What I did during my vacation


Eve of All Hallows, 2009


I queued. I didn’t really mean to. When I packed to leave Kyoto for Singapore, I didn’t plan to do much more than catch up with people and books I hadn’t seen in months.

But avoiding crowds was high on my list of things to do. So was staying out of any kind of queue because there are only so many people you can go on holiday with.

Then it was announced that Neil Gaiman would be appearing at the Singapore Writers Festival at the end of October.

Are introductions in order? Neil Gaiman: author of The Sandman, a fantasy series that has become so much of a hit that the comic books are now called graphic novels, and writer of short stories, novels, poems, film scripts and children’s books. Of these, The Graveyard Book has spent over a year on the children’s best-seller list of the New York Times though everyone I know who loves the work is old enough to drive.

It’s a reimagining of The Jungle Book; instead of a boy being brought up in a jungle by animals, he’s brought up in a cemetery by dead people. And a vampire.

The novel may well turn out to be one of those books you keep returning to and measuring yourself against, like standing beside a mark scratched on a wall to show how tall you were at nine because you want to see how much you’ve grown.

So great that the author would be coming to town, yes? There was only one snag: all the tickets for his three events were gone on the first day of distribution, even though it was announced only via Twitter.

To accommodate the demand from everyone not on the Twitter feed, the festival staff increased the venue capacity and announced that they would release a ‘VERY VERY LIMITED number of tickets’ on Sept 26.

When I read this on the festival website, I began to see visions of queues. There’s one thing I haven’t mentioned about Mr Gaiman. Yes, he’s versatile, yes, he’s prolific and yes, he wins all those awards but what he really is, is a queue-maker (like a rain dancer but more horizontal).

The mere hint of his presence is enough to draw previously unconnected people out of the great mass of humanity and assemble them into a line. This happens all over the world – at literary festivals, bookstores and conventions – and I knew it would happen on Sept 26 at The Arts House because of the promise of tickets to see He Who Brings Queues.

The question was, how early would I have to turn up before the distribution time of 11am if I wanted to be sure of a pair of those VERY VERY LIMITED tickets?

It didn’t help that I work late and go to bed even later. But after crashing out for five hours and hitting the alarm clock’s snooze button for half an hour more, I stumbled into the kitchen at 7.30am.

My mother was there. ‘You mean you haven’t gone to bed yet?’ she said.

Then again, she might not have been my mother. Since I’m technically not awake between the hours of 6am and 9am, anyone I see then must be a figment of my imagination.

The taxi-driver looked pretty real though. I asked him to take me to Parliament House – near The Arts House but not in the area closed off for the F1 races that weekend. He frowned. I held my breath: was he going to refuse to go anywhere near the barricades?

It turned out that he just didn’t know where Parliament was.

But between the both of us, we got there. It was almost 9.30am – one and a half hours before the box office’s opening time – when I made my way past the F1 barricades and security personnel to The Arts House.

Two girls in short shorts were approaching from the venue. ‘…queuing since 6.40!’ said one of them as she went past.

I stopped. What if the line had reached such epic proportions that those two had given up and were on their way home?

I kept on walking. Even if I didn’t get the tickets, there might be a story in it. To be a writer is to slink up to life with a scavenger’s optimism.

The queue began at the locked front door and snaked out of the portico. Since each person was eligible for two tickets, the line was actually twice as long as it appeared. Was I too late?

I left my bag at the end of the queue to stake a spot in that fine Singaporean tradition of chopeing and went to talk to the people up ahead. The first person in the line said she’d been there since 6.40am. She beamed at me, her smile and light green tudung unwilted despite the heat. No. 2 clocked in ‘just past 7’ and No.3 and No.4, at around 7.30am.

Humbled, I went back to do some proper queuing. I’d brought two books but a conversation was starting up in my neck of the queue, mainly about the tickets. One woman confessed that she was hoping that the F1 road closures would deter fans from coming. I had the same thought; devious minds think alike.

To pass the time, we reminisced about other occasions when Singaporeans had gotten into line and stayed there for hours. But the girl behind me was from the Philippines and knew nothing about the Great Hello Kitty Scuffles of 2000.

In the January of that year, McDonald’s launched a promotion offering customers Hello Kitty toys with each Extra Value Meal they bought. Lines sprang up, tempers grew short, fights broke out and people were arrested. At one outlet, a glass door broke against the press of the crowd, injuring seven.

You can think of a queue as a social microcosm. In one line, you’re told what a society values, how much it wants it, how much trust there is in the system to provide it and whether people will resist the urge to jump the queue.

Almost 10 years on from the Hello Kitty Scuffles, how was Singapore doing? The line outside The Arts House that Saturday morning presented the country as orderly and international.

But the nature of the queue might have had something to do with the fact that it was there for Neil Gaiman. For a start, more people were reading than fiddling with their phones.



Still, there was no guarantee of what would happen if there weren’t enough tickets to go round. Some of the books people were holding looked pretty heavy. If the situation turned Hello Kitty, things could get ugly.

For now though, everything was calm. A trio went past, wheeling a trolley of equipment – probably for an F1 event. They seemed surprised to see so many people sitting in a line on the ground and reading.

10.05am – an hour to go and the sun was weighing down. Anybody want to share life stories?

So I talked to the five people around me in the queue. There was Kim, a student from the Philippines, Xuemei, a civil servant, Eldred, who draws, Wanida, who works for Apple and had come with a laptop, and Pat, who handles administration at a polytechnic, has five children aged three to 14, takes all of them on holiday, teaches women to give birth and is on the fast track to a medal.

She said that if she got a pair of tickets, one would go to her 13-year-old son, also a fan.

