This is the last day after almost exactly nine months (271 days, thank you Mr. Wolfram) in Japan. I’d love to hit you with a lot of platitudes about, “Oh yeah I’ve learned so much, not just about Japan but about myself.” But er I’m not going to do that. All I’ll say is it feels odd to leave somewhere without taking a stack of exams first. It seems too easy like they’re just letting me drift out.
I spent today cleaning and trying to get everything to fit in my cases. I’m probably way over my weight limit but I’m really hoping that the people at the check-in desk don’t care. Maybe I’ll plead with them if they do. For a nice little break I went and climbed a local mountain with Jenny, Phil and Jamie. After we had a traditional Japanese Starbu
Above is a speech I gave at the university to thank them for everything. For their benefit I did throw in a couple of little platitudes – also because that’s about all I know how to say in Japanese. Here’s the translation courtesy of google:
Hello ASAN civics.
Study in Japan is very OMOSHIROKATTA. NARAIMASHITA lot about life and culture of Japan. We travel the country. So I think the Japanese and United Kingdom a little different. Japanese people say about my opinion. But Japan is a good society. For example, a country I think Japanese people and a safe place.
Today was a good NOBEN Japanese are becoming more difficult.
WASUREMASEN ever to Japan. And regrettably the chance, you come to Japan again. Thank you very different. Thank you.
Obviously I could have translated it myself but where would the fun be in that? Before the speeches they gave us a nice certificate and some kind of box. It later emerged that there was a very attractive piece of china in the box. It’s a great thing for them to give us but it’s very irritating to take home.
This blog has become a bit derelict recently mainly because I’ve been wondering what to do next and haven’t had too much time to write. Last weekend I went to the Nagasaki atomic bomb memorial which was quite harrowing and would have been good to write about. I’m sure there’s plenty of other stuff too that should have made it on here. After I leave I guess this place will just fall into disrepair but I’ve got into the habit of blogging and I’m thinking about giving tumblr a go.
So bye-bye, then. Or, as the Japanese say, “See you”.
It was a bit of a slow day on Saturday so I decided to build a little photo studio using my desk lamp and a cardboard box. Inspired by this guy,I got all my toys and figures and started playing around. Oisin and Todd thought I was a bit mad lying on the floor with discarded bits of lego and be@rbricks all around me. But whatever. A bit of editing and here’s the results. (I used character map, windings, webdings and paint to make these. It felt “old skool”.)
Keep reading for more photos. (more…)
It’s been a pretty big week for me: I’ve discovered two new things that I like. The first, pictured above, is Calpis in ice-lolly format. It’s really quite nice it kind of feels like a mix between a normal ice-lolly and a Mini Milk. The so called Calpis Ice Bar is now available in my university canteen from Italian Street. Unfortunately, Italian Street is what’s known in the business as “a clever bit of marketing”. In reality it’s neither a street nor Italian. In reality it’s a vending machine that sells ice cream. But since it has this nice Calpis ice cream I’m happy to let it slide.
When I was little my parents would only let me have Mini Milks and not proper grown-up ice cream.But my dad always had Feasts in the freezer as well and eventually I was able to convince them to let me have one of those instead.
BONUS AREA: In Okinawa, I tried premixed Calpis sour. I haven’t had an alcopop for a long time so it was a nice experience. That brings the tally of Calpis products I’ve encountered to four. <Damn. I thought I had a picture of Rhe trying it but it’s her photo.>
The other product is Silky Black. It’s premixed ice coffee and comes courtesy of a recommendation by Todd. You can get ice coffee in any one of Japan’s bajilion vending machines but usually it tastes awful. Silky Black tastes quite nice. The connotation of ’silky’ suggesting a smooth drinking experience might go over the head of the average Japanese punter so they’ve come up with a nice little slogan, “Stylish, Intelligent , Luxurious, Keeps, You relaxed”. Bit of a fudge but not bad.
Even better, mine came with a free gift: a USB stick cover! Oh man just what I’ve always needed so that my USB stick doesn’t get cold. It comes in a nice leather effect material and has a strap so you can strap it to things. Despite it’s unquestioned utlility, I think it’s a strange with to give away with coffee.
That concludes today’s demonstration.
