Winter spring cleaning


24th December 2007


Living alone can do wonders for your sanity but it has its drawbacks, notably a lack of people to stop you from doing something crazy. Or at least, incredibly foolish.

Something such as dribbling Jif on a wooden floor.

It seemed like the right season for it. The end of the year is traditionally when Japanese households do a major cleaning; I was just following local example.

The ritual began innocuously enough: moving my shoes out into the corridor, then applying Jif to my little square of a foyer and scrubbing.

Once that was done, I put the shoes back though I did have to wipe a pair off first; I'd gone out walking in the rain the day before. The shoes were black and sensible, even if rambling on a wet winter day wasn't.

I then swept the floor but how was I to get it really clean? The answer was obvious: Jif and warm water.

I applied both and scrubbed.

But after the floor dried, I noticed something odd. Was it me or did the wood seem, well, lighter?

Of course, when you take a layer of dirt off something, it's bound to look paler but the floor seemed to be covered in ...a white film.

Bending down, I brushed my palm over the floor under the bed, which I'd not Jiffed because it was too much trouble. The wooden boards felt smooth.

I put my hand over a Jiffed portion: sticky.

Damn.

I scrubbed the floor with a cloth once more but my slippered feet still made strange noises when I lifted it clear of the floor.

So I scrubbed the floor again but, this time, with a brush. It came with a long handle but it wasn't nearly long enough because it was meant for scrubbing the bathtub, not the floor.

I did what I could anyway, reflecting all the while on the perils of living alone.

It occurred to me that I was spending far more time getting the cleaning agent off the floor than actually cleaning it.

The irony was not lost on me, even if the finer points of housekeeping were.

I wiped the wood dry yet again and stared at it. There was still a haze of white but my back, not in good shape to begin with, flatly vetoed the idea of another scrub.

Oh hell, let's call that stuff a protective film or something.

And let us also declare that year-end spring cleaning is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.

Just let me do the fridge first.

God bless them, every one


7th November 2007


But the story doesn't start with Japan.

Many years - as many as six of them - before I started writing about this country, I wrote about Singapore.

I was working at The Straits Times then and after finishing a night shift, stood waiting for the company bus in the carpark.

Also waiting was a colleague from the lifestyle section. As we chatted, she mentioned that she was contributing work to a book of Southeast Asian writing.

She asked if I wanted to take part in the project.

Sure, I said. What're they looking for?

Comic writing was the answer.

So when I next got a stretch of free time, I channelled Bill Bryson. It didn't work too well. I could be wrong about this but I think that if you're going to channel someone, it helps if that person's dead.

Since Mr Bryson was, by all accounts, alive, I had to come up with material the old-fashioned way: stare at a blank sheet of paper till the brain gave you words to put there because it wanted a change of scenery.

In this case, the scenery came in two views - Singaporeans who'd discovered their Inner Party Animal and the language landscape of the country.

I'd always felt a bit of guilt for never finishing my thesis on Singapore English but the piece helped to take it away.

Besides, the story was more readable than the thesis would have been, if only because it was hell of a lot shorter.

And so, the book - Punched Lines: Sit-Down Comedy from Southeast Asia - went on sale.

I wasn't expecting it to take the world by storm, nor even by scattered showers, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a royalty cheque with more than two digits before the decimal point.

I figured that the story would end there.

But it didn't.

Now and then, a cheque would appear in the mail. No more than once a year and with the amount dwindling each time but they always left my world a little shinier.

Somebody's reading your stuff, they'd say. And, oh, here's $31 - go knock yourself out.

The latest cheque arrived today.

It was for two years of sales, which brought the grand total to...$9.56. Don't quit the day job yet, eh?

Oh, wait. I already have.

But the cheque also said, you know, people are still reading you.

So here's my world.

Doesn't it look a little shinier?












http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/getTitle.cfm?SBNum=31763

Put to the test, one year on


10th October 2007


And here's another column I hadn't planned on posting. Some people who missed it when it appeared on Oct 6 (http://www.thestraitstimes.com ) seem to want to read it though, so here you go.

Just don't tell other people you got it here.


...


A year and a week ago, I moved to Kyoto.

So in true Japanese fashion, I marked the milestone by taking a test. The questions below have been floating around the Internet in various forms for more than a decade and give you an idea of how you’ve adapted to life in the country.

