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).

Writer's blog?

Oh, how virtual we have become. Not only do we have a website, a school blog and of course this blog, but shacho has joined the blogging brouhaha with one of her very own. Yoshie's World is up and running and taking hits even while I sup my Chile Cabernet Sauvignon from the Seven-11. The Japanese is a bit hard for me to follow, but she certainly has a prettier layout than my blog. By the way, the more observant of you at the front of the class will have noticed I've been messing with the layout of this blog. I've ditched the news feed at the bottom of the page, binned some old photos and added a new "blog roll" which updates the latest entries to all our blog sites. Oh, and I am still taking votes for US President, but for the time being the poll is nestling in the broom cupboard between the picture of our house and a list of links.   

Fairy tale: Part II

In an izakaya (pub with good food) somewhere East of Tokyo:

Katherine:  I have to be careful because my tooth could come out at any time.

Dad: Don't worry, just eat on the sides of your mouth.

After a round of yaki-tori (grilled chicken on kebab skewers). Katherine begins wailing, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Katherine: It's gone.  I've lost it.

Mum: Uh oh...

Emma: She's crying.

Dad: What?

Katherine: I thought it was (sob) just a (bigger sob) tough bit of chicken.

Mum: Let me see your mouth...

Emma: She got no tooth.

Katherine: Now the tooth fairy won't visit!

Mum: Write her a letter and she will still visit...

Dad: What?

Katherine: In English or Japanese?

Mum: Both, just to be sure.

Katherine: OK.

Emma: She stop crying.

Awaiting the Tooth Fairy by I. Mac.

How knowing nothing increases knowledge

I'd say that my two kids' English and Japanese is on an almost equal footing, and that's thanks to my family's collective ignorance. The giri-no-shacho, my mother-in-law, can speak no English and I can speak little Japanese. As a result, my children have enormous benefits - in England they had to use Japanese to communicate with their Grandma, and in Japan I am a constant thorn in the side of Japanese domination. They always have to talk to me in English, and Japanese with the matriarchs. One beneficial side-effect is that they can translate almost at will between the languages, without us ever teaching x in English is y in Japanese, so to speak. I'll say to Emma: "Tell Grandma dinner's ready," and she'll dutifully trot off upstairs and say "Baa-chan, gohan da-yo!" Ignorance is the best education. 

Fairy tale: Part I

Katherine: Dad, Dad, mphg gwerff ith wobberwee!

Dad: Take your finger out of your mouth.

Katherine:  My tooth is wobbly! It really is, just like Mizuki! I'm a big girl now! But do you think the tooth fairy can make it over from England? 

Dad: I expect so.  

Katherine: But how will she pay me?

Dad: Er...

Katherine:  Because they don't use pounds here.

Dad:  She'll probably get the Japanese tooth fairy to help her, and er, then you will get a 500 yen coin.

Katherine: I'm going to tell Baa-chan mphg gwerff ith wobberwee!

 

  

A head for culture

Ah, Japanese culture: kabuki, karaoke, sumo and sushi. What best sums up the Japanese experience? Why a trip to the barber's of course. My ginger locks were reaching critical mass on Sunday so I thought I'd pop down to the ¥1,000 (five pounds/10 dollars) barber shop across the railroad tracks. It's a functional, high-tech sort of place. You put your ¥1,000 note in a machine and it spits out a credit-card like chitty (stop sniggering at the back there, I said chitty, not... er, never mind). Anyway, you sit on a bench and move along one space until you get to the end and it's your turn. You hand in your token, tell the chap or lady hair technician (it's hard to tell sometimes, they are wearing a surgical mask over their face):  "Ni senchi onegaishimasu!" (Two centimeters off please!) And in 10 minutes flat the haircut is complete, your head is vacuumed (I mean, really...) and you are out on the street. So, as you can imagine, it was with some relief that my wife suggested spending a bit more (¥4,000) and getting a proper haircut. So I went, a little sheepishly, to a new place called Hair Works Yoshiro. Wow, what a difference. Suddenly, you are not a minor cog in the utilitarian machine, but something more traditionally Japanese - an honoured guest. My hair was washed twice, I got a back and head massage (stop sniggering, or you can go home now), my hair was cut with scissors, my eyebrows got a trim, the manager introduced himself and entertained me with card tricks and I was presented with all three employees' business cards, a free jar of hair wax, a plastic thimble used to give shiatsu massages and an envelope with a ¥1,000 note in to take home for some reason I couldn't fathom. The door was held open for me as I sauntered off into the evening amid a chorus of thank-yous from the staff. I looked down at my watch and saw I had been there for two hours. And I learnt two new words from chatting to senior stylist Emiko: "sappari" - neat and tidy, and "jikka" - hometown or parents' homestead.  Oh and here are my trimmed eyebrows, whaddaya think?

