Providence

A student was talking to me about changes that had happened in his life recently. A few years ago he had endured a very painful series of events but now some good things were happening and he was searching for English vocabulary to express all this. It was late - we were both tired - so maybe we didn't get into the subject in a way he'd hoped for. But we did get to a few idioms that expressed what he was feeling. "Every cloud has a silver lining" probably came closest to describing how he felt looking back over recent happenings.

I was searching around my rather tangled mind for another word and after about then minutes it popped up. It was "providence" as in "the care, guardianship and control exercised by a deity; divine direction". I was trying, not very well, to explain that in English culture for some reason we have an underlying optimism about the future. The Greek 'Fates' Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos used to spin the thread of life and cut it off and there was an element of fatalism in it all. When it came down to it destiny was destiny. 'Providence' is very much about trusting that 'something will turn up' and also to a degree that 'God helps those that help themselves'. That is the neat twist. The heart and soul of the merchant venturer!

In East Asian cultures all this is subtly different, karma is at the root of everything. Not in the shape of that totally misconceived and mistaken 'hippy' concept of 'unavoidable fate' but in the sense of reaping the consequences of the actions of oneself and others. Karma relates to action as just like fruit does to a flower.'Do as you will and then accept the consequences'. So there is a link there to 'providence', free will is lurking in the bushes, but life gives out no lucky draws or 'get out of jail free' cards even when it might appear to.

Frequently this is a blindingly straightforward and easy relationship to understand. If you drive fast you are likely to crash. Other times you have to look very closely at what is happening. But what my student was saying pointed up something for me in all this that I've noticed a lot recently and that is never assume that you know the ultimate consequence of something. If you have a spring in your step watch where you put your feet. To use another English idiom "The party 'aint over until the fat lady sings". Sometimes some sad or negative experience leads you down a road that later transforms your life in a very positive way and the cloud really does have a silver lining. Other times something happens that makes you heart sing and puts a grin on your face and then darn me events sneak around behind you and kick you in the bum when you aren't paying attention and it hurts. Most of the time if you had really looked closely you could have spotted this coming but you didn't. You should have been watching where you were going eh?

Sounds like ...

I was reading somewhere yesterday about a couple (from Scandinavia?) who pulled up outside the information office in the north Italian industrial town of Carpi asking for directions to the beach. It seems that they had typed 'Carpi' rather than 'Capri' into their 'Satnav' car navigation system and it had never occurred to them that, as Capri is an island, that they should have crossed some water somewhere. Anyway not much harm done, not as if they had driven to the Ukraine or County Donegal by mistake. At least they were headed in more of less the right direction, they just had another day's driving in front of them.

There are a lot of urban myths about this kind of thing eh? The story that appeals to me is about the Japanese (of course!) tourists who got on the wrong train at Paddington. They thought that they were on the 'shuttle' for Heathrow to catch a plane to Istambul but they had been helpfully put on board an express to Devon by a railway official. Because of all the palm trees on the promenade they had been there an hour before they realised that 'Turkey' and 'Torquay' probably weren't the same place. Watching 'out of town' onobori-san down from Akita-ken for the day struggling with the Yamanote Line trains in Tokyo I can well believe this story. Mystery is how they ever got that far already.

I've had a couple of such events in my life. On my first trip to Japan I mistakenly got on a train intending to go to the youth hostel at Iidabashi but for the life of me I can't remember where I was actually headed for, must just have been one 'Roman' letter different wherever it was. Anyway no harm done, the encroaching forests and meadows hinted that we might be getting far from downtown Tokyo and at the next stop we just walked across the footbridge and caught the next train back in the opposite direction.

When I was a student once travelling to Denmark I missed my connection at the Hook of Holland and I had to get a following train which caught up with the one that I was supposed to be on. The helpful porter explained that first I had to go to Rotterdam and then go to a place called Plaefumto where I could get my train. It was some way down the track before I realised that what he actually meant was platform two. But no hassle, I got that train OK

The very last 'V2'

It is no secret that I'm a real railway 'buff', someone who will still happily go and spend a day sitting by a busy railway line with a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade. One of the nice things about this obsession is that life is dotted with happy memories where serendipity led to something completely out of the ordinary being seen or experienced.

The 'daddy' of all these experiences for me happened on Thursday 16 December 1965. It was the end of university term and for some reason, probably 'woman related', I wanted to travel home a day early. I had lectures durng the afternoon and hitch-hiking - very common in those days - was a dodgy prospect due to recent heavy snow and bitterly cold weather. So I headed up the hill to Durham station to catch a train down to London. You could still do that in the 1960's without having to take out a bank loan to cover the expense.

The overnight London train wasn't due for an hour but rather than hang about on that draughty station I took the first train one stop south down to Darlington planning to catch the following London train there. Darlington was a much more interesting place to lurk at. About twenty minutes later another southbound train arrived headed for Liverpool, but when it came to departure time despite much revving of engines that train couldn't move - the diesel locomotive had broken down in the cold weather!

And then the amazing thing happened. Clanking out of the darkness came an old and grimy 'V2' class steam locomotive. It must have been waiting on a goods train somewhere nearby. These engines had once worked expresses on this main line but not for years, and very few were sill left in service. The locomotive was hurriedly attached to the stranded train and you can guess I was also aboard in a moment too. Then we were off into the darkness, away down the long straight high speed tracks to York. That crew had at least fifteen minutes delay to make up on the schedule and they worked that engine so hard that cinders were soon flying out of the chimney like a firework display. Whether the coaxed that V2 over the 'ton' past Thirsk I don't know but we must have run most of that 45 mile trip at over ninety miles an hour, the locomotive roaring away through the clear starry night with the moon setting over the snowy fields. I spent the whole ride freezing to death peering out of the front window of the coaches just behind the tender, because I knew this was an unrepeatable event.

When we got to York I had to change to get that London train but I had a chance to take a look at the engine before it headed off towards Leeds. Of course I took a note of the number but somehow I lost that paper, I'm pretty sure it was 60806 - one of the few survivors of the class left then and the only one based at Darlington. It was scrapped a month or two later.

I can't be sure but I'm pretty certain that this was the last time such a thing ever happened - a V2 running with an express down the Vale of York. And I travelled on it quite by chance. So I was lucky that night, an early Christmas present for me!

Long Stop

I just about got my accustomed circuits of the park done yesterday before the deluge started. Once this unstable tropical air arrives here there is no predicting what the weather will do. After a short shower around four and a few thunderclaps I thought I ought to get my exercise in early and I was right. On the drive back down from the park the rain really set in and it lasted all night.

Walking around the park there was a good view of the weather arriving from the south - a heavy curtain of cloud and rain on the horizon with frequent flashes of lightning. Thunderstorms here are so very 'un-British' - more like an artillery barrage really. I was feeling a bit nervous with so many trees around and the big metal bulk of the 'Green Tower' sticking up into the sky so close by. But I guess it is well earthed, has one of those thick copper lightning conductors.

Apart from half a dozen kids playing baseball on the pitch in the middle I had the place to myself, so I soon got to notice their practice in progress. A girl of about ten or eleven - somebody's kid sister I suppose - had been corralled into acting as what in cricket we would call a 'long stop' behind the catcher. Every time the striker missed and the catcher missed it was down to her to stop the ball. Unfortunately rihgt behind her an access road ran down hill towards the library. If she missed the ball herself she had to chase it down the slope with the older boys calling out "Come on! Quick! We haven't got all day!"