According to the quiz, you know you’ve been in Japan too long when:

- You find yourself bowing while talking on the phone. (Guilty. Well, you have to be polite, don’t you?)

- You return the bow from the cash machine. (Not guilty. Haven’t met any cash machines that bowed to me.)

- You’ve forgotten how to tie shoelaces. (You have to remove your shoes so often in Japan that it makes more sense to wear the slip-on type. Recently, I walked past a convenience store a few days before it was opened to the public. Inside were workmen and manager types. And at the door were all their shoes. But I do remember how to tie shoelaces. You take one end in one hand, the other end in the other hand and…do that shoelace-tying thing.)

- You buy an individually wrapped potato in the supermarket. (Not guilty. Nearly bought an individually wrapped banana though.)

- In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible power supply. (Guilty. Vending machines are bad news for the environment but what else can you do about the trees trying to buy a can of coffee after midnight?)

- You think curry rice is food. (But it is. And those bright red pickles that come with it make up one of the two servings of vegetables you should eat every day.)

- You buy a potato-and-strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing. (Not guilty. But next month, who knows?)

- You really enjoy corn soup with your Big Mac. (Not guilty. I don’t enjoy corn soup with anything. But I bet miso soup would go nicely with a burger.)

- You are outwardly appalled to see someone pour miso soup over rice but do it in private yourself. (Hell, I do this in public. I very low class one.)

- You think cod roe spaghetti is a typical Italian dish. (What do you mean, ‘mentaiko’ isn’t an Italian word?)

- You think it's all right to stick your head into a stranger's apartment to see if anybody's home. (Not guilty. But it’s not unusual in Japan for the foyer to be considered public space so unless you want a door-to-door salesman to see what you look like in a towel, keep your front door locked.)

- You have discovered the sexual attraction of ‘sailor outfit’ school uniforms. (Not guilty. Whew.)

- You look forward to the porno reviews at midnight on Fuji TV. (There are porno reviews? On television? What channel is Fuji TV? Just kidding, Mum.)

- You don’t think it’s unusual for a lorry to play It’s A Small World when backing up. (Because it’s a small world, after all.)

- You’re arguing with someone about whether the green light of a traffic signal is actually blue…and you think it’s blue. (Not guilty. It’s green – unless you’re speaking Japanese in which case you have to say that it’s blue despite its obvious, undeniable, Kermit-worthy greenness.)

- You vow to “ganbarimasu” before every little activity you engage in. (A word that means to persevere or to do one’s best. Hmm. Not really guilty. I use it only for the significant and semi-significant activities.)

- You find yourself apologising at least three times per conversation. (Not yet. Sorry, I’ll try harder. Ganbarimasu.)

- You automatically remember all your important years in Showa numbers. (Not guilty. I still find it hard to remember when I was born according to the Japanese system of years. I guess I’ll keep messing up forms until I get it right.)

- You can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the peace sign. (Not guilty. The day this happens is the day I book a flight back to Singapore. A French classmate once asked my form teacher why so many Japanese made the peace sign when a camera was pointed at them. Her brow furrowed. ‘Then what do you do in France when someone takes your picture?’ she asked. ‘Nothing! Just smile,’ he said. The furrow in her brow deepened as she wrestled with this novel concept.)

- You have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like ‘building’. (That’s easy – it’s ‘bi-ru-di-n-gu’.)

- You find yourself asking all your foreign acquaintances what their blood types are. (Not guilty. People are often categorised by blood type in Japan and according to this system, those with O blood are outgoing, energetic and sociable. As an O+ person who can go for days without talking to anyone, I have this to say: ‘…’)

- You use the ‘slasher hand’ and continuous bowing to make your way through a crowd. (Guilty. This is how it’s done: Stick one hand out in front of you, move it up and down as if gently karate-chopping the air and bow all the while. Reports indicate that Moses didn’t do this when parting the Red Sea but I bet that it’d have worked if he did.)

- It all seems normal.

Not guilty. It’s still bewildering, funny, moving and endlessly absorbing. Guess I’ll have to stay here a little longer.



To see the quiz in full, go to http://perrin3.com/stupid/been-in-japan-too-long/

If I were one of the Seven Dwarfs, I'd be Grumpy


6th October 2007


Warning: The following may upset you.

