On reflection


31st December 2008


There was one thing I had to do before the year slipped to the other side of the mirror.

It had nothing to do with new year cards nor with parties and feasts, though I've been busy with at least two of those three.

My goodbyes were for something I would not see again till spring. And it's this:

















Every time I go, I want to move in. Not possible so I've moved it into a story. The words and people are still unwritten but whenever I go there, they stamp on the page. I can see the scribe's daughter, drinking on the verandah with one man who is trying to teach her to see another. I wake with her, looking through her eyes through the trees outside her window. The man she does not allow herself to look at is outside. His eyes are full of the arrows of the dead.

I see them not seeing most clearly when I am there.

And now it's closed for winter. But if it snows, I shall go anyway and stand outside until I am warm.

Season passes to the show


14th December 2008


More cuts, more iodine. But also more photos.

...


It’s one of the greatest shows on earth. Once a year, for a limited season and only in selected venues, trees set themselves on fire.

Tourists flood into Kyoto every autumn to catch the city-wide performances. It’s hardly a complicated plot – leaves light up in all shades of burn from yellow to red, then fall – but the more popular spots pack the crowds in until it’s standing room only.

The preparation begins weeks, no, months in advance. Tickets have to be printed and programmes designed, of course, but the real work begins in summer, when scripts are handed out and moves blocked.

But it’s not humans who direct the show. We just set the scene, do the ushering and sell tickets and refreshments (red bean soup is particularly good in the cold).

No, there’s a larger force directing – larger even than Steven Spielberg. This director cues the cast through sunlight, temperature and typhoons. If it sends, for instance, a cool and rainy summer, the trees respond with a muted, low-key performance.

On the other hand, a big difference between night and day temperatures, and lots of strong sunlight will produce a hot number. And if no typhoons come to rip off branches and spoil leaves with seawater, expect a show that will bring the house down.

Just a note about casting: not all trees can play a part in the autumn extravaganza; they have to be deciduous, which is a fancy way of saying bits – leaves, horns or teeth – fall off regularly. (Incidentally, the number of tree species which shed teeth is somewhere between 50 and -1.)

So coniferous trees – phlegmatic types like pines that stay evergreen and do nothing more dramatic than produce cones – never feature in the fall line-up. The limelight is hogged by their deciduous cousins: drama queens who spend a good part of the year on costume changes.

Chief among this lot is the maple. If you run into a bunch of maple trees, listen carefully – you may hear them calling each other darling in syrupy tones.

Trees talk all the time, whether you hear them or not, and autumn is probably the easiest time of the year to catch the conversation. Dry leaves whisper louder than green ones and when the wind whips them away, the whisper becomes a roar.

They quiet down when they fall, covering the ground in gold leaf, but when the wind whirls round again, they crackle up about you, rustling and hustling you to go see the show.

Most venues offer only matinees but some also light the trees up for evening shows. One of these takes place in Kibune, a mountain village north of the city. Once the sun goes down, visitors stream in by train and bus, the floors of both spotted with maple leaves like so many dropped flyers.

When you spill out of the bus, wood and paper lamps are waiting, lined by the road to take you to the glowing trees. It is a long, winding stage, with the river rippling through the orchestra pit that runs beside it. Even in the dark, the water never stops playing, flowing under and around the susurrus of the leaves.

They draw you on to Kibune shrine, which sits at the top of a flight of uneven stone steps. Red lanterns line both sides and they are lit, as are the amber trees arching over them.

At the shrine, a cluster of small buildings open to the mountain cold, log fires flicker but the trees burn with an unwavering light.

It is a show of strength, one last act of red defiance before grey winter upstages them.

And if you leave Kibune on rail, you’ll see the show one more time as the train goes through a maple leaf tunnel. The conductor will switch off the carriage lights and emboldened by the darkness, the trees will press forward on both sides, their arms weighed down by little seven-pointed lanterns.

It is as if the leaves know that they will fall in a matter of days but before they do, want to return all the light the year has given them.

But the passengers can only spend so much time with them before the train pulls away, speeds up, the lights come back on – and the entire carriage groans.

Behind them, the trees continue speaking their lines even though the dialogue doesn’t change much. Autumn is a simple story, after all, and everyone knows how it ends. Which may be why most of those who come to Kyoto for the show leave before the final act.

Even as they file away into buses, trains and tour coaches, winter is waiting in the wings and as the last curtain falls, it springs forward to strike the sets, the wind close on its heels. A stagehand with more enthusiasm than finesse, the wind bustles around, stripping off leaves without caring where they land.

The red, gold, orange and yellow flame through the air, smouldering out on the ground – the house lights, the house leaves come down and the theatre goes dark.

But perhaps only until the next season. If the sky feels dramatic, it will scatter white with both hands to smooth everything into an ice crystal stage. And when that happens, snowmen will stumble up to take their places.

