I have a question for anyone who reads this, who has any kind of knowledge of criminology - especially theories dealing with enforcement and resultant criminal psychology. I was just reading an article in the LA Times supplement section of the Daily Yomiuri - the story was filed from Sao Paulo, and deals with the recent epidemic of kidnappings in Brazil. The quote that caught my eye and got me thinking was from Saulo de Castro Abreu, the Secretary of Public Security :' "They started robbing freight trucks and banks," de Castro said of the kidnapping gang. "But when that dried up" because of increased security measures, "they started taking people" '. It seems that the law of diminishing returns was applied here - kidnapping was not being scrutinized by the authorities as much as robbery was, so the criminals simply switched - seemingly wholesale. Another quote : 'In Sao Paulo, kidnapping came back into vogue two years ago. Only 19 people were kidnapped in the state in 1999. A year later, the figure had jumped to 267. The criminals had learned that taking humans hostage was infinitely safer than robbing banks - and, when done right, it could be just as profitable." .

So, my question - Is there an accepted theory or practice among law enforcement entities which advocates leniency toward one type of (relatively) harmless crime, in order to steer criminals away from more serious acts? Of course, the penalty for shoplifting is much less severe than for murder, but I'm wondering if conscious distinctions are made between crimes of similar gravity? Are crime waves engineered, in a way?

We can't catch 'em all, and we can't expect a 0% crime rate from our law enforcement agencies. It seems to me that realizing that and choosing our battles would make a lot of sense. There is always going to be a criminal element in any society, so why can't we choose which crimes they will commit most often, and prepare to deal with those? That is already done in most societies, but I wonder if it is a conscious act, or an effect of concentrating on the crime wave of the moment, and accidentally creating another?

I can't help but think of a cartoon I saw a few hundred times when I was a kid - I forget which hopelessly well-meaning but useless character was involved, but it seems to illustrate this story nicely. The character notices a small bump in the metal of his car, so he gets a rubber mallet to pound it down - of course, as soon as he does that, it pops up a foot away. He continues chasing this bump around the body of his car for a few minutes, until, panting and sweating giant 2-D sweat bullets, he takes aim at the bump, which has inexplicably appeared in the center of his car's windshield. A 'Waap waap waap waaaaa' trumpet and a smashed windshield later, he has a much much bigger problem. And he looks like a total idiot.

On the other hand……

The other analogy I can think of right away should help me explain what I mean by 'consciously creating a crime wave'…one we can deal with. I grew up around animals, and I've had some experience in herding or corralling them. It's not a process of yelling and chasing, it's more one of reducing the animals' options. If you try to chase a group of animals in a straight line in an open area, you'll be sadly disappointed in the results. But, if you run in a zigzag pattern behind them, into an area with only one place to go, you can shut the gate and deal with them all in one place. By making a lot of noise and applying pressure in key areas where you DON'T want the animals, you can eliminate all of their options except the one you want them to take. They know they want to run from the frightening noise, and 'away' seems like the best place. If you decide where they're going, it's much easier to predict what they'll do, and what you can do in response.

So, back to my question - are law enforcement officials around the world chasing bumps, or herding animals? Are they unconsciously creating crime waves (like the kidnappings in Sao Paulo) by clamping down hard on the previous one, or are they pushing the criminal element to commit crimes that they feel they can deal with more efficiently? I don't for a second think that taking hostages is preferable to armed robbery, but the idea of it made me wonder about the theories behind law enforcement.

If anyone knows of more coherent writing about this subject, please leave me a note and tell me where to look for it.

Other than that stuff roiling around in my head, it's been a pretty average day…..

Word/Phrase of the Day : " shita (shee-ta)" - perversely, this Japanese word means 'bottom'

It's been an eventful week - literally, it's been full of events. On Thursday, the mighty Red Wings secured their 3rd Stanley Cup in six years, Japan's soccer team has advanced to the second round for the first time in World Cup history, and I've been to a couple of very good shows over the last two weekends.

I won't harp on about the Wings because I'm sure everyone's good and sick of that, but I need to point out that recent years have definitely made up for the suffering endured by we Detroit fans in the dismal 80's. The handful of Wings fans I know, including myself, are fairly vocal and irritating about Hockeytown, so I won't add to it here. There's a Leafs fan here who definitely owes me that beer, and a half hour of his time to sit and listen to me recap the Playoffs in excruciating detail.

The soccer world is shocked, and no one more so than the Japanese. A tie and two wins in the first round for the national team has sent them to the second round, and sent thousands of people into the streets in blue shirts and face paint to celebrate. We were in Shinsaibashi last night, and there were about 40 billion people crammed into the streets there, dancing, waving flags, and chanting "Ni-pon! Ni-pon! Ni-pon!", well into the night. The crowds dispersed a little around midnight (last train), but everywhere we went people were deliriously happy. The locals put together a good mob, but I have to mention a scene that identifies this as a very very Japanese occasion :

The core group of rowdies were having a grand time, swirling around in a tight circle, chanting and singing fight songs. A lot of clapping and choral shouting, singing and whooping. Suddenly a hand shot up in the center of the group, holding a cell phone. The crowd starting chanting something which included the word 'keitai' (cell phone). A quick vocab check from my Japanese friends confirmed that they were chanting "Someone dropped a keitai" in Japanese. The owner came forward, and everyone celebrated that for a few seconds, then went back to singing soccer songs. I love a polite riot.

As for musical events, last Saturday was the Planet of the Drums show at Karma, with Dieselboy, AK 1200, and MC Messinian. It was good to see Dieselboy in Osaka again, and the show was, as always, outstanding. Good meeting Dave and James - come back soon - it's tough to find a good drum+bass show in this city.

Last night at Club 2 was Freaky Flow and Flipside - I haven't laid eyes on those guys since a show 2 years ago in Pittsburgh, when they played with Fabio. Great TO-style set in the middle of the World Cup revelry, and again, it was great to see some familiar faces behind the tables. Flip is a big Italia soccer fan, and he'd like everyone to know that the only reason it seems that the team "only barely" made it to the second round is that the officiating was terrible, and several opportunities were missed due to unreasonable offside calls . There - I've done my bit for international sports.

This is definitely not a typical week, and I fully expect daily life to get back to feeling like daily life again by Monday.

Word/Phrase of the day : "sukiari!" (not sure of the spelling, but it kind of sounds like 'scary') it means, roughly, "If I had the time, I'd beat you"

It had been a long day. I had been up since six am, and I had traveled to and from three different cities, teaching two-hour classes in each. It had been raining all day, and I was tired of carrying my umbrella. I was tired of carrying my briefcase, my jacket, and my feet. I was just tired. I felt like my socks. Everyone I passed during the drizzly day had the same beaten expression, and we all needed to go somewhere else - anywhere else, and right away. The sky was having a great time, turning from slate grey to bruise black, and experimenting for a while with a surprising brown. I had that feeling that I remember from swimming out too far in the lake, and the shoreline looked impossibly far away. I almost literally couldn't wait to get home. I had just exited the sixth and final train station of the day, and I was finally trudging across the courtyard of a building near my apartment.

In this courtyard, there was a fenced-in dirt square, where neighbourhood kids play dirt games that kids play. It wasn’t even the size of a baseball diamond infield, but when I passed that day, it was being used as a whole field. About ten boys, ranging in age from about 10-14, were involved in what appeared to be an innocent pick-up game of baseball. [I should mention here that I have a terrible track record guessing the ages of Japanese people in general - it's not uncommon for me to be as much as ten years off. These individuals were short and beardless, and two of them had squirt-guns…I'm pretty confident that they were children]. I say 'appeared to be' because, upon closer inspection, this was not the goofy playground variety of Idiotball at which I utterly failed to excel at their age. This was a highly organized, sweat-on-the-brow, bragging rights sort of contest. I stopped to watch the drama unfold, if only because it gave me a great excuse to drop my briefcase for a few moments.

