The show had to go on

I finished my last lesson of the day at 5pm yesterday and donned my old Glasgow Rangers top and paint-splattered shorts to stagger round the banks of lake Teganuma. I covered just over 10km in one hour and seven minutes, for all you running folk out there (who will know that is quite a slow time) but I needed to get some training in before the half marathon around the whole lake in eight weeks. As I crossed over the main bridge, along the path where I snapped the Abiko Imperial Navy, I could see menacing black storm clouds ahead of me with occasional forked lightning. Time to turn back and sign up at a gym with cable TV? Heck no! I thought I would just increase my pace and make it round the lake before I was too much of a sitting duck for the rain and lightning. Well, I didn't make it. Ten minutes later the heavens opened up and I was drenched in one of those downpours that reminds you you're not in England anymore. And then, in the midst of the tempest, I found myself squelching through a small park, but I could hear music. I looked up and saw a stage with 20 hula dancers in grass skirts shimmying along to a Hawaiian ditty. The audience (if there had been one) had long gone, but the show had to go on. As I did, thoroughly drenched, back home. 

Caption competition

I quite like this picture I took of my shadow. But what kicker (opening words) to use for a caption? Here are a few suggestions:

Shady character
Sherriff's back in town
A long shot

Can you do better?

Now hear this

The loudspeaker. It's everywhere. Not only at train stations to torment the long-suffering commuters, as you might reasonably expect, but it's presence is hammered into your consciousness from more unusual sources too:

• Vans selling tofu, with a recorded jingle not unlike the Muslim call to prayer.
• Vans collecting unwanted bicycles, appliances and furniture.
• Lorries hawking diesel fuel for home heaters in winter.
• Vans repeating candidates' names at an incredibly loud volume.
• Schoolyards, which play a dainty ditty at 5pm every day to remind kids to stop playing on the streets and go home.

I was musing on the authoritarian symbolism that the loudspeaker presents - the voice of authority, no talking back etc, when a loudspeaker announcement from city hall echoed out at 7pm across downtown Kounoyama: 

Two children are missing. A boy, five years old. A girl, six years old. Mother was expecting them home at 4:45. 

A brief description followed and instantly the whole neighbourhood was aware. The two tikes were located and returned home safe and well. Maybe the loudspeaker is not all bad. But Mickey Mouse, he's obviously evil.

Temple tour, or shrine a light

In amongst the downmarket world of karaoke, pachinko parlours and Japanese TV often held up as the real Japan, sometimes you stumble across something a bit more genuine. And here it is:

OK, sorry I'm something of an ignorant guide, but if you could hear me above the racket of the cicadas in their deathrattle (they only chirp like that shortly before they meet their maker) this seemingly timeless place, five minutes by bike from my house, is actually surrounded by a new suburban housing estate and busy main road. I would have hung around but the mosquitos were gathering for a late afternoon snack. 

Odd one out

The Japanese love IQ tests (well, let's face it, who doesn't?) so I thought I would join in the fun with some pictures from Teganuma. Can you spot the odd one out? Answers on a postcard please. First 20 correct answers out of the hat get a free subscription to Tower Tales.

Not so easy is it?

Arun's home

I've just received the best news from the motherland since I have been out here: Little Arun is out of hospital and at home with mum and dad. Let me hand over to the proud father, my old mate Mrunal:

Last Tuesday night we brought Arun home. After six months in hospital he seems to like his new surroundings and has settled in well. He is an even tempered boy (apart from a late afternoon grizzle) who is thankfully sleeping through the night. He still requires some support with his breathing and so has come home with oxygen and we have had oxygen cylinders installed around the house. He has made huge progress towards establishing breast feeding (which is a real achievement given how premature he was). 

Clare and I are coping well at the moment - largely down to the fact that he is playing nicely at the moment. Life is pretty hectic as Arun has a real entourage in tow ranging which includes health visitors, community care, social workers, physios, speech and language therapists, dieticians, respiratory nurses, paediatricians and neo-natal consultants. We are going to buy him his own palm pilot - he has a lot of appointments to keep track of.

