Disney magic

Katherine meets Mary Poppins.

Hey, Tower English has raised the drawbridge for two weeks and we are officially on holiday now. We just got back from Tokyo Disneyland and on the packed commuter train home, I struggled to find the ideal analogy to sum up the experience. Here are some of the contenders, arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference:

• Abattoir:  That image certainly sprang to mind on a few occasions as we dutifully lined up in snaking lines, shuffling forward like pigs to the slaughter, only we never knew if at the end of the line it would be a merciful bolt to the head or a painfully slow finish (have you been on the "It's a Small World" ride recently?)
• Communism: It's those lines. You get to the stage where you see a queue and just join the end of it hoping for something worthwhile at the end. Is this the queue for bread? Hey, the sign said it's only 30 minutes' wait. Let's queue! Oh, at the end of it is a performance of mechanical bears singing country and western (they really were)... great!
• Consumerism: Buy your ticket; buy some junk food; buy some plastic souvenir with a corporate logo on it to give to your loved ones who couldn't share the magic with you today.
• Fascist state: We were constantly reminded of Our Glorious Leader's vision -  no, not the emperor, silly, but Walt Disney - his statue stood by the entrance, with his left hand holding Mickey Mouse, his right raised in a non-threatening half salute/wave to the youth of the world.
• A Science Fiction disutopia. Is this a Brave New World where we are bred to accept the needs of the collective good. Hey, you there, why aren't you having A GOOD TIME? THIS IS FUN. START SINGING! Oh, by the way, the machines are in charge now. They run the show and are the show (see the entry under communism for proof). Another troubling question nagged at me during my stint in D-land - what has happened to all the over 30s employees? Every single always-smiling-always-helpful staffer was well under 30. Was this place like Logan's Run, where everyone is bumped off before they are old enough to know better? When someone discovers the truth ("Hey, this place is a Mickey Mouse operation! I want out!") are they taken aside and rendered into a fibre-glass Polyfiller and smeared over the cracks in Western Land?

Anyway, I gave up trying to think of the perfect analogy when it hit me that it's not so much that Disneyland is a perverse version of reality, but the other way round: reality is aping Disneyland.

Or put it another way, I didn't like it much, but the girls loved it, they want to be princesses after all. Repeat after me: It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...

Phew, rant over. I feel better now. 

Trip to Tokyo: Part 3

Public art. Great the world over.

Katherine discovers where to keep umbrellas when you are in the shops.

Swimming in Tokyo.

A night on the tiles.

See, if you want to pull Japanese women, all you need is lager. If only I had known it was that simple...

Trip to Tokyo: Part 2

Sisterly togetherness.

Trip to Tokyo: Part 1

Hey, we all popped off to Tokyo on Sunday and here's the video to prove it. Here, the kids are messing around on the rooftop of a "children's castle" - a high rise block in Shibuya with different floors devoted to kiddie activities. Don't know if this video works or not, leave a comment if you can. If it is OK, expect more of this technological marvel. Yushi-san is an old friend from 10 years ago. He is the big kid on the tricycle. Stay tuned for more updates and pictures of our day out... 

Here we go again

The ancient Greeks (if my memory of school history lessons is still accurate) believed that human history was doomed to repeat itself in endless cycles of repetition, much like daytime TV's fixation with Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote, a poor imitation of Miss Marple if ever I saw one, and don't get me started on Quincy MD, a poor imitation of the Rockford Files. Well, I 'm sure I'm not the first talking head to notice that we seem to be living through the 1970s again. Evidence?

1. Words like stagflation and devaluation are back in newspaper editorials.
   
2. America is involved in a deeply unpopular foreign civil war in the third world.
3. Britain has an inept Labour prime minister devoid of vision who seems to be begging to be replaced. Click here for an example of how bad it has got for Labour.
4. I spend most of my time wearing shorts.
5. Denim is cool again.
6. Bjorn Borg was at Wimbledon this year.
7. Er, Abba is still popular.
8. OK, I'm losing the thread here a bit.
9. And, no I'm not nostalgic about Raleigh Chopper bikes and pocketeers. Moutain bikes and Gameboys are much better anyway.
   