‘And where is he?’ I asked.

‘At home,’ she said and laughed. ‘Sleeping.’

There was a collective intake of breath as we considered the likelihood of our mothers queuing up for Neil Gaiman tickets for us while we stayed in bed.

‘I don’t think my mother even knows who Neil Gaiman is,’ said one woman who will remain anonymous in case her parents read this.

On his blog, he describes himself as the ‘guy you’ve never heard of’ who ‘gets more people in his book-signing line than anyone else’. This line has been known to stretch to about 600 people.

Our queue was nothing along those lines but everyone in it was competing for a fixed number of tickets. The conversation flowed, snagging at times on the uneasiness underneath.

Two people ahead in the line stood up and shook out their groundsheet. ‘Do you think they’re giving up?’ someone asked hopefully.

‘They came with a mat – they’re not going to give up,’ someone else growled.

Sure enough, the two rearranged their sheet and sat down again.

I looked away to see an old man staring at us. A cap of flashing pink sequins on his head, he shuffled past, a smile crinkling his face. ‘Ni men hao!’ he bellowed. Hello to you too. Perhaps it takes a lunatic to acknowledge a whole line of them.

People were still arriving. They would do a double-take at the queue which now stretched along the front of the building and onto the grass at the other side. Then they would go to the end, their shoulders slumped.

11am – my queue buddies and I stood up. We paused only to get each other’s contact details then faced forward as if we could see through the bodies to the number of tickets left. Were people still talking? I don’t know; I couldn’t hear them any more.

And then I finally reached the table where the festival staff were handing out tickets from three dwindling stacks.

Maybe I was sunstroked out but I couldn’t quite believe it, not even when two tickets were in my (newly tanned) hand. The five who queued with me had their tickets too and all of us had picked the same event. ‘Let’s meet for lunch or something before that,’ said Kim.

Outside the portico, a burly, long-haired man in black was taking a photo of his tickets.

But not everyone was happy – about 20 people had to go away empty-handed. Amid the cries of disappointment, one young girl looked stricken. A few people exchanged words with the festival staff but as far as I could tell, they were polite. Perhaps we’d come out from under the shadow of Hello Kitty.

I couldn’t leave without seeing how it all ended because the conditions that give rise to a queue are also those that create a community: people with the same purpose come together, demanding attention through presence. But there is also envy of those ahead and a gnawing anxiety that you won’t get what they will. The factors are always the same yet the manner in which similar desires are balanced against competing interests is different each time.

So I stayed because I wanted to see what kind of queue, what kind of community we’d made. And when I left at last, I took more than tickets away with me.

When I got home, I headed straight for the shower, relieved that for this at least, I didn’t have to line up.

Because you know what I said about queues and community-building and all that stuff? When it comes to the bathroom, none of it applies.

Egmont and the seventh


20th October 2009


A concert again after so long away and the NY Philharmonic after even longer. This time, Beethoven was the one singing in the dark.

The brass was a little...startling but the strings alone were worth the (nosebleed) price of admission.

I'd have heard more of them if the audience hadn't been so quick to clap. An orchestra doesn't stop playing even after the fingers lift away and the bow leaves the strings. When the sound is gone, sound remains - an echo encore drifting in a space where no wind blows.

But applause slaps the sound away.

Wait, won't you wait a little longer? Only the first of the snowflake sound has fallen on my tongue.

Undead 101


13th October 2009


So I was working on a column today and for reasons I'll make up later, it suddenly veered off into the subject of zombie killing.

At which point I realised that I had no idea what to do if a zombie came through the door. I didn't think that the Internet, wide and Wikified as it is, would have any information on it either but I typed "zombie kill" into the Google search field anyway and hit enter.

Oh me of little faith.

Pages and pages of information. Whether the suggestions have been field-tested is another question but at least they're there - with brain diagrams and everything. There's even a game where you can kill zombie squirrels.

I wonder if virtual undead rodents come under the SPCA's purview.

Paths we have not known


21st September 2009


Sometimes, it is the road more travelled that haunts us.

'Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension...

'Some of my married friends may envy my freedom in an abstract, daydreamy way, misremembering single life as some sort of pornographic smorgasbord, but I doubt many of them would actually choose to trade places with me. Although they may miss the thrill of sexual novelty, absolutely nobody misses dating...

'Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.'

- Tim Kreider, The New York Times' Happy Days blog


Then there is novelist Guy Gavriel Kay, writing in Tigana: 'There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.'

A comforting belief but one which - and I know this from long years of trying - takes work.

For all you kids who want to be writers...


4th September 2009


...I should disclose the amount on my latest royalty cheque. After a year of sales, the figure came to a grand total of $3.95.

Well, that should give the taxman heart palpitations.

So...time for a commercial?

Time for a commercial.

"Singapore. Malaysia. Brunei. We share a region and now we share a book. Punched Lines: Sit-down Comedy From Southeast Asia - already at a bookshop near you!"*

I wrote this in 2001: "In a country with four major races, English has become the neutral linguistic ground and that neutrality has crystallised in the form of the acronym. Other countries use it too of course - for companies, transport systems, rebel groups - but Singapore is umbilically attached to it. Hospitals, schools, banks, expressways - we are born in collections of letters to travel on them, study in them and give them our money."

It's still true. And thanks to Punched Lines, I'll be giving my bank $3.95 this year.






Let's shoot for $4.95 in 2010!




*Assuming that you're near Select Books in Tanglin Shopping Centre.

The universe next door


23rd August 2009



From Ingram my American neighbour, I learned that the bathroom really is a dangerous place.