Though if you have to handle queries in any shape or form, it may strike a painfully resonant chord instead.

I’m always delighted to get a message from a reader and sometimes when I open the e-mail, the delight becomes pure happiness. But there are also times when I am…perturbed.

Here’s a composite of those messages: “hi, will be going to osaka for hols next month and want to stay in an inn in kyoto. please give detailed instructions on how to get to kyoto from osaka, how to book ryokan room and idea of how much it costs. what should i eat? see? buy?

“also keen on stdying in japan as am intrestd in the japs. can give me names of some schools? tks”

Certain thoughts come to mind: Does the writer have a religious objection to capital letters? Is he afraid of spelling words out in full? Of complete sentences? And did somebody break the Internet while I wasn’t looking?

Even setting aside the issue of calling the Japanese “japs”, messages like that disturb me on a number of levels.

I love e-mail but I sometimes wonder if it’s made things a bit too easy. If you have to look for paper, write or type on it, then find an envelope, stamp and postbox, chances are, you’d take more care with what actually went into the letter because it’d be a waste of the trouble otherwise.

When you use something that needs as little time and effort as e-mail, the temptation is to write without taking either.

But the result is like a stranger walking into your home dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and wearing slippers he doesn’t remove. He then puts his slippered feet up on your coffee table and demands a drink.

He may really be dehydrated but he’s not thinking of anything other than his thirst.

Living in Japan can be a constant education in how your actions affect others. A few months ago, I signed up for a class meant to introduce students to business Japanese.

But we found ourselves studying more than language. We learned the protocol involved in sitting in a room or car, the right time to call another company (not 9am as many businesses start the day with a short meeting) and the “respectful” way to seal an envelope (with glue rather than tape, which looks unsightly).

Some may say that this hyper-sensitivity to what others think of your actions is the result of a group culture gone overboard. They may point out that the care taken comes not from genuine consideration but a fear of ostracism.

While this seems to be true in some cases, it’s still worth thinking about exactly what you are doing when you approach another person – and the possible responses.

For this reason, I’ve debated for months whether or not to tackle this subject because I know it will upset some of those who have written to me.

“Geez,” they may say, “It was just an e-mail.”

Was it?

There’s another issue here quite apart from the writing style: The ease with which some people will ask a stranger for information readily available elsewhere.

Almost everything I found out about Japan before moving to Kyoto, I learned by using nothing more complicated than books, television and the Internet.

If you really don’t know where to start, try Kinokuniya. Those on a tight budget can do what I did: Look in the bookshop for something helpful then check if the public library carries the title.

As for information on studying in Japan – I got that from the Internet, not the secret files of the CIA.

But why am I so reluctant to share this information with strangers? First, the many, many things staring at me as they wait to be done.

Secondly, to make a recommendation is to take responsibility for the experience another person will have. I prefer to do it only for people I know or if what I’m recommending looks like a sure-fire winner. Not a lot of things fall into this category.

There’s another reason: The knowledge that by answering those kinds of e-mail, I’m compounding an unhelpful habit.

Every time we want to know something, we slide into our own pattern of asking questions and finding answers. We form this habit as children, taking it unconsciously into adulthood.

If not for this column, I might not have thought so hard about how I move from Q to A. I see now that while I enjoyed school on the whole, it was an environment where questions were seldom voiced.

I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing; I just got into the habit of finding my own answers. This meant reading, watching and listening – and thinking about what I’d read, seen and heard.

I might not have got the best answer but I usually came up with something.

Sometimes I’d get lazy and bother my friends before doing anything on my own. In return, I’d try to help if one of them came to me with a question.

But here’s the thing: I am not a friend to most of the people reading this column. I am also not a travel agent or education consultant. And I most certainly am not Google. For a start, I’m a lot shorter.

It’s cold comfort to know that journalists and other columnists also find themselves in my position. And reading the FAQ section of authors’ websites, it’s hard not to see a hint of exasperation at times.

Even British writer Neil Gaiman, reckoned to be one of the nicest human beings on the planet (and not just by his fans), felt the need to put this on his website: “Please don’t try to use the FAQ submission area for help with your homework… I won’t do your homework for you. Just pretend I’m a dead author and in no position to answer your questions”.

