alium' is just in a completely different class, in my opinion the greatest piece of English choral music ever. It isn't often performed because it is written for forty separate voices. I guess it is pretty well what a low flying 'Heavenly Host' of angels and archangels would sound like passing by overhead at chimney pot height. Truely awesome. It is easy as Englishmen for us sometimes to forget about the depth of understanding found in our own spiritial 'roots' and also the quality of Renaissance 'Tudor' art.

It has been crossing my mind that it just might be possible to sing this work in Japan, and a web site I found today has galvanised me on this one a bit. Not only does the site have a complete set of free scores for all forty a cappella parts but I now realise that under the enormous apparent complexity of this piece it is actually scored for eight separate five voice choirs to come together to sing. Perhaps that was the only way Tallis himself could organise the practical arrangements back in the 1560's. Good singers are always scarce.

Could we train up eight choirs to sing this separately and come together to do a full performance? There are plenty of good choirs around here, it must be possible eh? I'll have to think who to talk to about it.

Persistent Pussycat

Tora gave me a good laugh this morning. For sheer persistency I've never met anyone like him, and he was determined to get onto my knee somehow ...

Usually he's more than welcome too but at the moment I've got my nose into some seriously heavy reading. If I don't get up and walk around from time to time the risk of falling asleep is high. Also my legs get stiff, I need to use them every couple of pages or so.

I could tell by the purposeful way he walked into the room that he was going to be a pain. I tried the usual tactic of putting him on his own chair a couple of times but he was straight off again, there was only one place he planned to be ...

We then went through a ballet for about forty minutes of him sitting next to my chair staring me out. Occasionally a large paw would head gently in the direction of my trouser leg but this was always met with a firm "No! B****r Off!" Sooner or later those hypnotic yellow eyes would get so distracting that I would cast a glance is his direction and of course that was immediately taken as a sign of weakness.

After an hour he eventually found his way up via a nearby chair and I gave up the unequal struggle and let him sit there to the accompaniment of much purring and licking of both me and himself.

"Hey Boss! I knew you would get the idea if I kept suggesting it to you for long enough!"

No Skateboarding

Interesting how many times in Japanese streets and parks you come across 'no skateboarding' signs and - this being the land of the 'manga' - of course the evils of the activity are always depicted by a little cartoon like this one alongside of about ten paragraphs of detailed regulations and bye-laws.

I also often see "Watch out for Baddies!" type posters along side the "Wanted" posters outside police stations too and these also frequently feature sinister representations of phantom skateboarders in badly lit steets. Crime is everywhere and by the way time did you know it is time for an increase in police budgets?

Well, most streets in Japan are badly lit by UK standards it is true but here is a weird thing. In four years living hereand walking the streets of urban Japan I never ever saw a single skateboarder.

Anywhere.

Have the police and politicians shot them all aready? Hmm ... possible I guess. But hey! does anyone actually go skateboarding anymore? It was a craze of the nineties, surely? Oh! Well of course there are many real enthusiasts out there - real athletes. You only have to take a look at Iain Borden's excellent academic study "Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body". But it is unusual now eh? Like monocycles.

I suppose all this demonizing of skateboarding began with the "teenage males + no rules + 'attitude' = TROUBLE" formula and a generation ago there were many dodgy looking urban skateboarders around. But this is an interesting example of an urban myth. And not just any urban myth but a global urban myth it seems, you don't actually have to have a problem to get excited about it. Just the very idea of it keeps an army of Japanese sign writers in employment