I’m hoping it’ll be a good run.















The view from the top of the stairs leading to the main hall of Kibune shrine.

The brrr begins


19th November 2008


And the cold shot in like a cat through an opening door.

Not much warning, just a sharp drop in temperatures and suddenly strangers are remarking to me, 'It's cold today, isn't it?'

The other night, I opened the wardrobe doors to be greeted by a draught blowing from inside.

The obvious thing to do would have been to get inside, close the doors after me and see if the draught led to a faun with an umbrella.

But to do that, I'd have had to remove two suitcases, several plastic drawers of clothes and an ironing board.

So I didn't go. Besides, when you're ping-ponging endlessly between work and housework, the only fauns you're interested in are those who will help with the ironing.

What I found


29th October 2008


Went for a walk today, crossing two rivers to reach a street named for the temples that line it.














I found a perfect flower...

















...perfectly imperfect stones...




...old wood against a new sky...

















...and the place where the sun and moon are kept.

Tadaima


15th October 2008















Ishibei-koji (石塀小路)

I take a photo of a vending machine (almost) every day. Sorry.


27th September 2008


Hear the sound of one hand restoring length to yet another column.

Hear - one hand - sound - restoring -

...

I TAKE a picture of a vending machine (almost) every day. Sorry.

Well, I don’t, to be honest. But a man living in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido does.

Calling himself Motomachi Nijuuyon Ken, he puts the snapshots up at a website he’s named, ‘I take a picture of a vending machine (almost) every day. Sorry’ – a blog that does exactly what it says on the box.

But what would prompt a man to photograph the same vending machine – and not one that sells underwear either – nearly every day for three years and counting?

In the profile section of his blog, Motomachi-san says he has no interest in vending machines or canned drinks. Claiming to dislike ‘troublesome things’, he looked about for undemanding content and ‘ended up doing this’.

‘I get annoyed on days when there are changes,’ he adds, ‘Because it means work’.

His blog has attracted some interest from the media, which may be why he has left a notice saying that they are free to use the blog material but he does not wish to be contacted.

Respecting the wishes of this Greta Garbo of the vending machine world, I’ve confined myself to his work and a sort of meta-diary, a log of a log, has emerged. It seems appropriate for these post-modern times – and it’ll cost you less than a can of Coke.

Aug 5, 2005: First post of the blog. A picture of a drinks machine like the thousands scattered throughout Japan.

Aug 8, 2005: Second posting. Another photo of the machine with the words ‘No change’ over it. This will become the blog’s most common post title.

Sept 14, 2005: The first record of change – about a month after the launch of the blog. The drink displayed third from right in the centre row has been – wait for it – replaced! Motomachi-san commemorates the big moment with tidy blue arrows, red boxes and yellow labels.

Sept 19, 2005: A day of upheaval in Vending Machine Land. Products are added, others taken away, designs are changed… Even items that manage to stay on are moved about. ‘A change of this scale could well be called a revolution or a coup d’etat,’ says Motomachi-san. He calls this post ‘The Great Revolution’.

As if to recover from the excitement, there are no more changes until three months later, when canned cocoa is introduced to the line-up.

Feb 2, 2006: Motomachi-san notes that the display looked different on his way home, presumably from work. ‘Details will come tomorrow,’ he writes. ‘But it’s a bit sad that I’ve turned into someone who can tell the differences with just one glance.’

March 6, 2006: Seven items sold out. For the first time, Motomachi-san lists all the drinks in the machine, together with the can volume and availability. Also for the first time, he assigns a label to each product, depending on where it appears in the display. So the 300ml Fanta Grape, fifth from left in the bottom row, is C05. What we have here is a man getting organised about his hobby.

March 8, 2006: Sayonara cocoa, says the title of the post. The Europe Premier Cocoa introduced in December has been ejected by Royal Milk Tea. Truly, we live in a world of transience. And so, we bid farewell to cocoa as snow drifts across the vending machine.

March 17, 2006: With spring, life returns to the world – and heads for the vending machine. The phenomenon began four days ago, with three products selling out. The figure climbs steadily and, today, eight items are unavailable. ‘It’s the Sell-out Fest of Spring,’ declares Motomachi-san.

April 17, 2006: A notice from the blogger. ‘I will be away from the 18th to 19th so I will be taking a break from updates. Please make do with the vending machines in your neighbourhood.’

May 10, 2006: A revolution such as we have not seen in ages, trumpets the post title. To indicate the changes, Motomachi-san scrawls red arrows all over a photo of the revitalised line-up. It looks like someone’s turned the vending machine into a game of Snakes and Ladders.

May 12, 2006: ‘I leave it for two days and there’s another big change. It’s trying too hard,’ moans Motomachi-san. The Snakes and Ladders arrows now look like tunnels left by earthworms on a digging spree. Such is the scale of the revolution that two days later, he feels compelled to organise all the movements into a table.