And, anyway, the answer’s probably somewhere on the site, he adds – just search for it.

If you believe that it’s good to have questions, then don’t be in such a hurry to give them to someone else.

There’s a university lecture I still think about years after I attended it. It’s not the content I remember but what the professor said as she gave out stacks of notes.

Students, she remarked, had come to expect such photocopies as a right. But it was interesting, she said, that this kind of information had the same name as the things given as charity: handouts.

There’s a difference between help and charity – when you ask for something, which are you asking for?

One e-mail I received didn’t ask for either. It was from a reader who just wanted to say that, like me, he’d quit a good job to pursue his interests and was “hyped up” to see another person doing it.

He didn’t come looking for answers from a stranger because he’d already found them by himself.

And when I read his e-mail, delight shot into pure happiness.

In which I discover that I am a cat
(我輩は猫である）


4th September 2007


The Internet abounds with personality quizzes but the one at http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/ is the classiest I've seen.

In the world of The Golden Compass, people have their souls outside themselves, in the form of a bird or animal.

With a few judicious clicks and twenty honest answers at the website, you'll find out what your daemon is.

And mine is...a snow leopard.










It's a bit of a mystery how a person can be assertive and shy at the same time but cats are notoriously contrary creatures.


P.S. If a poacher points a gun at me, I shall be most put out.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here on holiday


18th August 2007


Hot. Urngngh.

Must. Do. One. More. Post. Before. Melting -

* Ice cream intermission *

There're other places in Japan recording higher temperatures but the important point is, I'm not there. I'm in Kyoto and every time I open the front door, a blast of hot air slams into my face.

It makes me wonder if the folks in Hell have decided that it'd be nice to take the kids to Kyoto for the summer.

But the silver-lined cloud in all this is the evening sky. Yesterday's had clouds scattered like sand, turning the sky into a summer seaside.

So I could go to the beach just by looking up on the street where I live.

The worlds you carry


11th August 2007


Here's another column restored to its full length.

And no, I am not too lazy to do proper posts. This is a proper post; it's got punctuation and everything.


...


I didn’t mean to keep my summer vacation a secret; it was just too much work to explain.

To the few I did share my plans with, I would start by saying that I was going to help a Japanese friend who wanted to offer a lomi-lomi, or Hawaiian massage, experience at the inn run by his family.

But it seems a bit bizarre for lomi-lomi to suddenly appear in a traditional inn so I would add that the event was targeted at visitors arriving for a Hawaiian festival in town.

And then I’d have to explain why a small Japanese town was holding such a festival in the first place.

Better known for its hot springs, Ikaho has been twinned with the Hawaiian city of Hilo for a number of years. But even before that, back in the days when Hawaii was still an independent kingdom, one of its ministers had a summer home in Ikaho. The building remains standing to this day and has been converted into a museum.

Still, if you feel obliged to bring up historical links when someone asks you about your vacation plans, it just seems easier not to talk about them.

Even knowing about the area’s ties with Hawaii, it feels odd getting off the bus in Ikaho, about two hours away from Tokyo, to see people in aloha shirts and leis.

But when I meet the other bodywork participants, it becomes clear that this is a Japanese event. For starters, everybody does things together, very close to each other.

Though not all of the 18 people taking part stay for the three days of the festival, our rooms – doors slid back to make more space – are lined from wall to wall with futons at night.

Communal living takes on new meaning when you have to share a bedroom with about 15 people and individual snoring patterns come up for group discussion the next day.

Most of us know each other from past massage courses and between the work and the catching up, it is well after midnight before we go to sleep each day.

But we don’t turn in at the same time; some of us topple over earlier. Those who do, however, have to learn to sleep with the lights on and through the sounds of people talking and giving each other massages.

And we all have to sleep in the summer heat. One night, I lie dozing off, having pushed the futon cover to one side.

As if from a long way away, I hear a voice say, “Should we cover her?”

I don’t hear the answer but gentle hands pull the quilt over me; it feels warm.

Not all the bodywork graduates can spare the time to help out but some make it at least for the reunion. Katsu-san, a ski instructor turned massage therapist, is one of them.

He shows up with three boxes of grapes – an unexpected extravagance given the price of fruit in Japan.

“You know, it’s kind of wasted on us,” says one participant.

“It can’t be helped,” says Katsu-san. “When I went to buy fruit, this was all I could find.”