I felt for her! In my school years I was a good long distance runner but lousy at ball games. When it came to picking teams I was always the last waiting to be chosen - "Oh God! We've got him again!" And I was always given the crappy jobs to do and especially 'long stop' because it is a position where you don't have to do much. Until you do have to do it of course. Then when everybody else has failed to catch the ball themselves they can at least vent their frustration on you by calling out "Butter fingers! He's missed it again!"

Good team leaders never allow this to happen. One of the things I really notice about 'sensei' is the careful way she works to get the best out of everyone. Weak singers are encouraged, praised, strong singers sometimes seriously beaten up to pay more attention and try harder. Getting the best out of everybody is so important. These kids thought that hitting the ball better was their main objective in life when what they should have been doing was paying attention to the weakest player on the team, the one most in need of their support.

Flea Market

Mid-summer in 'Little House' is marked not by your conventional 'Druids' and 'Virgins' stuff but by our famous annual 'Flea Market'. This is a kind of a car boot sale in a car boot free environment. Bring your junk along and take a 'pitch' on our tatami mats and try and sell it to someone else. Actually that isn't quite fair - some of the students do some nice baking too, lots of sugary home-made cookies around. I wouldn't want my monthly blood test within seven days of this knees-up, no Siree!

In previous years Edera has run the kitchen too and cooked loads of curry which people have bought for lunch but this time we got the proprietor of a local Sri Lankan restaurant in to look after that side of things. Just as well too because we had around 30 to 35 people turning up, it was busy enough without spending the whole of the night before cooking.

I don't know how much 'turnover' goes on at these 'flea markets', but as the going rate for recycled Teddy Bears and tee-shirts is usually around ten yen I don't think the Ministry of Finance is going to be sending special investigators in to track us down. I remember when I was about eight running a similar scam in the back yard of one of my friends in Middlesbrough. Being budding entrepreneurs we also had games to play as little money spinners too. We didn't have any coconuts but we DID have a 'potato shy' - win a potato by knocking it off the wall with an old tennis ball. We put lots of hand-drawn posters around but we only got one customer - his mum. Still, we made eight pence I think, I still remember the thrill of it all. Who knows but what we have been encouraging some budding retailers of the future here!

Anyway I'm glad everyone enjoyed it because next year it probably won't happen - in July we'll be in the middle of our choir trip to England. So maybe this is the last time. We'll have to see eh?

Trivial round, common task.

Quite often over the last six years I've found moments of living here in Japan really hard. Usually it is nothing specific, though the frying and braising we all get around this time of year doesn't help - I've got Northerner's blood for sure and I like it cool and breezy. More often it is just the cumulative effect of obligations, more 'input' than you can absorb and the effort of tuning in to what is happening from a completely different cultural perspective.

It has got better as time has gone on. The first strategy I learned was to 'stop digging' and if possible to go to bed early when I was feeling this way. Then the friendship of animals is the same everywhere, Tora especially is deeply concerned for my well-being, somehow always around the place when a stroke and a cuddle are what is needed. And then as time has gone on particular friends and students have always appeared to give me a lift.

Yesterday was a pretty stressful day - awful heat and 'events' - and at one stage I got pretty cross about a classic piece of 'dumbness' on somebodies part. If it had been in a sit-com on TV I would have been rolling on the floor laughing at the improbability of the plot, but faced with the potential enormity of it leading to something going very wrong it wasn't so funny. "I can see the funny side of it now" as they say. I think. Then just at the time when I felt like I'd been in a boxing match and needed my attention dragged away from the now resolved crisis one of our elementary school students began to chat to me in her usual cheerful and carefree mood. Big beaming infectious smile, so pleased to see me, just like she is every Saturday! Bless her!

Later on I experienced another side to this which has become more common now too. Tired and trying to explain to a university student an academic text dealing with a totally opaque piece of seventeenth century British administrative and legal procedure about purchasing military supplies I just couldn't stop laughing. Divine comedy! That sheer sense of 'helplessness' produces a powerful feeling of euphoria and well-being in me. Peace too. It is as if once your fingers loose their grip on the edge of the cliff and you finally realise how completely defenceless you are, how absolutely NOT in charge, then that is where peace and contentment are found. Joy bubbles to the surface like carbon dioxide in a bottle of lemonade. I'm sure that this is exactly what Julian of Norwich had in mind when she wrote that classic line "all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

A case for 'SOFTPOD'

I was just reading Marina Hyde's column on the 'Guardian' website this morning. She's a real 'up and coming' talent as a journalist, one of the best. Like Polly Toynbee used to be about forty years ago before she got into the habit of having too many 'girl's night's outs' with Harriet Harperson and the rest of the coven.

Anyway all I wanted to mention was this. Marina today was writing about the recent death of two police dogs in Nottinghamshire. If you don't live in Britain and haven't heard the news these two dogs were left in the back of a police car on a hot day by their handler. Actually they weren't 'real' police dogs, they were young dogs that had been donated by a breeder for training as police dogs. But they were dogs and they died of heatstroke. It became a national scandal, the policeman who made the (alleged!) mistake is suspended from work and has been charged with serious criminal offences by RSPCA investigators. He'll end up 'doing time' for sure. The Police Authority have apologised deeply and endlessly and opened a special canine 'memorial garden' for members of the public to leave wreaths.

Really, I'm not kidding you. You couldn't make it up. Years ago I started a kind of fantasy diary about 'SOFTPOD; - the 'Society for the Protection of Police Dogs' - and darn me it is really happening! Reality is always so much more powerful than fiction.

The Guardian article goes on to point out that in Britain since 1990 - that is just nineteen years - there have been 954 deaths of people in police custody. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE has ever resulted in any charges being successfully taken up against any policeman.

I guess the moral here is simple. if you are going to die in a police cell be sure to be a dog. Even better, we might do away with the expense of the allegedly 'Independent' Police Complaints Commission and put the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals inspectors in charge of inversigations of suspicious deaths in police custody. They cost less and clearly do a much more effective job.

Another 'Eternal Triangle'

The course of my day is usually interrupted at least half a dozen times by Tora coming upstairs and hammering on my study door. When I let him in he seldom settles down. He's arrived with an objective in mind - to get me to come and put some fresh food into the cat food bowls. And he's VERY skilled at manipulating me to do this. None of your 'Monkey Management Course 101' stuff for him, no crude and vulgar rubbing against legs. His two primary strategies are an incredibly penetrating stare - you can feel it on the back of your neck from the other side of the room - and rattling plastic bags, usually the one in the waste bin. This he has learned is the best and most effective human control technique, within five minutes I will give up the unequal battle of wills and go and do what he wants to be rid of him.

"What he wants" is for me to go downstairs to the kitchen and put a little bit of dried cat food in each of the two cat food bowls. Well, obviously, he's not going to turn his nose up at real tuna but usually the dried food will do, just so long as it is the "Seven Years Plus" formulation and tuna flavoured. But now here's the thing. Once that food is put in the bowls Cat Number Two immediately wakes up and walks over to assert her supremacy. At one time she had to enforce her will by sniffing his vulnerable tail meaningfully but now he's so well trained he just moves over without being told. He gets the picture. In fact I sometimes think that actually he comes upstairs to ask me on her behalf, to save her the trouble.

I've been countering this by putting the two food bowls on different sides of the room but those pesky felines don't give up so easily. Pero immediately heads over to the bowl nearest Tora whatever the original geometry of the situation. The grass is eternally greener elsewhere even, perhaps especially, in a feline world. The other cat might be getting something special, better check it out to be sure. Tora sits nearby and admires the wallpaper or looks out of the window at the rain, he is just hopeless at sticking up for himself. After a lifetime of experience of women around the house I feel sorry for him, like me he is too much the perfect gentleman, he and I are joined in a deep place for sure. I feel that I have to 'Play God' and intervene with my toe. Pero gives me a black look which says 'Learn some dignity please!' and stalks away with a 'if I can't eat the one I want I won't eat any of them' air about her. Females! But if I don't get involved and insist he eats we will be all around the routine again in another ten minutes time.