Names to reckon with MK II

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A day in the life of Tower English

• 7am Alarm goes off. Katherine is first out of the futon (the kids have snuggled between mum and dad sometime in the night).
• 7:15am Adults get up. Yoshie starts breakfast (toast for her, cereal for Dad and Katherine, rice bowl for Emma) Dad puts away kids' and parents' futons and then takes out today's permitted rubbish to the collection point on the corner (today it's burnable rubbish and garden waste). Find six perfectly good plastic plant pots that someone has thown out and liberate them from the rubbish, stashing them in our garage for future use. 
• 7:50am Two neighbourhood kids call for Katherine, they walk off together for school.
• 8am Yoshie walks to Katherine's school to take her turn reading a book to one of the four first-year classes. Dad finishes breakfast tries to read the Japan Times while battling with Emma to get her to finish her food/brush her teeth/go to the toilet/wash her hands/pick up her toys/read her book/stop colouring in her dolly's face with the whiteboard markers
• 8:30am Yoshie back from reading duties, we begin the great cleanup ready for playgroup - washing down the entrance hall and outside steps with salt water, vacuuming downstairs, mopping the floor and laying the ABC plastic mats through the living room, putting out wooden toys, guest book, money tin and name stickers and setting up the props we will need for the playgroup.
• 9:50am First of eight mothers arrives for the playgroup. Crank up the volume with Incy Wincy spider CD.
• 11:30am Playgroup finishes. Fishmonger arrives shortly after. Mother-in-law Michiko buys week's fish with proceeds from today's playgroup.
• 12pm Lunch. Today it's sandwiches and wheat snacks suspiciously like hula hoops, though Michiko can't face all the bread and has rice and seaweed instead. Emma wins how-many-hula-hoops-can-you-put-on-your-fingers competition with her dad.
• 1-1:50pm First class with K-san, a retired lady who is keeping her English lessons a secret from her daughter until she is better at speaking (her idea, not mine).
• 2-2:50pm Second class with K-san.
• 3-3:50pm Have business-English class with lady who is starting her new job at an English-speaking company in Tokyo on Monday. She will be fine, but just needs her confidence boosting. Meanwhile, Katherine has returned from school and Yoshie and the girls have cycled off to Dance Studio Nagaoka for Katherine's ballroom class (she's pretty good at the tango now.) 
• 4:30-5:30pm Give a level-check and free trial lesson to two retired ladies. Get them waving Hello and Goodbye cards stuck to chopsticks to the Beatles song of the same name, before training them to introduce themselves at a party. Yoshie explains what has just happened in Japanese and they sign up for lessons from July.
• 5:35pm Neighbour pops by with June's tuition fee for her son, and box of chocolate biscuits for being late paying.  
•  6-7.30pm I make sure yellow chain has been replaced across entrance to car parking spaces down the road that we've started renting for students. Pop in the shower with Katherine and Emma while Yoshie and her mum get dinner ready.  Today it's seashell soup, fried pork and vegetables in soy sauce, steamed rice and the chocolate biscuits which turn out to be individually wrapped fudge brownie cakes. Put the futons out for kids and their folks.
• 8-8.50pm Teach a very nice lady who lived in London  for a year. Teach new word "stoical" and talk about difficult vocab in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which she has just finished reading. Try to explain "His face was drawn, but the curtain was real." Meanwhile, Yoshie puts the girls to bed.
• 9-9.50pm Teach a salaryman a lesson on directions (go straight ahead/ the massage parlour is on the left next to the bank. Just joking, it is of course on the right). Meanwhile, Yoshie plans two kids' lessons for tomorrow and laminates anything she can get her hands on.
• 10pm I have a can of beer/update our accounts, think about two adults' lessons for tomorrow/look over Yoshie's plans, talk about ideas for the school (new lesson-in-progress sign for gate, shifting some class times) and do a spot of blogging. Yoshie sets up kids' class props. We're doing a treasure hunt tomorrow.
• 1am freetime!
• 1.10am bedtime.

A week in Japanese politics is a very long time

I'm not sure if it was a request, but a blog reader (is there a techie term for this like bloggie or something?) wondered if I ever blogged about Japanese politics. Well, I haven't so far because I know next to nothing about it, but on reflection, that is no excuse not to offer my two yen's worth on Japan's second oldest profession. Well, as far as I can make out there is one party called  the Liberal Democratic Party that, quite unlike their namesakes in Britain,  has been in government virtually non-stop since 1945, so you can imagine the vibrancy of Japanese political debate. In this country consensus and compromise are prized above originality and, er, balls, so you tend to get uncharismatic prime ministers like the current fellow, whose name I have forgotten. But it helps apparently if you are the grandson of a former prime minister, and I think this fellow is no exception, in more ways than one. His approval rating is regularly in the lower 20s and his best hope to raise his profile is to have a successful G-8 meeting in Hokkaido. He makes Gordon Brown look decisive. Yeah, politics is exciting over here. By the way, I notice a dark horse candidate for US President is storming up the Tower Tales poll - "None of the Above" is making it a three horse race... now,  there's excitement.

Names to reckon with

While racing through a bowl of spaghetti at lunch today - between lessons teaching toddlers the difference between up and down; and adults the difference between present continuous and present simple (I am drinking a bottle of wine vs I drink a bottle of wine every night) - I had a chance to compile a list of strange but true names of people that I or my wife have known. OK, they are not in the league of Major Bumsore (author of Sliding Down the Banister) or Theresa Green, the environmentalist, but these names have the added value of being real. And the winners are... honourable mention Johnny Dollar (an American reporter colleague of mine), in third place Ronald MacDonald (my brother's English teacher), second place Dave Mountainhike (my wife's colleague at Toyota) and towering above the rest is... Chez Burger (an American working for Johnson and Johnson). Have you got any to add? 

Solution for school-time jams

We used to worry about an impending nuclear war, then it was Aids, global warming, Y2K, and Islamic terrorism. What's the next nightmare facing civilisation? As regular readers will know (yes, I have about six or seven - and not all of them related to me either) my money is on the looming energy crisis. When I started this blog in March with a little news feed to topics of interest to me at the bottom of the page (go on, check it out) the keywords "oil crisis" used to dredge up odd-ball articles from the religious right and scare stories from the fringy left, but sadly now the term "oil crisis" gets a lot more mainstream coverage. American news services and the financial press blame the stark rise in the price of oil on China, speculators and OPEC, but most articles are quick to suggest that while we might have to pay more for oil, it's not like we are running out or anything. I read an article today from the Bloomsberg financial empire that said it was just that demand keeps rising while supply has been falling. Er, right, so that means we are using increasingly more oil, and we are drilling less and less. Doesn't that mean we are running out? It's just a matter of time, but when we have eventually turned every last drop of oil into packaging for Barbie dolls and go-juice for our seven-seater mini-vans, at least that will have solved one problem - there will be nothing left to add to global warming. Oh, and parking won't be such a hassle at school home time. 