He stays with us, chatting well into the night. Unable to contribute much and reeling from the lack of sleep, I decide to go bathe while I still have the strength to stop myself from drowning.

A friend soon joins me in the women’s bath but before we can get into the hot water, a participant we call Nee-san (Big Sis) sticks her head in.

“Katsu-san’s leaving so we’re taking a group photo,” she says then disappears.

I look at my friend. “Does this mean we have to go too?”

“I think so,” she says.

I start rinsing off.

It turns out to be a nice photo – people look tired but so happy you’ll hardly notice the two in bathrobes clutching towels.

Then everyone carries on talking some more. At least, we do until Katsu-san notices something odd.

“Nee-san,” he says. “Why are you holding a sandal in front of your face?”

She blinks, looking surprised as she realises that she is, indeed, holding her slipper inches away from her nose.

It is clearly time for everyone to say goodnight.

Nee-san presses the button for the lift and when it comes, gets in to hold the door for Katsu-san.

But leaves without him.

Yes, clearly time to say goodnight.

We work together, rest together and when it’s time for the evening festival performance, well, of course we have to watch it together.

Hoping to catch up on sleep, I try to get out of it but am somehow cajoled and nudged along until I find myself standing in front of the stage.

I should’ve known. After all, these are people who make sure you don’t get left out, even if it means gatecrashing your bath.

Billed as the highlight of the festival, Halau I Ka Wekiu came in overall champions this year at the Merrie Monarch Festival in Hawaii, an annual event culminating in a competition that’s been called the Olympics of hula.

Still, so much of the hula I’ve seen has been the lukewarm tourist version that I am less than optimistic as I stand waiting in the crowds.

Then the troupe strides onto the stage and the audience breaks into a cheer. Call me a cynic but I think their enthusiasm has something to do with the fact that the dancers are all male, sculpted and wearing nothing but loincloths and leis.

I wonder briefly if they’re going to be the hula Chippendales then the chanting starts, the men surge into the dance and I forget tourists, fatigue and my aching feet because it is hula kahiko that they dance – hula in the ancient style.

Gods and goddesses, chiefs and heroes are danced alive again, the legacy of a people who had no written language but who did not want to forget.

Chants and hula became their pen and paper; this is history written into the body.

And it is more than history – the dancers go beyond recounting events to recreating emotions.

When they tell the story of a chief who lost a game to a goddess and the dance she claimed as a forfeit, they do more than string the movements together; they lay bare the feelings of a man offering himself through his dance, down to the beating of his heart.

The goddess, bound by a promise she’d made to her sister, turned him down. But if he moved anything like the men on stage, it couldn’t have been easy.

The dancers perform on each night of the festival; we watch all three shows and I eavesdrop shamelessly on the audience’s conversations.

Of course, there’s speculation on what exactly the crowd will see if a loincloth flips up during a turn but there’re also comments on technique, the background of the songs and their composers.

And I am reminded that the number of hula dancers in the country has been recently estimated at more than 500,000.

In an interview with The Honolulu Advertiser, respected hula teacher Kawaikapuokalani Hewett, who has been holding workshops in Japan for years, said: “Their love is very intense; their dedication is very intense.”

I can believe it. In the lomi-lomi group alone, I see one person studying a Hawaiian-Japanese dictionary in between clients and another practising chants before bedtime.

Yumi-san, who contributes regularly to online forums about all aspects of the culture, also takes the trouble to bring a bowl of poi with her.

A Polynesian staple, the taro dish is often compared to library paste. It doesn’t taste bad but first-timers probably won’t go back for seconds.

Despite this, we all sit in a circle and take it in turns to dip a finger into the paste then pass the bowl on. This could be the next big thing for cults around the world.

But pinballing back and forth between the lomi lomi, the hula and the Poi Secret Society, I start to wonder exactly where the Japanese love affair with Hawaii comes from.

There is no one answer that will fit a group numbering over 500,000. Some may have been drawn in by the music; others by the movements.

The stark difference between the two peoples may also explain it. One of the most formal and ritualised cultures around, Japan seems a world away from the easy warmth of the aloha spirit. Perhaps that distance is the attraction.

But when I pose the question to my friends, all of them focus on the ways in which Japan and Hawaii are alike, not apart.