Since Mew-chan arrived on the decking by the shed we have a third and more Saturnine feline force in this equation. With recent and vivid memories of starvation he doesn't pass bowls of food by, nor does he politely stand by either. He takes what he wants. At least I know that any unwanted left overs won't be going stale any more. Just when these two thought that they had a stable relationship look who walks through he door!

But it is all much more complicated than that, those 'eternal triangles' abound everywhere in life and don't they just make things so interesting? If I was a 'proper writer' I could unpack some of the subtleties of this relationship. If only I had the skill! Watching the three of them reminds me that once I am free of this darn thesis another thing on my 'to do' list is to read 'Wagahai wa neko de aru' - the novel 'I am a cat' by Natsume Soseki.

Solar Elcipse

"Asia observes long solar eclipse" is the headline on the BBC News Site this morning I see. It sounds as if one of the many advantages of living 'Out East' - as my mum says - is that we have solar eclipse that last for hours. "Is it over yet? - I need to hang out the washing". "Not yet love! - they say this one will last until Tuesday!"

In fact this bit of Asia did not observe a long solar eclipse yesterday because the rain was hammering on our leaky tin roofs. You can buy all the mail order 'safety glass' you like but if there's a typhoon about you might as well have saved your breath to cool your porridge. Edera and I were debating - as we so often do! - whether it actually got a bit darker at one stage or if that was just thicker clouds. But as an 'old hand' with eclipses long and short I can tell you that unless they are pretty close to 'total' they make little difference to the amount of incident light around. I watched a 95% total eclipse from the M1 Motorway Services at Toddington in 2001 and you could still have comfortably read a copy of the 'Dunstable Gazette'. Around here in Kanto it was only a 70% eclipse, you would have had to have bought a train ticket down to Kagoshima to stand in the rain and miss a total eclipse on Japanese soil

Interesting how the same news stories always revolve about eclipses. They are all the last ones that will happen until you are 147 (if you are still around then Ha!Ha!) and also there is always some Professor of Ophthalmology around to play the 'health card' and give you some helpful advice about how you can go blind from staring at the sun for hours.

But yesterday I noticed a peculiarly Japanese angle to the 'eclipse theme' which I thought I would mention. NHK, suspecting that our native islands might be enveloped in cloud, send two reporters out into the Pacific on an 'eclipse cruise'.A whole boatful or middle aged men with huge cameras and telescopes! They got a ringside seat for the entire cloudless show out there on the Ocean.

Now I've noticed this many times before but yesterday was a classic. In the pink corner the female commentator - 'Woman the Feeler!'. "Oh my goodness ... my heart is so moved by the sight of this wonderful event ... look how dark it has become ... I feel so happy ... it is all so beautiful ...!" And in the Blue Corner her male colleague - 'Man the Explainer!' "Well Ayako ... that is because the disk of the moon at its apogee is 402 times larger than our sun ... the corona consists of radioactive gases that normally we don't see due to the intensity of light ...".

I've made a mental note not to fall for these stereotypes in future. Don't ask me how to get from here to the station any more. If you do all you are going to get is a poem I wrote about how tearful I felt the last time I walked down the lane at dawn on a misty morning. If directions are all you want ask Edera!

Rain Watcher

Rainy morning here, the second day of a deluge that according to the weather map now stretches from here down to Kyuushu. To add to our delights the car is 'dead' - battery flat. It isn't the battery because we just replaced that on our trip when the car wouldn't start in Matsumoto. Seems like it is the dynamo that is gone. A 'new' second-hand one is headed in the direction of leafy Chiba-ken as I type and if it arrives in time we might get it fitted later this afternoon. If not it will be a damp tramp to the station and back to get to and from choir tonight.

I like the rain though. Nice to lie snug in bed, preferably not alone, and listen to it drumming on the leaves in the garden and the sound of water gurgling down the gutters and down pipes. The magical world of guttering, a lot of grown-ups forget that it is there but of course when you are a child you take nothing for granted and always notice spouts and drains. Gutters have a kind of a 'Mary Poppins' feel to them for me, I expect Julie Andrews to pop out of one of them at any moment and float away on an umbrella.

Something else to do once my thesis is finished; become a professional rain watcher. I'll scan the meteorological charts for a good wedge of dark blue headed this way and then I'll be out there in my anorak (or in summer in my tee-shirt with an extra large umbrella) and make a comprehensive survey of the neighbourhood as the raindrops fall unceasingly. I will become a chronicler of the elements, a poet whose speciality is water descending from the sky, falling to mortal men from the Tushita Heaven. No small detail will escape my attention.

Which senses might be important to me in this task? Well, sight inevitably but hearing will give the best clues when it comes to 'intensity' and then there's a strongly sensual, even erotic aspect to rain revealed to the nose in the way that plants open up and give scents as their leaves are stirred to life by moisture. But mainly the skin of course. You have to 'know' wetness through touch. No point in stepping out into the rain if you don't want to get wet you know.

Dressing up time

I've noticed a slightly disturbing tendency in myself over the years to being attracted to dressing up and it is getting stronger. I think I'm going to indulge this obsession a bit in future. When I say 'dressing up' of course I do mean within the limits of decorum and good taste - I think. I'm not thinking of cross-dressing or anything extreme. Or if I am it would have to be pretty understated. I do have a beard you know.

It came to mind today because Edera and Y-san were reading "Ann of Green Gables" in their class this morning and I sat down for a cake and some tea with them. There was a picture of Ann and her 'beau' in the back of the book strolling along a country lane arm in arm. This guy - a young cleric and so rather wholesome (of course!) was wearing a 'boater' and the thought flashed through my mind in a trice! "I'll get one of those when I get back to England in September. And maybe a nice stripy blazer too". Well, why not? Then I can seriously play the 'Englishman Abroad' when I get back, take Edera out to lunch Wednesdays looking like I stepped straight out of the caste of 'Salad Days'. Perhaps I can even give her elocution lessons in sounding like an upper class Englishwoman, see if she can perfect a loud horsey laugh and then she can wear that nice flowery summer dress when we light up the town. Ho hmm...

This kind of dressing up is pretty safe, just 'reality' turned up about another 10% to 15% percent but I find myself promising myself to push the boat out a bit further from time to time, perhaps much, much further. Maybe twice a year, take an afternoon and do it properly, get a sepia photo taken too as a souvenir. One that I ALWAYS wanted to try out are those lovely stove pipe hats that they had in the 1850's, like in this picture of Ismbard Kingdom Brunel. Like his chains too! What a drag! This one definitely says something to me.

Obviously you probably wouldn't wear this getup to catch the 9:07 into Chiba in the mornings. You would wait until the 9:36 at least, something a bit less crowded. To be honest if you wore this hat and gear on a JR train nobody would even notice you at all, there would immediately be a kind of 'hole in the universe' exactly where you were standing. And people have been telling me lately that it is fine to do what you want when you are 62 - now may be the time to investigate the truth of this assertion.

I'll give it all some more thought and let you know my decision later.

Umi no Hi

Umi no Hi today - 'Ocean Day' - and so a public holiday. I was planning to head for the archives in Chiba but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Lucky that Edera mentioned it or I would have trailed into town in this heat to find the door locked and been very cross. You have to watch out for these public holidays winging in from 'left field' in Japan. There are loads of them and if you aren't part of a workplace routine it is easy not to notice them looming up.