I have a confession: I'm not a baseball fan. Admitting this fact while living in Japan is roughly the equivalent of swearing off beer and hating hockey in Canada. This kind of behaviour could get you deported. My feelings about baseball are simply…well, absent. If the game became illegal tomorrow, I would not lobby in its support, nor do I wish the institution ill-will in any way. I just don't care. You may as well try to get me excited about lawn care. I'm really very sorry.

One thing that I do enjoy, and I'm quite good at, is reading the newspaper. Reading local papers has provided me with an unprecedented grasp of up-to-date baseball news, most notably where Japanese players are involved in North American MLB play. “Godzilla” (Hideki Matsui) and Ichiro (Suzuki) seem to have become Japan’s most important exports since the Walkman, and it’s common for their slightest twitches to take up the entire first page of the Sports section. Yankee’s #55 and Mariners’ #51 jerseys are everywhere, and tough luck if you want TV highlights from American baseball that don’t include one or the other of them.

The kids that day in the dirt cage had definitely been paying attention to their hometown heroes, reproducing batting stances, surreal wind-ups, and all the tugging, scratching, and spitting tics found only at truck stops and baseball diamonds. I noticed two of them had giant lumps in their cheeks, and I could only hope it wasn't chewing tobacco. Every glove on the field had a perfect curve in the webbing, achieved by winter-long shaping and training, an art form rivalled only by the skills of ancient bonsai masters. The more I saw, the more impressed I became. They had an umpire - the same kid through the whole game, and he wasn't joking. Strikes were called loudly, and with gymnastic force. They had a bullpen! The reserve pitcher, presumably a first-round draft pick, threw warm-up pitches while a miniature coach gave him pointers. The on-deck batters swung two bats and did stretches, and the in/outfielders gave each other direction about ideal positioning. I thought to myself that all they needed was uniforms. Then I noticed that most of them were wearing baseball pants, probably from their school teams.

The Japanese love of baseball is widely known and there's really no need to expand on it. But guess what? I'm going to, but only to point out an amazing phenomenon - high school baseball stars. At my high school, the star was the guy who could funnel over eight beers - he wasn't exactly a great role model, but it's a hell of a trick, ain't it? In Canada, my friends and I might have trouble naming the high school we (barely) attended. In Japan, most baseball fans can tell you the name of the high school that won the championship last year, and they probably also know the names of the better players. The following , a true story, will illustrate:

One of my students has recently taken over a coffee shop from a friend, and she has also moved into her friend's former apartment above the shop. The reason she was presented with this great opportunity is that her friend's son is very good at baseball. She sold her business and moved far away to Wakayama, so her son could attend a very prestigious high school - you know, the kind with uniforms and strict authority figures. This particular school features baseball uniforms and strict coaches - it is mainly concerned with turning out perfect ball players. They've traded in the three R's for Hurlin', Hittin' and Home Runnin', and now I think I know where all the superfluous highway workers and security guards come from. According to a few different sources, the average number (from a graduating class of 40 or so) that goes on to play professional baseball is around 2. So…now the other 38 have spent their high school years perfecting their swings, and they have no clue what the capital of Hokkaido might be. I guess it's an acceptable risk though, because it's very difficult to successfully try out for Home Run High School.

Back at the sandlot, things had become tense. The score was somewhere around 47-38, in the bottom of the 29th…the bases were loaded, which left only one hitter in the line-up. The third baseman/right fielder had noticed me, and he and the runner on third kept giving me giggly peace signs between pitches. Here's the wind-up…. the pitch…and he's beaned the batter! A collective moan goes up among the players on both sides as the batter picks himself up off the ground, brushes himself off, and…actually rushes the mound! I was stunned. So were the rest of the players, until they shook their heads and rushed to haul the red-faced batter off the tiny pitcher. After much pushing, shoving, and name-calling, the batter took his base and the runner on third walked in his run. The game should have resumed at that point, except for one thing - the little pitcher was sitting on the mound, crying into his glove. Everyone on both teams went back to the mound (except for the maligned hitter), and tried to cheer him up with a lot of back-patting and there-there'ing. But, it was no good - they had to signal to the bullpen. The starter snuffled off behind the fence, where he drowned his sorrows in a round of "shoot the random passer-by with the squirt gun". The game fell to disarray after this incident, mostly because half the infield had to go home for dinner.

I used to watch Detroit Tigers games with my grandfather. I enjoyed those games because he was an interesting guy to be around, but I didn't really get into the games too much. I remember the crowds in the streets when the Blue Jays won the World Series (both times), but I wasn't a part of those crowds. I usually find the game fairly boring, but I'm glad I stopped to watch this one. I didn’t know it at the time, but that game was the last one. A few months later, the whole play area was buried under beautiful black asphalt, and people park cars there now. Home plate is now Space Number 17a. I glared meaningfully at the guys with backhoes every time I walked past, but they carried right on as if they had a right to be there. I’ve actually seen one of the aforementioned security guards shooing kids away – baseball’s important, but apparently not as much as convenient parking. 

At the end of the game that day, however, it was still a playground, children were welcome, and I walked the rest of the way home happier. It's rare to see anyone enjoy something as much as they obviously did. But, I was also bothered by the idea that these little kids took the game so seriously. I hope if any of them end up at an all-baseball high school, they'll sneak away from practice once in awhile to read something. If they don't , I hope they are at least one of the two who make it.

I live in Osaka, Japan. The official language of Japan is, coincidentally, Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, I don't read Japanese, and I definitely cannot write Japanese. Fair enough. I was raised in an English-speaking household, schooled in English, and even studied it in university. I have a fair grasp of the language, and try to use it effectively. I can speak it, read it, and even write it. These things are easy for me, because it's my mother tongue. There are some factions in Japan that want the country to adopt English as an official second language, to strengthen their negotiating position, and get back to the good old days when the whole world was caught like deer in the headlights by the shiny and expensive gadgets flowing out of the East. Luckily for me, I happened along in the middle of this push for bilingualism, and I get to capitalize on the hunger for language. Teaching a large portion of a large country a second language is a huge program, and it will take a long time for Japan to achieve it. Of course, the corporations are impatient, and believing that a good defense is a lightning offense, are sending bewildered and frightened sales reps to the West with 6 weeks of English training under their belts. They may get by, and they may even help their companies in the long run, but it still seems like a hopelessly bad plan. That's abroad - how about here in the home islands?

Most Japanese students since the 60's have had to study English from elementary through high school, and some elect to continue that study in university. By the time they get to me, they usually have a rudimentary grasp, and classes help strengthen that base. This sounds like it would make my job easy, but half of my job is helping students dismantle the book-learning and rote-memory English that they had been told was the language, and replacing it with the actual stuff. More so than anything else, learning a language from a book may give you building blocks, but using it is a whole new challenge. I understand the problem, and try my best to not laugh right out loud at some of the mangled sentences that come my way. So, here we have a classic case of a little knowledge being dangerous - intelligent people unwittingly wielding a second language more as a weapon than as a tool, and trying to use it for good. Now, what happens when a country full of manufacturers and advertisers decide that it's a good business move to use English to promote their products in a non-English speaking country? You can't even imagine.

