Train time

Coming back form Tokyo today I managed to make the connection for the 4:14 pm. kakuekitaisha 'all stations' from Chiba. While I've been working in the archives recently I've taken to using this train quite regularly to travel home.

As we head out into the 'boonies' of leafy Chiba-ken people heading home from shopping trips or business meetings get off the train at each stop and more and more High School kids crowd on. It is common here for these teenagers to commute ten miles or more by train every day and you can see a big variety of school uniforms in evidence. Although they are still common in some parts of Japan none of the girls around here wear the traditional 'sailor suit' style uniforms once much approved of by the Meiji government and taken from the English design. Around Chiba various styles of tartan and blazers are more popular. However some of the boys do wear the dark 'tunic-style' uniforms that the Meiji educationalists once based on the Prussian model.

At our small local station maybe three hundred kids in a dozen school uniform styles pour off this train, it is lovely to watch. Some travel with new school friends, others with friends they have had since elementary school who now go to other scools in the area. But for just a few minutes the station platform and forecourt becomes a heaving mass of excited, happy young people chattering away. Quite a few call out 'konnichiwa' to me too - either present or former English students of ours.

In my studies I read a lot about the negative impact of globalisation on young Japanese and it is true that things change rapidly in this generation but if you were at our local station at 4:52 on a sunny weekday afternoon you would be very impressed by the quality of this crowd. I am.

Being Watched

One of life's real treats around here is the reaction of some Japanese kids when they suddenly find themselves up close to you. I don't mean those horrible spotty mobs of noisy Junior High teenagers of course, they are no better that their counterparts anywhere else in the world. Heck no!, I'm thinking of 'nice' kids - still nine or ten years old and polite and deeply curious about all aspects of life.

Most children around here don't come across foreigners - or at least 'Westerners' (and what exactly is that term supposed to cover?) in their elementary schools and if you live out in the 'boonies' of leafy Chiba-ken you probably won't meet one socially either. So on the crowded train into Chiba this morning the ten year old girl with her mum who was crammed into the aisle near my seat had probably not had many opportunities to take a good 'gander' at one close up. And now here was one just thirty centimetres away that looked like Santa Claus in a short-sleeved shirt engrossed in a book. A book written in Roman characters too, not familiar kanji and kana.

I was getting one of those stares that you can actually feel so I looked up. Click! - it took her eyes about a thousandth of a second to move on so I went back to reading. A minute later I looked up and there she was staring again so I smiled - click! Her shoes occupied all of her attention! But then a minute later I smiled at her again and I got a little smile back before she looked out of the window.

As luck had it I was getting off the train the stop before Chiba so when I stood up to lift my rugsac down from the rack I politely said "dozo" to her - please have my seat! So I hope she remembers big beardy gaijin as nice people at least.

Shinobue

When Patrick was visiting Japan a few weeks ago we visited a local bamboo flute maker. He's a real traditional craftsman and I decided to take the plunge and buy one of his instruments. He made it specially for me - Western scale and in the key of 'C' so that I can practice some simple European flolk music on it. If I get on with it OK I might also buy myself an instrument in Japanese pitch too - they are both 'seven hole' flutes but the spacing and size of the finger holes on the Japanese instrument are slightly different.

In Japanese the collective name for this kind of flute is 'yokobue' and the kind I've got is a 'shinobue' of the type used to accompany singing and played at local 'matsuri'. After a fair amout of experimental puffing I can actually get a sound out of it now that is more than just a squeak but it isn't easy to play. If you want to play traditional Japanese material there isn't any music, you just have to pick it up by ear.

I like the sound of these flutes in a group but maybe for me the 'doing it' side of things is more interesting. Like Morris Dancing in England, there has been quite a revival of interest in doing festivals the traditional way in Japan and especially around here in leafy Chiba-ken. It's all part of a grand if vague plan of mine not just to get on with learning Japanese better once my thesis is finally submitted - around the end of the year I hope - but also to make a few new friends around here.