In Kyoto to research the Japanese legal system, he once went to a public bath. He knew the ritual involved – shower before you get into the bath – but he wasn’t expecting what would happen with the two old men in it.

They’d never seen a naked Jew before and proceeded to ask very probing questions. At his most vulnerable and unable to speak much Japanese, he did his best to explain circumcision anyway. The old men were astonished and kept on asking questions. He soldiered on with the explanations and emerged from his bath with his composure a little dented but his sense of humour intact.

From Klaus my German neighbour, I learned how to open jars with stubborn caps. Slip the point of a knife into that thin space between the edge of the lid and the jar and lever up. Once you hear a pop, the lid will come off without a fuss.

Open a jar for someone and he’ll have an open jar. Teach him how to open it and he’ll be able to eat from jars for life.

The jar Klaus taught me to open was one of rotkohl, pickled red cabbage from Germany. He taught me that rotkohl is better hot than cold.

A retired maths teacher, he spends half the year in Japan with his Japanese wife and the other half in Hamburg. They met at an English school in South Africa.

But he also spent time studying the language in Malta – ‘it’s cheaper than in England’ – and on the Maltese island of Gozo, he met an old man with a thousand books.

When he was young, the man left for the United States to look for work. Once he found it, he crammed it into his life, working for as much as 20 hours a day. He had no time for the books he loved so he collected them, intending to read them when he retired.

In time he grew rich and when he retired, he had a printing company to pass on to his children. He moved back to Malta, built a splendid house and began to read.

All had gone according to plan except for one thing: he was losing his sight.

My neighbour spoke of him as an old man in a room full of books he would never be able to read. He told Klaus, don’t wait.

A year later, Klaus retired. He was 49. Since then, he’s spent his time travelling and learning languages: first English because he wanted to read more about politics and now, Japanese.

His wife Kimiko said he could spend as much as 10 hours a day studying. They don’t have much but, as Klaus said, 'we don’t need much'.

From Maripass, I learned that when a Mexican says a chilli pepper is harmless, to take her words with a sea of salt.

And if the same Mexican tells you a chilli is hot, there’s no need to check for yourself unless you’re interested in near-death experiences.

From Lars the guitar-strumming Swede and Peter the Norwegian, who cross-dressed as a fairy one Halloween, I learned that the image of Scandinavians as a sober, reserved folk does not give the entire picture.

From Kim the South Korean, I learned that you can play Celine Dion on a bamboo flute.

Whenever he started warming up, I would open my door to hear him better. After he was done with the traditional tunes, he would move on to the Titanic song.

He introduced himself as a businessman when we first met but after we got to know each other better, he told me that he was a political refugee.

His exact words: ‘I write on Internet, I hate (name of politician). And police catch me.’

My first thought: is this guy for real?

He spoke little English and less Japanese and I didn’t know Korean so conversations took time. But when he showed me pictures of his wife and children, the look on his face said enough.

After a few months in Japan, he told me that his legal adviser in Seoul had called to say that it was safe to return.

I still don’t know what to make of his political dissident story but I can believe in the shochu he shared, in his parting gifts of pine nuts and ginseng snacks, and in his music – even the Celine Dion.

From the family of northern Chinese whose names I never found out, I learned nothing but received handmade dumplings, so many I ran out of vinegar.

From the Australian who might have been called Becky, I learned that when the Internet disappeared, I should go into the mysterious room under the stairs, insinuate my hands into the nest of wires, pull out all the plugs I could find then put them back.

On occasions like this, residents, including those I’d never met, would pour out of their rooms saying, ‘Is it just my computer or…?’

Then as we stood around, waiting to be connected, that would be the time to start learning about the neighbours, and from them.

Summer faces

18th August 2009





If you say hello, they'll say hello back. It's all rather friendly at the Kyoto Botanical Garden.

Listening to a people hear


13th August 2009


This tells you a bit more about cicadas than the published version.

And for those interested in finding out more about Japanese onomatopoeia, here are the grammatical terms:

- 擬声語 giseigo or 擬音語 giongo (words that mimic sounds that actually exist in nature)

- 擬態語 gitaigo (mimetic words used to convey actions, non-auditory senses, bodily feelings or mental states. The last two are sometimes classified as 擬情語　gijougo).

...


If dogs go woof and pigs go oink, what do cicadas say?

Now that it’s summer, they sing through the long days and short nights but I still don’t have the exact word to pin down their chirring.

When muffled by a closed window, the sound falls on the ear like a maracas chorus but when heard under trees shrilling with cicadas, it bares jagged teeth. Listen long enough and it could saw your head in half.

If dogs in Japan go wan-wan and pigs go buu-buu, what do cicadas say?

It depends partly on the species. There’s jiii-jiii, miii-miii while another kind has been named tsuku tsuku boushi because that is, apparently, what part of its call sounds like.

Many races have listened to the world and tried to capture its sounds as exactly as possible. Wan-wan is not one of a kind when there’s woof woof, ouaf ouaf and arf arf.

But Japanese is particularly rich in soundtracks of things that have none – things such as sight, sensation and emotion. These ideas in sound cut across the usual categories so an omelette, a towel and a balloon can all be fuwa-fuwa if soft and light.

The lines between mental and physical states, between animate and inanimate, disappear. A messy room, like a cluttered mind, is gocha-gocha and the mysterious residue on the dining table that left your fingers sticky is as beta-beta as a couple plastered all over each other.

These words pitch a narrative out of a monotone. They are the words you reach for when telling a story, when you want people to know how ira-ira irritated you became when waiting for a friend for over an hour.