Obit for the special relationship

Here's a little (true) story about the difference between American and British English. In my first job as a budding reporter at the Conway Log Cabin Democrat, in between picking up McDonalds breakfasts and massaging weather reports to make everywhere outside of the circulation area unbearably hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, I would write obituaries. A typical obit in Conway, back in the early '90s at anyrate, went like this: John "Jack" Jones, 72, a farmer, of Vilonia, died on Tuesday of natural causes. He was a Baptist. He is survived by his wife, Jeanie, a son, John "Jack" Jones Jr and a grandchild, John "Jack" Jones III. But every now and then the publisher would get his knickers in a twist over a local dignitary whose time was up, and then the next one down the food chain, the editor, would shout over to me to stop tucking into my sausage and egg "biscuit" and call round the funeral homes to get the phone numbers of next of kin who might give us a juicy quote. On one such occasion I kept ringing the fellow at the last funeral home on the list, but just couldn't get through, so I sauntered over to the editor who was getting quite fraught as the high noon deadline approached, and told him "I tried to give him a ring, but he was engaged." The correct American English should have been "I tried to call him, but the line was busy." My perfectly correct British English in American English meant I was trying to get married to the poor chap who was betrothed to another. My long-suffering editor's head just sank further into his hands.

Round One to Obama

So, Barack Obama leads the charge to put someone vaguely moral in the White House. Listening to his speeches and looking at him stare meaningfully off into the distance, I think he seems much more Presidential than the headmistress-like Hillary. Is America ready to vote for a black candidate? I don't know, but all I would say is that he out-Clintoned Clinton. Sixteen years ago, Bill could legitimately package himself as something new, exciting and different. This time round, his wife was campaigning as someone old, reliable and familiar, hardly likely to excite voters. But never mind Hillary, you are still leading the Tower Tales poll. By the way, I get all my political views from a balanced news source, The Onion. Click here for their latest updates on the War for the White House, and more on Obama's meaningful gaze. 

A foregone conclusion

Mark it in your diaries folks, October 26th. A day that will live in infamy. Yes, I'm talking about the 2008 Teganuma Lake half-marathon, or as they call it here the Eco Marathon (no idea why). I know I mentioned before that I was in training for it, but, ahem, after two outings I came down with a bad cough and, er, haven't done any running for a month at least.  I have applied for clearance to take part in the race and, this being the world's most organised country, had to fill out the time I expect to complete the race in, before I have actually done any training to speak of. Still, what could go wrong between now and race day?

Battle stations

Katherine had a great time at the undokai - her primary school's annual sports day. Which is just as well, because I was at the school from 7am to 3pm or so. And I got off lightly... As you can see from the pictures, Sports Day, or sports festival as it is usually translated, is a big deal in Japan. It is a cross somewhere between It's a Knockout and Triumph of the Will. I was at the school so early because you have to reserve your space around the field or in the hall with a picnic sheet. The early birds catch the, er, spots with the best views and most shade. I thought I would get a reasonable spot, but no, I ended up having to share a picnic sheet with two neighbouring families... and our view? Couldn't see much from behind the grand piano at the back of the gymnasium. Turns out the folk who got the best real estate queued from 1.30am. I kid you not. No egg and spoon races here.

A day to be reckoned with

I'm sure everyone reading this blog will join me in wishing Azerbaijan a happy National Day today. Yes, this must be an important date in the global calendar because the Japan Times devoted a full broadsheet page to the wonders of the little republic with a big heart complete with gushing and, dare I say it, not undeserved praise of the country that - wait for it - is a blend of East and West/ young and old/ traditional and modern, and, no doubt, little and large/ open and shut/ and over a barrel and under a cloud. But wait, a few pages on I discovered it was also Ethiopia National Day; there was another full page devoted to, er, the wonders of the little republic with a big heart...  and to think that people criticise journalists for always printing negative stories. 

Where's all the butter gone?

Who doesn't like a bit of butter on their pancakes? I had some very tasty pancakes today for lunch, only slightly marred by having to smear margarine over them instead of butter because we had run out. In fact, we haven't been able to buy any butter for three weeks now (despite visiting every supermarket and convenience store in cycling distance). Neither has one of my students. There is something of a butter crisis going on. My student became aware of it when she noticed a handwritten sign in a Tokyo convenience store proclaiming "We have butter!" She ran in only to discover they had run out. Apparently, Japan had a major surplus of butter and milk a couple of years ago, so the dairy herds were given their marching orders. Now, with imported butter suddenly unavailable (anything to do with dwindling oil supplies?) there's none of the off-white gold to put on the shelves, proving you can't have your cake and eat it, not for a long while yet.