Aug 1, 2006: Motomachi-san informs his readers that he won’t be updating the blog for a week because of work. ‘What do you think will have happened when I return?’

His post draws more than 60 comments. ‘The machine will be taller and look a little grown-up,’ says one person. ‘It’ll have a TV attached,’ says another. (No idle threat in technology-mad Japan.) A third has an even grander vision: ‘It’ll have declared independence and will no longer accept Japanese currency.’

Aug 6, 2006: Motomachi-san’s wife takes a picture of the vending machine and sends it to him. He puts it up at the blog with the title, ‘No change’, and adds: ‘It’s good to have a beautiful wife who takes photos well.’

He calls his wife okusama-chan: a term I struggle to translate. Chan is like a cutesy version of the -san honorific added to names but is used mainly for girls and women you’re very close to. It’s also applied to males too young or too good-natured to put up a fight.

A man may well use chan when referring to his spouse but he wouldn’t call her okusama: an extremely polite way of talking about someone else’s wife.

So the combined effect of okusama-chan is… Well, it’s as if he called her Lil’ Honourable Wife. Or Honourable Wife Babycakes. If anyone has a better translation, I’d love to hear it.

Oct 24, 2006: The first retrospective, about a year and two months after the blog was launched. A photo of the vending machine taken that day together with one showing what it looked like a year ago.

July 26, 2007: Is this the end? Motomachi-san posts this notice: ‘The vending machine featured in this blog is located in front of a yakiniku shop which, to the best of my knowledge, has not opened for business these past three years… But these few days, things have changed. This is just an impression but it looks like the shop will have to leave the building. So the vending machine may also go.’

March 20, 2008: Eight months later, the machine is still there. I think it may be safe to stop holding your breath now. Unable to update the blog because of a business trip, Motomachi-san makes a paper version of the machine instead. It’s about half the height of a propped-up mobile phone. It’s…cute. Even in a land of small, cute things, it’s a winner.

Aug 4, 2008: Three years after the first post, we finally learn the reason behind the photos. Motomachi-san writes: ‘The blog turned three today. On the first anniversary of my younger sister’s death, I thought about coming up with one of those silly, meaningless things that she loved and from the following day, Aug 5, 2005, began keeping these records. And that’s how this blog began.’

At first, he says, he planned to wrap things up after a year but now aims to keep going for five: ‘If you would, every now and then, come to take a look and say, “That idiot still hasn’t stopped!”, I would greatly appreciate it.’


The loss of a close connection prompted Motomachi-san to forge a new one but it wasn’t something you’d have expected. He picked an ordinary vending machine and devoted three years of attention to it.

In the process, he’s helped others connect with something so ingrained in the urban landscape that we look at it without seeing it.

With his blog, he’s made minute changes in a vending machine personal and opened up a whole new world of wonder. I wonder, for instance, who on earth would buy a drink called Hokkaido Milk and Vegetables.

And because of his photos, I’ve watched time pass in a new way: Snow encrusting the vending machine buttons gave way to summer glare which faded out in turn to yield to plastic maple leaves in autumn.

If you can see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, imagine what you’d find in an entire vending machine.


http://jihan.sblo.jp/

Eels, escalators and a side-splitting story


30th July 2008


If you've visited this blog before, you'll know that what follows is longer than the published version.

How much longer?

About 100 per cent. I was under the influence of eel.

...

Some people say that we live in but one universe among many and that parallel worlds hold other versions of ourselves.

These theories may be more than science fiction because, every now and again, something rumples the fabric of space and time – and I get e-mail meant for an alternative me, in particular, the one doing a column called Letter from Tokyo.

I answer the messages anyway, and hope that the other me responds to readers who write in about the Letter from Kyoto column.

But I’ve been thinking lately that there can’t be that many fluctuations in the space-time continuum and perhaps people just confuse Kyoto with Tokyo?

I’ve resisted this explanation because though the names sound similar and the two cities are separated by only about two and a half hours by bullet train, they’re worlds apart.

Even without going into the centuries of rivalry, it takes just one visit to start seeing the differences.

In Tokyo, I get lost in train stations like underground cities and among reefs of steel and glass skyscrapers.

In Kyoto, buildings in the city centre are capped at 31m – about 10 storeys – and the sky can breathe out without fear of being poked and pinched.

But I still get lost. Though if I’m lucky, it happens in streets of picturesque wooden townhouses.

If you were to take a bird’s eye view – assuming you can find an urban-minded bird – more differences appear.

Tokyo sprawls over a plain by the sea, crowding neighbouring prefectures, while Kyoto city sits with its feet together in an armchair of mountains – and doesn’t look like it’s going to move from its inland spot any time soon.