Japan raised itself up from utter ruin and economic devastation in 40 short years, to become the number one business force in the world. The party was short lived, but it was still an amazing comeback. That process has been described in minute, mind-numbing detail in many fine (and heavy) books, so I suggest you look there for details. Since 1853, when Admiral Perry knocked politely on Nihon's door with his four smoky warships, the Japanese have been borrowing English words and using them with wild abandon…not always correctly, and definitely with a bit of a pronunciation problem. Luckily, there was already a system in place, developed by the monasteries of ancient Japan, to write down and learn foreign words. This "katakana" system is still in use today, and it's the only one of the three different writing systems that I have learned to read. I'll now cut 'n paste a short history of Japanese writing systems from ASAHI Japanese Translations , a site devoted to the subject. This will give you a pretty good general understanding of what we're dealing with here, and it will also relieve me of the task of re-wording and re-typing…

****************************************************************

On the Origins of the Japanese Writing System

From the end of the 6th to the middle of the 9th century, Japan immersed itself in the Chinese culture, imitating it systematically. China was politically very powerful then and was leading all other countries thanks to its technical advance (Tang era, 7-8th century).

During the period of the greatest Chinese influence, the Japanese continued to write poems in their own tongue. They first used borrowed and unabbreviated Chinese ideograms as phonetic symbols to write Japanese proper nouns. They then began to transliterate each Japanese syllable, as in the first anthology of Japanese poetry called Manyôshû* (760) or "Collection of a Myriad Leaves", depicting in the most accurate way the poetic expression characteristic of Japan. These borrowed symbols were later given the name of Manyôgana.

From the late 8th (decline of the Tang) to the late 12th century (golden era of Heian*), Japan, having broken off in 838 all diplomatic relations with China, experienced a period of accelerated acculturation in isolation: after a period of eager borrowings and indiscriminate imitation came a period of reaction. Withdrawing from immediate overt influences, Japan could better absorb the foreign contributions, adjust them to Japanese realities and tastes, and reject those that might not suit. Eventually it could transpose the spirit and the principles of the borrowed models to new fields of investigation.

While the cultural life in Japan was progressively becoming autonomous, the linguistic field witnessed the creation of a new writing system. Better suited to Japanese language, it transliterated the words into syllabic phonetic symbols by means of 2 syllabaries of graphically radically simplified Chinese ideograms. Devoid of own meaning and purely phonetic symbols, these ideograms were called Kana**:

Hiragana or "simple Kana":

In the poetic improvisations performed by the aristocracy, the "borrowed symbols" were written in such a cursive form that one lost sight of the Chinese ideograms in Taus style, from which they were originally derived. They became official with the issue of the Kokinshû or "Bundle of Ancient and New Poems", compiled by Ki no Tsurayuki in 905, at the behest of the Emperor. This poet and calligrapher became the first man to write in this style. Hiragana was considered a "woman's hand" - a feminine style of handwriting***. The elegant simplicity of this writing contributed to the elaboration of the masterpieces of women's literature (novels, essays, and diaries), which marked the golden era of the Japanese civilisation.

Katakana or "abbreviated symbols":

Issued from a totally different evolution, the "abbreviated symbols" came from the great monasteries, where a set of abbreviated symbols had been developed to shorten the studied texts. Each symbol retained only some strokes and dots of the original Chinese ideogram to keep the whole phonetic value but the choice of the abbreviation of each ideogram was arbitrary. Several abbreviations of one unique syllable were simultaneously used then. Unlike the Hiragana, these secondary symbols never became the object of calligraphy, but they contributed to the development of the modern Japanese written style.

These two syllabaries brought an answer to the long and unresolved problem of writing, allowing the native literature to expand. Poetry found a new impulse. The courtesans wrote in verse, applying the rules of metrics to their love letters. Novels, diaries and essays, written in a refined literary language, multiplied.

Yet most of the cultured people did not want to write in their mother tongue which they considered to be vulgar. History works, essays, official documents were written in Chinese. Only the Ladies of the imperial court found themselves obliged to compose in Japanese. This created a paradoxical situation in that society: men strove to write in bad Chinese while their spouses wrote in excellent Japanese. Women's prose and poetry, meanwhile, formed the basis of a truly national literature.

Meanwhile, the links with the Chinese continent were loosening and men were gradually losing the habit of writing in Chinese ideograms and introduced Kana syllables instead. Simultaneously, some writers using Kana got into the habit of sprinkling their text with Chinese ideograms.

Those two contradictory tendencies have resulted in the complex system**** of hybrid writing of modern Japanese. It currently uses two different forms of writing (Hiragana, Katakana) as well as Chinese ideograms (Kanji). The nouns and the roots of the verbal words and determiners are represented by Chinese ideograms, whereas inflexions and elements that cannot be written in ideograms are written in Kana. Nowadays, the Japanese newspapers contain roughly 50% Kanji, 40% Kana and 10% Arabic figures and other signs.

Additional information:

Kanji

In 1946, the Ministry of Japanese Education established a list of 1945 basic Chinese ideograms or "jôyô kanji". 166 supplementary ideograms were added, to be used in the first and the last names. These characters should suffice to give the modern reader access to current writings. Nevertheless several thousands of supplementary ideograms are still necessary to read writings prior to the Second World War.

Hiragana

Hiragana is used to write words of Japanese and Sino-Japanese origin. The Japanese words are those prior to the introduction of the Chinese ideograms (kanji) and prior to the words of Chinese origin (400 AD) and those created after, based on old Japanese roots. The Sino-Japanese words are those introduced over the centuries, made from Chinese ideograms (more than 60% of the Lexis).

Katakana

Katakana is used to write words of foreign origin (mostly from the West) and onomatopoeia. It is also used to write Japanese and Sino-Japanese words but for stylistic reasons. It follows the same writing rules as Hiragana, except for the lengthening of the vowels and it allows an easy transliteration of the syllables of Western languages.

Each Japanese sentence can be transliterated into Hiragana or Katakana but the Chinese ideograms must be used for various reasons. Above all, the ideograms appeal to the visual appearance to distinguish the numerous homophones: the phonic and the visual appearances refer together to the meaning.

Notes

* Heian, finds its origin in the name of the capital of the same period, Heian Kyô* or "City of the Peace and Tranquillity", nowadays the city of Kyôto. Its name combines the first syllable of Heijô (Nara) - the oldest town in Japan - and the last syllable of the great Tang metropolis Chang-an, from which Heian, like the previous capitals, has been copied. It remained for nearly a thousand-year the imperial capital.

** Kana may come from "Karina" (borrowed symbol), as opposed to "Mana" (real symbol).

*** Women were not able to gain access to academic studies in Chinese. They therefore had to write in Hiragana.

**** The ideograms used in Japan have been imported from various provinces and dialects, at different periods. The same Chinese ideogram can therefore be pronounced in several ways in Japanese, with no resemblance to the dialectal sounds. Moreover, each Chinese ideogram refers at the same time to a specific Chinese word and to all Japanese words having the same meaning but a different morphology. The same Chinese ideogram has many equivalents in Japanese. This makes the Japanese writing system undoubtedly the most complex in the world.

So, in short, Katakana is used to spell and pronounce foreign words (and sometimes for names of companies or people), Hiragana is used for Japanese words, and Kanji are the Chinese ideographs used to represent an idea or entire word. What the good people at Sakura Translation Service failed to mention is that there is also quite a lot of what is known as 'Romaji", or Roman characters (the ones you're reading) being used. Learning to read and write in combination of three different systems is a daunting enough soup, but when you throw in a fourth, usually used to spell words in a totally foreign language (usually English), it becomes nearly impossible. Notice also from the history above, that the Japanese are a 'borrowing' culture, imitating and assimilating odds and ends from other societies, and tailoring them to Japanese needs. There's the background…now, the present.