Surviving the Big One

It's been another busy week, and I haven't written as much as I would have liked for the blog as life kept intervening. Tomorrow, I have a "free conversation" lesson - this means I have to think up some good topics for discussion. I was struggling to come up with anything very interesting, or failing that, topical at least. But fortunately I have a resourceful wife (did I ever tell you she can make up jokes? - What is the character of a scallop? It's very shellfish - is one of hers that she made up while walking beside the Wirral I think it was back in my Chester days). She came up with three ideas on the spot - the oil crisis, Obama for President, and the earthquake in China. All three have got legs, as they used to say in newspaper parlance, but she plumped for the earthquake as a topic, as after watching the inept Chinese authorities bungle emergency relief, most homes in Japan (and this one too) have been assembling their own survival kits should the fabled Big One strike the Tokyo area. If you could take 10 items with you as you ran out the door, what would they be? Here's my top 10 list:

1. Water
   
2. Chocolate 
3. Sleeping bag
   
4. Rain coat (rainy season is soon)
5. Clarks shoes (one pair of)
6. Tent
7. Toilet paper
8. Swiss Army penknife
9. Torch
10. My copy of Practical English Usage by Michael Swan

(One of the above items is not really that useful.... the penknife doesn't have a corkscrew on it.)

Out of the red, into the black

The Japanese are pretty superstitious. They don't like the number four, as in Japanese it sounds like the word for death, and I think six is unlucky too, though I have forgotten why. They also don't like their names written in red. I knew this, but I didn't know why until yesterday, when all I had to hand was a red pen to sign a receipt for a student. She told me that red ink was the colour that the wartime government used for conscription papers. If you got a "red letter" in the post it meant you were likely to be sent to your death in some far off jungle. I promptly found a black pen to fill out her receipt.

Rohan Atticus Sisodia

Life has a habit of turning up tremendous highs, and devastating lows. In my own life, some of the highs have been meeting Yoshie, buying our first house, and of course, the birth of my two daughters. Then there have been the lows, the worst of which was the death of my mother after a harrowing battle with lung cancer. But these highs and lows happened over the space of more than a decade. Spare a thought for my old friend from school days, Mrunal. He and his wife, Clare, had been trying for a long time to have children. What should have been the happiest day of their lives, the birth of twin boys on Monday, February 25, 2008, was tempered with worry as they were born 15 weeks premature. But, mum and dad remained hopeful that their little ones, Rohan and Arun, would gain strength and eventually be allowed out of hospital for a triumphant homecoming. It wasn't to be. After 64 days and 12 hours, Rohan died battling a lung infection. In the words of his parents: "We will remember the happiness that he brought us: the way that his little hands held onto our fingers; the way his bewildering and sparkling eyes looked out onto the world; the way he liked his forehead stroked; and the way he recognised our voices as we read to him." He received excellent care at University College London Hospital's baby unit and to thank the doctors and nurses, and to remember Rohan, Mrunal has set up a memorial fund to raise money for the unit. If you would like to make a donation, click here and fill out the online credit/debit card form. It is totally safe and may help others in the same awful situation. Meanwhile, Mrunal says his life is now simple. If Arun has a good day, he has a good day. Arun has many battles ahead of him, but the day he makes it out of hospital will be the happiest in Mrunal's life. Here's wishing for my friend's happiness.

Fruits of our labour

Sunday will be known as the Day of the Strawberry for all the youngsters in our neck of the woods. About 30 kids, a gaggle of mums and two dads (one was me) joined the annual neighbourhood pilgrimage to the local pick-your-own strawberry farm on the other side of the lake. After a 30-minute trek over the bridge, and an equally long time for toilet breaks, we were set loose on the rows of strawberries. Japanese pick-your-own differs from the English equivalent in one vital way - in Japan you have to eat what you pick there and then - they gave everyone a little plastic tray with condensed milk on one side (for dipping) and space on the other for the inedible green tips. You'd be surprised how many strawberries you can consume in 30 minutes. Frankly, if I never see another strawberry for the rest of the summer, I'll be happy.  

A piece of cake...

Constant worry, excruciating noise levels and never enough time for yourself... it's not easy being two. Well, those days are long gone now for little Emma, who isn't so little any more - she was three as of yesterday and we had a little party to celebrate. For more pictures of her skating through the living room/children's classroom see the slideshow at the right. Now, can everyone please BE QUIET, I'VE GOT SOME LESSONS TO PREPARE! 

Near misses with greatness

In a lesson today featuring the present perfect, the question came up "Have you ever met anyone famous?" While I didn't bore my students with old war stories, I thought I might risk boring you, dear readers, as you can escape at the click of a mouse, rather than having to wait politely for the end of the lesson. Actually, I haven't met anyone really famous, but I've had a handful of near misses - the Queen drove past me at high speed when I was a primary school student during her Silver Jubilee year in 1977; while inter-railing  around Europe I saw Yasser Arafat in the distance in Vienna, and while on a sightseeing tour to Philadelphia, I swear I saw the Dalai Lama go in to Independence Hall ahead of me. My greatest near miss, though, was while covering the visit of then President Bill Clinton who was opening a Sherwood, Arkansas, school named after him in 1994. While waiting for the Secret Service to allow us out of the school campus I nipped out for a quick cigarette (an evil habit that I have since renounced). When I retook my seat at the back of the auditorium, my editor said, "Where have you been? The President and Hillary just swung by and shook my hand." Dang. Another near miss. 