At first, you waited with nothing much on your mind, bon yari staring off into space. But then a quarter of an hour became half and half became a full hour. Then thunder began to goro-goro and the rain raged down zaa-zaa.

Splashing to the nearest bus-stop, you called your friend, only to learn that she was still at home. You snapped at her to stop guzu-guzu dawdling and sassa get there at once. But before she could, a car zoomed by, straight through a puddle, and left you bisshori drenched.

By the time your friend arrived, you were kan-kan furious.

Comics and novels make full use of this aural drama of clashing consonants and colluding vowels because they too are in the business of telling stories.

But as a situation becomes more formal, these words often end up being shoved behind curtains and into closets. Chances are, you won’t find them in a thesis because they smell too human and we like to pretend that academic papers are written, not by people, but by brains on legs.

To some ears, the repetition in words like jiro-jiro (to stare) and kira-kira (twinkle) sounds childish.

Childlike may be a better term. This is language wide-eyed and inventive, filling its tiny fists with clay. It clumps syllables together, moulding sound as it tries to show you that thing, you know, that thing that goes hurdurdurdur.

But clay hardens and the child’s world grows focused by growing narrower. The more choices he makes, the more he has to give up because to go through one door is to close five.

The world of Japanese idea sounds has matured beyond the days when it still sparkled pika-pika new. That there are dictionaries cataloguing these sounds suggests that they are no longer instinctive and obvious, even to native speakers.

For foreigners, they represent another set of lists to be remembered and puzzled over. It’s easy to see how thunder and heavy things rolling down would both go goro-goro but why would someone lazing at home be assigned the same sound?

And what’s the connection between leaves drifting hara-hara to the ground and someone being hara-hara nervous?

Yet in the process of linking experiences I share with sounds I don’t, memories are accreting, making the words easier to see and recall.

Waku-waku: a state of excitement or happy anticipation.

My waku-waku: an orchestra tuning up, setting off flares of sound in the dark of a concert hall.

Kichin-to: Neatly, precisely, properly.

My kichin-to: Approval when I see something done neatly, precisely and properly. Tinged with the laughing despair that comes from knowing my folds, whether in paper or cloth, will never be as crisp or aligned as the Japanese ideal and that my knots will always have the unsteadiness of the yoro-yoro drunkard.

These ideas in sound ask you to use your ears in a different way: not just listening to the thing described but also to how a people have decided to hear it and in going through the door they picked over others, find a world you might have missed on your own.

So though the cicadas outside my window seem to be saying schwiiiing, I shall try hearing as the Japanese hear and see if that takes me to the summers they’ve stored on the other side of the door that swings open on cicada trills: Miiiiin. Miiiiin. Miiiiin.


...

感謝コーナー：Many thanks to Chizu-san and Iuchi-kun for help with cicadas.

Columns mean legwork


6th August 2009


Today was a big day for my legs. First, I visited a cemetery (up a hill!), then a museum (up a hill!) and a shrine (deep inside a forest!), where I watched a Shinto rite (standing for over an hour!).

I have to walk to the supermarket tomorrow. I hope nothing falls off on the way.

If you don't recognise it, it's probably where you were born


5th August 2009


So you spend some time away from Singapore - about three months should do it - and when you return, a building you know will have vanished while another you don't will have appeared. Or a tunnel will gape where a library used to be.

On one occasion, I returned to find a water-slide amusement park had gone. I never visited Big Splash but as a child, I passed it on my way to school almost every day. So - Big Splash gone while down the road, a big wheel had popped up.

I've no complaints about the Singapore Flyer but I didn't pass it every weekday morning for years, wondering if I'd forgotten anything when I packed my schoolbag.

For a spot-on picture of this and what else it means to be Singaporean, take a look at Troy Chin's The Resident Tourist. Click before he moves, gets upgraded or turns into a shopping centre.

You were saying?


18th June 2006


I told myself it was just cloth. I told myself they were just colours. I told myself it was crazy to spend so much on a scarf, however it had been dyed.

I may have told myself other things.

I'm not sure because by that time, I'd stopped listening.












If you're interested, they take commissions, I think.

Bear with me


15th June 2009


More than two years after getting my present camera, I have finally worked out how to take black and white photos with it.

I'd forgotten the rainbow in those two colours. So I'm afraid there's going to be a deluge of black and white shots for the next little while. Bear with me.

These two are from Heian Jingu, a shrine usually associated with colour.





The bridge that ends the garden tour for most visitors.







Another bridge but, this time, a dragon.

Chotto Edo made (Just stepping out to Edo)


10th June 2009


I went to Edo, or Tokyo as I must remember to call it, on business for a few days. I rode on a lot of trains.






Though perhaps not this one.

What did I see? People, lots of people, many of them in black suits.

Here is a picture of crowds at Shinbashi.











Here is a picture of crowds at Nihonbashi.






How does anyone find anyone else in this mess, I wondered. Perhaps it starts with a cup of coffee...






...then an outing to the theatre...




...and a spot of Edo-mae sushi after the show.






Then the next thing you know, there's another (maybe bigger) pair of footwear in your foyer...






...and your laundry load has increased exponentially.






It could happen. After all, anything can happen in a country where the prime minister is a mini star. And I know he is because the map outside the station closest to him told me so.

A rainy day in Gion


5th June 2009


My umbrella has declared that the rainy season of tsuyu has reached Kyoto. It issued this statement after a wet day in Gion, where we inspected the rain-slick road.




Still, it wasn't as grey a day as my camera's black-and-white function would have you believe.





















And there was colour at the cafe we went to check out.




There were other things inside. Like quality sugar sent out by the kitchen staff.
















I didn't order this but I helped to finish it.


And a customer at the next table also brought quality sweet.
















