Monday, February 17, 2003

What I did today Today, I... Talked to a school in New Zealand about setting up an email link; Went to Kikuya for lunch; Got six or seven days' worth of articles ready to upload to the Breakfast Show; Got asked to play taiko on 'Okonomi-Waido', a local NHK television programme, next Monday; Went to Izumi and Mos Burger with Wendy (the new 'Kinoko Saute Burger'- a burger with sauteed mushrooms and a wasabi-flavoured white sauce- isn't bad at all); Recorded (i.e., sang!) a CD of English songs for Koyo Elementary School. Badly.

The North Koreans have been celebrating the 61st birthday of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. Reading the articles on the BBC, and watching the reports on the NHK News, I can't help feeling that the whole thing is actually quite spooky, and in fact a little scary. I mean, a flower show composed entirely of the blooms named Kimjongilia (wonder where that name came from, then?) can't be entirely normal. Can it? I'm very aware, though, that I can perceive and comment up this strangeness precisely because I'm on the outside looking in. It seems incredible in a way that the North Koreans themselves could fail to realise the oddity (absurdity, even?) of the celebrations (or perhaps more accurately, their sheer scale)... but then, when you're actually entombed in a society like that, with no outside influences, who knows what you would come to regard as normal and proper. That, far more even than the flower shows, is really scary.

Japan unfathomables Why are so many advertisements for household goods and cleaning products, etc., in Japan based on the concept of making housework a joyful event to be enjoyed? It's not. It never will be. For goodness sake, think of a new approach for your advertising!

After getting back from Izumi, Wendy came up to help me with the songs for the Koyo CD. In total there are only about fifteen minutes' worth of singing... which is why, of course, it took six times this to record the ten songs! I mean, who would have thought that 'Old MacDonald' could be so difficult?- it took us about twenty attempts to sing it properly... And then there was 'If you're happy and you know it'. It's pathetic, really (and quite embarassing!) that two twenty-odd year olds had so much difficulty doing all the actions in even a half-coordinated way!

Word of the week saba o yomu This phrase literally means 'to read the mackerel'. Which is why, of course, it comes to mean something along the lines of 'to fiddle the figures', 'to count wrongly on purpose' or 'to mispresent'. It is often used in relation to accounts, or to one's age.