As a result, Tokyo was in a good position to become sushi capital of the world unlike landlocked Kyoto, where not much is said about the fish. But what it lacks in raw tuna, it makes up with tofu. And its vegetables, whether pickled or fresh, can turn the most unrepentant meat-eater into a convert.

But cities are fed by more than food. In Tokyo, government, finance and commerce sustain its population of 12.8 million as they race from one trend to the next in a relentless pursuit of the new. Kyoto, on the other hand, draws strength from the past; some of its shops are run by families who have been in the trade for over 20 generations.

I’m generalising, of course. Tokyo has plenty of history – Sensoji, its oldest temple, dates back to the seventh century – and Kyoto, for all its tradition, is also the headquarters of Nintendo, which began there in 1889 as a company that produced handmade playing cards.

Still, don’t throw away the stereotypes yet; they may come in handy as we flip through the pages into the past, all the way back to 794, when Emperor Kanmu established his base in the river basin that came to be known as Kyoto, the Capital City.

Centuries of power struggles followed but in 1600, warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu fought his way to the top, eventually ruling a unified Japan as shogun from his castle in Edo (now Tokyo). Kyoto ended up politically sidelined, like the emperor and his court, but this freed its citizens, from the nobility down to merchants and craftsmen, to devote themselves to culture.

Specialising in disciplines such as poetry, incense and the tea ceremony, Kyoto's people built on their reputation for refinement, creating luxury goods for the rest of the country. That reputation has lasted and the city is still a shrine to traditional arts and crafts. So if you find yourself there during Kyoto's notoriously sticky summers, fan yourself with one of their delicate, handmade sensu - and melt in style.

If Kyoto was the city of culture then Edo was the city of samurai, the linchpin of the military government that remained until 1868. It was a man's town, with about 70 per cent of its land given over to the samurai, who swaggered about with two swords stuck through their waist sashes.

In contrast, Kyoto didn't even have a residential area for samurai and neither did nearby Osaka, the port city that became the centre of the Japanese economy in the first century of Tokugawa rule.

Discussions of the Kyoto-Tokyo divide tend to spread out into a wider regional debate that sweeps up even foreigners in Japan. Over in the eastern corner is the Kanto area, commonly equated with Tokyo because it takes up such a Godzilla-sized place in the popular mind that the prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Chiba get overlooked.

To the west is the Kansai region, probably known best for rambunctious Osaka, but also buoyed up by the idiosyncracies of Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, Hyogo, Mie and Shiga.

The rules of the debate are simple: Familiarise yourself with the stereotypes and then…pick a side!

The very names ‘Kanto’ and ‘Kansai’ are about sides. Kan means barrier – in this case, an old checkpoint in Hakone – so Kansai refers to the land west (sai) of the barrier and Kanto, the region east (to) of it.

This division is found in everything from dialects to eels to escalators.

A Tokyo friend who met her future husband when they shared the same office in the capital said there were times when she just couldn’t understand him. This had nothing to do with the usual man-woman communication breakdown. Born in Nara, he would lapse at times into the Kansai dialect, which veers away from standard Japanese in intonation, inflections and even in vocabulary.

But the rift goes beyond how people talk to what they actually say. According to the stereotype, Kanto residents are cool, reserved and more interested in sophistication than Kansai folk: a straight-shooting, entrepreneurial lot who would rather play for laughs.

This perception has a great deal to do with the association of Kansai with Osaka, which has a history as a city of merchants – and comedians.

Manzai duos from the city became famous across the country when they took their routines to television but the ordinary Osakan is also seen as someone with an Inner Comic just waiting to be unleashed.

Here’s something to try if you visit the city: Hold your fingers like a gun and pretend to fire it at a passer-by, preferably with a cry of ‘bakkyun!’ If the passer-by is a native of Osaka, chances are, he’ll fall about and do his best to act like he’s been shot.

Having cut their teeth on comedy programmes, Osakans are primed to join in gags even if they’re by complete strangers.

Chizu-san, a friend who explained the phenomenon from a native’s point of view, said: ‘I think none of us can stop ourselves from pretending to be shot if we were “bakkyuned”.’

But Osaka is also known as a city of people who would bankrupt themselves for food. (In Kyoto, it’s kimono. As for Tokyo, er, I don’t know. Black suits and shoes, maybe?)

And food is another area where Kansai and Kanto have agreed to disagree. They split over the soup for noodles (darker in the east) and complain that instant noodles taste funny on the other side of the country. If the debate goes on, someone may raise a stink about the smelly fermented soya beans called natto – a lot of Kansai people won’t touch the stuff though Kanto swears by it.

Even the ways eels are sliced depends on region. In Tokyo, they’re split in the back because cutting across the front reminded the samurai there of seppuku – ritual suicide that began with slashing the abdomen.