This is Akari-chan. When she wasn't in the sling, she sat in her mother's big black bag and threw things to the floor. Not in a tantrum but just because it was interesting to see other people scramble.

Perhaps this is why the sky lets rain fall.

Reporting live from the Ark


3rd June 2009


However I look at it, it just doesn’t seem like a pyjama event, even if I wear the black and white ones.

One of the best things about a mostly cultural column is that it can be done in jeans and, if working from home, in pyjamas.

But there isn’t much call for pyjamas when I’m assigned to report on part of President S R Nathan’s visit to Japan earlier this month.

Still, some of the drill is the same. When covering a festival, you go well in advance if you want a good view. And it’s no different with a dignitary’s visit. It’s like hitting a succession of airport departure lounges in a day: rush and wait, rush and wait, rush and wait and wait.

Going early lets you scope out routes, check camera angles, interview staff for background information and, sometimes, do a spot of advertising.

While waiting for the Singapore delegation to arrive at the Cenotaph in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a Japanese journalist beside me falls into conversation with visiting schoolchildren.

He tells them which newspaper he belongs to. ‘Do you kids subscribe?’

‘My family does,’ a little girl says.

‘Great – thanks for your patronage.’

After watching Mr Nathan lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, we dash off to take up our positions in the Peace Memorial Museum. But we can stay only long enough to see the delegation tour the first floor before we hurtle to the next stop, a room at the other end of the building.

We charge across an open expanse of concrete, startling the shoals of schoolchildren darting about.

An official sprinting ahead of the Singapore journalists reaches the other side first. He yanks open a door to reveal...a stairwell. Someone behind me groans. Then we are charging upstairs. But more slowly.

Ranks of Japanese media are already there and we squeeze in. About 20 people, all wearing black except for the occasional rebel in grey, cluster around the edge of the room. Hardly anyone talks; we wait in the silence of the suits.

Perhaps it’s because we’re indoors. No one seems to have any qualms about chatting when under an open sky.

Earlier at the Cenotaph, a Japanese reporter sidled up to ask the Singaporean journalists how the president’s last name should be pronounced. We told him.

His brow furrowed. Neither the ‘th’ nor ‘ern’ sound are found in Japanese and then there’s the question of whether to use a rising or falling tone. A debate broke out: NAA-zahn or Naa-ZAHN?

The journalist who asked was carrying a thick sheaf of material – event information, maps, the president’s bio data. Everywhere, the Japanese attention to detail.

Watching the hosts bustle about, one visiting Singaporean says: ‘Because it’s Japan, I can relax.’

Not that much relaxing seems to be going on, especially among the younger officials on both sides. Their faces generally appear in one of two settings: tired or tense. They look as if they have to load the animals of the earth onto Noah’s Ark but lightning is already flashing and the headcount is different every time and the lemurs keep escaping and…and…

The ones who manage to keep cracking jokes deserve a special award.

But by the last full day of the trip, the tension is ebbing away. Perhaps because the finish line is in sight or because we’ve arrived on the Hiroshima island of Miyajima and the sea air is working but we forget for a while that we’re in suits.

On our walk in from the harbour, we take photos of the scenery, each other, the deer wandering about.




One official moves as if mesmerised to a roadside stall. His gaze fixed on the oysters sizzling on a grill, he mutters something about not having had breakfast and digs out his wallet. Which is the signal for the others to stop and buy oysters on sticky rice.

‘Totally tourist mode,’ says another official.

Things are looking up on the Ark: the animals – the elephants, the giraffes and the spiny anteaters – are safely stowed in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front and if the lemurs haven’t made it back on time, well, that’s just too bad.

But when we reach the shrine the delegation is scheduled to visit, it’s back to business and a sober discussion about ramps.

The media area at the shrine is marked out with knee-high wooden barricades; every place has a different way of telling journalists where to stand.

At the Sento Gosho imperial gardens the day before, white raffia was pinned down on the gravel to form a discreet triangle. We stepped inside and waited.

After some time, an official told us to move closer to the entrance. Perhaps we made the scenery look untidy in our old spot. Whatever the reason, we got a new triangle at our feet.

When we arrived in the media van earlier, two men with wide bristly brooms were slowly sweeping the sea of gravel spilling across the entrance. We hopped out and crossed to the gardens on the other side.

An official came running up – could we please walk on the perimeter? Chastened, we moved to the side. Another man rushed out with a broom to restore the gravel we’d churned up.

Waiting in the barely visible triangle, I stared out over the composed grey plain. Would the visitors notice the work put in? Could they, given that the convoy vehicles would just plough straight into the gravel?

But this may be what it means to serve. Much has been said about service though most people seem to have a better idea of how they would like to be treated than of what they are prepared to do.

Perhaps real service is to know that what you do will remain invisible to most but to do it anyway as if it will be the first thing seen.

Remembering the men methodically soothing a gravel sea for a foreign Ark, I feel a sudden urge to seize a wide broom and find my own patch to smooth.

I wonder if I can do it in pyjamas.

New arrows


6th May 2009


Before the feathers get banged up in practice, I took a few photos.


The red backdrop is a drawstring bag that the arrow-maker threw in; the design shows a mounted archer taking aim.











Aren't they lovely?

Spring is...














...enjoying the flowers that other people look after.

Saucer across the universe in style


9th April 2009






Item: Traditional Japanese flying saucer. Made almost entirely of paper, string and bamboo - organic, biodegradable materials that won't alarm natives on technologically backward planets. Track record in reaching warp speeds spotty but manufacturer claims it's about the journey, not how many light years you take to get there. Optional extras include karaoke-cum-tea-ceremony room and hot springs bath. See your dealer for details.