'Ocean Day'. When, as an island nation, we celebrate our maritime heritage and express our gratitude to the many men (and women!) who carry our Walkmen and Toyotas in the holds of their ships to faraway places across the sea. Wee, you didn't think it was about marine mammal conservation did you? I feel a school project coming on here.It is one of the newer public holidays, one of four extra post-Bubble 'Maybe We Shouldn't Work So Hard' days. Of course those darn politicians could just have 'upped' the number of days people get as a holiday entitlement but it isn't the Japanese way, we like to do something together, have some element of symbolism there. You would have to be out of your mind to go anywhere near Kujukuri or Hasunuma Beach today, there will be wall-to-wall traffic stretching back to Tokyo on a nice day like this. I'll celebrate the ocean from a safe distance I think, maybe by having a packet of crisps and a nap.

Ocean Day commemorates the safe return of Emperor Meiji from a visit by boat to Hokkaido in 1876 but it has only been a public holiday since 1996. It was originally held on 20 July but under the 'Happii Mandee Seido' - the 'Happy Monday' legislation - it has now got tagged onto the nearest weekend so that people can have the unimaginable luxury of three consecutive days off work. Enough time here to make a foreign trip - I bet there are a few who even make it to Europe and back in that time. I once made a trip to Japan and back from England in six days when 'needs must' but three days ... hmm, you would need some stamina for that!

At least they do things in some style here. We 'Brits' like to think of ourselves as an island nation too but we never celebrate it. We used to, at one time 'Trafalgar Day' was a good excuse for parades, a 'knees-up' and general drunkenness and excess. But now I bet few British readers of 'Little House' could even tell you what month the day falls in any more.

New Games

Doing my circuits in the park last night I was pondering the purpose of the small marquee near the 'Green Tower'. It was the usual 'sideless' tent with about twenty people clustered underneath and the smell of barbecuing in progress, we just love that stuff around here. Nearby on the baseball practice area there was a canvas film screen pegged out and loudspeakers were blaring away some formless J-pop (in 'English' - I think!)

What was it all about? Someone with pretensions about to show their 'holiday snaps' to the local community? Highlights from the Kadzusa-kita Junior No.4 Kendo Championships Round Six? Well, I didn't ask, whatever it was I wasn't hanging about for it and it would have spoiled the mystery. I like mysteries, often the reality is a bit mundane.

Anyway this smell of damp grass and guide ropes and burning sausages all reminded me of my days in the good old 'Jaycees' thirty years ago down in Wales. 'Junior Chamber' - I wonder if that still exists? A crowd of young managers doing little community projects - it was fun! Anyway once we got asked by a young policeman to help him organise an event. He'd had a 'Churchill Scholarship' to travel to America to study 'New Games' and he wanted us to help him put on an event in the local park. You are right - he was really 'community minded' and a very nice guy! - I can't imagine he lasted long in the South Wales Constabulary.

The whole thing about 'New Games' was that they weren't 'competitive', everybody played on the same team towards a common objective. So say for example you had a huge beach ball that you had to get to the other end of the field then you got it there quicker if you all worked together.If only they had known it those 'New Games' people had discovered the mystery 'secret' of Japanese success in business - that here everybody sees themselves on the 'same side' rather than 'competing'. Interesting. The motto of 'New Games' was 'Play Hard! Play Fair! Nobody Hurt!'

Well about ten of us spent a month organising this freebie 'New Games Event' - booking the playing field, getting something in the local paper, booking an ice-cream van and I personally stuffed little handouts behind the windscreen wipers of about a thousand cars around town, begged permission to put up posters. The weather was great and - about four kids turned up. Actually I think three of those were just passing and saw the giant beach ball.

So that was an interesting lesson about organising events. Events are hard to organise even if you make a good job of it and you have to be prepared for complete failure if it comes along especially if it is something new. You have to be prepared to get your own reward just from the hassle of doing it. Organising events well requires great peace of mind I think.

Still worth having a go though

Mew-chan

We seem to have an extra feline on the payroll at the moment. 'Mew-chan' is no stranger to 'Little House' - he showed up around here a couple of years ago and thoroughly terrorised our two pampered resident pussycats. He beat up the entire neighbourhood, impregnated every female in sight and spent days hollering "I'm King of the Castle" at the top of his voice although the only 'dirty rascal' around was himself. He was forever hanging around the French Window at near our table insisting on some breakfast too. Edera was kind to him but then he bit her when she tried to comb his coat (which was probably not such a wise idea with a 'stray' I guess).

Anyway Mew-chan has been 'off the scene' for a long time but we did find out more about him. At one time he was looked after by a student of ours who lived over the other side of the tanbo behind the houses but then she moved away to a nearby town and he became wild again.

This time he is very subdued, a different character. He's obviously been in a real battle at some stage with a younger and stronger cat and in turn has lost his status and confidence. He craves not only food -he is about half the size he was a year ago - but also some love and strokes too. From the food angle he couldn't have timed it better, our two lazy incumbents have been getting pickier and pickier and half their uneaten bowls were getting thrown away. Now there is no wastage of cat food at least.

What to do with him eh? Well, I guess it it just a case of some TLC and a better diet, probably he needs to stay an 'outdoor cat' now. Apart from the fact he still scares Tora and Pero a bit there is the bird to think of and I don't think I would trust Mew-chan around the children that come to the house. But here you can make a reasonable living as an 'outdoor cat', there is plenty of warm dry shelter where we keep our gardening stuff and near the kitchen door and he seems happy to curl up outside on the timber decking and just sit and watch the world go by. We'll see how we all get on eh? Watching him sitting out there in the cool shade I'm strongly reminded of the 'rookie' trainee monks waiting at the temple with their begging bowls to seek admission.

Basis of Belief

Nothing like a good philosophical argument to get your blood coursing. Well, OK then, a cup of black coffee is pretty good too, I'm speaking metaphorically here you know.

Somehow yesterday my eye fell on a debate on the 'Guardian' website which kicked off when a guy called Daniel Dennett published a piece on 'belief'. Seems that he doesn't like it much, that we would all be better off without it. Apparently, despite the fact that he actually does look a bit like God himself - big white beard and the rest of it - he's a philosopher and a well known atheist, one of that bunch that people like Richard Dawkins hang out with.

Well, a professor of philosophy he may be but I have to say I was deeply unimpressed with him. And this was interesting - it was the work I've been recently doing around my thesis that was at the root of it. In pursuit of his argument against believers in 'sky fairies' this guy was completely ignoring the whole area of ontology and epistemology - the fundamental philosophical questions about what exists and how you can know it. He was arrogantly 'banging on' as if he had some kind of special access to 'the facts' while everyone else was mired in illusion.

Its an interesting area, and one I'm very tuned into these days so pay attention, I'll say this only once. Nobody knows what 'reality' is, nobody. All they actually know is what their current perception of it is. You don't 'know' that there is a lap top on the table in front of you, you 'believe' that there is. Your eyeball apprehends 'something', the optical nerve takes the image to the brain and your mind constructs the conception of 'a lap top'. The image and associations are in your minds You don't actually KNOW what the lap top is, it is potentially many things, clearly it is just as much a swirl of electrons as it is a 'computer'. If you hit someone on the head with it it could become a 'murder weapon'.

This isn't a pointless 'academic' distinction. Every day people give evidence in court about 'what happened' but at best, assuming they are being 'honest' they are giving evidence about what they 'believe' happened. That is what it 'looked like'.

This doesn't stop you talking about anything but it should teach you some humility. When it comes down to it your mental constructs are beliefs just like anybody else's. You might not have the slightest idea of what is 'really' going on around you, probably you haven't.

Health Check

One of the not so many 'Freebies' that We get from the City Office here is an 'Oldies' health check once a year. Somehow I've missed out on it the last two years because I get a blood test every month anyway, but this time I made it for my "let's keep well together" morning of joy up at the clinic near the kominkan.

The fun starts with doing origami the night before, a classic Japanese design of paper container for your pee sample to use in the grey light of dawn. And this year even the 'journey to the temple' had its exciting moments. I realised going up the hill that we were behind a whole bus full of 'oldies' probably headed for the same event and we had to make a few anxious 'wheelie turns' to get up there by the other road - a gamble which paid off.

The 'Big Health Check' always seems to fall on the hottest day of the year so far, and this year was no exception. It must have been around thirty four Celsius already (ninety three Fahrenheit!) when we signed in at the reception with much ushering and number checking done by nice ladies in green armbands. Then came more green armbands and helpful prodding than you could shake a stick at. First the 'Weigh In'. You would have thought that they could have got some really accurate scales to do that, these were reading about three kilos too high, but I got my Body Mass Index down again by standing on my toes a bit when they checked my height. The tape measure they used for checking waists wasn't much cop either and I thought it was a bit unsporting of her to call her mates over to take a look at my size.

Anyway, no problem with my blood pressure; I have some. Then came a very elderly doctor who just about came up to my knee who listened to my heart and chest with his stethoscope. And then the blood test and then I was free! Whatever happened to the eye test with the puff of air and the x-ray? The victims of social budget cut-backs I fear. But the REALLY big change this time was that there was no nurse at the end to look at your completed form and tell you to loose weight and do more exercise. In the interest of economy she's been replaced by a neat machine with three buttons and you can choose your own admonition (consumer choice!), press the appropriate button and get your personal advice in the privacy of the entrance lobby. I looked for the "You Are Doing Fine!" button but there wasn't one nor a "Why Not Relax With a Big Packet of Crisps and Read Books in a Cool Room" button neither, so I just settled for "Get Your Hair Cut!"

Still, all in all a nice trip out, and not part of your usual tourist rat run, you need serious skill and application to get yourself involved in this kind of stuff. I like the way we do events like this here.

Beware LITS

Of course I'm not really a one for 'conspiracy theories' but that doesn't mean that they aren't true, does it? And maybe I just got conclusive proof eh? Well no, nothing to do with 'extra-terrestrials' and the pyramids exactly, but I think I have conclusive proof now that there is an international conspiracy let loose in the world every bit as sinister. I can't tell you their real name (which is no doubt 'legion' anyway) but between ourselves lets refer to them the'League of International Time-wasters' LITS for short! There we have it gentlemen

Yesterday evening I was making a few purchases in Landrome and joined the shortest till queue and then it happened. The couple in front of me swung into action! "That can't be right!". An intensive check up the long, long till display and the intervention of two supervisors revealed that ... but wait a moment it might be down here ... yes! "Here it is! That is advertised on special offer on Tuesday at 85 yen but actually you charged me 88 yen. So that is 8541 yen less the ... and what about the double points for the toilet bleach?"

At this stage I crept away into the next queue. Good news! The woman in front was actually reaching for her purse and ... "now I also need ... have you got those packs of twenty but with the menthol filter .. no not the gold ones, I think the brand might be .. and my husband wants ... its OK, I'll wait while someone goes to the store room to get some ...!"

Chilling professionalism. These people use those 'see-back-o-scopes' you know. Or maybe they really do have a third eye in the back of their heads. "Ki o tsuke! Achtung! Fat hairy gaijin has joined the queue! Go for plan B in five seconds!"

I must admit I sometimes get these terrible primal urges myself though. Every time I go on Ebay and see some seller from Yorkshire has played his "No Timewasters! Cash sales only!"card I just can't stop myself. Before you can say 'British National Party' a sheaf of seriously dumb questions are winging his way through the ether. "Do you take Guatemalan escudos? Could you post it Cash on Delivery to Cambodia? How about wrapping it in goose down and Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup?" Just how inventive can time wasting get?

Very. Very very inventive.

Tokugawa Ieyasu

This last few days my bedtime reading has been a book Edera bought me for my birthday - a second-hand copy of Conrad Totman's "Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun". It's not a 'definitive' biography in that it focuses only on four key periods in his life, but it is a very readable introduction to his times.In my studies I've read quite a lot about urban life and culture in the Tokugawa Era and like most Westerners I've read James Clavell's novel 'Shogun' but I'd never taken a detailed look at his biography before.

If you have never come across him Tokugawa Ieyasu is perhaps the most outstanding figure in Japanese history, a kind of 'Oliver Cromwell' and 'Abraham Lincoln' combined in one person and he profoundly influenced not just the course of Japanese events but also Japan's culture too. He lived from 1543-1616 and he founded a dynasty of shoguns that lasted until 1868.Almost everything that you might think of as 'typically Japanese' originated in the Tokugawa era.

We have an impression in the West of the shoguns being a bloodthirsty bunch and certainly the first part of his life, which was during a period when civil wars were constantly being fought, was at times violent enough. But victory in the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600 enabled him to bring peace and stability to Japan, a peace that he then worked very hard to maintain through careful diplomacy. That was one of the surprises of this book for me. It had never occurred to me before but of course someone with such a reputation as a formidable ruler must also have had the character to command devotion and loyalty in others and the skill to compromise when it offered a way forward. And he was a great 'family man, forever concerned about the welfare of his large natural and adoptive family.

Towards the end of his life he became deeply interested in the idea of harmony in society and the practical role of religious practice. He would listen for weeks to monks and priests from different spiritual traditions in Japan debating points of principle and then drafted rule and regulations for the maintenance of good governance with these insights in mind. A serious thinker and even academic - he arranged for the publication of many Chinese 'classics' on governance.

Ah me! Somebody else I have to do some more reading about once this darn thesis is submitted!

Tonight's the night.

Sunday evenings are a bit of 'down time' for us. My English daughter would call it a time to 'chill out' but nobody chills out in Japan in mid-July unless there is a deep freeze store nearby. In my 'career days' is was a rather sad time to start packing a suitcase for the week and begin to feel depressed again at the thought of seeing the boss tomorrow. Here it is very much the 'end' of the week. Our last student finishes at four and at last we have the only evening when we get to spend some time on our own during the whole week.

Sometimes we have the ambition to watch a DVD together, more often we just take what is going on Japanese TV as we eat tea. And yesterday there was a 'nature programme' dealing with the wildlife of the Drakensberg Mountains so we just glazed over and watched that. Lots of pretty pictures of clouds swirling up the valleys.

Being a Japanese nature programme it inevitably featured a yellow cartoon character that kept bouncing along the bottom of the screen asking the narrator inane questions of the "do cows eat grass?" kind. This programme mainly featured Elands, or 'Errands' as we call them in Japan, not distinguishing between our 'l's and 'r's. We don't do "nature red in tooth and claw" here either, we practice more Confucian virtues. The mountain fox makes a brief guest appearance but the Mummy Errand spots him and hurries to Baby Errand's side. Phew! That was close! - not. Moral: Do what mummy tells you or bad things will happen.

But the one that really had us rolling around on the floor with laughter was Daddy Errand. It seems that when they all reach 9000 feet in June hormones kick in and - well, you know the rest! Although you certainly won't see THAT sort of thing on NHK. Anyway females are only in season for just three days so they get pretty carefully checked by all passing males just in case, you wouldn't want to make a mistake and miss it and have to wait all year again. In one sequence Daddy Errand was busy inhaling deep sniffs of the appropriate part of Mummy Errand's anatomy and then darn me he turned to the camera and he smiled with a big broad grin, he really did. What a smug look! I never saw such a happy Errand in my life. Animals can look so 'droll', often their sense of fun is much stronger than ours.

"For us Errands it really does come but once a year and tonight's the night boys!"

Making Progress

This morning I suddenly felt that I'd 'made progress' with my studies, a small shaft of sunlight crept in from somewhere. Two days ago I finished working on a 'fair final draft' of Chapter Three which was one of the more difficult ones to write, and then this morning I finished revising Chapter Four and adding the planned illustrations into my text which now suddenly runs finished up to page ninety-three. Once I've revised Chapter Six in a few days time it will run right through to the end of Chapter Seven, around a hundred and sixty pages.Nine and Ten are largely unfinished shells but - it is now ONLY nine and ten left like that! Even the appendices are complete.

I was thinking it over doing my five circuits of the park tonight - something else that I'm beavering away at. And suddenly for a moment I had a bit of a vision of 'the wheel turning'. When you start on big ventures sooner or later, usually sooner, you get bogged down in the detail - the 'Slough of Despond'. The wood disappears and only the dark tree trunks are all around you. that's how most things get done, just fermenting in the dark, one stumble at a time. You seldom make the top of a ridge where you can see the way ahead. I'm quite good at just keeping my head down and getting on with it but that is all it is, getting on with it. When I hear friends talking expansively about 'big pictures' like they had just been smoking something they shouldn't have been I often feel nervous for them. Standing on top of a convenient hill gives you a nice view but you aren't actually moving anywhere when you do it.

Today - maybe it was that circling the park - but there was such a powerful sense of the wheel turning. I'm not the person I was when I started all this six years ago, my life has moved on in all kinds of unforeseen ways, I'm not in any sense 'in control'. And at the same time there has been a serious effort of will there. When I say 'wheel turning' I don't just mean 'my wheel', we are talking a seriously big 'wheel of becoming' turning here, watch out for its shadow. When you spot the scale of it sometimes in light and sometimes in shade it takes your breath away. Becoming, becoming, how does the song go?

Little wheel, spin and spin: Big wheel turn around and around

Weed story

Edera was at a local history discussion a week or two ago and some elderly people there were saying how 'weedy' our local railways had become in the last few years. Fifty years ago their memories were of weed-free tracks but now when you travel by train it feels like you are riding through the fields.

Well, I wouldn't say it was quite that bad, as this picture of the track between Togane and Naruto shows. But there is certainly a fair crop of weeds sprouting in what in England we would call the 'four foot' and what in Japan I guess is more accurately called the 'three foot' because the distance between the rails here is usually 1067 mm. Most of them here seem to be 'annuals' but there seems to be a fair selection of perennials creeping in there too.

It set me wondering as to why things had changed so much, and indeed can we really know if they have? I don't know what JR Higashi-Nihon's policy is when it comes to weeds in the track bed but the actual track itself is beautifully looked after. I can't imagine that they are skimping so maybe the theory is now that they don't need to spray weeds so often. Also they are surely more environmentally conscious and are using milder systemic sprays, I dread to think what they were spraying back in the 1950's. Plain old 2-4-D I guess, of Rachel Carson 'Silent Spring' notoriety.

Back in the 1950's the track was maintained by gangs of men and mainly during the day with hand tools and levelling equipment. Now it is done by expensive machines at night. But I don't think this is much of a factor because I doubt they did any hand weeding even in the old days. On the other hand in the 1950's trains were pulled by steam locomotives that dropped hot coals out of their ashpans onto the track and this must have had an effect on weed cover.

So no real conclusion on this one but it is the kind of thing that often attracts my researchers 'nose' these days. Questions like this about change in respect of small things are often almost impossible to answer once some vital records have gone, or the people that actually did the job have died. Knowledge evaporates like water on the pavement after a summer shower, look the other way for an hour and it is gone and you will never find out where those puddles once were.

Old Photograph

I had my latest 'Stainmore Railway Company' newsletter yesterday. This comes from a group that I'm a (rather geographically distant!) member of who are busily restoring Kirkby Stephen East railway station to working order.You can find their web site here. It is a real 'Lazarus-style' task - the place closed in 1962 and was converted into a small factory and almost everything apart from the core of the old building vanished. Now amazingly - after forty years - it is all getting back to being a proper operating railway again, track is being re-laid and buildings restored. Wonderful project.

In this month's magazine there is a photograph of the station staff at Barnard Castle in November 1956. They are in their smartest uniforms on the day of a visit by the Queen Mother to the area, and posed on the platform in two rows just inside the ticket barrier, one row sitting and one row behind standing. A bunch of people very familiar to me and a familiar place too. People and place have long vanished - the station was closed in 1965 and demolished to make space for a car park for the nearby Glaxo factory.

I could look at this picture all day. The nine people in the back row all have local 'Barnie' faces, the kind of people that I grew up with. In the front row are mainly the 'incomers'. The station master Mr. Watson, who I think came from 'the south'. He is flanked by four 'officers' from the operating and locomotive departments at Darlington - big-wigs who came down on an earlier train to make sure that everything happened smoothly and shake hands with Her Majesty no doubt. The Queen Mother was no stranger to this line, her 'extended family' owned a mansion close to the next stop at Broomilaw and as a young woman she used that station. The four 'officers' and the stationmaster are flanked by the two station foremen, Mr. Teasdale and my grandfather's close friend Bob Raine.

There's a lot I would like to write about this photograph and indeed some things about some of the people in it that even now I mustn't write! But one thing that especially strikes me is the whole demeanour of the people in the image. The back row contains the servants - the porters and shunters - and the front row their masters. But all have an obvious military bearing, no surprise as probably all of them were soldiers in the First World War except for one younger porter who fought in the Second World War. And the relationship here is not between managers and staff, it is between officers and their troops. People still 'knew their place' It was certainly no vanished world of lost content, as a general principle my granddad absolutely hated what he called 'the officer class' his whole life. But it is a different world for sure. Looking at this picture now I realise that the 1950's was a heck of a lot closer to the Victorians than it is to us.

Licensed to drive again

Got my new Japanese driving licence yesterday. Is it really three years since I first had one, since I exchanged my UK licence and international driving permit? Here you have to go and get it in person. There is none of this British 'filling in a form and paying by debit card', they want your body and a wallet full of crisp thousand yen notes I'm afraid. At the beginning you have to renew every three years but if you keep a clean licence the renewal period eventually gets extended to five. All very different from our UK licence which you get until you are seventy, so if you pass your test at twenty it will be valid for fifty years. Here you will have made a dozen trips at least to the licensing office in that time.

Why so different? Well, it is partly cultural, the Japanese ways of doing things. They want to take a gander at you and also to check you over. 'Self-certification' is just unknown in Japan, although people are so honest it is hard to see why. They want to check your eyesight every time, make sure that you can still tell red from green (actually 'red from blue' in Japanese!) and can see which side of a circle has a little gap in it.

The centre for leafy Chiba-ken is over near Makuhari-kaigan, the 'space age' high tech city on the west side of Chiba where all the big telecommunications firms have their research offices. Easy to get to by car - come off at the Wangam interchange on the Higashi-Kanto Freeway - not so easy by train. Yoy have to arrive between 8:30 and 10:00 and when you get there you are herded around on a vast concourse which always reminds me of the old Gatwick Airport building and you get 'processed' even more than peas. People with arm bands come at you from all sides to ensure you have ticked boxes and got two copies of Part B ready and are in the right queue. The eye test machine queue extends to maybe sixty people ahead of you but it doesn't take long.

And then while they make your new licence - the lecture! Two relentless hours on 'you and the law' and 'road safety' from one of the centre's many, many, experts who are so enthusiastic about their topic. Upstairs they have the 'remedial' section for bad drivers; for God's sake don't get caught speeding, you might be here for a year!

It might sound grim but actually it isn't. It's just the Japanese way of doing things and it is totally different. In Britain the 'state' is encountered as laws, they love to shake sticks at the peasants and talk about penalties .... 'failure to comply ... a one thousand pound fine and/or three months imprisonment'. Also, bureaucrats sit is faraway offices and for some unknown reason they seem to hate you. Japan is completely, utterly different, like a mother with a child, they are right there at your elbow. 'This is how you do it ... please pay attention ... but if you do that it isn't very nice!' There is always someone in authority to tell you what to so, all you have to do to be loved is do it. If only all of life was so simple.

Clockwise or anti?

Of course those of you that know me 'in the flesh' so to speak already know that I'm not a superstitious character. A pair of crossed fingers here, a ladder avoided there, basically I'm no different to the next man or woman.

But recently I've been wrestling with a problem in this department and that is - which way to walk around the circuit in the park? This being Japan I'm surprised that there isn't a polite notice actually telling you which way round to walk. Maybe there is and I just can't read it! Anyway even here 'out East' as my old mum says we are still faced with two choices, clockwise and anti-clockwise. Cut to the chase - which is the luckiest?

When I first started I walked the circuit anti-clockwise and most people do. Actually almost everyone does. Why is that? It must be learned behaviour from school sports days, I'm sure that the norm on every running track is anti-clockwise and there is a good reason why in that most people's strongest leg - the right - is on the outside to push you round bends.

So far so good. But my problem as a picky Buddhist is that it says in the Lotus Sutra that you should circumnambulate stupas in a clockwise direction. OK so the sports area in the middle of our park isn't a stupa but it could be. A kind of 'stupa for maintaining health'. That's how I see it. Anyway it's enough to get me walking in the opposite direction. I'm a serious person.

The interesting thing about this is that you have to be REALLY mindful. People around here are very polite and everyone says 'konnichiwa' as we pass each other. The first time. So - Challenge Number One is - remember who you already said 'hello' to because obviously you can't do it every time you meet after every half-circuit, it would get monotonous. BUT this being Japan Challenge Number Two is coming up with an appropriate response every time you do pass each other after that first time. Old people here are just brilliant at it - a slight polite twitch in the corner of the eye, a hint of a hint of a bow so you would hardly notice. After all you haven't met for two minutes, there is a mild pleasure in the experience of meeting again. You do need to acknowledge each other again even if it is only a teeny little bit.

Great Expectations

I was reading a very interesting feature last week on the Guardian 'Comment is Free' website about Marx and religion. Very subtle thinker Karl Marx, sadly most of the stuff you read about him today only parodies what he really thought and wrote about.

Not only was the article good but so were many of the comments afterwards. Someone had written:

"We can't give up the expectation that work fulfils us, even when it abuses and empties us ... "

This comment really stopped me in my tracks. The writer was commenting on Marx's views on 'alienation'. When I first came across his use of this word I didn't fully understand what he was pointing to. Marx looked at the factory system of production that existed everywhere around him in the nineteenth century and saw that the way the system worked those who made things had become separate from - alienated from - what they made. The capital employed by the factory owner had turned the relationship between craftsmen and their craft into a relationship between worker and commodity. Workers no longer exchanged the fruits of their talent but only their time. They sold their lives for someone else's profit

But there is something much more important fundamental about this. How many years did I plod along in my career trying to do a good job? To please who exactly? That wasn't what my boss wanted! He wanted a quick, cheap job. Not perfection next week but something that will do by this afternoon. No need to test this in Yorkshire first, let's roll it out everywhere next Monday and by the way, no need to gold plate the taps you know! And he was WRONG! If he'd wanted to succeed he darn well should have worried about quality.

But I was wrong too. I never stopped looking for fulfilment in work and all the time it was abusing and emptying me. It's the Sandokai again isn't it?

"Here born we clutch at things and then compound delusion later on by following ideals ...."

It can't be put any plainer than that can it? I'm not saying here that you shouldn't find fulfilment in your work, just that you shouldn't expect to find it.

Is is expectations that empty you.

Lessons about War

Wah! Must get my brain back into gear here this morning. Too much birthday celebrating yesterday evening I'm afraid. Nothing excessive by most people's standards, no alcohol in any quantity of course let alone an excess of the stuff, just an impromptu barbecue round at a friend's house and I even had a big bowl of salad! But it was later than usual, I always suffer if I give my digestive system any extra work to do after about 7:00 pm. How boring my body has become.

Somehow the discussion around the picnic table last night got around to the idea of remembering Wars of the past in the hope of avoiding conflicts in the future. It was an odd discussion, a bit like the kind of thing we would have been arguing about as eighteen or nineteen year old students and I felt pulled two ways on it. Part of me didn't want to get involved in 'debating' something that was perhaps being discussed in the absence of much hard evidence and in a rather superficial way. Another part of me felt that I ought to be expressing opinions on such an important question. I seem less and less willing to open up on ethical questions these days, at least in a context which has overtones of disputation and certainly where there are overtones of 'dispute'.

This doesn't mean that my ideas are any more sophisticated than anybody else's, maybe just that I realised that they aren't especially clear or well formed.

For the record I suppose I DO feel that remembrance in the context of education does produce results. Many more British kids over the last twenty years probably have a clearer idea of the realities - or maybe more perhaps of images of the 'realities'- of trench life in the 1914-1918 War than we ever did who knew as our grandparents many of the men who fought in them. All those school trips over to France to visit Somme battlefields and cemeteries has had an effect. It was all 'long ago and far away' for us so the study of history can bring objectivity (whatever 'objectivity' might be)

I've been interested over the past few weeks at the impact these television pictures of protesters in Teheran have had on me. They just bring to life the self-evident truth that these people are exactly the same as me, just speak a different language and live in a different culture. Once you can see that actually those kids could be your kids politician's talk of 'pre-emptive strikes' and the like is seen from a different angle.

Sixty-two Today

Goodness! Sixty-two today! Flowers have been arriving here at the palace since dawn and a crowd has gathered to hear the military band play 'Happy Birthday' as they march past my balcony. Later on I'll wander down and accept a few bouquets from starry-eyed toddlers. Birthdays only come once a year. You should enjoy them!

And for once there seems to be a nice little pile of 'goodies' on the table next to where my rice and miso soup bowls live. Of course I know that "It's the thought that counts!" but I always bear in mind that old Tom Lehrer song about Christmas

"It doesn't matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price."

Also I've had four e-cards too - one of which opened and two of which told me that I needed an updated copy of RealPlayer and locked up my browser for ten minutes. Which was yours eh?

Sixty two feels like a bit of a 'lame duck' age to arrive at. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water it seems like you can't make it across the beach any more. Sixty is a milestone and some of the other 'sixties' sound interesting don't they but what did 'sixty-two' ever do? There's the M62 of course, one of the nastiest motorways in the world to drive on in my opinion. And there are sixty two deities featured in the Samvara-mandala which is a bit more cheerful than thinking about Hartshead Moor Motorway Service area.

Anyway on your birthday I'm told that you have to eat a packet of crisps for every year of your life so I'd better get started. I also have to sing in a concert this afternoon too so better check if my white shirt is ironed. You just can't get the staff these days.