We both know this is the end of the beginning of our story with Arun. There are going to be challenges ahead but for the moment Clare, Arun and I are happy to be at home and are enjoying being a family.

Double the fun

Despite the very British weather yesterday - it was overcast, a bit chilly with intermittent rain - we decided to go full steam ahead with our second "double day" picnic for kids with dual heritage (I know "double kids" sounds oh-so politically correct, but we get tired of people asking if our kids are haa-fuu, as "half" is pronounced in Japanese - my wife answers, "No, they aren't haa-fuu, they are dub-el-oo!") We, very un-Britishly, had no Plan B in the event of rain until the day before, when Shacho came up with the brainwave of hiring out the community rooms at Abisuta, our local library/community centre. Thanks to her, what would have been a washout turned into a great afternoon and we had around two-dozen kids running around and 20 adults tucking in at the indoor picnic. We stayed for five hours, the lingua franca was English, and the men even had a chance to swap jokes. The best, albeit not the newest, one-liner that can be repeated for a family audience was from Terry D. (pictured), a former Daily Yomiuri sub-editor: 

I went to the doctor's, and he told me I was fat. I told him I wanted a second opinion. He said: "OK, you're fat and ugly." 

But if you see this man, don't get him started on jokes featuring blokes walking into pubs with various animals, such as rabbits, horses, giraffes and so on, it's like being transported to the primary school playground. Why so many animal jokes? Terry says its because you can't offend anyone with jokes about giraffes. I beg to differ, but we had enough nationalities at the indoor picnic to make our own politically incorrect joke featuring a half-a-dozen Japanese women, four Englishmen, two Canadians and a Sri Lankan. Any suggestions? 

Graffiti shortage

Hey, what's going on here? A thug defiling a fine establishment? No it's the day after clean-up job. You rarely see any graffiti over here, and maybe the swift clean-up is why, or the general law-abiding nature of the good folk of Abiko (I took this picture in Tokyo, I must admit). In fact, graffiti is so rare, they actually offer classes to wayward youth in how to defile walls, as my youngest demonstrates here at an indoor play castle in Tokyo:

  

OK, they don't really offer classes in graffiti, but it sure looks like fun.

Don't mess with the kappa

What's the connection between journalists, karaoke box waitresses and English teachers? None of them can hold a tune? All of them are alcoholics? No, silly. They all work anti-social hours. Since my students have to earn a living or attend primary school, I have to be available when they are. It makes for a natural rhythm to my day: Mornings are for teaching little kids; afternoons for housewives and retired folk; late afternoons for schoolkids; and evenings for salarymen (and women) popping by at 9pm to top up their English before bedtime. But don't fret, there's often the odd hour free between lessons despite being on call from 9am to 10pm weekdays and Saturdays too. Anyway, on one such moment of freedom, while riding my bike round Teganuma (that's the local lake, not an Aztec god) I saw a sign featuring the kappa water sprite, whose festival we attended the other day. On this sign, he is helpfully warning children not to throw rubbish in the lake. He looks cute here, but you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

Half a million reasons not to commute

A joy of working from home is I don't have to brave the Tokyo commuter trains. I remember being squeezed onto Tozai line trains 10 years ago and getting so scrunched up that I couldn't move to prevent the beads of sweat from the forehead of the bloke next to me dripping onto my shoulder. But almost equally annoying were the incessant announcements to inform you of the blinking obvious. 

• "Attention, attention, Platform 2. There is a train coming. It will be coming shortly. Please don't stand close to the platform edge."
• "Attention, attention the train is now approaching."
• "Be careful, there is a train here. Be careful getting in because the doors will shut automatically."
• "Be careful now you are on the train because the doors will shut behind you."
• "At the next stop, the doors on the left side will open, automatically. Please be careful." 