Katakana

As I mentioned, I can now read kana. I didn't try very hard, and I'm still not 100% sure about all the words I read, but it's enough for me to go shopping and not accidentally buy pickled octopus toenails any more. I learned kana the old-fashioned way - from advertisements on trains and subways. I would sit and stare at a picture of cavorting cartoon characters, holding packages of mysterious consumables, and try to figure out what all the squiggly lines above the picture were supposed to mean. When I thought I had it figured out, I would then check "Kana Can Be Easy" book for the actual translation, and then burst into tears. Little by little, there were fewer tantrums, and now I can read most things written in the squiggly lines. It's helpful that kana is usually used for English words, and I can therefore use both pictures and the occasional romaji accompaniment to check my work. The only problem is that reading kana is a three-step process :

1. Translate all the characters into their respective phonetic sounds, i.e. "bu..ru..ma..oo..n..ta..n...bu..rey..n..do"

2. Hold all of these sounds in your mind from beginning to end, trying to build a cohesive word or sentence.

3. Try to figure out a) if it is one word or several, and b) what English words the sounds most closely resemble

By the way, the example above is directly from my can of "Blue Mountain Blend" coffee (co-hee). As you can imagine, just reading labels here makes me want a nap.

Hiragana

Hiragana is another set of squiggly lines entirely, and it has fewer built-in pronunciation tiger traps. Each symbol matches exactly with a sound, and there's no messing around with having to try and figure out what it REALLY says. The biggest problem with this wonderful system (for the confused Canadian guy) is that it is used to represent only Japanese words. So, the little hiragana that I have learned is fun to mess around with, because hey! I can read Japanese!..But that still leaves me with the problem of having no idea whatsoever what the word I just read is supposed to mean. Undaunted, I am still studying hiragana, because I may need it someday when I can actually speak this language.

Kanji

Pictures. Little complicated sketches that mean something. I would need to learn over 10,000 of these little pictures and their meanings just to read the newspaper. I know about 20.

Romaji

AAAHH…roman characters - friendly, helpful, easy to read…I learned them as a shortie, and I didn't even know I was doing it. They tell me things in letters from home, they make clear the intricacies of programming the VCR, and they hold in their benevolent arms more knowledge than I could absorb in ten lifetimes. But…what if the beloved romaji were to fall into the wrong hands? I'll tell you what : "Japanglish".

"English in signs is maybe, I think, just for decoration"

Picture this : a board meeting…steaming cups of green tea and overflowing ashtrays on the table in front of several men in blue suits and white socks. The men have stayed many hours after five o'clock because…well because they always do, but this time, it's important. The magnificently overstaffed advertising department has just finished presenting their ideas for this year's line, including 3 different 15-second TV commercials and the most unlikely cartoon characters yet for the print ads. They have hired the pop star of the second to sex around on giant posters, and the day-glo kanji is just right. It's a very fine campaign indeed. Only one problem - it has no English words anywhere. What to do? Do they go with the 'single-word' idea, copying Pepsi's wildly successful "GET!" ads, or should they go for it? The CEO takes off his gigantic wire-framed glasses, and asks the group, "Who knows English?". A visibly perspiring freshman in a daring blue shirt speaks up, making sure to execute a quick half-bow every other second :"I'm sorry…excuse me…and pardon my excusing myself for being sorry, but I have been attending English Conversation classes here at the company for the last six weeks, and I'm very sorry, but I think I can handle the assignment. Excuse me." The CEO is impressed, and makes a quick mental note to promote the rising star to even more overtime.

*one week later*

The eager young suit has written, translated, and re-translated his English copy. He has submitted it to three different departments, and it has been liberally deciphered at each turn to better suit the needs and philosophy of the company. He has been at his desk for 872 hours in the last week, ignoring family and friends, losing sleep, and almost beating his overtime record. The piece is flawless. With a perfect perpendicular bow, he presents his masterwork to the CEO, and waits for the verdict. The CEO can, of course, read English. He had to know 500 words to pass his entrance exams to university. The words on the page certainly look English, and they seem to form sentences. Adding these words to the advertising will prove to the Japanese public that the company and its product are indeed cosmopolitan, and are moving forward with the push to incorporate English into Japanese society. Clearing his throat several times, he reads aloud from the page, including what he hopes the board members will think are dramatic pauses.

"The rain stoped and a beautiful rainbow appeared the distant hills. Struck by beauty of a scene, I kept standing there for a lot. This super blandscope will remain in my memory for all life."

The board unanimously agrees that this is the very best passage to represent their new line of insoles, and a month later, the largely ignored young salaryman's contribution to the steadily growing canon of Japanglish is proudly trumpeted from subway ads and full-page glossy magazine pages. The company went with "Do!" for the TV spots, and it all seems to be working out well…

That's how I see it happening - there are few other ways some of the mangled English I see every day could possibly end up in public. [By the way, the passage used in this imagined scenario is quoted directly from a shopping bag advertising a department store] My Japanese friends have explained to me that it doesn't matter that it makes little to no sense - no one except foreigners are actually reading it. English is for decoration in Japanese advertising. This may seem ridiculous at first glance, but hearken back to the mid-80's in North America; clothing with Japanese kanji characters on it was almost a uniform when I was in grade 9, and some companies are still doing it. Diesel clothing has just introduced a line of t-shirts and beachwear with not only kanji, but also hiragana and katakana symbols all over it. People the world over are now proudly walking around wearing shirts that say things like "Quantity of Onion", and "Green Super Hand". They don't know what their own shirts say any more than the Japanese guy with the shirt that says "Pretty Momma" does. Diesel chose the Japanese from a design standpoint, and printed 'em up. The customer agreed that the shirt looked cool, and bought it. Luckily I can read kana, so I was able to jump at the purchase of my new Diesel t-shirt that says "Ultraman", with a number 7 under it.

My days are filled with double-take sightings of absolutely nonsensical English - I've spent the last 8 months jotting down some treasures :

T-shirts - "You sould know better. The world is sick of such story."

"That is just your wishful thinking."

"As the world will be safeting. Dig deep contact we love."

"Each time for sports is a playing time. Enjoy together and be strive."

"The song touched me deeply. That sounds very tempting."

Hotels - Hotel Pasta Book

Hotel The Rich

Hotel Rose Lips

Shopping Bags - Marginal Glamor

Liquorland Dream

Fields of Tint

On the back of a car - "Highway Killer. We love the motorsports truly, and keep our minds to drive safety."

Photo Album #1 - "Beauty criteria is something the individual person decides. If your preference is there, that is the most beautiful one there."

Photo Album #2 - "Special Memories. Who would be happier, firstborns or the ones who come along later? Spare the rod and spoil the child. It's a lasting memore."

Businesses / Products

- "Postonic Body Profitable Water moistens your body rapidly and softens your soul gently. Postonic is life us all."

- "We wish all the time to be able to provide you fresh bread and to propose you a joy of eating life with bread at Kobeya Kitchen."

- "Hanshin Department Store has planned an amusement atrium to make the store a LIFE IMAGINING STORE…to bring a rich new sensitivity to customer living style."

- [On a package of 'jack-o-lantern' cookies] "The sun smiles in the tree. Let's have a fun Halloween Party! Let the fun begin."

- [On a package of Strawberry Cake] "Beautiful things are timeless. Women's throughout history have never ceased to yearn for beauty."