One person points out that both peoples historically lived in constant awareness of nature, seeing the world around them alive with spirits.

Others raise anthropological theories about biological and cultural links; DNA is mentioned more than once. For them, their love of Hawaii is, like hula, inscribed in the body.

In reaching across the ocean to another island people, they are not searching for a world apart but simply expanding their own.

And perhaps the best way to enjoy another people is to appreciate your own because when you no longer seek what you think your culture lacks, you are free to see what really lies in another.

What lies there are not the answers you need because you already have them – all you will ever find in the Other are mirrors to help you see them better.

And if the mirrors are held by men in loincloths, well – we should all be so lucky.

And now we are 42


9th August 2007


Countries are, of course, fictions but there's no reason why you can't grow fond of a story or hope it will find receptive ears.

Happy birthday, Singapore.

When I grow up...takoyaki!


8th May 2007


It's funny.

When I was living in the dormitory and without a TV, I missed it more than any number of living relatives.

But when I moved into my new home, which came with a set, after an ecstatic reunion, I settled into a daily rhythm which managed fine without television.

Still, I did catch the news the other day while having dinner at the noodle shop across the road (they sell something called Chinese soba. What the...?).

The broadcast ended with an item about an event organised to give kids a taste of working life.

The camera panned over a field of children trying out jobs. Then it was time for interviews.

"So," said the reporter, "What did you do?"

"Sell ramen," said the boy in front of the mike.

"How did it feel to earn money?"

"Good!"

"And what will you buy with the money?"

He looked blank for a minute.

"Flowers maybe. Or takoyaki."

Cut to another kid.

"What was your job?"

"Policeman," said the bespectacled boy.

"Was it hard?"

"Yes."

"And what does a policeman do?"

"Dunno."

Give that boy a takoyaki.

Scatter, a thousand cherry trees


9th April 2007


Three things will make me wake up at 4 am: an early flight, a bladder about to explode and sakura.

I set the alarm for 4 am the night before because I want to catch the cherry blossoms in town before the crowds swarm onto them or the flowers fall, whichever happens first.

It is 7-something in soft light when I reach Gion, possibly the most famous geisha quarter in Japan. But the geisha being night-shift workers, they are nowhere in sight and I share the streets with only a few photographers.

I stand beside a little canal that runs beside wooden houses, watching sakura drift into the water from the trees hanging over it. I’m not sure how long I stand there, tuning out the crows and the conversations that come and go.

“Nee-chan!” An elderly photographer has appeared beside me. He is clearly expecting a response but what sort?

I hastily replay the last words I tuned out. They turn out to be: “Nee-chan, warui kedo doite kureru?” (“Miss, you mind moving?”)

I don’t and let him take the shot. When he is done, he nods at me. I return to my spot and space out again to Planet Sakura.

Still on a different planet, I float to the other side of Gion. But my bladder is turning into a pressing matter and my back makes it clear that it wants a break from floating.

So I find a café where I can take care of my bladder and my back – and have a second breakfast.

I set out again with a vague plan to see the famed cherry trees of Maruyama Park but before I can cross the bridge over the Kamogawa, I spot a white-pink stream running down a narrow street beside it.

So I dive in. It is a working street with shops and restaurants so I have to watch out for motorbikes and delivery trucks. There’s also a place called Pink Office. I don’t know what kind of business it is but I’m fairly sure it has nothing to do with flowers.

But the sakura of Kiyamachi-dori are mentioned in no guidebook I’ve seen, which means I’m spared the masses that flock to Kyoto at this time of the year.

There are a few people there for the flowers, though, including a woman wearing an orange skirt cut in the style I call, unhelpfully, “ethnic fashion”.

I note her bony, masculine features in passing then go back to the sakura. It is only when someone else strikes up a conversation with Ethnic Skirt that I realise that the reason she looks masculine is because she is a man.

I think I need to pay more attention to these things. They could be helpful when dealing with other human beings.

But who needs skirt-wearers of dubious gender when you have sakura in full bloom?

The trees line one side of a canal, the water so shallow it will cover nothing higher than my ankles.

And I was right not to put the outing off for another day because the petals are falling – a false, gentle snow. So many land in the canal that they look no different from the sunlight freckling the water.