And so it goes on, and on at every stop. There are about a dozen stations from here to Ueno, downtown Tokyo, so in a single day the poor commuter, let's call him Mr Abiko, will be told that the doors are automatic (wow, really? They close all by themselves?) on at least three dozen occasions. Over his lifetime, Abiko-san will be told about the magical mystery doors on the train he takes every day at least half a million times, by my calculations. You'd think the odd yearly reminder in the post would be more than enough.

Things to do in the summer 5: Put on a show

The kids with their homemade karaoke microphones (made from rolled up newspapers and protective plastic peach wrapping).

Here, Katherine belts out You're Beautiful by James Blunt, while Emma runs through her floor gymnastics routine. Two words: London 2012. Margaret, don't forget to turn the sound up on your computer. On second thoughts...

Splashing out

Spend any amount of time wandering around Japan in the summer and you will come across middle aged men earnestly spraying water on perfectly clean pavements and driveways in the late afternoon. Why do they do that? I'm not sure. I've been told it is to cool the concrete down (begs the question, why?) I think it must have some connection with purification rituals and bathing rites that the Japanese go in for. Seems like a terrible waste of water to me, but give me a few years and I'll probably be doing the same. 

Appreciating modern art

The kids get to grips with modern art. At the top of this overgrown Habitat lamp in the nearby Tega no Oka park is a giant fibre-glass flying beetle which I couldn't bring myself to photograph. Sorry.

First Kounoyama... then the world!

Spot of tea, old chap?

We started back at work today, but with one small difference. We're no longer just an English school, oh no, we are now tea merchants too. Well, sort of. Our first friends in Abiko, a Japanese-Sri Lankan family, have received a licence to import tea and we said we'd be happy to display their wares and try to find some customers for them. It's all part of the plan. Sort of. Margaret asked me what my five-year plan was the other day, and I said we haven't really got one. If you had asked me five years ago what I would be doing now, I couldn't have predicted how my life has changed. But it got me thinking. I don't know about five years, but here's my ideal result:

• We are a well-respected English language school.
• We have our own premises with a lively tea and coffee shop on the ground floor.
• We operate a thriving English language bookshop from the basement.
• We have a small publishing operation in the attic, producing original teaching material for profit and the odd novel or two for kicks, and for sale in our bookshop.

In short, I'd love to see us develop into a cultural centre for English. It's possible, after all, the British Empire started with just a liking for tea...

Olympic ideals

Is it heresy to admit I couldn't care less about the Olympics? Here in Japan it's on the telly all the time, the front and back pages of the papers and no doubt all over the internet too. Watching the Olympics here means watching a lot of judo and women's volleyball (it's what the Japanese are good at) rather than rowing and running, which the Brits tend to be good at. I'm with comedian Billy Connelly who can't be fussed with it all either. He does a great routine taking the mick out of the opening parade, pretending to march with a flag saying in a childish voice "We can jump higher than you can!" The uncharitable might say I don't like the Games because Great Britain has no chance of topping the medals table, and that leaves picking from the Chinese, Americans or Russians. Hmmm. I've never understood the excuse for international sports that it allegedly brings the world closer together. Nonsense, it has us baying for blood for the nation's honour. Or, as George Orwell put it: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting." But I like the World Cup...

Cocko's coming

Ryokan (Japanese inn) Tomimasu, where Cocko and mates will be staying, if they can find their way back from karaoke in one piece.

 

Just got an e-mail confirming that another former Derby Evening Telegraph colleague, James "Cocko" Coxon, is popping over to Japan for an extended doss, er, cultural exploration and I am delighted that he has seen fit to come out my way to take in the local waters and appreciate the wonders of the 24-hour karaoke box with us. In his honour, I thought I might offer some advice relevant to anyone who wishes to nip on over to Nippon:

• Don't bring travellers' cheques. Even banks here don't really understand the concept.
• Never tip anyone (not a problem in Cocko's case) - it's considered rude - why bribe someone for doing their job?
• Don't open or close the rear taxi door - the driver does it with a little handle from the front.
• If you don't know how to say it in Japanese, try saying it in English but with an exagerated Japanese accent. It might work, and if not, it is amusing for the locals.
•  When figuring out how much things are, there are roughly 200 yen to the pound - knock two zeros off the price tag and halve what's left to tell you what it would be in Sterling.
• Everything is on time. Don't arrive two minutes late for a train thinking it will be late, Cocko. It won't be.
• If in doubt, smile, shrug give a little bow and carry on regardless.