And my all-time favourite, from a business card for Giraffe coffee shops :

"A journey to one's origin, regenerates the body's aging blood through an unknown essence. Africa, the free empire with its primitive colors and super natural nature, where the waves of time flow slowly. In the middle of a plain, a single giraffe is staring off into the distance………..as if this giraffe is gazing sternly yet gently, at the future of mankind with its mixture of illusions, reality, mysteries and lost time which can not be turned back. The wilderness and untamed power carve away man's materialistic world in which man's most simple rule applies, that is to say, in the morning the sunrises, in the evening the sunsets. In the glass you can use your instinct to catch glimpses of this wilderness."

Now that's good coffee.

Names of products are slightly odd as well. It took awhile to get used to drinking a very good sports drink called "Pocari Sweat" I try to avoid "Colon" chocolate, steer clear of the cookies called "Coque d'Asses", and absolutely refuse to set foot inside the pachinko parlour called "Poo!". I doubt the "Guts Factory", the "Jimny" or the "Cedric" automobiles will outsell GM cars in North America any time soon.

A little note about placement of these masterpieces : it's not at all unusual to see a massive paragraph about rolling hills and the majesty of the universe printed on the side of a car, and that "Giraffe" opus was all crammed onto a regular business card - that's a little ambitious for design purposes, isn't it?

I was curious about my theory, and decided to do a little experiment with one of my classes. I wrote out a fairly typical English advertisement for dishwashing liquid : "New and Improved! Attacks dirt and grease! Leaves dishes sparkling clean!". I then asked the first student to translate it into Japanese, and pass that on to the next student. I then asked him to translate the Japanese into English, and so on, through 5 people. This is what came out the other end of the rudimentary Japanglish generator that day : "This is the new products that protect your wear from oils and any dirts. If you try to use this one, it is sure that you are able to wash a dish cleaner than usual.". This is merely clumsy English, not nonsense, but remember - this came out of a classroom setting in which all participants were studying English intensively. It's clear that if the original English had been more fractured, the finished copy would have been much more like the above examples.

I think I understand how English in Japan got to be the way it is, but that doesn't make it any less funny. It amazes me that these words and phrases come out of multi-billion yen corporations without anyone bothering to ask a native speaker to edit anything. I mean, there's a few of us here, hanging around just getting stared at…we have time. When I placed an enquiry about getting a job in this area, I was told, typically, "We don't need to edit. It's just for decoration.". I tried.

So, until I get around to writing again, take care of yourselves and have fun…I mean…"Enjoy together in healthy and be safety."

Water is wet. The sky is up. Yellow and blue make green. The Red Wings are the greatest hockey team in the history of sport. There are certain immutable laws which help us walk around with a straight face in a cause and effect universe, and we’ve grown fond of them. We know that when we shoot an arrow into the air, it will fall (though we know not where). When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, we have no idea what will happen, and we get a little nervous. Trees falling in the forest and one hand clapping elude us, and we set up centuries-old smarty-pants organizations to think about it, so we don’t have to. We’re happy with the arrangement – a+b=c, and if it doesn’t, the world doesn’t seem kind any more.

One of my most cherished of these agreements is that the ground stays put, right there under our feet, and we assume it will continue to sit there in the down position until we need to bury something in it. The ground doesn’t get up and walk around, it doesn’t talk back, and on the whole, we don’t think about it very much. What if the ground throws a tantrum? What if it begins to feel used and taken for granted? Here we are, cheerfully building things on the ground – tall things - things which reach away from the ground to incredible heights, and we fill them with all of our stuff, and ourselves. We trust the ground to be as impressed with the tall things as we are, and to not get angry and knock them down. Last week, while we were all assuming the ground likes us, it got frustrated and twitched its skin like a dog with fleas.

It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and I was listening to Miles Davis while doing some dishes. The city, the building, and the apartment were all exactly where they were supposed to be, and continuing to carry out their assigned task of sitting still and being reliable. Miles was blowing his horn, the water was flowing out of the faucet and down the drain, and objects in general were maintaining their x,y, an z axes flawlessly. Mundane, usual, expected and perfect. Then, the floor dropped about 4 inches. I can only assume that the rest of the building followed suit, because I could hear it say “Huh?” in a booming, clattering, surprised voice. As if compensating, the floor then lifted again, and began to slip back and forth. All my mind could think to do was babble on about its vertical plane of reference, and how it simply couldn’t deal with a room that won’t stay still. Luckily my body is more practical than my mind, so it took itself to the front door, and propped itself up to watch the show. Like most Canadians, I was raised on American television, so I am filled with the same earthquake preparedness skills that many California youths were taught in the commercial breaks during “Diff’rent Strokes”. I just never imagined I would ever call upon that knowledge.

Standing in the doorway, I could hear dogs losing their minds, children screaming, and the entire building creaking, snapping, and booming along. All the doors in this building are aluminum, so when you shake 800 of them, it gets a little loud. At this point, the earthquake had been happening for about 10 seconds – which is a little long for the world to sway and roll. I have been in two other very minor tremors, each of which last about 5-10 seconds, and I was fully expecting this one to follow suit and pack it in any second. As the room continued to confuse me, it dawned on me that this could be a big big big deal – I then proceeded to become deeply afraid. I mean, I thought I had been afraid before – when the car starts skidding sideways towards a tree, when the ship is in heavy weather, when I realized halfway down the hill on my bicycle that the ramp simply wasn’t going to work. Standing there, watching the horizon disagree with the window frame, I realized fear – fully, intimately, and permanently. It seems to me that fear arises from loss of control, and a feeling that you’re no longer captain of your own ship. Being treated like a martini on the 19th floor produces this feeling like nothing else – I have a new benchmark now, and fear isn’t invited over for coffee any more. Any half-serious musings about sky-diving or extreme unicycling are gone; no thrill-seeking is necessary now.

Where was I ? Oh yes…panicking. The paper lanterns on the ceiling were swinging, the plants were swaying hypnotically, and plaster was falling on my hands. The back-and-forth motion slowed, and I thought it was over – until the front-to-back nonsense started up. The washroom mirror recorded the angle of the building’s list by alternately pointing at 45 degrees, then smacking into the wall. Water sloshed out of the fish tank , and Sushi & Sashimi (the fish) rode the waves like champs – I’m very proud of them. Looking out into the hallway of the building, I watched bicycles laugh at their kickstands and dive for cover. I didn’t really know what to do, aside from standing in the doorframe and shouting “No No No” into the room, which does little good, by the way. This chaos went on for about another 20 or 30 seconds, during which all the thoughts you might expect went prancing through my mind : ‘is this the last scene, falling 19 floors, clinging to a silly doorframe?’…’just what did I do to deserve this treatment, aside from moving to Japan?’…’wow, Miles can really play that trumpet’…and ’I wonder what those idiot fish are thinking?’. Apparently it was not a good day to die, because the building decided to twist a few times, shrug, and slowly sway to a stop.

As soon as I was absolutely sure things were going to sit still and behave (an assumption I can never make again), I took a few seconds to compose myself, and went to the balcony to look at the city and see how it fared. Osaka was carrying on with its day – I could hear construction sounds from the construction site, street sounds from the street, and bird sounds from the birds. No one was running around in circles like in a 70’s disaster film, and it actually seemed like nothing had just happened. It wasn’t until later that day that I found out that some people didn’t even notice – it lasted 10 seconds on the ground, and those on trains, riding bikes and driving cars found out about it on the evening news. Even my non-scientific mind can figure out that tremors and swaying are amplified many times over when you’re 400 feet away from the ground. The earthquake was massive and terrifying if you were attached to the earth at a great height, but it was a suspicious bump at ground level. High price to pay for a great view, huh?