Map Purchase

When we were in town on Wednesday I bought myself three 'climbing maps' at the Sanseido bookshop on the ninth floor in Sogo. Two of part of the Japanese 'Southern Alps' west of Kofu - some of the nearest seriously big mountains to leafy Chiba-ken, and one of the part of the 'Northern Alps' west of Matsumoto including the Norikuradake area that I liked so much.

Not even sure if I could manage the staircase to the ninth floor at the moment! But somewhere I've got a real itch to give some serious hiking another go. I'll have to watch it, nothing too ambitious. You are forever hearing stories of over-ambitious 'oldies' expiring in the process of trying to recapture their youth. "Tragedy of Missing Gaijin Hiker". But the effort of getting into shape over a year or so would be good for my health, a 'project' of a very different kind Reverend! I'll have to take some advice on it.

The scale of it all is so different here. Heightwise the mountains are 'alpine' - around three times the height of our British 'pimples'. But actually to me they seem more formidable than the European alps, not so often beetlingly 'vertical' but heavily forested on their lower slopes and in many ways the 'dimensions' of things are more like the Canadian Rockies.

Interesting looking at these climbing maps. They took me straight back to a childhood visit to the English Lake District and my first encounter with the Bartholemew 'Lake District' 'half-inch' sheet. The pleasure of seeing the whole of that area shown on a colour contoured map mounted on linen - the way the roads and railways of green lowland England petered out against the creams and browns of the hills, the sky blue lakes radiating out from the central core of mountains. Beautiful cartography, engraved on and printed from copper plates even in the 1960's. I don't think I have a copy of that map any more, I must hunt one down in a second hand book shop when I'm next in England.

These Japanese 1:50,000 maps are much more formidable. Huge swathes of virgin forest with not a trail in sight and the summit ridges are a buff colour - high alpine meadows. Sections of trail are marked with timings, 1 hour 10 down, 2 hours 10 up. And there are no sheep farms or hotels or ruined castles or drystone walls. Just wilderness.

One Thousand and One Nights

I once used to have a copy of a children's version of 1001 Nights' - the 'Arabian Nights' stories. It must have been a 'selection' - it can't have had ALL the stories in because it was quite a thin book with lots of pictures. But I can remember being shocked at the idea of King Shahryar executing all those virgins because he didn't like women much (Hmm .. but on the other hand ...!). And I also use to worry that Queen Scheherazade was going to run out of material at some stage and come to a sticky end herself.

Well, now I know how she felt! Amazing to think but this is my 1001st 'blog' here on 'Little House'. Actually I've done a few more because I started writing on the 'mirror site' I publish for Japanese friends on 'Mixi' a few weeks earlier but this is the 'Thousand and First' here on 'Blogger' so let's make that the 'official total'.

Looking back on the site I see that my first 'blog' was written on 31 July 2005 and featured the school Sports day at Sanbu Minami Junior High. Our old dog Kuu, bless him, was very much in evidence then, and my stepfather Bill was still alive although my dad had died a few months before.

To write 1001 Blogs took me 1768 days. A lot of the time I've written pretty well daily but I've had a couple of 'sabbaticals' during that time. I've averaged 19.8 readers per day.

Interesting to see how my style has changed in the time I've been doing it. At the beginning I edited the text rather carefully, thought about topics a lot and tried to write something about Japan as much as I could. It probably took me about 45 minutes and I mainly wrote about tea-time. Now I usually write early in the mornings to publish before breakfast and I've relaxed a lot, I just write until I'm done and it usually takes about twenty minutes. Often I don't know what the heck I'll write about until I sit down with this blank screen in front of me. but out it comes - amazing! Where does it all come from? I've never studied writing technique in any way, shape or form but 'Blogging' certainly gets you writing fluently and the practice I've had here has helped me a lot with facing up to my academic work.

And the future? Well, I'll go on writing here for the the time being. I want to copy down to CD and print off and bind a hard copy of these 1001 blogs and then if I ever have any grandchildren I hope that one day they will find them interesting to read. I'd certainly have loved to read my own grandfather's blog if such a thing had ever been invented back then. Come to think of it we didn't even have stone tablets to chisel at in the 'Olden Days', let alone computers.

Fifteen quid

There were a few items on the UK News websites this week about a proposed architectural 'addition' to Westminster Abbey. It seems that they are about to apply for planning permission to put a big neon 'Virgin Atlantic' advert on the West Tower for Richard Branson. You will be able to see it right across London on a clear day.

No, only joking (of course!). They want to spend several million pounds adding some new feature to the roof, a piece of architecture that resembles a crown which will be 'exactly over the very spot where monarchs are crowned'. A heavy piece of symbolism there, about three hundred tons I think.

I don't know why but this prompted me to check how much the Abbey was charging to admit tourists these days. Can you guess? Well, not hard I suppose bearing in mind the title of this blog. Yes, they charge an incredible fifteen pounds for entry into a church. And they aren't even struggling to repair earthquake damage (see below). I couldn't believe my eyes.

What IS happening to Britain? How can the Church of England possibly have convinced itself that it is OK to charge that amount of money for visitors to enter the 'House of God'? Actually if they are doing that it can't possibly be 'The House of God' any more can it? It is just another over-priced tourist attraction cashing in on the so-called 'Heritage Boom' and the gullibility of foreign visitors. They have had some 'consultants' in there haven't they? Some advisers on how to best exploit their dreaded 'World Heritage Site' status.

Of course big old buildings need a heck of a lot of expensive maintenance. But here's a clue; if you are saying something spiritually important to your visitors they should be putting enough money in your donations box already. And actually I'm not against expecting some formal donation from people visiting such sites. But fifteen quid? Last year I was at Todai-ji Temple at Nara, the largest wooden structure in the world and considerably older than Westminster Abbey too, and also a World Heritage Site. Cost of admission - 500 yen. About three pounds.

Earthquake Damage

While we were in Noto a couple of weeks ago we paid a visit to Sojiji at Monzen, one of the really historic temples in our tradition of Zen. Sojiji was a temple founded by Keizan Zenji back in the fourteenth century; he was the man who took what was still an essentially Chinese practice and put it into a form consistent with Japanese culture.

The large temple site up at Monzen was badly damaged by fire in 1898 and most of the community moved a couple of hundred miles right to the other side of Japan, to the site that I visit sometimes at Tsurumi near Yokohama. Quite a lot of the original buildings at Monzen survived though and those that didn't have been rebuilt in the traditional style. As a casual visitor you wouldn't realise that they aren't quite the ancient structures they appear to be. It something they have in common with a lot of old Japanese buildings - when the work is done in timber with such skill using traditional carpentry methods where does the old end and and the new begin?

We were shocked walking around because we hadn't realised the extent to which this area had been damaged by the March 2007 Hokuriku Earthquake. In Japan it really can happen anywhere, any time. Much of the superficial damage had been repaired but there were still many places where the 'wattle and daub' walls between the timber structural posts were broken down. Looking in the ceremony hall you could see that the main pillars had shifted several inches and it wouldn't have taken a whole lot more to bring the whole building down in a heap. It will take a lot of jacking up and skilled re-alignment work to get the building back to anything approaching square-ness.

I felt like I was in a scene from Kamo no Chomei's Hojo-ki - "The Ten Foot Square Hut" - where he describes the damage done by earthquakes to Japanese cities back in the old days. But then they didn't have hydraulic jacks and laser surveying instruments to help sort the problem out, just string plumb lines, brute force and a heck of a lot of skill.