Lynwen's lens

Hey folks, here's a little guest feature. I've been trying hard to include lots of pretty pictures with my posts, but I have had no training as a snapper, other than chasing ambulances for the Jacksonville Patriot in Arkansas, hoping for a good crash scene. My philosophy is: get the thing that is interesting in focus and press the button, but apparently there is more to photography than that. A former colleague from the Derby Evening Telegraph, Lynwen Davison, has actually just got a piece of paper (A City and Guilds no less) that says she can take a good photo. And here's the evidence. She clearly likes doorways and statues of dead folk, (and there I was thinking she liked Margaret Attwood and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.) Anyway, Lynwen, you get the job of official Tower Tales Toggie for Great Britain (it carries no salary, but think of the honour). By the way, I particularly liked the cherub making a rude gesture (no, not the first picture, that's Lynwen's daughter, Isobel). I included the scarecrow too for comparison to a Japanese one I snapped. Hmm, which is scarier? 

Things to do in the summer 4: Run barefoot through a stream

What could be more natural than running barefoot through a stream? This being Japan, appearances are deceptive... We spent a lovely afternoon at the Tega no Oka park (see the slide show at the right for more pictures), but what appears to be a natural spring in a quiet wood with just a few climbing frames and such added, is actually a well oiled machine. Literally, in fact, as they turn off the stream at 4.30 every day, and close the park completely for maintenance and chemical cleaning of the water every Monday and Friday. There are loudspeakers that announce the immanent closure of the place at 4pm, and there are plenty of refrigerated drinks vending machines to keep the thirsty throngs supplied with fizzy caffeinated sugar water. Still, the fun was genuine and the mosquitoes were real enough, I can assure you.

A trip to Kanda - Tokyo's book town

Anyone who knew me in my newspaper days, knew I liked a good book. Especially if it was a free, new review copy. Before I left the UK I had a garage full of 3,000 books at last count I think. So it was with some sadness that I knew I would be moving to a country that although loves books, loves them written in a language I doubt I will ever be able to read beyond the level of a three-year-old (although that may be patronising to my my three-year-old). But anyway, we had another daytrip to Tokyo yesterday and I was given time off for good behaviour. What to do? Well there was only one thing on my mind, find a good second-hand bookshop. Where to go? Kanda, 10 minutes from the emperor's palace, it is a last bastion of quirky bookshops. My two favourite shops from 10 years ago were both shut for the day, so I was at a bit of a loss and headed off towards home, when I came across a bookshop jam packed with English (and for some reason) German books.  They had a lot of Steinbeck first editions and musty leatherbound books. Before I knew it a couple of hours had gone by and it was time to go home. And look what I found in the bargain bin - a history of my hometown. It was a good place worth a second visit, but still not a patch on my favourite with a great website - Between the Covers. Just look at those 3-D rotating books...  

The Third Man

I can't remember the last film I saw at the cinema. It may well have been Lost in Translation or The Last Samurai or possibly Madagascar (that's a kids' movie, not a poor man's Casablanca), so you can see I'm a little out of touch (and out of date) with my movies, but I finally got round to watching a DVD I picked up for a song from Arai-san's defunct bookshop. It was The Third Man, which you probably already know, is a cracking movie. Set in post-war Vienna, it's really of its time - 1949 - but in all the right ways:

• It's got the most evocative soundtrack I can think of
• There isn't a single throwaway camera angle in the whole film
• There are touches of brilliant understated British wit
• It's dark and menacing - just like the femme fatale
• The violence is all off-camera

I enjoyed watching the hero bumble his way through a strange land where he doesn't speak the language but somehow gets to the bottom of it all - with the help of an inscrutable raven-haired beauty. There's hope for me yet.