They're coming through the walls, they're coming through the walls...


1st April 2009


There's a Japanese saying that all men are wolves. I spotted one in Gion, the most well-known geisha area in Kyoto. I'm not sure this is what Neil Gaiman had in mind but it was a wolf in the wall.

From the bottom dark, resurrection


24th March 2009


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It was 1985, the year when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan first met, the year when Nelson Mandela spurned a conditional offer of freedom from the South African government, the year when Microsoft released Windows 1.0.

It was also the year when it really meant something to be a fan of the Hanshin Tigers. For the first time in 21 years, the team emerged champions of the Central League, one of the two professional baseball leagues in Japan.

Celebrations reached a fever pitch in the western city of Osaka and what happened next has become legend in this baseball-mad country.

The story goes that ecstatic fans gathered at the Ebisu bridge in downtown Osaka and began chanting the names of the team members. With each name called out, a supporter who resembled the player jumped into the Dotonbori river beneath.

But the team’s star slugger, American Randy Bass, proved problematic. Then someone spied the Colonel Sanders statue outside a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. The mascot was bearded and Western; so was Bass. Good enough. The statue was uprooted and thrown into the river.

As with many legends, variations have crept in over the years of retelling. Another version says that the crowd was only giving the statue a victory toss in the air. They tossed too enthusiastically and it flew into the river. However it happened, the Colonel plunged into the murky depths of the Dotonbori and stayed there.

The Hanshin Tigers went on that year to win the Japan Series, the height of professional baseball in the country.

But that glory has eluded the team ever since. And in the 24 years since the Colonel sunk to the riverbed, the Hanshin Tigers have plummeted to the bottom of their league 10 times.

Some people put this down to the “Curse of Colonel Sanders” and though attempts were made to recover the statue over the years, all failed.

Then the city of Osaka decided to improve the walkways beside the Dotonbori river, which meant sending divers to check for unexploded bombs from World War II.

They didn’t find any but did turn up a barrel-like object. Arrangements were made to remove it and on March 10, at about 4pm, a crane on a salvage barge lifted it clear of the waters.

‘It looks like a corpse,’ said watching construction workers but the foreman, a Hanshin Tigers fan, cried: ‘It’s the Colonel!’

Strictly speaking, it was only half of the Colonel: the top part of the 26kg plastic statue was found about 200m away from the site of the historic toss.

The next morning, the search resumed under the eyes of workers, residents and the media. About 10 minutes after the statue’s right hand was found, a voice exploded from a speaker on the barge: ‘It’s the lower body. There’s no mistake about it.’

The onlookers cheered.

The years – almost a quarter of a century – in the sludge of the Dotonbori had not been kind to the Colonel. Not only was it badly stained, it had been broken into bits. Even though the two halves of the statue have been rejoined, it is still missing its feet and left hand. And its iconic black-rim glasses are gone too.

Not that any of this matters to Hanshin Tigers fans, who hope that now that the figure has been recalled to life, the team’s fortunes will also be resurrected.

The team management seems to be thinking along the same lines. On the day that the bottom half of the Colonel was pulled out of the river, Hanshin Tigers president Nobuo Minami told the manager of Koshien Stadium – the team’s home base in neighbouring Hyogo Prefecture – to ask for the statue.

‘The Colonel Sanders figure is a piece of Tigers history,’ said Mr Minami, adding that he would like it displayed in the museum being added to the team’s stadium.

Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, which had thought about moving the statue to its franchise in the stadium, responded positively. ‘It’s an undeserved honour,’ it said. ‘If the Tigers make a formal request, we will certainly consider it.’

Still, the real question to thousands of baseball fans is not the statue’s future but that of the Hanshin Tigers. The Colonel may have been rescued from its river prison but will the team be able to break out of its Bastille of failure?

Defeat constrains movement and with each loss, the muddled mind is forced into a smaller and smaller cell until walls are all it knows. Winning calls for breadth of vision, a view of the future so wide and vivid it becomes the present.

But that present may take time to come and when you’re pitched to the bottom, it may be hard to see past the dark. It’s even harder if, like the Colonel, you’ve lost your glasses.

Yet when the statue was pulled out of the mud, though its paintwork had disappeared into a mottled coat of grey, its smile had not dimmed. It wasn’t the face of someone who curses misfortune or those responsible for it. Whether or not the Hanshin Tigers retake the No.1 spot, we already have a winner.

...


(Go say hello to the Colonel.)

The fox bride's wedding procession


21st March 2009


Today was the second-last day of the Hanatouro light-up in Higashiyama, the eastern hills, and as expected, it was packed.

But the event is one of my favourites in the Kyoto calendar so I went anyway. Exhibitions and performances are dotted along the 4.6km route and this year, I caught one of the stranger activities.

At 7pm and 8.15pm, a curious procession set out from the imposing gate of Chion-in temple. Preceded by attendants bearing lanterns, a woman wearing a fox mask and wedding clothes travelled slowly by rickshaw through the sea of visitors.

It was the wedding procession of a fox bride (kitsune no yome iri junkou; 狐の嫁入り巡行). If I understand the event pamphlet correctly, it's an old practice done for luck.

But kitsune no yome iri also refers to the drizzling rain that falls in bright sunshine - apparently so named because of a belief that a fox bride was going to meet her husband and showers were needed to shield her from human eyes.

The procession I saw today moved in complete silence except for an alternating accompaniment of a bell rung once, then wooden clappers cracking like a thunderbolt. Ring, crack, ring, crack - and a fox woman with wedding white over her head and around her passing through.