Other Osakans told me harrowing tales as well, so I know it wasn’t just in my mind. A friend called from her office downtown, telling me that a wall crumbled in her building. Another friend was also working in his office, where floor tiles popped up from the floor, and drywall sheets came away from the wall. That office complex is comprised of two tall buildings built on gigantic wheels, for just such an occasion. He told me that he watched the two towers roll back and forth, and that it looked like they were rubbing together. It took ten minutes of slow rolling for the creaking, snapping buildings to find their centers of gravity again. The magnitude in Osaka was 5.3, and the epicenter was 500 km away in Tottori Prefecture. Tottori received a 7.1 spanking, so I shouldn’t complain one little bit. Amazingly, no one died. There are some very sad pictures of destroyed temples and people who lost their homes, but there were only 50 injuries in the whole country.

Regardless of differing individual experiences, the quake was a big topic of conversation that day, and it inevitably led to stories of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake that erased Kobe. Last week’s adventure was the same magnitude and duration, but strangely, it didn’t create a need for a Time magazine retrospective. I don’t know why – ask a seismologist on his day off from utterly failing to predict earthquakes.

I used to see reports of earthquakes on the news and in papers, and I would do the usual – shake my head and say, “Can you imagine?”. Well, the fact is that I couldn’t – now I can. More importantly, I can remember, and it still turns my stomach a bit. I have tried to find something funny about this experience, but I keep coming up empty – if you hear anyone make an earthquake joke, punch ‘em for me. The simple, ugly fact is that we’re tiny and impotent, standing in doorways shouting “No”. We’re passengers, and the captain doesn’t care if we’re afraid of turbulence.

First, please allow me to apologize for the distance between the last letter and this one – it’s been a hectic month, and that’s the only excuse you’re going to get. As some know, I’ve started working at a new job since the last letter – I’m now an instructor for OTC -Overseas Training Company; or “Ontario Teachers’ Collective”, depending on who you ask. I teach conversational English to all levels of employees from various large companies in the Kansai region. That last part is an important thing to notice – not in Osaka city, or even in Osaka prefecture…in the Kansai Region. That’s like saying ‘not in Toronto or just in the GTA, but in Ontario’. I’m a genuine three-fisted pen-slingin’ grammarian for hire, and I’m exhausted and whiny. In the past if someone asked me how many hours per week I worked, I would say that I worked 40 or 50 or whatever it was, and completely ignore the 20 minutes or so it took me to get to that job. The travel time is so rudely obvious in this case, that I have to include it in my work week. Some of my classes are over three hours away, and none are closer than 45 minutes from home. I’m the new guy – I guess that’s becoming obvious. There’s a legend about a guy who had to actually get on a plane to Tokyo once a week, but the references are shady and suspicious – they sound like Elvis sightings to me.

Trains. My life is about trains right now. I’m Railboy – a smoothly rolling superhero for the ages. I have the recorded voices that tell passengers the next stop memorized (in Japanese). I’m beginning to recognize some of the motormen (drivers), and I even know which are my favourite train types, and wait for them to show up sometimes. Take the Chuo train from Morinomiya to Hommachi, and switch to the Midosuji line to Umeda….switch to the Hanshin Tokkyu-ken train from Umeda to Shikama, then jump on a local from Shikama to Aboshi. Get on the Himeji City bus for 10 minutes and show up at the front gate of work in tears. See how unreasonable I can be? I even get paid for travel.

Being on the train could be considered an anthropological thesis in itself. Forget about thousands of years of tradition – the real key to Japanese culture is played out on the trains every day. Everyone has heard the horror stories of thousands crammed onto a subway car intended for hundreds, and yes – it’s all true. During extremely busy times, there’s a fellow whose job it is to actually push people onto the train – like trying to get an over packed suitcase closed. Once the sardines are in the can, the real fun begins – no one touches anyone else. I’ve seen some very interesting contortionist routines designed to conform to the shapes of one’s surroundings, all to avoid actual contact with another human being. This only happens during peak times, though – there are usually only enough people on any given train to fill the seats, with a few people standing.

It has become apparent that the typical Japanese individual can’t stand conscious ‘downtime’. The train offers hours of blankly staring at walls or watching scenery roll past, both of which I enjoy – not so my fellow passengers. The second they hit the seat, there are only a few options, it seems – a few read books or newspapers, a large percentage whip out their ‘keitai’ (cell phones) and play games or send emails; most simply go to sleep. The Japanese powernap is a thing to behold – whether they are traveling for 5 minutes or 5 hours, the second they are off their feet, they’re asleep. It’s like there’s a power switch on their bums. I’ve seen a whole row of sleeping passengers, all slumped over and rocking around, simultaneously wake up and exit the train, fresh as a dozen daisies. I’ve seen a bedraggled businessman actually snoring, but miraculously managing to not touch the guy next to him as he flopped back and forth as the train rounded corners. I saw a woman asleep while standing propped up in a corner. Thankfully, I am impervious to the knockout gas that I suspect is being pumped into the car, so I am able to observe this strange behaviour and report it to you.

Almost as entertaining as the passengers are the motormen. It has always seemed to me that “driving” a train must be the single most soul-numbing job in this world. You don’t get to execute barrel-rolls, dramatic last minute turns or even the occasional peel-out. It’s 8 hours of ‘Go (slowly)….go (a little faster)….sit there (going fast)…slow down (gradually)…stop (completely).’..oh, and ‘Try to stay on those rails, ok?’. This has always been my image of the motorman’s life – anyone could do it, right? Not in Japan. There is a minutely choreographed dance, an exciting and complex system of switches, cranks, keys, buttons, and gauges at the maestro’s fingertips. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain – the Wizard of Oz would have a nervous breakdown driving a Japan Railway train. Not only are there about 10 different maneuvers necessary to starting and stopping the train, there is also a finely orchestrated ritual to the time between stations. Being the ignorant prole I am, I always assumed that they would just listen to the ball game or write a screenplay between stations – the train is moving, it’s not going to go left or right on you…nothing to do until the exciting ‘slowing down’ procedure. I guess someone noticed that it could get pretty boring between stations, so they have come up with a system to keep them interested. I’ll use my favourite motorman as an example – he drives the Ayabe-Fukuchiyama local – I actually look forward to that 20 minutes of my journey. The dance goes something like :

1. push the button that starts the tape that produces the breathy woman’s voice that tells the passengers that we will be arriving at such-and-such a station next.

2. turn the crank to start the train moving slowly, while at the same time, making this sound : “Pshh”, just seconds before the train itself says “Pshh”

3. point at the schedule mounted on the window in front of the controls, and say “Pshh” again

4. turn the crank to get the train moving a little faster, saying “Pshh” , barely beating the locomotive’s “Pshh” again

5. point out the window at the station as it slips away, and point at that station’s name on the schedule

6. adjust your hat

7. say “Pshh”

8. pick up the CB handset and say something into it about the next 47 stations over the PA in the cars - *NB – please ensure that you hold the handset way too close to your mouth, to ensure a finely distorted and nerve-trampling cacophony for the passengers

9. replace the handset, point at it , say “Pshh”

10. repeat steps 3 & 4

11. say “Pshh” for no apparent reason

12. as steps 3~11 are unfolding, point at various telephone poles and switching stations as they whip past, and say something that sounds curiously like “Hey look, a taco!” (I swear that’s what he says)

13. repeat steps 12~1 in inverse order, until the train rolls to a complete stop.

