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.