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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Monday, October 28, 2002 |
 Tried Calorie Mate for the first time this evening. Calorie Mate is a food (it looks like nothing more than fingers of shortbread) that's supposed to be able to replace eating normal meals in a normal way- the thinking is that just a few bites of Calorie Mate is all you need. Well, that may be so- but the fact still remains that it's just like eating shortbread...
I'll try it in place of a conventional meal at some point in the future. I had intended to conduct this experiment tomorrow, but curiosity got the better of me this evening...
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It might sound like something vaguely Mexican, but tonight was hatsu-kotatsu- the first time since spring I've used my kotatsu. Actually, I have a feeling that hatsu-kotatsu might be a word I've made up myself, but what the heck!- it sounds good, and gramatically it's fine.
Anyway, the kotatsu was as deliciously cozy as ever- in five minutes or so, the space under the table was toasty-warm and snug, proving the Japanese saying that if the feet are warm, the body will be too. I've been looking forward for weeks now to being able to snuggle up under the kotatsu on a cold night, and it's great finally to be able to!
Perhaps I should set up a company to export kotatsu to the UK?- with central heating, double glazing and so on, kotatsu probably wouldn't feel quite as cozy as here in Japan, where in general there's little insulation or central heating, but nevertheless, I'm sure they'd be a hit...
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Not nice. There's a nasty, cold drizzle falling now. In fact, it could even be sleety. What a horrible evening.
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Wendy wanted to buy shelves, so after the cosmopolitan delights of Izumi and Mos Burger, we went over to Fuji-san. Well, if I say that Fuji-san is to Izumi what a dingy little corner shop is to Harrods, then it should be easy to imagine. First of all, there's the 'dirty corner'- a section of the shop with a little play area for the children, and benches around this, so that all the grimy, tooth-sucking, tar-inhaling old men can slum around and create a nice, healthy, wholesome atmosphere for the children to enjoy. I've never seen anyone looking even marginally respectable sitting in the 'dirty corner'- it really is a veritable melting-pot of purple polyester, banana-yellow toenails (framed- of course!- in cheap plastic flip-flops), rotten teeth and week-old unshavenness.
But setting the 'dirty corner' (incidentally, the first thing you see as you enter the store) aside, Fuji-san does have one thing to recommend it: the muzak. It's inevitably either (1) some random, must-be-on-drugs-frenetic music with a beat that makes latin dancing look stately, or (2) 'the best of heavy metal'... played on the pan pipes.
Now if only the person in charge of the music (I mean, what impeccable taste!) could be tasked to redesign the 'dirty corner'...
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Who needs Tokyo Disneyland when you have Izumi? It's amazing just how fun a rural supermarket can be (or perhaps it's just that, living here for five years, my concept of 'fun' has changed completely...). Quite apart from Mister Donut and Mos Burger, which seem always to be on the itinerary when Wendy and I go to Izumi together, what with the CD and DVD shop, the 100-yen store, the fashion-challenged clothing to admire, and so on, an hour just flashes by!
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The island buses have finally moved into the 21st century with the introduction of bus cards! Just like in Hiroshima's trams, you put the card into a reader when you get on, and again when you get off, and that's it. No cash, no fuss.
Or at least that's how it should work in theory. In practice, the whole concept of bus cards seems to be proving a little technologically confusing for many of the bus users on this island (well, slotting cards into slots really can be difficult sometimes...!). Almost every time someone tries to get off using a card (which in most cases seems not to have been inserted into the reader when the user got on the bus), there are muttered exchanges, and the bus driver can be seen frantically pressing buttons on the console of the card reader. It's most amusing to watch!- but I wonder whether we aren't trying to move forward too far, too fast...
I was going to comment that we'd perhaps be best sticking to the method of commerce most prevalent here- bartering, and a system of currency based on seashells and goat fleeces- but that would be rude and insulting. It would also be factually incorrect; everyone knows that goat fleeces were phased out in 1999...
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Can class and sophistication such as this ever be surpassed? On the bus to Izumi this evening, Wendy and I saw a lorry with... a chandelier in the cab! Superb, or what!
We tried to take a picture, but we were just not quick enough off the mark. A salutory lesson in what happens if you don't have your digital camera to hand all the time...
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Finally got to Ozu in one piece. With the second- to fourth-years, we sang Jingle Bells (the teacher's request, not my idea!). The problem is that for some reason, all the children in Ozu are incapable of picking up English sounds, especially those at the end of words, and in addition to this at least half of the class don't listen to what I explain (or if they do, it fails completely to sink in). Therefore, despite my explaining, and having the children practice, until I was blue in the face, we still ended up every time with 'on a one-whore open sleigh'!
With the fifth- and sixth-years, meanwhile, we continued with the Dartmouth link. However, while the girls were all very eager, and we were able to take videos of the stoke orders for four common kanji, two of the boys who were supposed to be writing an explanation of the various usages of kanji, kana and romaji had lost the stuff they'd written in the previous lesson, and spent the whole of the current lesson arguing about who should write what without actually writing anything, which meant that after two lessons, still the only thing they've actually produced for me to be able to send is about forty seconds' worth of video...
If I'm being brutally honest, I don't think this link will last. The teachers don't seem to understand how to take advantage of it (it could, and should, be integrated into normal lessons much more so than just being something that is only considered in my lessons), but, more than anything, the children don't seem to have the interest and the capacity for imagination necessary to make this link a success. Normally I would expect the children to be full of questions to ask the other school, but here, there are none. If I don't suggest something, nothing will be done.