When I looked over the photos I'd taken, it seemed as if she was materialising out of thin air. The photos wouldn't have looked that way if I had a camera that could take moving objects at night.

But I prefer my flawed, eerie version.

Visit of the Lake People


5th March 2009


Recently, old friends whom I shall call the Lake People visited Kyoto. Since I don't have an account at a photo-sharing website, I'll park the photos here for a few days.














Kitano Tenmangu shrine, home to about 2,000 plum trees.


























At Misoguigawa in Pontocho. Sitting down to dinner together for the first time in 10 years.























Heian Jingu, where the plum trees are also in bloom.












Demonstration of how to put on a juuni hitoe at Shimogamo Shrine.





Sanzen-in temple, just before closing time. Monks busy with rakes and vacuum cleaners.











Making traditional Japanese sweets (wagashi) at Kanshundo because partings should always be accompanied by cake.

The two of us on your bike


28th February 2009


One of the brands of tea that I buy ran a haiku contest and includes the winning entries in each box.

So in a box of 20 teabags, 20 poems. This morning - afternoon, really - I tore open a foil packet, took out the teabag and read on the other side of the packet:

二人乗り
重いと言わない
君の汗


Freely translated:

The two of us on your bike
but of the weight behind
your sweat, you say
nothing.


A winner from a junior high school girl.

In the spirit of the day


14th February 2008


A diver does not abandon
a seaweed-filled bay...
Will you then turn away
from this floating, sea-foam body
that waits for your gathering hands?

- Ono no Komachi (834?-?)


From The Ink Dark Moon, translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani

Fura-fura


12th February 2008


I haven't been to the dojo for a month because I've been ill with one thing or another so I decided to make the effort to train today. I wasn't exactly feeling well this afternoon - feverish and a dodgy throat - but I was feeling better. And kyudo isn't exactly an aerobic martial art. Should be fine, I thought.

It turned out to be not such a great idea. Just firing two shots pushed the world into slow spin. Fura-fura, the Japanese call it - dizzywizzywhirlyswirly.

But it's Kawaguchi-sensei's birthday this Sunday and there was a presentation of a bouquet of flowers - all the students lined up in two rows, sitting with their feet under them in the formal seiza position - and a small party.

Various people contributed snacks and Murata-san bought a large box of doughnuts (he went round collecting 200 yen for them and the flowers; I hope he got all his money back).

Apparently, he ended up buying the doughnuts because he'd lost to Sakai-san in a match on Sunday. If she'd lost, she'd have been the one to make the trip to Mister Donut.

'I lost by one arrow,' said Murata-san. He drew himself up. 'But it's okay. I don't mind.'

It was a good idea to go to the dojo today, after all.

Spot the unicorn


25th January 2009


What is this life, asked a poet, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

So I’ve been staring at a beer can. Specifically, a can from Kirin, a major brewery in Japan.

I’ve been puzzling over its logo of a unicorn – the kirin – ever since a teacher told me that hidden inside is the word itself.

It’s written in the katakana script, one of three used in modern Japanese, and I’ve been turning the can this way and that, trying to find the word. Is it spelled out through the angle of the unicorn’s neck and the flow of its mane? Or in the arrangement of its legs and tail?

For those tempted to try this riddle, here’s a clue: look in the mane and tail and forget about strange angles.

If you don’t have the patience – or a magnifying glass – you could just enjoy the logo. It’s a handsome creature, with a black-scaled body and a full golden mane that doubles up as a beard.

This kirin owes something to the Chinese unicorn, or the qilin (written with the same characters but pronounced differently). Accounts vary but the qilin is said to have the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, the head of a lion and the hooves of a horse. (Opinion splits over the hooves; some think they’re cloven.)

The qilin is nothing like the pearly, incandescent unicorns of the West; it’s covered with green scales. If you met such a chimera and ran away screaming, no one would think the worse of you.

But there’s really no need to run. The qilin is apparently so gentle, it pays great attention to where it places its hooves so as not to crush living things underfoot.

Its name is a combination of qi, the male unicorn, and lin, the female. It is said that the latter has no horn although this tells you less about the qilin than it does about the people writing about it – and how they feel about females with sharp objects.

Unicorns, being generally well-mannered, will not laugh when you tell them about this differentiation. And the females will, in a well-mannered fashion, not draw attention to the horns on their foreheads.

That single horn is something the qilin has in common with its Western cousin, which looks more like a horse, albeit one with a goat’s beard, lion’s tail and split hooves.

It is an image of purity and beauty – but where there is beauty, too often there is also the desire to acquire.

The traditional way of catching a unicorn is to set a young woman as bait. The idea is that unicorns are drawn to virgins and on finding one, will lay their head in her lap and go to sleep.

Though this manoeuvre has been described in medieval lore and any number of tapestries, it tells you less about unicorns than it does about the people writing about them – and how they feel about sleeping in virgins’ laps.

It is actually not that hard to catch a unicorn. Hunters will tell you different, of course, but they have reasons of their own for doing so, reasons that have mostly to do with their lack of a pension and medical benefits.

It is true that unicorns have horns (yes, yes, even the female ones) but they rarely use them for defence. It is also true that they are fast but no faster than a cheetah, say, or a shooting star. And besides, mankind has a history of overcoming speed.

So why have so few unicorns been captured, so few that most doubt they even exist? It is simple: they are not caught because they are not seen. Not invisible, just unnoticed.

Not possible, you say? Not possible for a creature at least as big as a deer, with a horn sticking out of its head, which may or may not look like a lion’s, to be ignored?