So I’m taking this on the evidence of this post. But it appears that once upon a time there was a Japanese TV show called “I Wanna” where the presenters would just shout out something they wanted to do. Once a female presenter said she wanted to sing a duet with Yasir Arafat so they tried to make it happen.
If you watch the video you’ll see that his guards were very skeptical at first but eventually she somehow managed to charm her way in. Unfortnately either Arafat didn’t have much of a singing voice or he got camera shy so he decided not to sing along.
For this post I have done basically no research apart from what other people have told me. This is presumably what blogs were like before the internet.
Anpan is a kind of Japanese bread filled with mashed up bean paste. It tastes pretty weird but it grows on you. I’m told it was invented because all the bread in Japan circa 1870 was horrible and one enterprising young samurai-turned-baker decided to do something about it. Anpan was born.
His bakery is really famous and still stands in Ginza, Tokyo. I’ve forgotten the name but I have seen a piece of paper with a print out from their website that shows the different kind of Anpan you can get.
I teach the children of a family who own a bake shop and every week they give me a massive bag full of whatever they didn’t sell that day. Often there’s an anpan in there. But I didn’t realise until yesterday that it was anpan that I was eating.
Anpan is also famous because there is a cartoon character called Anpan Man. His head is made of Anpan and his dad is a baker. Whenever Anpan Man finds a starving person he lets them eat half of his head and then when he goes home his dad just bakes a new one. The reason for this bizarre set up is, I’m told, that Anpan Man was devised by a starving Japanese soldier during the War whose favourite food was anpan. I also hear that Anpan Man is the most popular animated character among Japanese children (ahead of Doraemon and Pikachu).
Yesterday I convinced a group of kids that Oisin looks like Anpan Man and that they should call him that from now on. They thought it was funny. Today when I got to university there was a kids festival and through the windows of the classroom I could hear some aspiring kindergarten teacher singing the Anpan Man theme tune.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’ve been away for ages. Normal service will resume shortly. Here in super-highspeed list form is what I’ve been doing since I last saw you. I hope this hasn’t harmed the future of our relationship. I still love you. (Click the photos for the full view)
1. Here I am drinking beer blindly oblivious to the fact that I’m missing a Beck show for which I had very expensive tickets. Shows start at 7 and finish at 9 in Japan and I think that’s just about the stupidest thing I ever heard.
2. Went to Denny’s only to find that it doesn’t serve American style breakfast all day but instead has kind of expensive Japanese food. Walked around for ages trying to find somewhere else. Couldn’t. Cooked massive amount of food at Rhe’s. Watched My Neighbour Totoro which is great. I now have Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away lined up to watch.
3. Met my sister in Tokyo who came to Japan for a couple of week’s holiday. Spent our time travelling all over. Here we are at some kind of a train station, possibly from the airport.
Sunday was the university’s graduation. Overall it was quite boring. As far as I could make out everyone had to stand up and sit down a lot of times and bow some times as well. There were references in the speech to the gurobaru keizai (global economy) probably along the lines of, “haha sucks to be you you’re not going to get a job.”
Fortunately, there were highlights. The main one being that all the girls (well almost all) wore kimonos. Usually only grannies wear kimonos and they’re drab affairs. When young women do it’s usually for a special occassion so they put a lot of effort into it. Each girl at the graduation had a huge mass off hair extensions piled up on her head and one girl had, I shit you not, loads of little gemstones in there.
The other highlight was that Todd and Waz thought it would be fun to go out all night and turn up on the back of three or fewer hours of sleep. To brace himself against the light, Todd was wearing some sunglasses which our teacher said made him look like a yakuza.
Anyway, the obvious thing to do was combine these two diversions into the photos you see here. It’s not hard to get Japanese girls to pose in photos with gaijin normally and when they’ve spent about a thousand pounds on their day’s outfit it’s as easy as “pie”.
And here’s the reaction shot, something along the lines of “OMFG LOLZ ENORM BANT HILAAR” + “Hmm, I wonder if he’s married”.
The word above reads “chikan”. The two kanji that make up “chikan” are chi – stupid – and kan – Chinese.