Talking to Yourself

Maybe it is just because I'm commuting into Chiba every day at the moment but suddenly there seem to be a lot of strange people around in Japan. Didn't I notice them before or is it something new in the air? Perhaps it is all to do with the need for a serious political shake-up here, Japan feels in as much need of a General Election here as we are back in the UK and the Americans are itching for a presidential contest too. Political hassle of all kinds seems to get people into an agitated frame of mind.

In the archive office over the last couple of weeks I've had at least five fellow readers holding debates with themselves over the documents they were reading. One guy got so excited that he got up, prowled around and stamped his foot. The archivist on the desk looked at him nervously and me meaningfully, I looked at her meaningfully back ... but luckily the debate got less agitated and he left soon after. The security guard there is pretty well a full-time zimmer frame driver, not much help in that direction if it really hit the fan

Then on the train I seem to have had more than my usual share of this too. Mind you this is the time of year when humidity rises sharply and we all breathe deeply when the air-con in the coach cuts in with a roar. But this afternoon the passenger in the seat opposite me seemed to be having a conversation with the bottom corner of the A4 envelope he was carrying and he even smiled at it twice. "For God's sake don't look! Eye contact here is just fatal ..." was in my mind. But I couldn't drag my eyeballs away. The envelope was from the Leopalace21 apartment agency, perhaps he'd just been given a job as janitor, stoking the boilers down below in the dark. Somebody's terrible future might just be arriving.

My grandad used to tell me that "talking to yourself is the first sign of madness". The FIRST sign? Well, I told myself that he might have been right but somehow I just couldn't agree with myself in the end and in fact we are still arguing about it after all these years ...

'Quitters' and 'Stickers'

Strange isn't it how you never know how kids are going to turn out.

Walking back from the station yesterday I passed a couple of our former students in the lane. If I'd let them get away with it they would have shuffled past me without acknowledging my presence but I let loose with a hearty booming 'konnichiwa' in their direction and unless they were dead set on being outrageously rude they just had to say 'hello' back.

Of course almost all students go into deep moult as soon as they get to Junior High School - 'secondary school' in UK Speak. They change from being chatty and friendly ten year olds who couldn't do enough to please you into sulky young adults for whom talking to 'oldies' just isn't cool. Seen it all about a million times before.

But what is interesting to me is seeing the ones that stick it out and keep studying English compared with the ones who quit and head off to frequently do not much with the rest of their lives. Of course having mean and nasty parents who won't take 'no' for an answer has quite a lot to do with this process, it certainly isn't all 'self-selection'. That said, time and again I notice that kids I really liked a lot at eight or nine are the ones that are 'quitters' and vanish as soon as they get to be teenagers. The 'stickers' are often the ones I got to quite actively dislike at some stage!

Well, I could work out a few theories around this - maybe it is like the cats that feel you might not like them so much that they forever twine around your legs looking for a caress behind the ear eh? But one thing is sure, it is teaching me not to jump to conclusions or judgements about people, you never know how it will work out.

Learning New Tricks

Tora seems to have admirers in many parts of the world these days as indeed he should. Those of you who have actually visited 'little house in the paddy' will know that he is amongst the most friendly and cheerful of cats and one of my best friends.

This last couple of weeks though he has suprised us by picking up something from our younger cat Pero. Pero likes to sleep in high and protected spaces and often makes a bee-lie for the wicker washing basket on the upper shelf in the ofuro. Tora must have been taking careful notes on this one because recently he has started doing the same thing too. It isn't an easy climb for him - positively 'alpine' by his standards in fact ... from the floor to the top of the keosene heater and onto the wash hand-basin rim and then a traverse across the north face of the washing machine.

So that is one way in which old cats and dogs differ then. It seems that you can teach an old cat new tricks.