But in Osaka, with samurai making up less than 1 per cent of the population then, this was hardly a problem. If anything, to the merchants of the city, opening up the gut symbolised hiding nothing from customers.

The we-merchant-you-samurai difference is also whipped out to explain why people in Kanto stand on the left on escalators, leaving a path clear for people to charge up and down, while Osakans line up on the right side.

Standing on the left, it is said, lets samurai draw their swords freely but merchants will keep to the other side to protect their belongings in their right hands.

It’s a great theory though it starts to unravel when you consider the number of years separating the ban on carrying swords and the introduction of escalators.

The more convincing explanation is that when the World Exposition was held in Osaka in 1970, a railway line there made announcements asking passengers to keep on the right to accommodate the numbers of foreign visitors.

But what all this really means is that by travelling a little, you get to take a ride on the other side – and taste different flavours in soup, speech and spirit.

When I asked a Japanese businessman about this, he said: ‘I’ve been to 56 countries but still think Japan is unique because, even though it’s not a big country, the regions have their own identities – perhaps because there are so many mountains separating them.’

For this reason, I get the feeling that I’m not just doing a Letter from Tokyo column in an alternative reality. I think I’m scattered through the worlds of the multiverse, filing stories from all corners of Japan – and enjoying the view from whichever side of the escalator I’m on.

Silk and straw


21st July 2008


Whenever the reading lists for Japanese studies are pulled out, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum And The Sword is almost certain to be featured.

Though criticisms have been levelled at the anthropologist's most famous work, it's still worth studying, if only for the impact it has had.

But equally worth reading is Dr Junichi Saga's Memories Of Silk And Straw. Even when passed through the filters of interviews and translation, it lets you hear the voices of ordinary Japanese in a way that Benedict's book doesn't.

Unlike her work, it's short on theory. It just presents a fading generation as best as it can - and lets you make your own mind and your own theories up.

So I'll just tell you a bit more about the book and leave you to decide for yourself if it's something you want to look into.

...


‘My mother once told me that I only just avoided being killed the day I was born.’

Thus begins one of the life stories in Memories Of Silk And Straw, a book of reminiscences collected by Japanese doctor Junichi Saga.

Based in Tsuchiura, a small town about an hour by train from Tokyo, he would end his day by putting a tape recorder in his medical bag and going to interview the elderly.

He spoke to hundreds of them, piecing together what life there was like before World War II.

Many of them talked about the widespread poverty that made it common for people to go about barefoot and hungry – and to kill newborns they couldn’t feed.

But in the case of Mrs Fumi Suzuki, whose mother told her that the start of her life was nearly the end of it, it was her looks that were her undoing. Apparently, she was so ugly that her parents and grandparents decided that she wouldn’t be able to find a husband and so asked the midwife to get rid of her.

The woman wrapped the baby tightly, covered her face and left her to suffocate.

But after a while, the mother noticed the bundle of rags moving and when they unwrapped it, found the newborn still alive.

They decided that it would be bad luck to try to kill her again so they let her live. She went on to get married at 20 and survived into her 80s to tell Dr Saga her tale.

Her story, together with 60 others, was published in 1981.

Dr Saga then pushed for an English translation because ‘the stories revealed something about modern Japan very little understood by the rest of the world, and perhaps not even by the Japanese themselves. Namely, that the Japan which now prides itself on being an advanced, high-technology nation had, until only recently, a very different type of society; and that indeed it was this very society, backward though it may have been, which created the basis for what Japan has become today’.

He saw in Tsuchiura the kind of small town found all over the country and in its elderly, a generation who had experienced centuries worth of change compressed like an accordion into about 50 years.

Part of that change was the abolition of feudalism in the second half of the nineteenth century. But even after the laws dictating class differences vanished, a ghost of them lingered in people’s minds.

Mrs Mineko Toyama, born in 1903, remembered walking as a child with her grandmother one day when they met a woman who used to work for her family as a maid.

She ‘looked slightly shocked for a moment, then fell quickly to her knees and bowed with her forehead touching the ground’. Even though her old employer had been the wife of the local magistrate, ‘no passer-by, whether he’d known who my grandmother was or not, would have been particularly surprised at this spectacle’.

Though you’re not likely to see people kneeling like that in the streets of modern Japan, the reflexive ordering of the world into hierarchies remains.

In the same way, the work ethic of the present can be traced back to a world where people began the day not with the cock’s crow but before it.

Tofu makers were some of the earliest to rise: They were up before 2am to grind soya beans, squeeze milk from them and when it had set, went from door to door to sell it.

Children had to work too and those who living on farms would till the rice fields from half past four in the morning. One man who did this said: ‘By the time the six o’clock siren sounded I would hardly be able to move another step; but it was still a while before I got my breakfast so I’d just do my best to carry on’.