Grandma's party

I had nice chat with one of my students tonight about her grandmother. They went off together to spend two nights in a mountain ryokan - a traditional Japanese inn (that means rice husk mats and futons to sleep on; fish, fermented soy beans and a raw egg for breakfast). My student, in her 30s, slept in the same room as her grandmother, in her 80s, and had to adjust her body clock to her older companion's sleep patterns. This was fine for the holiday, but when she got back to working in Tokyo, she found herself getting sleepy before 10pm and wide awake at 5:30am. It got me thinking about my American Grandma. She was a politically astute Arkansan who saw out the defining moments of the 20th Century - America's Century - The First World War, Great Depression, Second World War and Cold War. She brought up three children, one of whom was my mother, and lived through some astounding changes in the US South, including the Civil Rights movement and she joined the march of women from behind the sink to their place in the office. I used to visit her every Wednesday night in the early 1990s. I would bring her copies of my latest opinion columns, and she would feed me dinner (I definitely got the better end of the deal there). Then we would sit down and watch a little of the McNeal/Lehrer Newshour on PBS and she would nod wisely when a Democrat was on and scowl when a Republican spoke. Roosevelt's New Deal policies had kept her family in food and, in return, she was a Democrat for the rest of her life. Her proudest possession in her latter days was a Christmas card signed by President Bill Clinton, thanking her for her contributions to the party. The feeling, I'm sure, was mutual.

Back to base in one piece

Poor little Emma. She may be nearly three, but still the youngest member of the household works hard everyday in the playgroup, distributing felt shapes, collecting cardboard steering wheels from toddlers after "Wheels on the Bus" and gets a full aerobic workout thanks to daily doses of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Hokey Cokey". So, after lessons this afternoon, I thought it would be nice to take her out with her sister to the big playground by the lake. She loved it, of course, and enjoyed sitting in the back seat of the shopping bike to get there. But on the way back home, her eyelids got heavy and I felt her head slump forward into the small of my back, like a bomber rear-gunner knocked out by enemy bullets. The journey back to base became a perilous one as I had to steer the suddenly unresponsive craft over difficult terrain, conscious that if I hit any turbulence my casualty would plummet to the ground. We limped home, escorted by Katherine, but after a good two hours' R&R, Emma was fine, just a little grumpy because she thought she had missed dinner.

Auspicious, epochal, farcical

This time of year is auspicious for the Sherriff womenfolk. My wife, sister, stepmother and youngest daughter were all born within two weeks of each other (although on different years). Being the gentleman that I am, I wouldn't dream of revealing my wife's age, but let's just say that yesterday, Yoshie celebrated one of those epochal coming-of-age type ages, but managed to keep her excitement in check to pop out for a spot of clothes shopping and tea drinking while I slaved away at the chalkface. Anyway, amid all the excitement of that, the relegation of my hometown football team, and the spicy Italian we had for dinner (a pizza, that is), I somehow missed the other big story from Britain... the Labour Party imploding in the local elections. Now, dear reader, as a general rule I never heed any political observations from a commentator 6,000 miles from his subject, and I wouldn't expect you to from me, but may I just state for the record, ahem, PULL YOUR FINGER OUT GORDON! How bad things must be if Labour polled third behind the twit-led Tories and the rudderless Lib Dems. And Boris Johnson is mayor of London? It's almost enough to make you want to emigrate.

Had my fill

We've had a lovely weekend, I spent Saturday night in downtown Tokyo supping a beer or two and scoffing some not bad tandoori chicken with former Daily Yomiuri colleagues, and then on Sunday we had a great time with our friends from Kamakura chomping through some yaki nikku (cuts of beef and any vegetables left in the fridge, fried on a hot plate on the dinning room table), when I just thought I'd check out the internet and see how Leicester City Football Club were doing, and blow me if they haven't got themselves relegated to the old third division, their worst position in history. It wasn't so long ago that I was supping a beer in Takadanobaba (although it sounds like something James Brown would shout into the microphone, it is actually a suburb of Tokyo) watching LCFC take on Spurs for the League Cup (which the mighty Foxes managed to miss out on then). I suppose it's only justice after the schadenfreude of seeing Nottingham Forest fall through the same trap door a couple of seasons ago. It's all too depressing to dwell on, so here are some pretty pictures to look at instead.

Teganuma lake. The odd-looking Mosque-like building is actually a water museum.

Emma/Snow White in our front garden. 

Two little mermaids on a rock beside the lake. 

Best things in life are free

I've had a few good freebies in my time as a journalist.

• I've sat in the back of a C-130 Hercules as it lowered its back door and a squad of paratroopers jumped out
• I've flown in the rear gunner seat of a World War II Japanese Val dive-bomber in a re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor (this was for the Tora Tora Tora air show in Little Rock, so there were a few historical inaccuracies, such  as the US Air Force winning the battle, but I digress...)
• I've had a press trip to the French Pyrenees mountains
• and my shelves have always been groaning under the weight of hot-off-the-press review copies of books.

So it has come as a pleasant surprise to discover that even in my new life as a teacher there are quite a few freebies, and these are all the better because they are gifts given freely, without strings attached. Recently, students have given me Blue Mountain coffee, Harrod's tea, apple cookies, Korean seaweed, sweeties from Tokyo Disneyland and a tin of biscuits from Hong Kong Disneyland. But today's haul has been among the best. I got two bags of delicious mange tout picked by the fair hand of one of my students from her allotment at 6.30am today, and then two half-litre bottles of home brew reminiscent of the great beers you could get at that real ale joint between The Dolphin and The Bless in Derby city centre (the name escapes me) from the mother of one of my five-year-old students. We fried the mange tout and supped the beer for dinner. Cheers!

Who's your horse?

Hey, there're only 185 days left to vote in the US Presidential elections, so who's your horse? Billy's Filly at 5-1, Barack Beauty at 4-1 or Vets' Dear John at 15-1? You can vote in the poll on the right, and no one will check your citizenship papers or your dimples after you've pulled the lever. Oh, and you are free to change your vote as the days draw in to polling day. Not sure what the margin of error for this poll is, probably astronomical. Now, I've got to get on with planning some lessons for tomorrow... 