It's a real shame that in the school where the teachers at least are trying this scheme, the children have no interest, whereas in the schools where the children would have a great time corresponding with other schools, the teachers can't be bothered even to try something like this.
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Not quite close to being life-threatening, but truly mortally embarrassing. On the way to Ozu for my school visit, I took the coast road, a narrow little road with generally not enough room for two cars to pass. Well, I saw the lorry coming from a way away, but I could have sworn that there was a passing space just where we calculated we'd meet, so I drove on blithely.
However, the passing space failed to materialise, and so there followed a stand off between a car only just bigger than a matchbox, and what can only be described as a juggernaut... I backed down. Unfortunately, backing down meant backing- all the way back to the previous passing space. Luckily, the road was straight, and there was nothing behind me, but even so, having to back about five hundred metres (especially with my backing skills!) was very embarrassing! The moral of the story, then: don't bet on there being a passing space when faced with a lorry. It's not worth the ensuing red face...
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If it's Monday, then there are the Travel and Wine sections of the Electronic Telegraph to read. This week's 'Weekend to Remember' is about St. Malo, which has to be my favourite place in Brittany (I'd almost say 'in France', but I think that Vouvray and Sancerre beat it by a whisker). Reading this article really made me want to pay a long-overdue visit to St. Malo and the surrounding area...
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At last, an entry that doesn't begin with 'Speaking of...'.
The issue of the Japanese people abducted by North Korea continues. There's an article in the Electronic Telegraph about how the five had their stay in Japan 'extended'. This article raises the problems succinctly: the victims have lived longer in North Korea than in Japan, and have families there. Their families in Japan might want them to come back permanently, it might be a matter of principle to have them return to Japan, but in the end, unfortunately, I don't think it's quite as simple as all that. The families of the five, and Japan as a whole, might well find themselves having to face the fact that, unpalatable as this might be, at least some of the abductees may no longer want to return to Japan permanently... As Prime Minister Koizumi has commented, whether or not they do return permanently should depend on their own wishes, although, talking to some people in the office about this, it appears from Japanese reports (I haven't read the Japanese newspaper today) that it is the Japanese Government that has decided to 'extend' the stay of the five in Japan.
Writing this, though, one thing strikes me. Bothers me, even. It is this: if even one of the five decides not to return to Japan, North Korea can be said in a way to have 'won'...
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Speaking of cold days (albeit not in Hell), today is cold. Not 'slightly cold', not 'late-autumn cold', not 'quite cold', not cold with any sort of mollifying adjective whatsoever. Proper, accept-no-imitations, Cold.
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Speaking of cold days in Hell, it strikes me that 'Hell's Icicles' would be a great name for a band. I should set up a band with this name forthwith!
...Or, at least, I would if I had any musical talent at all...
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Speaking of speeches, the fax of the 'speech' I'm supposed to be giving to the new chap coming to live in the apartments turned up today. Well, I'd said from the beginning I wasn't going to read anything written in bad Japanese- why should I want to make myself look stupid as well as reinforcing Japanese prejudices that only Japanese people can ever learn Japanese?- but I took one look at the fax, and my resolve not to play along became ten times greater. The speech went as follows:
Konnichiha
Watashi Nei-san desu
Anata ha dare desuka?
Nani ka watashi ni you desuka?
Watashi nippongo nigate desu
Anata English daijyohbu desuka? I find this quite remarkably insulting, in fact, primarily because although this might have been written as a joke, it nevertheless is written in exactly the way that Japanese people believe that the 'barbarian' non-Japanese speak Japanese- it's full of little mistakes and oddities (for example, I would never call myself 'watashi'- this is pure textbook Japanese). Added to this, there's the sentence Watashi nippongo nigate desu- 'I'm bad at Japanese'- which, quite apart from anything else, contains two glaring grammatical mistakes itself. And in addition to everything, the speech was written in English characters and Japanese characters, but the Japanese was entirely in katakana, which is a script often used by the Japanese (for example, in subtitles) when non-Japanese speak Japanese; it's a subtle way of saying, 'Yes, it's Japanese, but it's not real Japanese'...
This is all in the same vein as the television programmes featuring gaijin making themselves look stupid, and in the process reinforcing the Japanese sense of smug self-superiority. Well, other foreigners might be prepared to prostitute themselves like this, but I'm not. And whilst I'm as willing as the next man to play along with a reasonable joke, the fact is that this whole scheme might be billed as a joke, but in fact it panders to what many Japanese actually believe deep down- that only Japanese can ever master Japanese. I'll play along and only speak English, but it'll be a cold day in Hell before I stand up and speak such mangled, insulting, demeaning rubbish as is written in this fax.
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Well, the meeting with the man from the Rotary Club was indeed finished with fairly quickly, primarily because he said virtually nothing. I'd made it more than clear previously that there needed to be a title before I could, or would, do a speech (it's remarkably difficult to do 'a speech' when you have no idea of what is expected), but- of course!- there was no title. And moreover, the man who came had no clue about what sort of speech the club wanted, which didn't make for a particularly profitable discussion. In fact, it didn't make for any sort of discussion at all...
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An easy day today, I think. I have a school visit, but it's only to Ozu, and both lessons are continuations of things we did in the previous lessons, so there's no preparation. I like this sort of school visit! I do have a meeting with the Rotary Club to discuss a speech they want me to do, but that should be over nice and quickly, leaving me plenty of time to get up to date with the Breakfast Show.
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 8:51:51 pm.
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