His stoicism might have been remarkable but it was by no means unique. Even childbirth hardly interrupted work.

Mrs Tai Terakada, born in 1899, recalled how her mother went into the mountains one day to chop wood and returned with something wrapped in her apron.

Thinking that it was fruit, she asked: ‘Have you got something nice for me?’

Her mother laughed and said: ‘Yes, I’ve brought you back a little baby sister.’

Alone in the mountains, her mother had given birth to the child, cut its umbilical cord with her knife then carried it home. But she didn’t want to leave the pile of branches she’d cut so she lugged that back too.

When recording this story, Dr Saga does not say what he, as a medical man, thought of this and the women who had to deliver their own babies because the midwife couldn’t reach them in time.

In his introduction to the book though, he dwells on the hardship of that period. But, he adds, ‘amid all the poverty and unhappiness of those days, there also existed a strange kind of serenity which today seems to have been lost’.

If you also feel that serenity is missing, try spending some time with Dr Saga’s people. Get into a boat with lake fishermen who can tell you what mood the sky is in by reading the clouds and listening to a faraway sea. Or else join hands with the neighbourhood children and walk around town, inviting people to a birthday party.

It may be dark when you leave the party for home but if it’s a summer evening, fireflies will fill the air like sparks blown from a fire.

From behind you comes the sound of bare feet slapping on the path – you turn to see a rickshaw, its lanterns swinging from side to side.

It may scare the frogs into silence but they’ll start up again once the rickshaw goes and besides, the moon, less easily startled, will wait over the distant mountains until you find your way home.

In the pink of health


13th June 2008


And here's another column because I, er, just wanted to post pictures of this year's sakura.


...


The pink mist is still swirling in my brain.

Once a year, a peculiar malaise grips the whole of Japan and the symptoms are most easily observed from March to May, with the cases peaking in April.

The malaise is called sakura fever and I have been identified as a carrier since last year.

The virus lies dormant for most of the year but when March melts winter from the air, the symptoms begin to flare up.

Sufferers find themselves checking television and Internet reports repeatedly for predictions of when the cherry blossom will bloom and once it does, track its progress with bloodhound focus from the south to the tip of Hokkaido in the north.

It is not an obsession; it is an epidemic.

Here are a few of the classic symptoms: Laying blue tarpaulin sheets under cherry trees, plonking friends, family or colleagues on them and buying up box-loads of yakisoba, sakura mochi and hanami dango.

The fried noodles and rice cakes and balls all translate into an insane infusion of calories, as do the fountains of beer, which is not drunk so much as soaked up.

But because so many people are infected with sakura fever, competition for a spot under the trees can be stiff. So some resort to arriving early, staking out a space with the blue plastic – and parking one member of their party on top of it.

This lot usually falls to the youngest and most junior person. Not because the young and the junior are the easiest to bully but because their youth means that they have the highest resistance to prolonged exposure to the source of infection.

While there is no known cure for the sakura fever virus, folk remedies involving alcohol abound.

But anecdotal evidence shows that alcohol has little effect against the virus. If anything, it accelerates the uninhibited singing, outrageous chat-up lines and other forms of behaviour unthinkable under normal circumstances.

Even uninfected passers-by are not safe from the excesses at the nightly parties as the constant explosion of camera flashes have been known to cause temporary loss of vision.

Be advised that the over-use of cameras and other photographic devices is a common sign of sakura fever. If travelling to areas where the virus is endemic, take precautions. Take sunglasses.

So virulent is the fever that no insurance plan in the world will cover it.

Yet though the virus has been active in Japan since at least the eighth century, surprisingly little has been written about how the disease is transmitted.

However, the word for the parties under the trees may offer a clue: hanami. Literally ‘flower-see’ or ‘flower-view’, it suggests that infection is spread through the eyes.

It is certainly true that most people seeing a cherry tree in full bloom will show the same signs of slackened jaw and glazed eyes almost immediately.

If not physically restrained, they will move towards the tree and stay under it for as long as they can. Similar behaviour has been observed in moths in the presence of a flame.

Furthermore, it has been hypothesised that the virus impels sufferers to move to the closest cherry tree as if, through renewed exposure to the cause of infection, it can stop the body from developing an immune response.

Work on creating a vaccine for the virus shows little signs of progress to date. This is mainly because researchers, when attempting to take samples, usually end up abandoning their work to go in search of beer and blue tarpaulin.

However, some argue that the source of sakura fever is not a virus but a bacterium – and a beneficial one at that.

Just as humans function better with the right bacteria in their digestive tract, those with sakura in their system show higher levels of sociability as anyone invited on the spot to a stranger’s hanami party will attest.

It has been said that the ability of blooming sakura trees to reduce inhibition explains why they are valued as safety valves, especially in societies which normally set a premium on self-control.