10. Fawlty Towers is still the best sit com ever.

Shaking all over

One the least appealing aspects of living in Japan, apart from a popular Saturday night TV programme featuring a psychic fraud Ehara-san who regresses vacuous chat show celebs back to their previous lives as warrior horsemen on the Mongolian steppes, is the frequency of earthquakes. We just had one about 45 minutes ago and it was not a pleasant feeling. The furniture and window frames started rattling and there was that uncomfortable moment when you have to gage in a matter if seconds whether it could potentially kill you or knock the house down at least. Well, after the tremours had lasted for about 10 seconds and kept increasing in intensity, we erred on the side of caution and grabbed the kids from their futons and stood on the stairs ready to run out the front door. The not-our-taste 1960s style hall light dangling a metre or so from the ceiling swung from side to side, but the house stopped rattling after 30 seconds or so. We put the kids back to bed and turned on the telly in Baa-chan's room. Apparently it was a 6.8 job about 300 miles north of us, round here it was just a 3.0 on the Richter scale. We just signed up for earthquake insurance on Saturday, and the expense suddenly seemed worth it tonight. Sweet dreams.  

Read it before Hollywood does

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was quite funny, and it appealed to my latent snobby side. The captions state, "Read it before Hollywood does."

Messing with the space-time continuum

I've been tinkering again with the blog. From now on, I will be giving a label to every blog entry. Why? Well, I did like lining up toy cars in a particular order when I was little, er, and I'm aware of the fickle nature of blogs and how an entry of vital import might be missed by a reader who doesn't like to be tied down to chronological order. Instead, you can search by subject matter. Think of it as a virtual card catalogue (for the old fogies who remember such things). Yes, it's that exciting. Anyway, you can click on the label on the bottom of every post and see more like-minded posts in the same category. Not only that, but beneath the oh-so-passe chronological archive list is the labels list, so you may never be tied down to linear time travel again. Kurt Vonnegut would have approved. Oh by the way, I'm backdating all previous entries so eventually everything will have a label. Who says I don't know how to party?

Ginger is the spice of life

It occurs to me that my legions of non-Japanese readers (do five or so regulars constitute a legion?) may be logging on here in the hope of improving their knowledge of Japan and the Japanese language. While I know little of either, I realise I have failed to offer anything much in the way of Japanese language tuition beyond the nicknames I have given my family. Well, consider this post Lesson One in essential Japanese from your self-appointed cultural attache.

• Sho ga nai said with a shrug of resignation, means "Such is life". However, keen Japanophiles and consumers of raw fish and tempura fried vegetables will know that "shoga" means "ginger" and "nai" means "none". So, said at the dinner table the expression can mean "There's no ginger." How my wife almost laughed once when I made this lame joke. I make it every time we have tempura and the mother-in-law says she has forgotten to bring the ginger from the fridge. Ahem. Now, get back to your grammar practice. 

Crisis, what crisis?

• NHK, the BBC of Japan, is considering suspending late-night TV programmes in an effort to save energy, reverting to the old days of shutting down at midnight.
• The mayor of Kyoto has asked the ubiquitous 24-hour convenience stores to close at night to save energy.
• A neighbour who works at a Hitachi factory was told to take Monday and Tuesday off last week. Was this a kind act of the company in recognition of his sterling work. Er, no, the electric company didn't have enough juice to power the factory, so everyone was sent home.
  

Should I sell my air conditioner while it still has some value?

What's my name?

In recognition of getting nearly 1,000 hits to this blog (as of writing, the counter stands at 997), I'm thinking of re-branding myself. Yes, I need a new handle, something worthy of my position as Sherriff-sensei and self-appointed window on my corner of the world. So, after a thrilling response to my request for names for my online persona, I've whittled the suggestions down to three and you can vote on which ones you like at the right of the blog. You have only got a week mind, so get voting. By the way, in keeping with current Mugabe-Bush thinking on democracy, I may ignore the popular vote entirely and give myself another title altogether.

Journey to the other side of town

Ah, summer. A time when every middle-aged man's thoughts turn to that three-letter word we all think about several times a day but rarely do anything about until the weekend... DIY. Well, today while shacho and giri-no-shacho were having an aesthetic massage (not quite sure if I should be worried), I ventured out into the heat of the afternoon for a mission to the DIY Mecca known as Unidy (written how an American would pronounce "unity") with Emma and Katherine. Here is a photo diary of our trip:

At ease, Corporal Katherine

Capt. Sherriff and Rear Gunner Emma

Scaring crows the Japanese way

Little troopers take on supplies 

No time to enjoy the view, we've got a paddling pool to buy!

Destination Unidy lies beyond the rice paddy and behind the council flats

"I always wanted to work in advertising, but..."