If you hear someone shout, “chikan” at you on a train, it’s probably because you’ve got your hand half-way up their thigh. This kind of behaviour is no long acceptable in Japanese society. Women will now stand up for themselves and maybe slap you about a bit. At the very least they’ll retreat to one of the women only carriages run by Japan’s rail companies at rush hour. “Chikan!” actually means “pervert” not “fuck off you filthy Chinese person” but the choice of kanji gives you an insight into the way bad words are constructed. It might seem a bit racist but the old Chinese word for Japan meant “dwarf slave country”. (The Koreans fared even worse in the “dog slave country”.)
Tucked inside the big “chikan” is another “chikan” but that one means “becoming flaccid”. If you face an accusation of being a “chikan” you could try and explain to the police that it’s ok because “I’m chikan”. Probably not a good idea but he might at least applaud your wordplay as he locks the handcuffs.
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The centre of Fukuoka is in pretty good condition kept but stray a little way and you start to find evidence of two decades of stagnation pretty quickly. This happy little piece of graffiti was half way up a fire escape that looked like it was about to fall off the building. Some parts of it were quite seriously corroded and in an emergency I don’t think I’d trust it. This is an apartment building but it looks barely occupied and unbearably bleak. Not everywhere in Kasugarbaru, which is half way between here and the centre of the city, is as bad as this but it feels like a pretty seedy place. By the station there’s a big pachinko parlour and a lot of signs advertising “companions” for 6000 yen per half hour. I’ve spent a good bit of time poking around in these buildings and you hardly ever see any signs of life. No sound from behind the little front doors.
I’ve been teaching in Kasugabaru, which means spring day field, since the first week I came to Japan. In fact, my first post was about going their for the first time. The first time I stepped of the train I could tell it was a more run down area and over time that impression has only been confirmed. The house and apartment of my students’ families are nice and they seem pretty wealthy but it’s the kind of are you would only say had nice “bits”. The old people there look a lot older. The streets are narrower and the shops on them feel a bit dirty and almost neglected.
I occasionally teach at a school in one of these crumbling buildings and it’s a very weird place. It’s always very busy with Japanese housewives wanting to learn english but I can’t imagine what it’s like for the teachers who work there full time. As far as I can make out the staff consists of three older American guys. They’re all of the same time, tall balding and with big smile lines all over the faces. They dress in very 90s fashions: cream chino trousers and slightly too-large-to-be-fashionable shirts. My guess is that they moved there in the 90s and have just lost touch with what’s fashionable and probably don’t care anyway. But being so obviously out of style makes them incongruous. The Japanese staff at the school are probably older but dress in an understated and dignified way. So do most of the students. These Americans are a foot taller than anyone else in the building and with their clean cut image don’t belong in the picture.
I’ve wondered a lot about how they came to be in that place. Fantasy aside the reality is that they likely have Japanese wives and maybe children here as well. The school probably pays the bills. But it is very weird. The school is crammed up on the fourth floor. Two of the rooms, including the reception, don’t have any windows. The rooms that do have windows look out on the bleak landscape of the train line and pachinko parlour.
One of my theories is that to escape this disturbing existence these men have retreated into some kind of weird parody of Whose Line is it Anyway. Their logic being that losing half of your sanity is better than losing it all.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bastard noise, defektro, incapacitants, masonna, music, noise music, zeroreality
On Saturday I went to Graf, a club in Fukuoka, to write about this year’s extreme music festival for Fukuoka Now. My thoughts on the ‘music’ are here but I think there’s other things to point out here. Anyway, I advise you to follow some of the links and listen to some of the ‘music’ to get an idea of what I’m on about. I can’t really describe it in words. As far as I can tell, I’m not alone there’s not much of any sense written about the style. What I can tell you is that the relevant websites use a lot of skull imagery and #66FF00.
Graf is deep under Tenjin and decorated with graffiti which is probably to coincide with its name. It looked like an average rock bar but standing at the top of the stairs it sounded like a theme park dungeon down below. There were low rumbles and grunts and howls that got considerably louder whenever someone opened the door into the bar room. Having done a bit of research that was kind of what I expected. On stage were a group called Defekto who build instruments from giant pieces of scrap. They had this pretty cool spider hand that smashed away against an iron cross. I wouldn’t say that the result was exactly musical but as some kind of mental Dickens meets Carol and they go and take crack together piece of performance art it was pretty cool. I chatted to one of the women from the group after and she said they take inspiration from Survival Research Laboratories who make robots and fight them to the death (but in a less BBC2 way that Robot Wars).