Arun's on his way home

I'm delighted to report that my old school friend Mrunal and wife Clare are planning to bring their newborn baby son home from hospital at the end of the month (seen here taking a stroll in London). But let me allow Mrunal to explain: "I wanted to send out some photos of our darling little boy Arun. As you know he has had quite some journey. He was born weighing in at just 600 grams- right on the cusp of viability. As he was born he suffered a brain haemmorhage that has left him with some damage that he will have to contend with. However, he has shown the most incredible courage and has come through more in his short life than I have in 37 years. He has had seven operations, two broken arms, countless drugs and procedures. Words like character, determination and inspiration are often used lightly but not in Arun's case. If ever I want an example of all three I need look no further than my son." 

Clare said that the memorial fund for Arun's twin brother Rohan has raised enough so far for a new ventilator at the ward where he was cared for. Fingers crossed Arun can make it home this month.

 

The ancient Japanese art of low impact aerobics

Strange green creatures had a larger impact on my life yesterday than they have had since I was a child enamoured with a plastic triceratops model that my dad bought me from New Walk museum in Leicester (by the way, boys in Japan are obsessed with dinosaurs too - my class of seven-year-olds all know the Latin names of the cool carnivorous and flying dinosaurs). We all went along to the kappa matsuri festival - a local shindig celebrating a mythical green half-human, half-frog kappa  (Pictured). Anyway, while speeding along the back roads to get there I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt (not quite as impressive on a push bike as in a car) because a slinky metre-long green snake was crossing the road, and I thought it would be bad luck to run over the thing, and even worse luck to be bitten by it. We all stopped and watched it disappear into the crevasses of a garden wall. But the show must go on... How do you celebrate a mythical river sprite? Why, by cross-dressing and performing a sort of mass low-impact aerobics routine in the middle of the street. I whipped out my handy digi cam to shoot the hilarious scene... only to realise the camera battery was still in the recharger at home. Oh, you should have seen it. There's always next year. Crestfallen at the lack of publicity potential, we cheered ourselves up with a MacDonalds happy meal and headed home, only to discover giri-no-shacho upset, brandishing a tied up plastic bag. She'd caught a lizard in her room and had Shanghaied it until we arrived home, expecting me to stamp on it. I opened the front door and shook the bag for a good 20 seconds or so, and then I opened my eyes. Given the theme of the day, I was happy the little green fellow had nipped off before I had to do anything his kappa brothers might have objected to.

Nagasaki

 

One thousand origami cranes made by local primary school kids hang in Abista library. Below: Pictures from the exhibition.

We popped down to the library yesterday after a visit to the lake with the kids, mainly to grab an ice cream from their nice cafe and cool down in the air conditioning when we happened upon an exhibition to mark the anniversary of the A-bombs - today is 63 years since Nagasaki. I was nonplussed by the pictures of the mushroom clouds that I have seen on many a History Channel documentary. What was arresting to me were the pictures of ordinary folk bewildered by what had just happened, but carrying on as best they could. I'm sure I have seen pictures like these before, but in my youth they were of a people who lived on the other side of the world, in another era. Now, I see these pictures and I see my neighbours, their parents and their grandparents.

Things to do in the summer 3: Find a cool place to sleep

Chame-chan and Emma find the coolest spot in the house to flake out in the heat of the day. It's what trampolines were designed for, I'm sure.