But perhaps the greatest contribution of sakura is not to the group but to the individual.

Almost everyone exposed to cherry blossoms reports an enhanced sense of well-being. They describe what epidemiologists would call joy if it were not such an unscientific term. And easy to spell.

It does not seem to matter whether the sakura in question is white or pink enough to suggest flamingos overdosing on food colouring.

It does not matter whether the flowers are gathered in tight bunches or trail along spindly branches that stir like a woman’s hair in the wind.

All it takes is one glance at a cherry tree in flower for delight to rush in and billow up into joy.

And that is why if I ever suspect that I am in danger of developing an immunity to sakura, I will sit under a thousand cherry trees, a blue sheet beneath me, until the roots have entwined themselves in my bones and the blooms dissolved in my blood beyond all possibility of a cure.

What can I say?


20th May 2008


There's a little place near my apartment that I think of as My Local Diner.

Never mind that the word 'diner' seems all wrong when the menu is in Japanese and almost everything on the menu is soaked to the bones in dashi stock.

It's the place with the cheapest noodles and rice bowls in the area - and most of it actually tastes good. They seem to have won some kind of award but they've stashed the gold plaque high up on an ageing heater so it won't distract you from the food.

I started going there soon after moving in and, in time, the people there - Grandpa, Grandma and their middle-aged son - got used to my strange Japanese and occasional inability to read the menu.

I drop by on average twice a week though when I was careening through a mad busy period, I ate there almost every day. There's enough range for that if you don't mind dashi flavouring almost everything except the curry dishes. And you wouldn't think it given the hole-in-the-wall decor but the tea tastes great.

And last Thursday, I went there again. I can't remember what I ordered but at some point, I noticed that I had been served a cup of green tea while every other customer had a glass of ice water.

I wondered why - and then I remembered. Last summer, when Grandma had shuffled to my table with a glass of water, I asked for tea instead because ice can do terrible things to your insides even in the heat.

Months later, almost a year later, she still remembered.

I've encountered great kindness from a great many people in my one and a half years in Japan but there was something about that cup of tea put wordlessly in front of me that reached inside to the place where I keep gratitude and sorting through the thank-yous, found all of them wanting.

Bunnies do their bit


30th April 2008


In a few days' time, it'll be Children's Day (Kodomo no Hi) in Japan.
But the national holiday, which falls on May 5, is known more commonly as Boys' Day.

(Girls' Day is celebrated on March 3. Around about that time, supermarkets explode with pink sweets in pink wrapping.)

As Boys' Day approaches, poles with large carp kites tethered to them start sprouting everywhere. When the wind blows, the carp lift and beat against the air just as if it were water.

The carp kites - or wind socks - can go up to a few metres in length but the ones I found today outside a shop in the geisha district of Pontocho were a lot smaller.

As small as this, in fact.

Bull's-eye(ish)


10th April 2008


I've held off writing about the year I've spent studying kyudo, or traditional Japanese archery, because I haven't had the time to do a proper post about it, whatever a proper post means.

But I hit the bull's-eye today.

Well, not quite. It was a little to the right of dead centre but standing at the other end of the shooting range, it looked like I'd shot straight into the heart of the target.

Kawaguchi-sensei, the most senior of my three teachers, was there too.

'I feel like I should take a picture,' I said.

'Did you bring a camera?'

'Well - I have my phone.'

She was smiling. 'Do you want to take a photo?'

I thought about it. 'Erm, yeah.'

One of the other students was waiting by the targets to retrieve the arrows and she called out to him. 'Leave the arrow in the No.4 mato! She wants to take a picture of it!'

And off I went. Kawaguchi-sensei sent Sakai-san, another student, after me so I could pose with the target but all I really wanted was a photo of the arrow.

Staring at it now, I still can't quite believe it.

You wouldn't believe it either, if you'd been sending arrows too high, too low, too wide, too high and wide and, in the most embarrassing instance, into the ground about a metre before the target.

I'll probably never touch the centre again. But I'll remember the magic thhuddd of the arrow driving into the target - and the even more magical disbelief that followed.

Is it too late to buy a lottery ticket today?

The right to remain silent


29th January 2008


We hear a great deal about freedom of speech but what about freedom of silence?

Ironically, from the nation that talks the most about talking comes a push for the right to say nothing at all.

It comes in the form of an American magazine article called “Caring for your introvert” by The Atlantic correspondent Jonathan Rauch. Written in 2003, it continues to draw more hits than any other piece on the magazine’s website.

As an introvert, he says, he belongs to one of ‘the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world’.

Being introverted does not necessarily mean being shy; it just means that people tire you out.

While extroverts need company like the Energizer Bunny needs batteries, introverts recharge by spending time alone.

To introverts, other people are like sunlight: good in short stretches but prolonged exposure leaves you burned.