But more than flowers are in the air; voices ghost in from the past and hover on the edge of hearing like words from another room. I catch the thought of a man long dead: “Another year’s sakura… Another year’s passed.”

None of the joy I see so often with the cherry blossoms, only a mind worn down by time. But his voice slips away and I do not hear it again.

I finally make it to Maruyama Park and if there are ghosts there, they are drowned out by the din of the crowds. I’m happy that the picknickers are happy but, within minutes, I decide to go because I can’t hear myself think, let alone the ghosts.

Besides, if I’m going to take photos of sakura, I’d rather not do it where the population of Greater Tokyo and a yakisoba stall will also get into the frame.

As I head for the bus stop, I recall the hanami party I went to the previous day. Organised by the manager of the rooming house I’ve moved into, it was held under a cherry tree beside the Kamogawa.

But between the food and the banter, it was hard to remember that hanami means “flower viewing”.

The afternoon really was fun and any picnic that comes with a portable barbecue pit used to produce grilled meat and veg as well as yakisoba is a serious contender in the picnic leagues.

Still, it is not the party I will revisit when the season ends, not even the salami with breath-defying garlic, but a narrow street of wooden houses where flowers have gone adrift.

Because this is the way I prefer to meet sakura: with a high wind to shake them, running water to take them and voices that fade with the falling till next year’s flowers come – once again – to wake them.

Death gods and fashion victim ninja


3rd-4th March 2007


Kyou nite mo
Kyou natsukashii ya
Hototogisu

(Even in Kyoto,
I long for Kyoto...
The cuckoo cries)


I don't know what prompted Basho to write that all those years ago in the 17th century but there is much in Kyoto - stage of an era, a mood, a dream - that draws out natsukashii.

It is a word heard a great deal elsewhere in Japan too. You say it when you see something that brings back memories; you say it when you long for something in the past.

But even though I'm now in a city thick with memory, my first natsukashii moment had nothing to do with it. It did, however, have everything to do with a young ninja in an orange jumpsuit.

The name's Naruto; the premise, a wildly popular manga and anime series that drives a merchandising juggernaut. Sorry - the premise, a wildly popular manga and anime series about a boy who, despite terrible skills and unfortunate fashion choices, wants to become the head honcho of his ninja village.

The series, also called Naruto, runs on adventure, friendship and fights that sprawl over a couple of chapters (or episodes). In other words, it's a typical shounen work. Here's the plot in a peanut shell: hero goes on adventure to save friend. He fights. A lot. He makes friends. They fight too. A lot.

Shounen, or boy, is the tag usually stuck on stories like these because they're seen as male-oriented. Who cares if some of the most popular series are written by women or if a large chunk of the audience is female? The tag saves us from thinking and that's all that matters.

I suppose I should use the freed-up brain cells to think about exactly why I spent so much time watching Naruto. After all, I like only one character, I'm not amused by most of the humour and the heavyhandedness makes me wince ('This Is The Moral Of The Story! Look, We've Done It In Neon CGI!').

But I followed the series for about 145 episodes, stopping only because it had descended into filler hell. Fillers are what happens when the anime storyline catches up with the manga's and to stall for time, the anime team comes up with its own material.

Despite their F-word reputation, fillers aren't always bad. Naruto's, on the other hand, sparked outrage on a scale not seen since the ending of Evangelion was aired (Evangelion: mind-bending anime classic with giant robots and a penguin. Evangelion ending: controversy and viewer screams heard all the way over on the Korean peninsula).

After more than a year of fillers, Naruto: The Return Of The Manga Storyline was aired. More widely known as Naruto: Shippuuden, it started running last month and I went warily over to see if I should give the relationship one more try or move on.

And they were all there - the hooks that had kept me watching for so long. The action, the occasional humour that works so well you hang about hoping for more, and plenty of screen time for my favourite character: a top-ranking ninja who teaches while reading racy books.

Natsukashii naa...

But happy and hooked as I am, I can't help doing what I always did whenever I watched Naruto: compare it with Bleach.

According to the Bleach author, heaven is a place called Soul Society and the ones regulating the flow of souls between heaven and earth are the shinigami - death gods. One of them ends up transferring her powers to a 15-year-old boy while on a mission to earth (as will happen when you're out in the field) and the two have to work together to function as one death god without attracting the attention of the head office.