View from the floor

The trouble with blogging is I get tired of my views all the time, so here is a selection of views from my almost-three-year-old, Emma, which she snapped before I could wrestle the digital camera away from her sticky hands.

Dad and big sister

Big sister and big window

My big leg

Big sister's little nap

Big Buddha and a big thumb

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.

Who was that masked man?

I've had a bit of a cough since Tuesday, but today Yoshie had finally had enough of it and ordered me to the doctors. So, after lessons finished we trundled over to the local hospital (marginally bigger than a UK GP's clinic) which specialises in stomach ailments, but has a drop-in service even for folk with perfectly fine stomachs. Upon entering and telling the receptionist of my condition, I was issued with a thermometer and a surgeon's mask. Fortunately, she didn't expect me to remove any ulcers, just didn't want me infecting anyone else in the waiting room as I stuck the thermometer under my arm. Five minutes later I was in the surgery and was preparing for the fifth degree (it's not unknown to have to give blood, urine and stool samples). The poster on the wall with a variety of pictures of female genital warts didn't exactly settle my stomach. So, I was quite relieved when the doc addressed me in good English (he had lived in Milwaukee for two years) to tell me, very GP-like, I was suffering from a cough and if I insisted I could have an x-ray and blood test as the doctors were going on holiday from tomorrow, but really I had nothing to worry about as I had no temperature. He recommended some pills to deal with the symptoms and to come back in a week, after their holiday, if I still had a cough. Wow, not even a stethoscope in sight. After being given the prerequisite bits of paper, I popped over the road to a building smaller than some garages I've seen, in which seven pharmacists were toiling away. They toiled away some more and provided me with three sets of pills. The cost to me of seeing the doctor? ¥1,170 - about five pounds, and the medicine was ¥600. And I got to keep the mask too, which I wore all the way home, until Yoshie told me to take it off, I wasn't that poorly. Picture by Emma-chan.

Virtually friends

I've got 24. My little sister, Jane, has got 53. My Arkansan nephew, Ben, has got 529. DVDs? Overdue library books? Zits? No, of course not, I'm talking about friends on Facebook. I am hard pressed to think of more than a handful of people that I would truly call friends, yet even I have 24 of 'em on the online social network, as it's called (or a waste of time, as my wife calls it). I would have had 25, but one cancelled his Facebook account because he was sick of people he barely knew knowing everything about him. So unlike blogging, ahem.

A buzz about town

We'd just finished a delicious dinner cooked by the giri-no-shacho (in a previous life she ran a coffee shop with her brother, so she knows a thing or two about whipping up a tasty meal) - we had deep fried white fish that were a little like sardines, a beef and potato stew, a bowl of rice and some salty Korean seaweed, with the obligatory green tea - when my wife's ears pricked up like Chame-chan's when he hears a bird tweeting in the garden. She could hear a buzzing sound, and in between K-chan and Emma-chan's attempts to shout louder than each other, so could I. Have the electrics finally fizzled out in our 32-year-old house (ancient by Japanese standards)? Was one of the florescent bulbs about to blow? No, the sound was actually coming from outside. We opened the front door and stood peering into the darkness, before we realised it was in fact just the buzz of insects, possibly grasshoppers, filling the dusk air with their white noise.

English, but not as we know it

The Good-English-But-Why prize goes to a sign on a paper towel bin I spotted in the Abiko McDonald's: "Would you like to review what your life should be?" Hmmm. Maybe, but I was taken aback to hear such profound thoughts from an object so mundane. The Nearly-But-Not-Quite prize goes to my youngest who announced on looking out the window and seeing a delivery van pulling up, "It's the fishmonkey, Dad." The correct English should of course have been "It's the fishmonger, Dad." Correct, but not as good.

Hot stuff

A close family friend said this blog was fluffy and Apocalyptic in equal measure, but does provide a snapshot of my life. Thanks, that is the primary goal, to shed a little light on the world as I know it, and sorry about all the doom and gloom and unrelenting fluff that is the stuff of my life. I watched the telly for the first time in a week last night, I didn't feel like joining the Sunderland v. Newcastle match as Newcastle was already winning 2-0 and while looking for a film, Yoshie and I found ourselves getting into a documentary that turned out to be An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's slide show about global warming. It was actually very entertaining, (fluffy in an Apocalyptic way) and reminded me of a definition of politics that I had forgotten - politics is showbiz for the ugly. Gore came across as, while a little self-important, an intelligent, compassionate man passionate about the environment and gave an excellent, folksy summary of what a mess we have made of our planet, without hugging a tree once. If only he had shown that kind of passion and ability to communicate when he was up against Bush Jr, what a different world we might have now. It was a good film, despite some minor quibbles I could make,  and was determined to end on a positive note, saying that it was not too late and we could all make a difference. Hmmm, we'll see. Yoshie did comment after the documentary, "Well, we don't really need a car after all, do we?" - words that I may have to remind ourselves of when the message of the Inconvenient Truth has been conveniently forgotten.

Nothing like a lazy Sunday morning

One of the less-well documented drawbacks of working a six-day week is the lack of opportunities for a lie-in. This great institution, which in Britain at least, is observed at the weekend as religiously as, er, church-going used to be in a previous generation, is a time to re-charge batteries, plan great projects for the distant future and snooze before emerging from bed sometime around noon. The prospects today for a lie-in looked good. We had no plans for the day, no imminent visits and there was to be no jogging round the lake (my mentor is running a half-marathon today, so training is off). However, as always, the kids had other ideas and after a brief run around Mummy and Daddy's bedroom at 7am, they settled into a routine of standing on their parents (they call that giving a massage) and clambering up onto the futon cupboard shelf to make a little house. Meanwhile, a delivery man rang the doorbell shortly afterwards and K-chan began lobbying for breakfast/sweeties/television/computer privileges. Ah well, another day begins. There's always next week... 

