Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)... Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...   Wednesday, December 4, 2002 J-List 10 most recent Prime Ministers of Japan Koizumi Junichiro (26/4/2001) Mori Yoshiro (5/4/2000) Obuchi Keizo (30/7/1998) Hashimoto Ryutaro (11/1/1996) Murayama Tomiichi (30/6/1994) Hata Tsutomu (28/4/1994) Hosokawa Morihiro (9/8/1993) Miyazawa Kiichi (5/11/1991) Kaifu Toshiki (10/8/1989) Uno Sosuke (3/6/1989)      What better way could there be to spend a Wednesday without taiko than... watching X-Files? Wendy came up, and we watched three episodes. Half-way through the second episode, though, there was a strange, pungent smell, which I ignored at first. It grew stronger and stronger, though, and towards the end of the third episode, I asked Wendy if by chance she was cooking anything downstairs. She responded with a look of horror, and rushed off without saying anything... she'd left chicken cooking in a pan of water, which (of course) had boiled away, leaving the chicken gradually turning to charcoal!      This evening I had a legitimate excuse for not going to taiko; the man who takes me had to go to a training exercise for the Fire Brigade. It's a great feeling to be missing taiko without the nagging guilt of having skived off...      I'd been asked to do an extra lesson in Miyanohara Elementary School, so the children could practice their play with me for one final time before the performance. I have to say that they've improved a great deal, although there are still children who read their lines as if they've never seen them before. And, yes, I do mean 'read': despite having had the script since well before the summer break, the children who've remembered their lines number precisely... none. It's just a shame there isn't a month or so more for them to practice in. I know one thing, though: there is no way I am doing a play at Miyanohara again. Not because the children haven't learned their lines, or at least not primarily because of this fact; rather, because the teachers, having pushed and pushed and pushed for a play (despite my warnings) then did nothing to make the whole project a success. I mean, with six whole months to practice, I could get kindergarten children to remember three of four lines of English; that the fifth- and sixth-years in Miyanohara haven't managed this reflects badly on them, to be sure, but even more so on their teachers, I feel. I await Sunday's performance with interest.      Web sites worthy of mention... Legodeath I don't know what sort of people make sites like this, but I'm glad they do! The power of the internet put to work to bring the world a site devoted to 'horror scenes'- from 'the gallows' to 'snowed in'- all created in Lego. Excellent! I used to enjoy Lego, but I never was this creative...      I got an email this morning to let me know that the mother of the man who was the head of the taiko group five years or so ago, when I first joined, had passed away. I then got another email to tell me that the tsuya was to be held this evening. A tsuya is an all-night vigil over the dead body; I suppose it's something like a wake. I would like to experience a Japanese funeral at some point, for certain. However- and I don't know why exactly- I didn't want to go to this funeral. It's a complex feeling, but I think that it's that I don't want to go to a funeral where I know the bereaved only tangentially. Looking for an excuse, if I'm being completely honest, I asked two people I used to work with in the office whether I ought to go, or whether, in fact, I didn't really need to be present at the wake. The consensus was that, since I didn't really have any personal connection, there was no real need to be present, and therefore I decided not to attend this funeral. As I say, I would like to experience a Japanese funeral, but I think that the funeral of someone with whom I have such a tenuous connection is not the most appropriate.      Actually, writing an article in the office is never particularly productive, because there's never enough peace to be able to think clearly. I always get articles written more quickly and smoothly when I write them in the evening at home. And, for that matter, when the deadline's less than three days away...      Web articles worthy of mention... What a superb idea! This article comments on the concept of Cityblogs, a sort of city-guide-cum-weblog, at the moment just for New York. This seems like an excellent use of the advantages that weblogs offer, and a natural progression for blogging. Interestingly, John Hiler, the creator of Cityblogs, comments that one of the things that prompted him to set up the site was the feeling that blogging can become so addictive that, as he puts it, 'I started to feel that blogs were coming between me and the real world.' I don't feel yet that the Breakfast Show is necessarily coming between me and the real world, but I can understand completely the addiction of weblogging. I really can't remember the last time I felt as enthusiastic about a hobby or interest as I do now about maintaining a weblog. I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, and I've come to the conclusion that basically, a major part of the attraction of blogging is the 'instant gratification' that being able to post directly, immediately and personally to the internet affords. And this is also, of course, precisely why Cityblogs should have an advantage over conventional city guides. I hope this concept succeeds.      Decided to use today to get my newsletter article for January out of the way. Which is why, of course, I wrote all of one paragraph. Actually, to be fair I wrote quite a lot- except that what I'd written wasn't in fact about what I'd decided I wanted the article to be about... I'd originally decided to talk about things in Japanese life I'd like the British to adopt (trains that run on time, and so on), but having written a fair bit of this article, I decided it would be better if the article were about things I miss about Britain. Great move- write an article before deciding that it's not the article you wanted to write...      © Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth. Updated: 20/1/03; 2:14:07 pm.

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