14. throughout this entire process, vaguely point at gauges, switches, the ceiling, your hat, the schedule, out the window and into your ear – punctuate with liberal use of “Pshh” and loud explosive words

I will never accuse these guys of having a boring job again – I get tired just watching him. If you weren’t able to see him, you’d swear there was a dart tournament going on in an air mattress factory. The “Pshh”s and weird yelling definitely keeps him alert – I imagine he must think of himself as a part of the train itself, and it certainly seems like he’s having a hell of a good time in there. I feel like the kid flying for the first time, and he gets to sit in the cockpit to watch the pilots. I always try to sit near the window close to the motorman’s cab, and always feel like clapping at each station. He should put a hat in the aisle for change, like a busker.

I have yet to see a train arrive late or depart early, I always get where I need to be, and I get a floor show in the bargain. I get the feeling that if one train was one minute late just once, the entire infrastructure of Japan would fall to ruin. Multinational companies would go bankrupt, world markets would fluctuate madly, and governments would collapse. Maybe not - but the motormen, conductors and even the passengers all act like it. I guess that’s a good thing, and I’m slowly getting used to the ultra-efficiency mindset. Conductors are unerringly polite and helpful, cheerfully listening to my Japanglish and trying to point at the right platform when I look lost.

A few other tiny tidbits of trivia about the train : conductors bow to the entire car, before and after collecting tickets…the Hanshin line has a Muzak-like recording of “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad” to announce the arrival of trains in the station…it’s perfectly alright to stare at any non-Japanese passenger for an entire hour without blinking…sit adamantly in your hard-won seat and pretend not to notice when an elderly or handicapped passenger enters the car, but notice immediately and express unreserved disgust when someone eats a sandwich…cell phones : not just for communication any more.

I spend approximately 25 hours per week in this environment – roughly twice as much time as in the classroom, and I can feel it changing me. Maybe I’ll just sleep from now on.

Just me again…here to blather on about a startled Canadian and his unlikely adventures….

I think the last letter ended with my plans to go golfing – it would be criminal to skip over that little episode, even though it was a couple of weeks ago now…there are some pics attached of the golf course and the hot springs later – but, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

The golf course is outside Osaka, so my day started bright and early, and on a train for 45 minutes. I was picked up at the station by Mr.Honiden, who is an architect; and Mr. Nakamura, who is a Buddhist priest and professor of something. We took the highway out of town and drove another hour and a half. Usually this is a boring experience, but of course everything that whipped by the window was strange and new to me. All the other vehicles, the buildings, the amusement parks inside giant buildings…stuff like that. Of course, if I were to get bored, I could always watch cartoons on the TV mounted on the dashboard. This seems like a very very bad idea to me, but I guess since the engineers were installing a GPS in the car, they thought they might as well put a receiver in there too. I’ve seen it come in handy in the many traffic jams…

We arrived at the golf course, signed in, and went to the lounge to wait for our tee time. It was 10 am, but that didn’t stop my hosts from ordering three rounds of Asahi beer for us, along with a light lunch of rice, pickled eggplant, and fried pork and squid. Mr. Yamafuji met us in the lounge – he’s a priest, plays standup bass in a jazz band, broadcasts his own station on shortwave, and owns a business called “Music Lovers House Tube”, where he builds custom tube amps, of all things. Well fed and watered, we set out.

Have I mentioned that it’s a little hot here? The golf course felt like I was wrapped in a wet duvet inside an oven in the corner of a bakery. After warming up to take our tee shots, I felt like running back inside to shower. I had my towel around my neck the whole time, taking it off only long enough to wring it out…my hand-fan was useless – it just blew jungle heat onto my face more efficiently. By the end of the day, I was the colour of a Coke can (a 3 dollar Coke can), and there were actual salt crystals on the outside of my skin. Again, I’m skipping ahead…

We’ve all seen golf carts – you know the ones…you load all your gear onto the back and drive around the course under a canopy, and generally have a lot of fun piloting a small electric car for the afternoon. Well, the Japanese will have none of that – it simply has to be both more and less convenient, as with everything else here. The Japanese golf cart has no seats – just room for your golf bags – and you don’t drive it. You have a remote control hung on your belt, and guide it like a model monster truck around a magnetic track, which loops around the course, and almost never gets close enough to the place that you may need to retrieve a club. You’re terribly tempted to applaud this kind of ingenuity, but there’s something essentially spooky and not quite handy enough about it. It’s like they’ve met you in the middle of the convenience/annoyance curve. On one hand, you don’t have to carry your clubs around in the sun…on the other, you have to wonder why they didn’t just put seats on the silly thing. There is a nod to actual convenience, though : conveyor belts on the hills so you don’t have to climb. The one I rode on was about 40 feet long, and it scaled the side of a hill that was easily 20 degrees less pitched than the hills without escalators. See what I mean? …

A round at the Shoji Golf Club costs 9000yen – about US$90.00, and that is apparently a very reasonable rate for 18 holes. Now, the course itself…for that kind of fee, don’t you think the course would be relatively free of large earth-moving equipment and assorted metal debris? I would too. I have since talked to a friend who golfed this particular course 2 years ago, and he described exactly where every monstrous machine (still) is. The greens are beautiful – the very best pieces of lawn I’ve seen since I arrived on the island. The fairways…hmmm…okay – Imagine that you’re about 200 feet tall, and you’re walking through thousands of acres of wheat fields. A beautiful golden colour, and a very nice rhythmic crunch as you follow your robot caddy around the sauna…

Just to point out that there are some very positive things about the course : an air conditioned bar on the 7th hole, vending machines for juice, sports drinks and cigarettes (?), and thick, huge bamboo forests all around the fairways. Please don’t get the wrong idea about the day – I had an outstanding time, shot some very poor golf, and spent a great afternoon with some cool guys – even Yamafuji, with whom I spoke French all afternoon (just in case it wasn’t a strange enough time)….

After the longest round of golf in Japanese history, the four of us jumped in the car and headed deeper into the woods, through a small village called Mizuma, going waaay too fast on alley-sized streets, dodging cyclists and pedestrians, and watching TV the whole way. We ended up at a little Inn tucked into the side of a mountain, called ‘Okumizuma’. The Hot Spring!

As Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said of Hawaii in ‘The Curse of Lono’, “Anything that can create itself by erupting out of the bowels of the Pacific Ocean is worth looking at”. I happen to agree with this sentiment, and happily apply it to Japan – especially with respect to something like a hot spring. If the Earth has seen fit to heat pools of water and place them in the mountains, it seems just plain disrespectful to ignore them. Any time I had ever imagined hot springs before, it involved a hazy picture of having to hack through underbrush with a machete and come upon the steaming pool in a huge bowl of lava rock. Not so in Mizuma – they’ve decided to build a quaint little hotel around the marvel, and provide well-decorated air-conditioned rooms and a great meal to go with your adventure.

We changed into thin, floor-length robes called ‘Yukata’ (I liked mine so much, I stole it) and headed for the pools. First we went to the ‘sento’ – public bath – where we showered sitting on little wooden benches, using bowls to dump water on ourselves (there is a sento in most communities). I have the same setup in the shower here in the apartment – it sounds kind of primitive, but it’s actually very relaxing. Then we soaked in the ‘onsen’ (hot spring) itself – all indoors, with about 20 other guys – all trying to look the other way at the same time. The women’s section was next door, and we could hear them all giggling and talking, in stark contrast to the locker room silence on our side. Then we went to the outdoor section of the spring, which was incredible. The outdoor section is situated on kind of a large balcony, overlooking a stream, with a wall of dense forest all around. The water is hot, the brook is babbling, the birds are singing, and it’s a great place to be naked.