You don't have to look hard to find the similarities with Naruto. For starters, both are long-running series built on familiar shounen lines. In Naruto, the hero goes on an adventure to find and save a friend who's embraced the dark side of the Force. Fights ensue. In Bleach, the hero goes on an adventure to save a friend who's been jailed by the dark side of the head office. Fights ensue.

Both manga are also animated by the same studio and share voice actors ('Naruto, I've found Sasuke! He's in Bleach!').

Even though I watched close to 150 episodes of Naruto before giving up, I knew within 10 episodes that if it came down to a fight between the ninja and the shinigami, I was squarely in the camp of the men (and women and giant furry beastie) in black.

They're dressed so much better in Bleach - the death gods wear black kimono and hakama (traditional Japanese pleated trousers). It's a look which fits the job; you certainly wouldn't confuse a shinigami with the postman.

Naruto, on the other hand, is togged out in orange while his female sidekick has opted for red. It'd work if they were supposed to be two thirds of a traffic light but they need to hand out sunglasses if they want to make it as masters of stealth. (Another ninja in Naruto goes about with a giant gourd of sand on his back. How inconspicuous can you be if you keep toting a mini beach?)

Bleach also scores because the jokes are actually funny. And because I'd rather spend time hanging out with the death gods than the ninja.

Besides, the shinigami all carry swords. Known as zanpakutou, the swords reflect their owners' personalities. For example, a character so regal he makes the Queen look like a fishwife has a zanpakutou that scatters into sharp fragments which encompass the enemy. Because the fragments look like a shower of cherry blossoms, the zanpakutou is called Senbon Zakura - a thousand cherry trees. Impossibly elegant and very, very cool.

Yet the zanpakutou are more than extensions of personality; they are personalities in their own right and the shinigami can unlock their powers only if they can hear the names of their swords.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent ages playing 'If I had a zanpakutou, what would it be like?'* even though it was time I had set aside to work on my first novel.

But then, the stories I want to tell are like Bleach. There are no swords in my novel and the ideas about salvation are very different but it aims for a world which, like Bleach's, makes the reader want to hold on even after the last word on the last page says, let go.

Some books I admire for language, others for ideas or technical pyrotechnics but a work becomes a story only if it makes me want to stay.

It's stories I want to tell.

That's all.

Not quite all - make that stories which find their way to an agent and a publisher because rejection slips are like death by a thousand paper cuts.

I have made a zanpakutou of a story - a zanpakutou waiting to see if its name will be heard.

If, after the last word lets you go, would you stay a little longer? If, after you leave as you will eventually have to, would you return?

- I hope -

A bird of mine calls; you know its name, memory gives you wings back and -

Natsukashii naa...





* What is my zanpakutou like? I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Not that I'm making excuses but... Okay, I am


6th February 2007


This is an announcement for those who follow this blog regularly (yes, all four of you).

After reading the adventures of onehandwaving, the editor of The Straits Times' Review section kindly offered me the chance to do a fortnightly column for the paper.

The pieces will be much the same as the entries in this blog - though probably with fewer elephants - but they'll appear under a different byline because, for some reason, people don't believe that onehandwaving is a real name.

Unfortunately, because of the crossover in material, I'll be blogging less.

Okay, less than before.

I don't want to stop onehand from waving - and that second novel really needs to be written because the characters are threatening UN sanctions if I don't - but the demands of a fortnightly deadline will mean less time and fewer working brain cells for other forms of writing.

To be honest, though, the column hasn't started running yet and may not get off the ground because:
1) Review writers focus mainly on political and economic commentary
2) My proposed topics for the column include beans and bicycles.

I'm not the editor and I'm worried.

Still, if the column doesn't work out, there's always the novel and this blog. Who cares if they don't pay the rent?

To those of you who've sent me encouraging messages, many thanks. You've stopped me from feeling like I'm phoning a black hole when I blog.

What I'd really like to do is introduce you to the people in the second novel. They're sweet, funny, tragic, struggling for grace... And one of them is really hot, even without taking his shirt off.

Scotch that last comment. I'm a Serious Author and I have no interest in the body temperature of my characters.

Still, it'll take a while before the novel becomes more than a handful of notes and clamouring characters and, in the mean time, you may see me waving from the pages of The Straits Times.

If you do, come over and say hello.