Hiroshima

I forgot to mention, but yesterday was one of the biggest anniversaries marked in Japan - Hiroshima. Every year the papers are full of discussions on the morality of the decision to bomb and, quite rightly, conclude that war is a bad thing. If you want to learn about the Second World War, Japan is probably not the best place to be - every April (the start of the school year here) there are debates about officially approved high school textbooks that skirt the issue of Korean women forced into prostitution during the war, and descriptions of the Nanking Massacre as little more than a picnic that got out of hand. My wife's sum knowledge of the Second World War from Japanese high school is Pearl Harbor happened in 1941 and then Japan was A-bombed mercilessly in 1945. Blame (and detail) is never attached, merely the bland truism "war is bad". Mind you, in the midst of an Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, I don't feel I can get on my high horse and lecture Japan about virtue in war. One of my students grew up in Hiroshima and her grandmother and grandfather were in the city when it was struck. They were lucky that they lived on the outskirts of the city and the day of the bomb the father called in sick. Just as well. His factory and workmates were obliterated. If he had been feeling well that day, I would have had one fewer student today.  She can still remember playing in her grandparents' house and touching scorched wood that was left from the blast.I asked if her grandparents harboured any ill feeling towards Americans and Westerners after witnessing the horror of Hiroshima. "Oh, no," she said, "war is bad, not people."

Walking before I can run (a car)

Yesterday, the humidity was getting to me so I headed off on my trusty 13-year-old mountain bike to the electronic superstore down the road and bought two fans, as well as some lightbulbs and 100 coffee filters,  then tied them to the handlebars and saddle and wheeled my bike through the backstreets home. In the stifling humidity (I don't know how humid it was, but even thinking about doing anything that requires any movement at all drenches my brow in sweat) I felt like a Viet Cong foot soldier wheeling his Chinese-made supplies down the Ho Chi Minh trail.  We've lived in Japan now for over a year, and I think I can safely say that I don't miss owning a car. It wasn't an eco-conscious decision when we moved here, simply a lack of money that meant buying a car was way down the list of priorities (somewhere behind adding a veranda to the house and digging a wine cellar in the front garden). We've had to turn to public transport (which is no hardship in ultra-punctual Japan) and take advantage a lot more of pedal power. At first we had withdrawal symptoms. "My feet are hurting" was a constant refrain from the kids, but now the car is a distant memory of life in suburban Mickleover. Mind you, I wouldn't object to a quick air-conditioned spin up into the cool of the mountains right about now.

Rain didn't stop play

Apologies for the wobbling around (must remember - keep the camera still) and, yes, maybe the subject matter (it rained yesterday) was not the most thrilling, but hey, it's not like I have a budget of millions to blow on fresh-faced college kids to chase real news stories (like "Phew what a scorcher/What a damp squib" splashes that appear every May Bank Holiday in the Daily Mail in England). But I thought the folks back in Blighty might find it interesting to witness a thunder storm Japanese style, and the nosey closer to downtown Kounoyama might enjoy peering at their neighbours' houses. One final note of irony - I was happy to leave local newspapers in England partly because they seem to be getting their knickers in a twist trying to be all things to all people (the Derby Evening Telegraph is on to its second web editor in less than a year and management at the Nottingham Evening Post now describe the company as a "media hub" - silly me, I thought it was a newspaper). Anyway, when I was doing Lord Rothermere's bidding, I resented the move into cyberspace, but now I find I am doing all the things I thought I detested (blogging, uploading pictures, shooting video) only I am doing them for free now. I always knew I would make the model employee someday.

Things to do in the summer 2: Swimming lessons

Emma and Katherine practise their swimming techniques.

Things to do in the summer 1: Rollerblading

Emma demonstrates the importance of having all the right safety gear. The pinker the better.

Photo opportunity

We were really happy to see old friends from England yesterday - Andy and Mayu from Loughborough with their kids Joe and Luke. We all had a great time and neighbours the Nonaka family dropped by briefly. Here, I took the liberty of videoing a traditional Japanese custom - photographing every social occasion before guests leave. The great thing about my video camera is it is actually just a cheap digital camera, so no one is quite sure if I am filming or just snapping a shot, allowing them to behave a little more naturally. Enjoy the reality.  Oh, click here for more pics and commentary in Japanese.