If you ask Joshua Bell, he may say otherwise. One weekday morning in 2007, the award-winning violinist busked for 43 minutes in a busy Washington subway station. His performance was organised by The Washington Post as an experiment in perception, priorities and public taste: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

For the seven commuters who stopped to watch for at least a minute, it did. But for the rest – over a thousand people – Bell and his Stradivari violin were either invisible or a nuisance competing with the phones in their hands and the headphones in their ears.

He made US$32.17, not counting the US$20 given by the one person who recognised him. A bit of a comedown for a performer who can command as much as US$1,000 a minute.

But when he watched the video of the experiment – it was taped secretly – just one thing puzzled him. Not the fact that he didn’t draw a crowd because it was, after all, a weekday morning and people were rushing to work.

What stumped him was “the number of people who don’t pay attention at all, as if I’m invisible. Because, you know what? I’m makin’ a lot of noise!”

Any unicorns present would not have been surprised. They know the human capacity to turn blind and deaf; they depend on it.

This capacity is refined as we grow older – as children, we are wide open. The tape of Bell’s subway performance shows that all the youngsters who went past tried to stop and watch. And that all of them were hurried away by their parents.

You could argue that this is just how children are and they would have done the same thing if it’d been a beginner on the bongo drums rather than a violin virtuoso.

Even so, there’s something to be said about a worldview that has time for both.

This is the real reason why virgins came to be used as unicorn bait. All the hunters needed was for somebody who could still see things as they were. This usually meant someone young enough to spot any passing unicorns and point them out to the hunters. Virginity was just a coincidence though it sounded much better if you were trying to raise your fees. And it made for nicer tapestries.

The difference between seeing as a child and as an adult is time: you know that you’re growing up when you feel like you never have any. So from the world that has robbed you of leisure, you withhold vision, hoarding your attention.

This seems all the more necessary in cities, where sounds and pictures rush in like harpies that will scratch out your eyes and scream you into deafness.

In self-defence, we blinker ourselves with tiny screens and stop up our ears with headphones.

But if we can teach ourselves not to see, we can teach ourselves to see.

I’ve been practising with a can of Kirin beer but you can start with something closer to hand.

You may, for instance, know someone who’s a little distant, a little unworldly, a little odd. And if you learn to see what’s there instead of seeing only what you expect to, you may find that you’ve known a unicorn all along.

What happens next is up to you. But at least one expert suggests that it would not be tactful to mention virgins.


...


Here's where you can find the Washington Post article, "Pearls before breakfast": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html









Hidden in the Kirin logo are the characters that spell out "unicorn" in the katakana script: キ (ki), り (ri) and ン (n).

When I was fifteen and worse


19th January 2009


When I was fifteen and worse, I wrote like I was icing a chandelier, dripping crystals from the bird's nest metal to shoot light every which way.

I am older now - and less caught up with dazzle.

A candle will do for a beacon and I stumble after, fumbling wicks and tallow to draw out a single stem of flicker bloom and leaf shadow.

But these hands remember chandeliers and, sometimes, they stray.

Nothing then but to bring them back to short words, shorter sentences. And from brevity, begin again.

Argerich at 5:56


16th January 2008


Woke up starving and with music ghosting through my head.

So I woke up with a cheese sandwich, soup and this: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoSvHdcCv0

初コラム (First column of the year)


12th January 2009


Columns: too much work
to write, too much work to read.
So let’s do haiku!

A poetic form -
seventeen syllables set
in five-seven-five.

Often forgotten
kireji, the ‘cutting word’:
Haiku’s bridge or stop.

Then there’s the kigo,
signpost word to the season.
A phrase will do too.

(Haiku is…complex.
Sometimes, the rules don’t apply.
Google for details.)

When the year is fresh
A possible season word
Hatsu, which means first.

The hatsu mode
First shrine visit of the year.
Crowds in kimono.

The hatsu yume
First dream you dream in the year.
Do you recall yours?

Good luck to dream of
Mount Fuji, a hawk and for
some reason, eggplant.

The hatsu genka
First quarrel of the new year.
My hairdresser won.

‘Make it really short’
I wanted to save money
Haircuts aren’t cheap here.

‘It’ll look terrible’
My hairdresser’s persuasive
She holds sharp objects.

I forgot one thing.
You know, the verses above -
they aren’t all haiku.

Five-seven-five but
no cutting or season words -
this form’s called senryu.

Perhaps too late but
let me rewrite the first verse
for accuracy.

Columns: too much work
to write, too much work to read.
So let’s do senryu!

Poems aren’t just for
poets or those in garrets
or people who rhyme.

When you have something
to say – and you know the times –
then make a poem.

So the iambic
pentameter fills you with
Stress? Try a senryu.

Remember: if you
can count to seven, you can
try writing senryu.

(And if you can count
to 21, you can play
blackjack. Just a note.)

January’s clear
but how long will the year stay
sharp and fresh for you?

Between yesterday’s
dishes and tomorrow’s bills
the rest all a blur.

These eyes encrusted.
But the sleep sand the days leave
can be rubbed away.

Just try the new, try
a poem and see the world
For the hatsu time.




Afterword: There's a joke buried in the blackjack verse but you have to count to see it.













Auspicious door ornament for the new year, Kibune village.

初声*


1st January 2009


The first day of the year and a man's voice woke me.

Someone outside, beyond my curtains, beyond sleep, called out to another man. 'Omedetou!' he said - the way you wish a friend a happy new year.

I fumbled for the clock behind my pillow. 8.26, it said. Omedetou.

Too early, I said and went back to sleep.




* Hatsu goe: first voice (of the year). There are a number of hatsu pairs in Japanese - hatsu yume, first dream, for instance - but first voice is not one of them.