Stone cladding, Japanese style

Perfect refueling spot for the last leg of the return journey

Training tips

My little sister has asked me to share some of my training tips for running a half-marathon, so I am glad to oblige and hope that I may inspire others. So here are my top 10 tips:

1. It's hot out there, so drink plenty of liquids. I find that a couple of half-litre cans of Suntory Malts 5.5% beer are a great thirst quencher.
2. A can of Salsa Pizza Pringles is a perfect accompaniment to the cans of Suntory.
3. Have another can of Suntory to wash down all those salty e-numbers.
4. You are now in a perfect state of mind to consider how important running will be to fight the mysterious weight gain that is creeping up on you.
5. Check your blog for additional tips.
6. The latest medical opinion is that eating plenty of peanuts will give you energy.
7. While reading the suggested training schedule that my little sister had photocopied out of Runner's World, notice a copy of Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries and read a few entries.
8. Start thinking that if he were alive today he would have been just one of millions of bloggers. 
9. Have a quick nap to consider all of the above information.
10. Time for bed!

Sole survivor

Ah, the camaraderie born of shared effort toward a common goal. Yes, I'm talking about the "Eco-Marathon" - the half marathon round the lake five minutes from my house - that I've entered which I have been busy thinking about training for very soon. Readers with a cut-and-paste memory will recall that I signed up to struggle round the lake partly as an act of local solidarity with two neighbours who vowed (nice newspaper headline word - a lot shorter than 'promised') to join the 8,000 runners in October. Well, turns out one neighbour left it too late to apply and the other forgot about it, so the upshot is I will be the sole representative to uphold the honour of my street. Now, where did I put my trainers?  

Wishing upon a star or two

Today is the tanabata - star festival - in Japan, when two stars (I don't know which) are visible in the same sky only once a year on this date -- the seventh of the seventh month. The myth goes that the stars were once lovers but got so lovey-dovey that they neglected their work (as close to a sin as you can get in this workaholic country) and so God punished them by banishing them to opposite sides of the Milky Way. However, the former lovers saw the error of their ways and got right back to work (maybe at a 7-11) so God generously gave them one day off a year when they could shack up. Anyroad, the upshot is that on this day you can make a wish, write it on a piece of paper and  tie it to a bamboo tree. Emma's wish: "I want to be a princess." Katherine's: "I want to go to Disney Sea." Yoshie's: "Family's health and happiness." Patrick's (same since university): "Write a novel." By the way, this is also the date that I proposed to Yoshie one chilly night 12 years ago in a tent in the Rocky Mountains, but that's another story...

Independence Day

The mercury hit 31 degrees today, so it's officially sweat-fest in Abiko now, as my elder brother Geoff in Arkansas would call it. He moved from lil ol' Leicester to the US of A when he was only 17, I think, and now, on this Independence Day, he is into his 44th year. After working his way up from Pizza delivery driver to restaurant manager, then from newspaper delivery driver to circulation manager for the  New York Times in Little Rock, he then was in charge of circulation for the state-wide Arkansas Democrat Gazette (often referred to as the Demagogue for it's monopoly on public opinion in the southern border state). Now he is going it alone as a freelance truck driver. It has been something of a dream of his, so I'm just hoping the nightmare of rising oil prices doesn't ruin his day of independence. 

Air heads

Here's another rule I've noticed. If you listen to the radio in the Tokyo area (try Bay FM), in between the usual mindless chit chat that the DJs spout, for no apparent reason, they will suddenly flip from Japanese into perfectly accented American English and say something like: "Yeah, it's a really cool track zooming up to the number one spot." Do all DJs the world over go to the same training college to learn how to be an inane plonker?

A contrary approach

I've read that unless you know otherwise, assume the correct behaviour in Japan is the opposite to what you would expect in the West. A few examples come to mind (although Yoshie disputes the truth of some of the following):

• Japanese consider it odd to have a shower in the morning - you should bathe before going to bed here.
• It's rude to blow your nose in public, far more polite to snort the gunk back in.
• When eating noodles, you are expected to slurp them up noisily.
  
• It's perfectly OK to ask a new acquaintance how old they are.
• When laughing, don't show your teeth - if you are a woman. You can often see women putting a hand over their mouth if they feel the need to laugh in public.

And here's another rule I discovered while in the bank last weekend - don't start a business conversation with pleasantries and small talk about the weather, latest sports news or disaster in China - start talking turkey, and only when you are standing up to leave may you change the subject to something far more intimate and engrossing like the extortionate price of Leicester cheese in Japan (for example).