Another 'new trick' that Tora has picked up recently is creeping into the bedroom to wake me up with a kiss early in the mornings. He's got very skilled at sneaking onto the bed and curling up for a few zzzs with me as you can see. I often wake up to find him staring patiently into my face hoping that I will come to life soon.

Lunchtime Neighbours

I was in a MacDonalds near Keisei Honchiba station a couple of days ago grabbing a quick bite for a late lunch. Yeah! Yeah! - I know all that stuff about how MacDonalds are corporate bullies who feed me poisoned products and they will shorten my life, but actually I've come to rely on their places over the last few years of study. If you are tramping some remote housing danchi on a cold rainy February afternoon and are starving hungry I can tell you that it is always a cheerful warm clean MacDonalds that turns up at the next crossroads. With cheerful welcoming staff behind the counter and even clean toilets too! But this is Japan, I wouldn't like to guarantee the same experience in Britain.

Anyway I had just settled down to mutter the 'five thoughts' to myself and get my snout into that overdue trough when I noticed that the two teenage girls chatting in the next 'pig-pen' were speaking Chinese in that usual animated way. Somehow to me Chinese often sounds like people having a mild row with each other, it is the effect of those different speech tones.Then I realised that the six girls on the other side of the shop were Chinese too.

What were they all doing together in Chiba I wonder? I don't think they were 'local', they seemed all too unfamiliar with the Japanese environment. My best guess would be that they were part of a group of kids send over here by their parents to take tests to enter one of the local colleges or universities.

Nice though, very nice. I love to see Chinese youngsters here and more Japanese teenagers ought to travel to China too. Even maybe ten years ago, certainly twenty years ago it might have been quite impossible. With this week's state visit here by President Hu and the warm welcome he received I have the feeling East Asia is getting to be a better place

Disturbed Night

Good grief! 'Quakes Seem to have featured a few times on "Little House in the Paddy" recently and here they are in the news again. We had a couple of real 'corkers' last night.

The first happened just after 1:00 am when I'd been asleep for about an hour and was obviously a 'big one' somewhere not too far away. The house shook for about a minute and I wondered whether to get up, switch on my laptop and just check that it hadn't hit a major city but then I drifted back to sleep to be woken about twenty minutes later by a sizeable aftershock.

That time I did get up and check the Japan Meteorological Agency website. It had been a Shindo 6.2 earthquake and about eighty miles north of here just off the Pacific coast near Mito in Ibaragi-ken. That's a bad area for earthquakes, that deep ocean trench off the Japanese coast.

Back to bed and back to sleep and then just before two the worst of the lot! I jumped out of bed as the light fittings, blinds and curtains all swayed wildly around as if we were on a rain riding on badly maintained track. At that point I gave up sleeping and went down and made a cup of coffee and I saw several other lights going on in the village. Shindo 6.8, the biggest of the night.

Well, we had one more small aftershock after that and maybe I snored through some others before waking at 5:30. I noticed the evening before that it was the new moon and I'm wondering if the tidal forces around that time of the month make earthquakes more likely.

Kururi trip

Down to Kururi in the south of Chiba-ken today for an 'arty event'. The parents of one of our students were taking part so we made a day out of it and also met up with Keiji and his family.

That part of the prefecture is the old kuni ('province') of Kadzusa and it's quite different to this part of the world. The hills down there are still covered with virgin forest and it is like stepping back fifty years into Japanese history somehow - a place where the old generation live on but many younger people have headed off for better jobs in Chiba City or Tokyo. Small towns like Kururi fascinate me because it is the closest I can get to seeing what Chiba-shi itself was like in the 1960's, or more exactly would have been like in 1960 if it hadn't been burned out by bombing fifteen years before.

Lots of original and arty stuff around the place as you can see. Why do the inflated rubber gloves remind me of milking cows all those years ago as a child? Hard to imagine eh? But there is definitely something more than a bit erotic about a room full of inflated rubber gloves! I thought of stopping off at the hardware store to buy a few packs and a cycle pump and going into the art market myself but maybe it can wait until I'm in England next and I can sell it for an outrageous fee to a London gallery.

