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.

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.