Going through a bad spell

One of the perils of being an English teacher abroad is it doesn't take long before you forget bits of your mother tongue. In a lesson today with a very nice lady whose daughter lives in Germany, the need for a term for knives, forks and spoons came up and I had to look it up in the dictionary to check the number of 't's it needed. The word, of course, is 'cutlery'. Incidentally, my student said she was eager to learn English partly so she could communicate better with her German son-in-law. I suggested that wouldn't it be better to simply learn German, but she replied, "Oh no, his English is very good!" Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my spelling has never been brilliant, but out of the daily newspaper game, occasional reading and this blog are the only ways of sharpening the blunt edges of my spelling. When I was in America writing obituaries for the Log Cabin Democrat (that's the newspaper's real name, by the way), I could always claim any misspelling was in fact just British spelling, and the excuse worked vice versa when I returned to Britain fresh from four years of looking everything up in my Webster's Dictionary. These days I have no excuses, and I find my trusty Concise Oxford English Dictionary is getting plenty of exercise. Now, I just need to work on my Japanese kanji...

Sounds of summer

Last night while off on an errand on Yoshie's shopping bike, or momma charu as they are known in Japan, I could have sworn I heard my first cicadas of the year. The large, noisy but harmless insects are synonymous with summer and reign through the hottest months, before dropping from the trees as the cool weather sets in around October. Chame-chan loves to drag half-chewed cicadas into the house as his gift to my mother-in-law, much to the delight of my wife.

Number crunching

I was always better at my reading and 'riting than my 'rithmatic, but here are some numbers that affected our lives today:

300 - number of hits on this blog since going online in March

66 - number of students enrolled in our school

12 - number of students I taught today

7 - K-chan's height rank out of 15 girls in her class (kids line up in order of height in Japan)

3 - number of times I sang "Hi how are you? I'm fine" song today

0 - number of lettuce leafs Emma-chan ate ("I don't want it, Mummy, it's too green")

 

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?

A bird in the hand

At the end of lessons today, I had a chance to ride my old mountain bike round Teganuma Lake. The lake is the third dirtiest in Japan, a fact the locals have up in lights (no really, they have a 20ft sign by the lake). The lake used to be the dirtiest in Japan, so folks round here are happy to chart the lake's drift down the list of shame. Whether our lake's performance is due to clean-up efforts or the rest of Japan's lakes going to ruin, I don't know. Anyroad, it affords lovely views and doesn't smell and has a great cycle path winding all the way round it - about 20km in circumference. Rude of me not to have introduced the other amenities beside the lake, they include:

• A swanky library featuring a grass roof  you can walk around on.
  
• A bird museum featuring lots of stuffed rare birds (no wonder they are rare...)
• A water museum featuring, er, exhibits about water and such
• A couple of nice parks with playgrounds and picnic benches
• A bait shop where you can rent giant fibre glass swans you can pedal around the lake (unless you allow your two-year-old to steer, in which case you barely make it from the jetty before your 30 minutes is up)

I have no pictures of the giant swans or stuffed rare birds, but in keeping with the avian theme of this post, here is a picture of a pigeon sitting on our front garden fence I snapped one morning back in January.

 

In the running

Guess what I was doing at 8am this rainy Sunday morning? Sleeping off a well-earned hangover? Eating pancakes with the kids? No, I was huffing and puffing round Teganuma Lake in a worn-out T-shirt, paint-splattered shorts and trainers. After a few beers with my neighbour back at Christmas we agreed it would be a great idea to run the Teganuma half-marathon in long-distant October. Well, it's not so distant now and training started today. We ran with his 58-year-old colleague. I thought it was just a 3km trial run, but we got to the little bridge 20-odd minutes into the run and his colleague said, "Well, that's three kilometres, let's turn back now." Yikes, 6km in total. Still, we made it back to base only a little out of breath, although my neighbour's friend had barely broken a sweat.

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?  

School ties

I really felt like I was in Japan today. When you spend most of your day teaching English, speaking English, reading English papers and websites and watching Premier League football (did you see the cracking match in the Champions League a couple of days ago that Liverpool justly won 4-2 against Arsenal?) it is easy to forget that you are actually the other side of the world. But today, I sang the Japanese national anthem Kimigaiyo (well, others sang, I stood respectfully,  thinking how similar the tune is to "Zou-san, Zou-san" - a Japanese children's song about an elephant). Why the sudden taste of patriotism? Because it was K-chan's first day at primary school and she went through nyugakushiki - the school entrance ceremony. It was sort of a cross-between a British school speech day and a parish council meeting. It involved speeches from the headmaster, PTA representatives, city hall representatives, telegrams from the mayor and local nursery schools, and there was a perfunctory inspection of K-chan's new classroom. K-chan performed brilliantly, no tears and she raised her hand and said "hai!" at the right moment when her name was called in front of the assembled 200 or so parents. While I was a little concerned about the weight and difficulty of the standard-issue text books and rigid system of numbered desks all facing the teacher - no open-plan, non-hierarchical nest of tables here - K-chan was delighted with it all. She loved all the books and the fact she has her very own desk - right in front of the teacher. Even better, she's next to her nursery pal Tama-chan. Here, she is pictured showing off her new school equipment to Emma-chan in our front garden. I have also included a picture of the proud parents, not out of vanity, but to mark the occasion - it is the first time in almost a year that I have worn a tie (since quitting my job at the Derby Evening Telegraph on May 18, 2007, actually, but who's counting?) 

