New chapter for Tower English

Did I mention I like books? Did you know I teach, that I have two children and I'm running round Teganuma, the half-marathon-sized lake near my house? Enough questions already. Well, after reading about the late Paul Newman's achievements for charity, I thought I would emulate him in a small way and do something worthwhile that combines my passions. So, I've decided to seek sponsorship for my epic trek round Teganuma to raise some money for Book Aid, a charity that distributes books to the poorest communities in the world. For those new to giving online, here's how it works:

1. Click on my sponsorship page, or on the "widget" on the right.
2. Enter how much money you would like to donate (in pounds - there are about ¥200 to one pound), and write a message, or donate anonymously.
3. Fill out the online credit card details.
4. The money will then be sent directly to the charity.
5. I then huff and puff round Teganuma.

Book Aid reckons that for every five pounds (¥1,000) donated, they can distribute four books to people in the poorest area of the world, sub-Saharan Africa. Why books and not food and medicine? There are other charities that do that, but I believe that knowledge is power and what you can learn from reading might save a life, teach new skills vital to escape poverty, or at the very least, give children a window on the world. If we could raise 250 pounds (¥50,000) that would mean 200 books for those in need. What do you say? I've donated 20 pounds (¥4,000) from Tower English's coffers to get started, can you add to that?

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...  

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."

Double take

I just finished reading The Double by Jose Saramago (rhymes with Mr Magoo) about a hapless history teacher whose life is turned upside down when he spots his doppelganger, a bit part actor in the Portuguese film industry. Our everyman hero becomes obsessed with meeting him to discover who is the duplicate, and who the original. It's quite a funny book and the author frequently breaks naturalistic literary conventions by popping his head round the door to remind readers about an important point or plot development that we might have missed in the previous chapter. Did I mention that it was excellently translated into English from the Portuguese by Margaret of Dad and Margaret fame (see glossary)? My only quibble with the book is the author's irrational hatred of quote marks and his incredibly long sentences and endless paragraphs. Think I write long paragraphs? Try reading a whole chapter without a line break or full stop for company. Still,old Jose won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so I guess he can do what he likes with the language.

Time to get out of Dodge?

I just finished reading James Kunstler's The Long Emergency, all about the imminent depletion of the world's oil, and I tell you what, it makes for frightening reading - all the more so because his arguments are persuasive, are presented matter-of-factly, and his predictions of future problems (the book was written in 2004) appear to be coming true. If I may summarise (pay attention at the back now, I may ask questions at the end):

1. The world appears to have hit peak oil production. This means that the existing fields are pumping at maximum or are nearing depletion and there are no more great finds to be had in the world (the big companies have been looking).
2. Whether we blame Americans for driving their V-8s enormous distances to pick up the kids from soccer practice and a Big Mac or two, or the Chinese for wanting a slice of the industrial pie, it is beside the point; the world is consuming ever more of a finite resource.
3. America (and Britain I might add) has been blindly following a course of suburban living based on a misplaced belief in the eternal existence of cheap oil to power the luxury of living miles away from any amenities. Without oil, the suburbs will become the new slums - neither close to urban convenience, nor able to function as a true rural economy.
4. Biofuels are a con. It takes as much energy to turn the crops into fuel as they can produce. Meanwhile, less land is able to be farmed for food, which will exacerbate world hunger.
5. Solar panels and wind turbines can only exist in the shadow of an oil-based economy. How do you make the components without oil? Oh, and hydrogen fuel cells eat up more energy to create than they can produce.
6. We are running out of natural gas, and all the cheap coal has been mined already.
7. Nuclear power works, but has obvious dangers and requires a strong central government to ensure its safe use.
8. There are about 6 billion people on the planet. Before industrialisation there were around 1 billion. Without the feedstock of oil power and natural gas fertilisers, we have about 5 billion people more than can be fed by a pre-industrial (ie organic) agriculture. How secure is any society or government going to be when the vast majority of folk are starving? Expect wars over resources, civil strife and scapegoating of preceived enemies.
9. What future civilisation there will be will be small and local. Globalisation is dead in the water without cheap oil. The world of Wal-Marts, supermarkets and fast food, dependent on supply lines stretching around the world, is approaching its sell-by date.
10. The future will be nasty brutish and short for most of us. Want to survive? Sell your house in the suburbs, avoid the big cities and find a small town with access to good farmland and build strong relations with your neighbours. But I got to Kounoyama first, OK?

Turned on and turned off

We got cable TV today. I know this is not particularly earth-shattering news, the rest of the world and his dog has had giant plasma TVs fed by satellite for a couple of years now, but the slow advance of TV technology into my home put me into a bit of a funk. I had prided myself on being able to tell my students airily, "No, actually we don't have a car or a TV." Now, only the lack of a car remains as our sole other-worldly credential. Yoshie was excited to watch things in English and wanted the kids to see cartoons and the like in English (although, paradoxically we don't want to encourage our kids to watch too much TV). I flipped through the channels and after watching a report on chaos at Heathrow T5, a bit of a movie that I'd seen before and a roundup of Premiership games that I can't watch, I turned it off and returned to the world of words, reading a bit and blogging a bit. My reading didn't cheer me up much, I'm engrossed in a political history of oil and how we don't have much of it left. The Long Emergency, by James Kuntsler, a New York Times columnist, makes for compelling, if depressing reading. His thesis is we are addicted to oil, without it our societies don't work and we have no realistic replacement for it when it runs out - which will happen for folk in this generation very shortly. I'm half way through the book and am getting a bit worried - he effectively debunks the myths that free market economics will sort out the problem (there just ain't enough of the stuff in the ground left) and pooh poohs the notion that some alternative silver bullet high-tech solution will save the day. However, the sub-head to the book is "Surviving the converging catastrophes of the 21st Century," so I'm hoping there will be some ray of hope to cheer me up and save my children's generation. In the meantime, here are two jokes to take your mind off doom and gloom. Where do British detectives live? In Sherlock Homes of course. Ahem, and where do Bobbies on the beat live? In Letsbe Avenue. The old 'uns are the best, eh readers?  

End of a chapter or two

One of the luxuries of being out of the journalism game is I don't have to keep up with the news every minute, so it came as a surprise today to learn of the death of Arthur C. Clarke 12 days ago. His 2001: A Space Odyssey series of books (he wrote four) are classics of their kind and show how fantastic sci fi can be even when it is rooted in science, rather than fantasy. In other book news, I popped down to Arai Bookshop, which is perfectly placed between Tennodai tube station and Mister Doughnut (Mister Doughnut is a close personal friend of mine). It was the last day of business for the shop before it undergoes conversion into a fast-food outlet. The owner, Toshiko Arai, is a student of mine. She took over the place from her father who died three years ago. Squeezed out by competition from the internet, book superstores and declining numbers of avid readers, the shop has more value as a piece of real estate than as a general bookshop. If it were me, I'd fight tooth and nail to keep it alive, but I suspect the passion for the shop died with the father. While I was there, I picked up some bargains, some DVDs of classic movies  - To Kill a Mockingbird, The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Great Dictator and Casablanca. Is it fitting or just sad that it was DVDs and not books that were my last transaction with the bookshop?