I loved watching these two boys too, in fact they were one of the highlights of a damp and cloudy day. The younger one was really going for it and he could really paint! No hint of hesitation here. It made me smile to remember a hundred painting classes from long ago when I also established the truth of it too - that no matter how many colours you mix together in a picture you always end up with a kind of browny bluey green.

Really 'loosing it'

On the way back from Narita on Wednesday we filled up our tank with petrol - along with about half the population of Japan. I haven't followed the full political story but we have been running without fuel tax here for six weeks and paying around 58p a litre for unleaded fuel. Now, sadly, from 1 May, the tax goes back on and petrol has 'soared' to 75p a litre again. It was good while it lasted!

The forecourt at Cainz was very busy and somehow we got to the pumps from the wrong direction because our filler cap was on the right. Anyway, no problem, the guy keeping things moving reversed us and we were eventually able to get where we had to be.

A few minutes later I suddenly realised that a row had blown up between the attendant and a nearby woman motorist. Maybe our circular tour had made her notice that it was possible to get to the pumps from either end and she had jumped the queue but anyway the attendant was having none of it.

That's when she completely lost it. She drove her car at him angrily, pushing him backwards and if he had fallen over probably she would just have run him down. She seized the petrol nozzle and started a furious row with him - Japanese like I had never heard before. So you can be abusive after all eh? Everyone looked on with astonishment and I noticed a few customers looking nervously at me to see if I'd noticed - hard not to actually as abuse was being screamed at everyone. Bad enough to loose face like that in any event but in front of a gaijin - incredible! I mean just how much face is it possible to loose in one day? Sad, very sad.

I've noticed before that in Japan there is a tendency for rudeness and agression to 'work' simply because most people are exactly the opposite - polite and harmonious. So the super-aggressive seldom get challenged because no-one expects it or knows what to do. In Britain I'm sure this woman would have been floored by the attendent's fist in a moment, and probably the police would have been called.

But it also made me reflect on just what makes us really 'loose it' like that, what 'snaps' and why? We all have the potential for it, all of the time, there but for the grace of God etc. A few times in my life I've similarly 'lost it' but not perhaps so publically and irretrievably, certainly I never felt the need to attack anyone with my car anyway. You only have a moment to grab it before the hare is running and the greyhounds are out of the trap. Once the avalanche starts, it is hard to keep on your feet, better not to ever add the energy in the first place.

Another Quake

A tidy-sized 'quake' here again this morning - I was just checking my e-mail and still in my pyjamas when the house lurched suddenly to the right a few inches. But no damage done - Shindo 4.5 though, that's "cranking it up" a bit. And the epicentre was at Kujukuri about ten miles from here. It even made 'national news' because it was close enough to Tokyo and Yokohama to give them both a bit of a shaking too.

Quakes quite often feature on this blog. When I first came to Japan I found them rather exciting but then after about a year the 'danger' aspect suddenly dawned on me too. Before that of course I'd always thought of the danger in theoretical terms but then I learned to feel a bit scared when an earthquake started, just like most of our students do. I was experiencing it with my body, not just my head.

Today I noticed yet another angle on this for the first time. After that first jolt the tremors usually increase for a few seconds and then - you hope - gradually die away instead of getting worse. Well, today I was in a hurry to get a train and I was packing my computer and some notes into a bag. When the tremors started I stopped working but then, after about five seconds, I just got on with what I was doing even though the house was still shaking. It obviously wasn't going to get any worse.

Yes, that's something else I've come to live with in Japan at last it seems, earthquakes. When they start they are scary for a moment, the potential for disaster is there. But then after a while - we hope - it seems it is just another small one, nothing out of the ordinary. Time to get on with some work.