London calling

Think you've got it tough? Spare a thought for one of my students. Her husband's company decided to pack him off to London for two or three years (at their discretion) with less than a month's notice. Oh, and by the way, my student, who had no particular interest in moving from their newly bought flat, is pregnant with their second child. So shacho and I have been working feverishly on a survival course for her stint in London, and I have to say, she has coped amazingly with her change in circumstances. I have high hopes she will thrive in the Big Smoke. For her last lesson, she said she wanted a few pointers of what to expect in her new life so the culture shock wouldn't be terminal as she left the terminal, er, so to speak. Anyroad, here is our top 10 list of the key cultural differences hard for Japanese to fathom, but which they must negotiate to survive life in Blighty:

1. Trains are often delayed or cancelled altogether. In fact, trains are so often late that a 10 minute delay on an intercity train is considered being on time.
2. If you make an appointment with a plumber for 2pm, he may well not show up until 5pm and very often will not show up at all. You should wait one hour after the hypothetical arrival time before ringing to enquire politely where the blazes the so and so is.
   
3. When going to a party, it is rude to arrive on time. A quarter or half an hour late is far more polite.
4. Neighbours will often feed your cat if you go on holiday, and expect reciprocal rights.
5. Never leave anything you value out of sight. This includes bags, wallets and children.
6. Never leave your car running as you pop into the newsagents.
7. Never sign or buy anything from people at your door or on the phone.
8. Electricity bills are based on inaccurate estimates and come every three months. Water bills have to be paid twice a year. Council tax is every month, except at Christmas. Always check bills because they are frequently wrong.
9. You can't survive without a car, but driving in London has been made as inconvenient as possible.
10. Nobody wants you to see a doctor. When trying to make an appointment, if asked "Is it urgent?" always answer "Yes , it's urgent."

The view from here

If you don't suffer from hay fever, April is one of the best months in Japan. The cold of the winter is forgotten, the rainy season and the heat of summer are a while away and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom for a week or so. Yes, it's time to appreciate the fleeting beauty of nature... by consuming alcohol and junk food and for the little 'uns, roller-blading and grass-surfing down the nearest hill. If you live in Kounoyama, that means a five-minute walk to Teganuma lake (below). See the slideshow on the right for more pictures of our trip this afternoon with neighbours to enjoy hanami - cherry blossom viewing.  

 

What a wonderful world

I forgot to mention what a great time we had on Friday. One of our first students, Junko, invited us to her mother's place who was having a party for 20 foreign university students over here on an exchange programme. Our daughters put on their best party frocks and we set off down the road in Junko's classmate's car. As a special treat, Junko's classmate, Miwa, tuned in to the American Services radio and in between military-approved news items, Cheryl Crow blared out "If it makes you happy..." The evening certainly did that. We met folk from Norway, Sweden, Uganda and the States - a lively lady called Faith from Chicago who, can you believe, actually preferred Hillary to Obama. There were perhaps 30 people in the room eating a feast of tempura, yaki soba, and fried chicken... and the wine, beer and sake flowed (thanks Miwa!). Even a magnitude three earthquake, which shook the building for an ominous 15 seconds or so, failed to stop the conversations. We all had a great time and Yoshie said it was like being in a foreign country. There were perhaps people from 15 or so different nations, but the common language was English, even among the older Japanese folks there. There's a lesson for you.

Red badges of courage

Sorry I haven't written for a while, I blame global warming. Not only have the cherry blossoms come out a little early this year (see below for sample tree snapped in the yard of Katherine's new primary school one minute's walk from home), but of greater impact to me, the first mosquito of the year found its way into the house on Thursday night. Despite an extensive array of what Americans call bug screens on the windows, the little blighter made itself at home in our bedroom at 3am and kept me up with its whining wings for a good hour. It tormented me as Yoshie slept. If I covered my head with the duvet, I couldn't hear the thing, but couldn't breathe, and if I risked exposure to the air, its drone would send me into involuntary fits of slapping myself in a bid to kill it. In the morning, I woke up bruised, but intact. K-chan, who had crawled into our futons at some point in the night, slept like a baby, but had two bites on her cheek as her red badges of courage.

No more gardening on TV

There used to be a lovely house just round the corner. It had something rare in Japan - a messy front garden with two 30-year-old televisions decaying by the road. All it lacked was a pickup on blocks and it could have been out Greenbriar way in Faulkner County, Arkansas. As it was, it provided me with the best joke I have come up with since moving to Japan. On the top of the TV cabinets the owners had put some potted plants. Whenever I passed by on my bicycle with K-chan, who has mastered two wheels now, I would say, "Is there anything good on TV... no I see it's still gardening." She would laugh (at me), knowing I had made a Dad joke. Anyway, the house and TVs are no more, they have been flattened and I wonder what will sprout up in their place. This being Japan, we won't have to wait long to find out. In a month there could well be a multi-story apartment complex. Watch this space, I will be.  

French is the way forward

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of a language that has no masculine and feminine inflections and has words that most of the time are easy to pronounce. Yes, I'm talking about English, and frankly, I think it has had its day. Far too many people speak English already, and everyone else who doesn't yet speak the lingua franca wants to speak it. It's time we fought back. I think French is a far superior language and culture and henceforth we shall be conducting all lessons in French and shall be adopting French forms of address and styles of dress. This will be the last post in English and from now on please refer to this school as Le Tour de Francais. Avec poisson d'Avril. 

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?