Still, Rauch makes it clear that introverts don’t harbour a grudge against the rest of the human race: ‘We love people… We just can’t socialize with them all the time. We want to hold their hand or hug them or just sit quietly and read a book with them.’

What introverts don’t want to do is go to cocktail parties and make small talk.

But the world is filled with people who do – and they set the standard for what is considered normal and desirable behaviour.

Some introverts learn to keep up a stream of conversation however much it tires them but those who can’t or won’t tend to get labelled as shy, aloof or arrogant.

Rauch notes that female introverts have a harder time of it because people don’t usually think of women when you say ‘strong, silent type’.

But whatever their gender, introverts are almost always outnumbered in politics, a field where what you say appears less important than how you say it – and how often.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda seems to be one of the few who have risen to the top.

I don’t have conclusive proof that he’s an introvert but I have my suspicions because whenever people try to describe him, the same words keep cropping up: undemonstrative, self-effacing, steady, grey.

According to an article in The Times last September, when a supporter encouraged him to ‘express his personality’, he said: ‘I have no personality.’

Of course he does. It’s just the kind of personality that’s at the other end of the spectrum from former boss Junichiro Koizumi’s.

Though I think anyone, not just an introvert, would have trouble competing with somebody who has a habit of breaking into Elvis impersonations.

But, writes Rauch, ‘If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place’.

I don’t know if this is true. But I do know that in a world run by introverts, no meeting would last over an hour because they don’t think by talking; they think by thinking.

And I know this because I’m an introvert too.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy conversations. In fact, I see them as one of the best ways to have fun with another person without taking your clothes off.

But I can’t have them all the time. In fact, I don’t have them a lot of the time, which prompted one friend to say: ‘You’re so quiet I sometimes forget you’re there.’

Ouch. Still, this could be useful if I ever decide to become a ninja. Or wallpaper.

By now, you should be able to work out on which side of the conversation gap you belong.

And if you’re an introvert, what can you do?

First, understand what you are – and look after what you are.

If you need time away from the maddening crowd, take it. Fighting this is like resenting your need for sleep.

Rauch also recommends helping extroverts to get comfortable with their opposites.

It can be hard to relax when silences keep breaking up a conversation. But not if you understand that ‘if someone is being quiet it doesn’t mean they’re having a bad time; it doesn’t mean they’re depressed; it doesn’t mean they’re lonely or need psychiatric help or medication’.

If you’re an extrovert, be confident that the introvert next to you is enjoying your company.

If he isn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s not like he’s going to tell you.

So, yes – I think it’s time to raise some awareness. Start by sending this post to 25 people within the next three days. Failure to do so will mean being trapped in 75 parties where people won’t stop talking at you.

But whether or not extroverts take any of this on board, introverts should be prepared to meet them halfway because we are, let’s face it, not the easiest lot in the world to live with.

Having once had to keep a dinner conversation going around someone who sat silent with his eyes down for hours, I can understand why extroverts get frustrated with us.

There are more ways to fit yourself into a conversation than by talking; you can do it by showing that you’re listening.

Just looking interested can take you as far as a well-placed witticism because who doesn’t like a bit of attention?

And if you’re not interested, well, that’s what the door is for.

But why should introverts have to go to such lengths, you may ask. Especially when extroverts don’t seem to bother?

Let me be clear about this: You don’t have to do anything, except maybe breathe. But what you do or don’t do will always have consequences.

The trick is to read far ahead enough to see those consequences, decide if you like them – and then act.

Come to think about it, you don’t even have to breathe if you don’t mind losing your vital signs.

But whatever you decide to do, I hope you’ll be happy with yourself. And from there, to be happy with others.

The story that gives me the most hope for introverts comes from the unlikeliest of sources: an article about how Japanese men express themselves in love.

Whatever their sterling qualities in other areas, the men of this country don’t have a good reputation when it comes to telling their partners how they feel.

So when The Japan Times reported last March on a magazine poll to find out which expressions they favoured in such situations, the howlers came as no surprise.

But the article ended with a housewife’s story about her husband, who said something unforgettable for the right reasons.

She said: ‘When we started going out together, he nervously blurted, “Mari-chan-tte, amari shaberanai na. Demo issho ni iru dake de, nani yattetemo tanoshii na! (Mari, you don’t talk much, do you? But just being with you makes whatever we do so much fun)”.’

Sometimes, you don’t need a lot of words to tell a story with a happy ending.


Afterword:

A shorter version of this post ran as a column in The Straits Times (http://www.straitstimes.com ) on Saturday. I'm reproducing it in its full length for various reasons but mostly to let the husband quoted in the last paragraph speak in his own words. The Japanese was left out of the published version but if you understand the language, you'll see the clumsy sweetness that doesn't quite make it into the translation.

Oh, and Rauch's article can be found at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch