So I was reading the paper this morning, and this piece caught my eye:

MOBILE BACKLASH: Pay phone cull hits disabled

The Asahi Shimbun(Newspaper/Press)

A junior high school boy, helped by his teacher, inserts a telephone card in a pay phone at his school in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward and calls home. His mother answers.``Curry,'' is all he says before hanging up. It is a code between the pair, meaning he's heading home from school.The boy at the School for the Mentally Challenged at Otsuka, attached to the University of Tsukuba, has difficulty talking, so such codes ease the process.The phone is indispensable to students-from kindergarten to senior high school-at the state-run school, but they stand to lose their lifeline if Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) goes ahead with its streamlining plan and removes it.NTT East and NTT West are removing 11 percent of their 680,000 pay phones this fiscal year, as the ubiquitous mobile phone makes them increasingly redundant. Their combined loss from the pay phone business was 34 billion yen in fiscal 2001.For a pay phone to be viable, it needs to net NTT at least 4,000 yen a month, but the school's phone has been averaging only 3,240 yen a month, leaving it primed for the cull.According to Motoshi Kanda, the school's vice principal, students usually start coming to school alone when they are in fifth or sixth grade.Teachers then advise children to call home after arriving and before leaving school to ensure their safety and to help them get to grips with simple everyday tasks.The pay phone is easy to handle and accepts telephone cards. Many parents do not want children to carry cash, fearing money could involve them in trouble. They feel similar fears over cellular phones, which can also be hard to use.Defending the need for a pay phone, PTA head Mihoko Kikuchi says: ``If we must let children carry cash, we must teach them its value and how to handle it. People may say they must at least be taught how to use money. They are right, but I hope they will understand even that is beyond some children.''An NTT East official says there will be no exceptions. ``We cannot say our removal work is proceeding smoothly, but we are making efforts to obtain understanding.''According to NTT West, it has also received requests for stays of execution from schools, social welfare facilities and clinics.A public relations official says the company will not eliminate pay phones ``without consent. We will try to leave the minimum necessary units, so we hope people will understand.''(IHT/Asahi: November 26,2002)(11/26)

…And my very first letter to the editor followed about 26 minutes later:

I'm writing in response to the Tuesday, November 26,

2002 article in the IHT, "Mobile Backlash: Pay Phone

Cull Hits Disabled".

I sympathize with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone

Corp., and understand their decision to remove the pay

phone from the School for the Mentally Challenged in

Otsuka. These are extremely difficult times, and the

company is losing a lot of money due to the popularity

of mobile phones, so a phone that is losing an average

of 760 yen per month clearly must go.

Perhaps the lack of revenue at this particular pay

phone can be attributed to the students using

single-word codes to let their parents know that they

are safe. Maybe NTT would like the students to

memorize longer codewords or phrases, to ensure a

higher charge per call, so the phone in this location

remains "viable".

I see in the article that NTT West has received

numerous requests to leave the phones in schools,

clinics and other facilities such as this one in

Otsuka. I also see that an NTT East official has said

that there will be "no exceptions". And, I hope that

the phone discussed in the article appears on the list

of "minimum necessary units" the company is planning

to leave in place.

It's a difficult decision for poor NTT, so I would

like to offer the company some help. I have discussed

this dilemma with my friends, and we think, through

careful budgeting, we can scrape together 761 yen per

month. I ask that NTT would be so kind as to add that

amount to my current NTT bill, and apply it to the

average monthly shortfall of the pay phone at the

School for the Mentally Challenged.

I ask NTT to allow these students to keep their very

"necessary unit", and I urge them to accept my offer,

so they don't have to lose a single yen in their

"efforts to obtain understanding".

Sincerely,

blah blah blah

I wonder if pissing off one of the biggest companies in the world is a good way to get deported? Let's find out…….

I wrote this awhile ago, and I can't think of anything new to write right now, so here it is....

A lot can happen in 80 years. Human ingenuity and technology changes the world every month, and things previously impossible are now not only possible, but commonplace. I can sit here in my apartment in Japan, type this letter without using correction fluid, and know that it will reach its destination in Canada in a flash, simply by pushing a button. I take this for granted, and I will be upset if it happens in seconds instead of microseconds. I consider it a chore to sit down with pen and paper, and actually write a letter or card; applying ink to stationery isn't efficient anymore. In fact, I avoid the surface mail system as much as possible, because the electronic style has ruined me for letter-writing. Life is fast, and time is precious - no time for the personal touch.

Every so often, I receive a letter in the mail - the surface mail. The envelope has a stamp on it, and there is a sticker with a nice sunset or beach scene on it, bearing the return address of the sender. Inside are folded pages; pages that I can hold in my hand and read. The pages tell me about the life of the sender, and of the lives of those the sender loves and cares about. The sentences are not the usual one or two line incomplete info-packets that I see on my computer screen every day - there are no cute abbreviations or ridiculous acronyms. The letters contain long, complete, patient sentences, and they tell me about my family. More importantly, they tell me that the sender cares enough about the family (including myself), to put forth what I consider to be extra work, to keep us all informed and together, despite the thousands of miles between us.

The sender is my grandmother, and I thank her for the personal touch.

A lot can happen in 80 years. Every one of us will see births, deaths, marriages, divorces, victories and failures - and we will usually see all of them in our own families. It's difficult to see this flow of up and down, and believe everything will be better tomorrow. It's even more difficult to somehow know this is the case. The trick is to keep everything in perspective, and it's a tough trick when we're inside it. When someone throws a rock off a cliff onto your head, and you have to get stitches, it's important to have someone around to tell you that it was only three stitches, and you're still walking around. In spite of the Looney Tunes / Acme nature of the accident, it really was just an accident, and those kinds of things happen every day, and we should accept this and go back to summer camp the next day. "This too shall pass" is one of the most important lessons we need, and that bit of advice about a small cut has grown into a general attitude about negative events in my life. It's important to note here that even though the lesson was about toughing it out and making it to the next day, it didn't preclude holding a small hand before the stitches, nor did it discount the curative properties of a hard candy or two after. It's about alternately propping up and stepping back, and knowing the perfect time for each.

The giver of advice and humbugs is my grandmother, and I thank her for helping us keep it all in perspective.

A lot can happen in 80 years. Three squares a day for that many years is over 87,000 meals - an awful lot to see to. Now consider that for a large portion of those years, there are 5 others to fill up, and on special days throughout each of those years, there are upwards of 3 times that many mouths. Call MIT to figure out the math - all I know is that it's a lot of food - "enough to sink a battleship", one might say. Perfect turkey, lumpless gravy, Yorkshire pudding, fruit and marshmallows in suspended animation in jello…and (shiver) turnip. (I'm really very sorry, but I still hate turnip. I will still wash it down with sparkling white grape juice, and I may even still pretend the juice is wine, and wish I could sit at the big table, just for old times' sake.). I always looked forward to special occasions, and the trip into Blenheim for those dinners are inextricably linked to them. It's nearly impossible to find turkey on this side of the world, and the sensory memories of those meals keep me going when I'm eating rice on Boxing Day.

I have yet to find pickles that have achieved that particular shade of turquoise. I can't make an egg salad sandwich that tastes any better than one served on a paper towel with a big glass of milk. I swear, the only place I have ever seen Winnie the Pooh cereal is on the top shelf in the kitchen on Nichol's Drive. And, I've become aware that most of the world is stuck on this 'soft-boiled' description, for what is clearly and logically a dish called 'dip-in' eggs.

I have worked as a cook, and people have given me real money to prepare food for many mouths. I have baked pies, cakes, bread and cookies, but none of them ever seem to be quite right. Maybe the trick for the cookies is to keep them at a ten year old's eye level in wax-papered tins beside the utility tub - I don't know. Maybe the secret behind the bread is real butter and Velveeta - hard to say. All I know is that whether it is Christmas Day or Wednesday, the food is always the best around, and would make the authors of the Canada Food Guide very happy.

The cook is my grandmother, and I thank her for feeding us.

A lot can happen in 80 years. Many many children will come into the world in that time, and on the aforementioned special occasions, most of them will gather together under one roof and become bored very very quickly. A bored child tends to run, yell, and knock things over, and three or more of this type of creature can reduce a house to splinters in no time at all. The natural reaction in this situation is to shout and restore order - sit the bored child down in one place, and tell him/her not to move or make a sound, thus ensuring a doubly bored, and a very unhappy child. A more considered approach might be to designate an area for yelling, running, and knocking things over - an area removed from those who no longer have an interest in those things, and an area in which it is difficult to do much damage…say, a garage. In this child-proofed bunker of silliness, the herd of shouting and running small people may feel perfectly free to ride tricycles, kick balls around, and shout ridiculous things at the tops of their lungs, all without recrimination or restriction. They will form complicated alliances and invent astounding games, both of which will be the most important things in the world, until it's time to eat. They will discuss the probable contents of the boxes in the storage loft, the mystical properties of the foamy yellow insulation on the garage door, and the importance of not kicking a ball at the pies cooling on the freezer. They will dispatch representatives to the quiet zone, with reports of amazing feats or skinned knees. They will get out of hand and too loud, and they will be gently reminded of fair play and acceptable noise levels by a figure in the doorway with her hands on her hips. They have been corralled and controlled, but they will feel free, and they will never forget it.

The engineer of this space, and the figure with her hands on her hips is my grandmother, and I thank her for letting us be children.

A lot can happen in 80 years. Millions of small acts of kindness and charity, countless lessons learned and passed on, and a general way to live and show others. It takes a lot of energy to be a good person, and even more energy to conscientiously instill that goodness in those around us. A good example is one of the greatest influences a family can hope to have, and we have enjoyed that privilege for as long as any of us can remember. I take many things for granted, and I rarely stop to recognize or show gratitude for the most important things I have. That great example is responsible in part for who I am today, and I hope this goes a short way to show my gratitude.

….But probably not.

Maybe he's a lazy, filthy jerk. Maybe he's a dangerous lunatic who lives like a transient, and he's just waiting for the very moment someone says something about his place, to unleash a prolonged campaign of weirdness on his neighbours. Maybe he's an evil genius, bent on the domination of the 14th floor. There's just no way for me to be sure.

I tried to understand his position, and came up with the preceding points. The problem is, he's not living in a shanty in the mountains somewhere - he sees others taking out garbage, mopping floors, and cleaning things in general. He must have seen pictures of what a typical home looks like, and he must know that his own varies wildly from that. As I said in the original rant, he dresses normally and is presentable for work, so he's proven that he understands some societal norms. There's no way he hasn't noticed that other doors don't look like they're smeared with fudge. He's living in a huge building with thousands of people, and he's not pulling his weight. We should vote him off the island.

As for 'what I've done' about this. Nothing. The weather cooled off recently, so he keeps his door closed most nights, and the cooler air doesn't transmit his microbes as well as hot and humid air. It's become bearable again, and it's not the emergency it was a month ago. Sure, I know he's in there, incubating new armies of stinkbots to invade in Spring, but that's months away. Ok, I admit that I came home pretty drunk one night and shouted into his open door for a few minutes, and the fliers seemed to disappear the next day. Might be a coincidence, might be that he responds well to verbal abuse.

Thank you very much for all your comments and suggestions. I'll spend these months of respite from the offensiveness, studying Japanese and sorting out the best plan for confronting the problem, in time for the Rainy Season next year.

At first, he was a bit strange and fun to talk about. Then he became a little annoying and unpleasant. Now, he's a bona fide very bad thing, and he must be stopped.

I call him The Rat.

………………………………………………………………………..

Rats are small sneaky creatures who are rarely seen in daylight.

………………………………………………………………………..

I first became aware of The Rat when I moved into this apartment, and I noticed that one of the doors in the hallway wasn't painted a soothing pink-rose colour. The door immediately across from my apartment was (is) thickly encrusted with a smudged swirl of black and brown filth. I had to wonder (aloud, I think), how does a door get that dirty on the outside? Wait for it - you'll find out. Anyway, for the first week or so, The Rat didn't have a nickname, and I was unaware of the evil on the 14th floor.

I don't see my neighbours very often - I went around and said hello, and gave them little gifts of plastic wrap and paper towels like a new neighbour is supposed to (kind of a reverse-Welcome Wagon custom), but since then, I see them only once in awhile. There's the nice lady who says 'okairi nasai' (welcome home) when I see her at night, and there's the guy next door who looks like a retired science teacher, and there's the Tanimuro family down the hall. It's like they never leave their homes - granted, most of them are older and probably retired, but don't retired people need sun once in awhile? At any rate, I don't see my neighbours every day, so it wasn't particularly surprising that I hadn't seen my neighbour across the hall until about a week after moving in.

………………………………………………………………

Rats can squeeze through incredibly small holes and cracks.

………………………………………………………………

I happened to be leaving my place in the evening at the same time as he was coming home, and even then I only caught the tail end (so to speak) of The Rat's arrival. I saw that his door was only open about a foot, and that his leg was wrapped around from behind the door, and receding into his apartment. Then the door slammed, and that was that. Odd. When his door closed, several advertising fliers jutted out from his doorjamb. Messy, I thought - he should pick those up so they don't stick out when he closes his door. Little did I know, this was an extremely naïve thing for me to think.

The next time I saw him, I was treated to the whole show. It was basically the same situation, but this time I came out of my place just as he was putting the key in his lock. His head whipped around, he glared at me for a second with small glittering eyes, and then pushed his entire body against his dirty door with jerky, panicked movements. Again, the door only opened about a foot, but this time I could see why. The aforementioned fliers were only the latest in what I would guess is a two-year collection of paper piled up just inside his door. I could see that the browned paper formed a drift of fire hazard about 4 feet up his wall, so it's little wonder that he has to push so hard to open his door. This also solves the mystery of why his door is so awful on the outside - he has to push that hard to open up a small crack, and then wipe his body across the entire surface of the door in order to slither into his lair. Ok, I thought - weird and creepy. Hermit-like and possibly dangerous. It was after this incident that he was dubbed The Rat. The furtive movements and scurrying, coupled with the filth - it was just obvious.

……………………………………………..

Rats look unclean - greasy fur and dirty feet.

……………………………………………..

The Rat is anomalous. The first few times I saw him, he was wearing an odd assortment of things, apparently from the "Found In A Bag By The Tracks" Collection. He's usually sighted in grey slacks, tucked into black motorcycle boots, topped off by a very tight green Pleather jacket. His hair is phantasmagoric - it looks like an Elvis wig for someone three times his size, but I think it's his real greasy, matted hair. He's about 40 or so, but he dresses like a 14-year old's Halloween version of a mass-murderer. He has a distinctly Robert Deniro-as-Max Cady-in-Cape Fear sort of look going on.

But.

So this is jetlag. I shouldn't say it like that - like it's never happened to me before. It happened for the first time about 10 days ago, when I landed in Canada. Actually, I can't say with any sort of reliable degree of certainty when this thing happens. Did it happen as I was crossing the Pacific, sitting next to a sweaty mouth-breather? When I landed in Toronto, smelling of old laundry and older coffee? When I got under the covers in a strange bed, and stared at the ceiling for 3 hours? I really don't know, but this is a confusing state to find myself in.

The really strange thing is that I'm not even trapped in Eastern Standard Time, which would at least make a little sense. Nope. I feel groggy right around 2am in Belgium or something. Yesterday, I finally passed out at 8am here, which is 7pm in Ontario. Not even fair. So, for the last couple of days, I fall asleep at inappropriate times for a few hours, then wake up refreshed and start doing regular awake-guy things, only to fall down again a couple of hours later.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I find myself in an unfamiliar situation in my own apartment. I can't sleep (it's 8:30am, and has been for several hours), so I'm trying to short-circuit myself. I think. It must be that - why else would I be eating oatmeal and drinking peach drink, while alternating between The Jesus and Mary Chain & Gordon Lightfoot on the stereo? Sure, Psychocandy and Gord's Gold are both fine albums, but they mix like peach drink and oatmeal.

In an attempt to bash myself to sleep, I re-read a Philip K. Dick book last night. This is my third reading of this particular book, and there really weren't any surprises left. I figured my mind would say "Yeah yeah yeah…we all know how this one ends, so let's shut 'er down". No dice. Still, a great novel - "Galactic Pot-Healer", one of the two books that I have read in my life that actually creeped me out. This one has that effect if I even think about the story. The Glimmung is, without question, one of the great lumpish, doomed, benevolent/malevolent, possibly divine characters of the second half of the twentieth century. That's quite a thing, if you think about it.

(Oh - the other book that really put the thick blackness on me was David W Elliot's "Listen to the Silence" - the story of a 14-year old who is sent to an asylum instead of an orphanage. I read it for the first time when I was 14, and it seems to resurface at regular intervals in my life. I challenge you to read it without developing a keen sense of creeping dread.)

Those who know me well may skip the next bit - it's my usual harangue about the brilliance of Philip K. Dick, and the injustice of his being relegated to the Sci-Fi shelves of book stores. I have nothing against the genre, mind you - I've been hooked since J.G. Ballard's "The Giant" leapt out at me from the pages of a short-story collection. It's just that most SF is (justifiably) regarded poorly, and the chunks of genius on those shelves are pooh-poohed because they have zap-guns and buxom futurebabes on their covers. I had an American Literature professor who wouldn’t even entertain the notion that there could be anything of worth between the covers of a book labeled SF. I found out later that one of his favourite movies was 'Crash', based on a story by the aforementioned Ballard, an accomplished 'SF' writer. I kept it to myself.

Anyway.

Sorry for the big gap - been busy. Just a short note on the topic of self-censorship, because I said I would...

All of the following is going to be unsubstantiated, and based on dim recollections of articles I've read, and conversations I've had over the last few months. I'm sorry, I don't have the documentation in front of me - good disclaimer for a piece about irresponsible journalism, huh?

Here's a brief history - there are over 130 million people here, and the unemployment rate is something like 1.2%. Everyone works, even the homeless. It takes 4 guards to help me sign in at a company front desk, and there are guys guarding empty parking lots at 2am, but that's an entirely different subject. All these people need to be kept busy, and manufacturing is way down since about 1992, when the economy came very close to collapse. So, they build things. Specifically, they build dams and highways.

The Construction Ministry is the most powerful and corrupt bureau in the government, and they are the big subject these days. If you want a very detailed breakdown of how this particular system gets away with its nonsense, I suggest you pick up a copy of Alex Kerr's 'Dogs and Demons' - a painstaking accounting of the high-level chicanery happening in the backrooms across the country.

Anyway.

About 3 months ago, the Minister of Construction, Muneo Suzuki, was caught red-handed, fixing construction contracts for some useless make-work civic monster of a project. Since then, the papers have been full of the usual "I did not" / "You did so" blather attached to political scandal, and plenty of underlings are coming out of the woodwork to help sink their former boss, and deflect blame away from themselves. He's done for, and everyone knows it.

This is what all papers, Japanese and English editions, are reporting across the board - common knowledge, and casual banter fodder for the dinner table. This is where the split between Western and Japanese journalistic styles occurs. In the U.S. (especially) or in Canada, we know that a scandal like this one will launch many careers on talk shows, in magazines and newspapers, and the media will go crazy, blowing out of proportion almost anything else that even remotely resembles the main story. In the months following Sept. 11, alarmists turned fistfights into global terrorism, and CNN copywriters ran out of bizarre names for special breaking reports. Not so here. Things must remain pleasant.

In the English edition of the Daily Yomiuri, there are at least 5 new stories every day, either detailing further developments in the Suzuki case, or exposing remarkable frauds in other companies and government ministries. I take this as the usual media hounding of a common theme, and carry on reading the paper and shaking my head with (I assume) everyone else on the train. As it turns out, these follow-up stories simply don't appear in the Japanese edition. I tried to develop debates in class, using the follow-up stories as support for the central theme of government corruption, but students had no idea what I was talking about. They know all about the Suzuki case, and can discuss it easily, but they've never heard of the handful of other stories. This from people who claim that their primary use of the Internet is invariably 'to read news'. I don't blame them for turning to digital media for news - they're not getting it from the papers.

The more surprising thing had to do with something more interesting than politics, and I thought it would have been the headline on every front page. During the ramp-up to the World Cup in Korea and Japan, public figures in both countries decided to bury the hatchet, and say some nice things about each other for a change. (Korea and Japan get along like albinos and Aruba). Among the trite and hackneyed doublesaynothingspeak coming from elected officials, Akihito decided to chime in. The Emperor isn't a very public figure, so I assumed that when he says something, people tend to listen. His quote actually made me say "What?!?", out loud on the train platform. Again, I don't have the quote in front of me, but the substance was that the emperor of Japan, a country that has hated Korea for a couple of thousand years, said that it is likely that the Japanese people are probably descended from the Koreans. Just to put it into perspective, that's like Rush Limbaugh saying he has a feeling his grandfather was a gay liberal macramé instructor.

Due to a recent lack of funds, I've been unable to buy books. English language books are, of course, import items here, and as such they demand top yen. Typically, a paperback can cost between 2000 - 3500 yen ( about $25 - $40), and I just haven't had the extra cash to invest. There is a library I know about that has English books, but it's about a half hour away by train. Luckily, when people leave Japan, they usually don't pack up their books and take them, so there's a good lump of used books floating around between us here in Little Canada. I have about 150 books here, and I think I've read 90 % of them. (Any Morinomiyans reading this - drop by; take 'em away)…

Another good source for used books is the magic shelf at my company's office - lately, I've been swapping out paperbacks there. Employees take a book, leave a book. The problem with this is, there's no accounting for taste. The shelf looks like the literary equivalent of a box for a food drive - pumpkin pie filling, sardines and trial paks of baking soda. Lots of Danielle Steele, Tom Clancy and John Grisham floating around - sometimes two or three copies of the same book. Ignoring conventional wisdom, I usually judge a book by its cover, and if the author's name is larger than anything else, or if it is in embossed silver letters, I pass. If it appears that the characters may have been created with the sole aim of fitting the eventual actor's script demands, I'll wait - until it's "Now a Major Motion Picture!!".

So, because I've been poor, I read my first Grisham novel last week - The Street Lawyer. I'm not sure if this thing has been turned into a blockbuster yet, but I'd love to see how much the screenplay re-write costs the backers. I won't go into it, but suffice it to say, I think this is the book that could disprove the ' book is always better than the movie' theory.

So the magic shelf is picked clean, my own library is used up, and I can't afford new books. I turn to the paper. I was never much of a newspaper reader, for the same reason I don't usually watch the 11 O'clock news - it's just plain depressing. I trust the rise and fall of economies and empires will carry on without my scrutiny, and all the important sports (hockey) news turns up daily on my computer. But lately I've been reading the paper every day - the Daily Yomiuri costs just 120yen, and I know a few reliable places to buy the English-language version. Not only is it a cheap source of reading material, it gives me fodder for warm-up conversations with students. Discussing current events with students has shown me the extent of something that I've read about, but not experienced until now - the amazing propensity of the Japanese government and media for self-censorship. The differences between the English and Japanese editions of the Yomiuri show just how much the Japanese public isn't told.

Examples and further amateurish analysis next time….I'm late for work.

Sorry about the tone of the last one…I was in a bad mood. Also, thanks to Yumiko for correcting my limping Japanese.

When writing emails, or anything on the subject of Japan, I have always tried to avoid being too critical or condescending, and I hope I've managed it. In re-reading a bunch of what I have sent out, I've found a few things that make me look like Lewis and/or Clark, and it makes me cringe a little. There's 14 tons of books written by foreigners, and I've found that most of them have this tone - complaints and criticism; the holier-than-thou mocking laughter of adults watching children try to master simple mechanical devices. The forewords of these books usually explain that the author has lived in Japan for 109 years, loves the culture and the people, and the seemingly bitter and insulting tales in the following pages are meant as a celebration of the differences between our cultures. After having delivered this disclaimer, it seems that the author feels he can let loose on his hosts with impunity. There are a few magazines here for the foreign (read 'English-speaking') community, and they seem to be home to those who can only put together an article or paragraph of snide comments - they need a few more years to work up 300 pages of snickering pokes at their host country and its culture.

Again, I know I'm guilty of this very thing, and I would like to exercise a bit more constraint when putting these things together. I don't mean any disrespect - after all, I've lived in Japan for almost two years, and the tales I send out are meant as celebrations of the differences between our cultures………

This is a strange place, and it's very often a funny place. To someone visiting or just arriving to live here, almost everything is bizarre, and it's an honest reaction to get that 'wait 'til I tell 'em back home' feeling. Besides, if you want dry reporting about temples and festivals, you can read travel guides and the newspaper. It's much easier to point out what's "wrong", inconvenient, unattractive, or amusing, but just because it's easier doesn't mean it's more interesting. It takes less energy to point and laugh, without trying to learn the history or social significance of the thing being laughed at.

The foreign community tends to band together, the same way immigrants do in other countries - Chinatown, Little Italy, the Latin Quarter, etc. I hear a lot of the same conversations in many places, and I have to wonder why some of these people are still here. I mean, they sound actually upset at the Japanese just for being Japanese…in Japan! It’s like being invited out to a restaurant for a lavish dinner, and complaining about the colour of the curtains. Here in Morinomiya (Little Canada), there's an occasional venting reference to something irksome or odd, but by and large the talk is either a) the same conversations everyone has about everyday things like work, money, entertainment, vacations and friends, or b) absolute nonsense. The 'b)' section makes it very hard on the Japanese contingent in our peer group, and a lot of time is spent puzzling over attempted explanations of references to Monty Python. I'm glad to have ended up in a community that has grown bored with negativity, or had very little in the first place.

So…for the next little while, I'm going to attempt to be a little more even-handed in these entries - try to swing the pendulum back more toward center. I'm not a social critic, I'm a guest. I've been complaining about the colour of the curtains too much lately, and I feel more like telling about the dinner now. The service is excellent, the table settings are beautiful, and best of all - no tipping!

I'm just putting the finishing touches on some travel plans for August, and it's not a moment too soon. I need to get out of here for a couple of weeks, and August, the sauna month, is the ideal time to do it. It's all just becoming a touch too much, and I need silence. It's loud here. All the time.

Even here in my apartment, where I try hard to absorb silence, and where I rarely even listen to music any more, it finds me. The distorted nasal announcements from the train platform under my balcony…the constant foooooooosh of tire treads on Rainy-Season streets…the occasional bbbrrrooobbbrrrooo of the rat-pigeons that land for a minute…the echoing chatter of the custodial ladies, sweeping and mopping my hall…the sub-sonic thrubthrubthrubTHRUB of passing trucks…the dropped manhole-cover sound of bikes racing over a loose metal grating in the sidewalk…the ripping-atmosphere whine of planes going by overhead on their way to Itami airport (every 5 minutes)…the rolling squeak of my neighbour's balcony door, as he opens and closes it often enough to make me think he's signaling someone in the park…ahh perfect - there's some thunder…the sharp, spiked, and altogether too loud ooo-eee ooo-eee ooo-eee-ooo of a decidedly French-sounding ambulance, accompanied by a wholly unnecessary loudspeakered voice, asking everyone to please kindly get out of the way…the BBBLLLAAAAAT BBBLLLAAAAATT blat BBBLLLAAAAATT of some jerk on some motorcycle, who will no doubt provide the loud ambulance with another reason to be loud…and the general white-noise hum and whisper of a city supporting far too many people ties it all together - filling in any potentially peaceful moments until the symphony starts up again.

Aside from the PA on the ambulance, this mélange is not specific to Japan - I know that. I also know that I have chosen to place myself here, and I enjoy it most of the time. I think everyone everywhere gets this feeling, and we know it’s time to be elsewhere for a breather. The above list is actually a transcription of what I sat here and paid attention to as I typed, and this is a fairly quiet place, relatively speaking. It's when I go out into the local world that the cacophony threatens to take my last nerve out behind the barn and put it down.

The clacking of these keys is driving me crazy, so I'm off to wrap a pillow around my head until I have to go back to work.

A few quick things - from the neighbourhood, from the paper, and from history…

First, if you ever need to make me crazy, there seems to be a fairly simple formula - just get yourself an amateur brass band, position them in the park across from my balcony, and practice the same 4 notes from 11pm - 1am on a Monday night. Please try to ensure that on each successive attempt to master the 4 notes, a different person in the group veers horribly off-key, so you have to try it again. And again. And again. And again. If you can manage it, try to find 4 notes that sound hauntingly familiar - say, the last part of the Hockey Night in Canada theme, like last night's train wreck of a practice featured. I would have paid them to stop….just stop. I would have financed a world tour of the Fournote Orchestra, just to get them away from me…

Speaking of orchestras and Canadian content, I see in the paper that Toronto's Walk of Fame has added a few names, and there's some interesting trivia to go along with the gala - the usual Canuck propensity for shouting out the names of the home team - we matter! We matter! For instance, we all know about Shatner, Mary Pickford and Monty Hall being covert Hosers…but I had no idea that Jack Warner (Warner Bros.) and Louis B. Mayer were both from the Great White North. Warner was from London, Ontario, as was 1930's bandleader Guy Lombardo (and his Royal Canadians). Here's the interesting part, and again I'll go the lazy route and just quote from the article :

"The venerable U.S. custom of welcoming the new year with "Auld Lang Syne"? The old Scottish ballad had been the signature song for Lombardo's Royal Canadians, and when the band was featured on live U.S. broadcasts of year-end festivities in the 1930's, 'it caught on' ".

This is one of those rare occasions when a real mystery is suddenly cleared up. Billy Crystal in 'When Harry Met Sally' goes on and on about it ("My whole life, I don't understand this song"). It's not a New Year song at all - just another case of a pop song becoming attached to an event to which it has no connection.

Speaking of songs being out of place in their surroundings, there's a habit among big companies here that I found to be irritating at first, then amusing, and now I hardly notice. In the offices and factories of megagiant corporations, break times are indicated to staff by way of tinkly Casio keyboard renditions of familiar, if incongruous, songs. "The Entertainer" is played (ad nauseam) as the 'on hold' music when you call my office - which is fine, but I really want to find Scott Joplin's grandchildren and give them noogies. Another company plays "Silent Night" and "What Child is This?" at significant times throughout the day, which seems just plain wrong in August. I don't like Christmas music very much at the best of times (i.e. Christmas), but when I'm sweating through my suit and longing for snow drifts, it becomes downright malicious. The other well-known and confusing musical presentation brings us right back to Guy Lombardo again. At the end of the day at most department stores, restaurants and various shops, we know it's time to go because the dirge-like 'Auld Lang Syne' will play, usually accompanied by a nice voice-over, telling us very kindly to get the hell out. I used to shake my head and have a lot of condescending thoughts about the Japanese just not getting it, but I suddenly realize that they've been getting it right all along. As their signature song, it was probably played last at every performance by Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, so it makes a lot of sense that department stores in Japan should play it to indicate closing time. We're the ones who have been happily singing a nonsensical song for no apparent reason. It's accidentally reasonable, and I'd better not tell too many people, or they'll put a stop to it right away.

Just to wrap this up and complete the circle….Speaking of brass bands that don't play very well, and working in the idea of the song not fitting the occasion, and making sure to include a healthy dose of Canadian content :

When I was about 15, Rick Hanson came through my home town on his cross-Canada wheelchair tour - he rolled over my foot that day, but that's not the point of this tale. Our high school band, who played extraordinarily poorly, was assembled outside to greet him and play the three songs that they played extraordinarily poorly. Immediately following the glowing welcome and introduction by the mayor, the band broke into their incredibly shoddy rendition of "The Hop". I'm not even kidding. It could only have been worse if they had played it for Terry Fox.

Until next time….