When I felt cleaner and more light-headed than ever before in my life, we went back down to the room and rested before dinner. The room was spacious, air-conditioned, and contained a small fridge rammed with beer, which my gracious hosts seemed determined to consume before the dinner even arrived. The Sumo tournament was on TV, and we were lucky enough to have tuned in just in time for the finals. The Yokazuna (grand champion), Akebono, was being presented with trophies from all over the world – the G-8 Conference was just wrapping up in Okinawa, so all the member nations decided to toss in a gigantic crystal bowl or something to give to the gigantic Hawaiian sumo champion. Mr. Yamafuji tried to give me a crash course in sumo history, but my French is lacking in that area, and my Japanglish is even worse. Besides, I had walked a few miles, been roasted and boiled, and I was getting a little drunk.

Dinner began arriving, brought in by a small fleet of 400 year old ladies. I can’t even begin to describe the food – surreal colours and shapes, with flavours and aromas that can only be described as ‘huh?’. There had to be 6 courses, each consisting of 1500 little bowls, plates, steamers and pots, and for each there was a complicated ceremony of dipping, swirling and mixing. I know there was sushi, some squid, and some eel. As for the rest, and there was plenty more…’huh?’ pretty much covers it. It’s interesting to note here that by that point in the day, the notion of me sitting on the floor, drunk, dressed in a robe and consuming stuff from Mars…didn’t even phase me. It all started to seem normal. Let’s hear it for Canadian adaptability!

As you may expect, we all passed out on the floor for about 2 hours. It seemed the only reasonable thing to do after putting ourselves through that many extremes in one day. I woke up feeling better than I have in years, and we all went down to the spring for a quick soak before leaving. After changing back into clothes that I can now only regard as ‘stupid’ after reclining on a tatami mat in a robe, we loaded up the car and headed out of Mizuma at the same unadvisable pace as when we arrived. I watched a Japanese Old-Timers baseball game all the way home.

That was just one day.

Konnichiwa!

I still don’t have a very reliable internet connection, so I’m afraid this is a bit of a form letter – more personalized missives will come shooting out of Nippon as soon as I have that sorted out…

It continues to be jungle hot here in my new hometown – apparently it gets hotter in August - businesses shut down for a week at a time because people die in the streets. Honestly, I can’t imagine it being any hotter or more humid, but my friends tell me to “just wait”…

On Sunday, I’m going golfing with two students – Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Honiden. They offered to take me and pay for everything, which apparently includes buckets of beer and lots of food. I figured this was probably the best chance I would get to see some more of Osaka, and almost definitely the only chance I would get to play golf in Japan ($150 for 18 holes). Mr. Honiden is an architect, and Mr. Nakamura is a professor and priest – neither one speaks English very well, so I think that’s why they invited me out in a social setting – lessons. Another student, Mr. Maesawa, who is an executive for movie distribution, has offered to take me gambling and deep-sea fishing. Who am I to ruin the party?

I live on the 19th floor of an apartment building, which helps me to get to know the neighbourhood a bit without actually going out and getting myself lost. I’m concentrating on spelunking around the immediate vicinity until I get some sense of direction. It’s easy to get turned around in the narrow streets and weird little corners, and I’ve been good and lost more than once…luckily, my building is right on a river, and is also the tallest building in this area, so I usually don’t have too much trouble finding my way back.

Last night there was a lunar eclipse and a Buddhist summer festival (I don’t know if that’s coincidence or not). The festivities were centred around a temple that’s directly below the apartment building, and featured a movable shrine on wheels. About 30 teenaged kids were chanting, singing, playing drums and bells, dancing, running, pushing pulling, and setting off fireworks in, on, under, around and behind the shrine as it raced up and down the streets. Well – you can’t just sit on the balcony and watch nonsense like that, so my friends Rob and Geraldine and I went down to see what we could see. Standing head and shoulders above everyone else, we joined in the crowd and watched the shrine go up and down the street for about an hour. The music was pretty catchy, so Rob and I started dancing along with everyone else. [Now, just as a side note: non-Japanese residents are called ‘gaijin’, which literally means ‘alien’ in Japanese. I took this as an exclusionary attitude, (which it actually is), and prepared myself to be the victim of racial prejudice for the first time in my life. People move away from you on the elevator, some people actually get startled when you walk past them on the street, and quite a few people (mostly business men) look straight through you and talk to their buddies when you’re standing on the train. However, Rob has pointed out to me that it’s less like being an uninvited guest as it is like being famous. Everyone stares at you, makes little comments that you can’t understand, and actually point at you when you’re out in public. Some friends here have had people ask to have their picture taken with them, and one was asked for an autograph.] So, when Rob and I started dancing at a Buddhist festival, it caused quite a stir…everyone was looking at us, the gangly white guys, making a scene. A little girl came running up to me and asked me in English where I was from - just as I started to answer, about 10 other little girls came running over and leaned in like I was E.F. Hutton. There was a lot of giggling and bowing – some other guys gave us sparklers and lit them for us, then everyone started dancing again. All in all, it was a strange experience, and I’m positive I couldn’t have had that exact evening anywhere else in the world. Teaching is fun – the students are really into learning the language, but I find it hard to see how they can be learning much – some are only in class for 45 minutes a week. For some, I think it’s just a hobby, while others seem to seek out situations in which they can practice English – bars, restaurants, golfing with a gaijin. Most students seem to be doing a lot of independent study, and use the classes to ask specific questions and to learn in a more formalized system. After nearly every one of the classes that I’ve attended or taught, there is food and beer – I think the students want to use their new language skills in a more relaxed atmosphere, and again – I feel beholden to accept…. wouldn’t want to offend…

It’s great to have so many old friends here; with new friends attached…it’s made the assimilation process a whole lot easier. About 15 Canadians and I had a barbeque on the roof of the apartment building last week – it felt like a familiar activity, but with a 600 year old castle in the background, it was definitely a twist on patio lanterns and lawn darts. It’s funny how the more we try to make it seem like home, the less it seems like it. There are a lot of familiar Western things around – McDonald’s, Coke, Hollywood movies, Aquafresh toothpaste…but I’ve decided that I have come here to experience Japan, not Japan’s notion of North America, so I’m going to stick to the mysterious stuff…

The idea of convenience here is a little skewed, I’ve found. For example, cabs have doors that the driver opens by remote control, there are conveyor belts on golf courses so you don’t have to climb hills, and just about anything you could need may be found in a vending machine: ice cream, beer, sake, cigarettes, magazines, soft drinks, coffee, food. On the other hand, most apartments have a washing machine but no dryer, local phone calls cost ten yen per 3 minutes (10 cents), each subway or rail line is owned by a different company (separate fares for each one), and there are stickers in the washrooms to show how to use a western –style toilet (when to have the seat up or down). This is a country in which it is a mortal sin to not take your shoes off when entering a restaurant or someone’s home, but the traditional toilet is little more than a porcelain hole in the floor. Oh well…when in Rome….

I could go on and on about the little differences in virtually everything, but overall, I like this country and the people. It seems like an interesting place to spend a year, and it’s definitely a new experience. I’m going to try to get some pictures scanned to send, just so you can see what I’m talking about. I’m sorry about the silence from the East, but the internet connection has been a bit of a problem. I should have it sorted out soon, and I’ll be able to write a bit more.