The WAM (Whatever And Multi-vitamins) diet is over.
I don`t have a problem with nakedness. In fact, I like nakedness. As my mum pointed out last night:
"I tell my work colleagues, Holly. I say `my daughter keeps taking her clothes off. If she`s not running around in the nuddy with old ladies in baths, she`s bouncing around in the sea with her friends. She doesn`t seem to be able to keep them on, and I don`t know what`s wrong with her. That`s certainly not how I brought her up.`" And then mum paused and looked at me on the webcam. "Although, now I think about it, you used to strip at the first sign of rain as a baby. It was all I could do to get wellies on your feet before you were out there, cavorting for all the world to see. Perhaps I should have seen the signs then."
My nakedness, though, has its limits. And the key criteria is this: I don`t mind being naked, in a harmonious, aren`t we all the same and isn`t it lovely enjoying the water like this kind of way, as long as nobody tries to talk to me about it. Because if you try and talk to me about it, my nakedness is no longer harmonious and hippy-like. It`s no longer humans, celebrating our humanity, and women, celebrating our femininity (or friends, celebrating drunkness). No: comment on my body and it is suddenly just me without any clothes on.
Which is why I was a little disturbed last night, when I strode confidently out of the local Onsen and stood on the changing room mat, nude, dripping and looking for my towel.
"Oooooohhhhh," a little naked old Japanese lady squealed, and ran right up to me - right up to me - and started pointing at my stomach. I stayed as still as I could and tried to both brazen it out and surruptitiously reach my towel without pushing her out of the way (she`d only need to slip on a bit of wet floor and I`d be responsible for the death of a naked pensioner, and I don`t want that).
"Look!" she started shouting at her friends, and - within 20 seconds - I was surrounded by Japanese women of all ages in various states of undress: most fully naked, one with a bra on, one wearing a pair of trousers. You know those dreams where you suddenly realise you`re standing, naked, in the middle of a room and everyone is grouping around and pointing at you? Try having one of those in Japanese.
I smiled as nicely as I could. "Hello," I said politely.
"Wooooooaaa," the old lady cried, and then she made the international sign language for hourglass va-va-voom and wiggled her hips a little bit. And then the little old lady next to her - a nice, polite, demure little old lady - made the international sign language for big boobs, and the international sign language for big butt, looked for a moment as if she was going to try and prod my bottom and gave me the thumbs up.
And all I could do was turn bright pink and bow, still butt naked. And all I could think was: I believe that a group of 70 year old Japanese naked women have just told me they`re ready for my jelly. I`m not going to be surprised if they form a line, start flicking me with wet towels and singing "I like big butts and I cannot lie...".
Tell me the truth, I texted a friend the minute I got out. Have I got too much jelly?
Nah, he texted back. Why?
A group of old Japanese ladies just told me I had junk in my trunk, or the old lady Japanese equivalent.
They love that here. Japanese women are straight up and down, so they all want a bit of fat on their girls.
So I am fat, then.
No. You`re just...
You`re going to say Bootylicious, aren`t you. Sod off.
And then, to top it off, the conversation this morning somehow steered to Sumo.
"How do they do it?" I asked Harai. "I mean, how do they get so massively fat?"
"They eat five times a day. When they aren`t eating, they sleep. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep."
There was a short silence.
"Oh Jesus, that`s exactly what I do, Harai."
"Women not allowed. But if women allowed, you make good sumo."
I`m all for having a bit of literal junk in the metaphorical trunk, but when a diet results in having your bottom tapped in a single-sex onsen by a naked old lady, it`s time to cut off supplies. And when your colleague suggests putting you in a large nappy and getting you to run at other fat, naked people, it`s time to think a little more carefully about what you`re eating.
If you want to keep running around naked, that is.
And I most certainly do.
Monday, 27 September 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
The Law Of Sod
Something has gone wrong with the Season Race.
This always happens. I wax lyrical about something - gush my little Pollyanna socks off, as I`m horribly prone to - and then it spins around, sticks its middle finger up at me and runs away laughing. Every time: no matter what it is. If I publicly declare trust in a hairdresser, she`ll automatically give me an orange mullet. If I announce that I`ve found the perfect moisturiser, it will bring me out in hives. If I say the children in my school are lovely I`ll turn round three minutes later to find them doing an unflattering impression of the way I walk, and if I confess that my writing is going well, I`ll discover that every single word I`ve written is nonsense. The minute I announce to anyone I`m in love, the object of my affections changes their minds; the minute I say I feel fanastic and healthy, I get the flu; the minute I say I want to go to a country, some kind of war breaks out there. Oh she`s gone and done it now, the Universe immediately says, and goes out of its way to prove me wrong and make me look like some kind of Anne of Green Gables on acid. This, it adds, just for the record, is called Sod`s Law. It particularly likes you, because you tempt it so openly and so damn often. Get a grip, Hollyanna.
And yet, I never learn. Logically, of course, I should just announce that the world and everything in it is crap and heading towards further inevitable crapness and be proved either right or pleasantly surprised, but you can`t fake that kind of thing. The Universe will know that I`m secretly optimistic that everything will turn out perfectly in the end, and it`ll call my bluff. Because I honestly believe that everything will. Eventually. As soon as I stopped getting punished for believing that. As soon as the Universe starts behaving the way I got told it would in all the fairytales I read when I was little, and sends perfect weather and haircuts and love and health and students.
Thus, I think I may have asked for this: the immediate death of Autumn. The minute I wrote about how perfect it was - taking the baton so neatly from Summer, moving so elegantly towards Winter - it killed itself. Mid-race, somewhere in between steps two and three. And, in the swan dive towards its 2010 end, it just managed to lob the baton towards Winter before it fell face forward into the dirt.
It`s freezing. It`s raining. It`s cloudy. The temperature - so beautifully temperate for about four days - plummetted overnight, and I woke up shivering in my cotton sheet and trying to work out where I put all my jumpers and a duvet that isn`t at the back of a cupboard, covered in mould. One week ago, I was in a vest and shorts: I am now in a jumper and tights. Autumn didn`t even bother trying: it took one look at 2010 and said Sod this, I can`t be fagged, and committed seasonal suicide. "If it doesn`t come back, I`m blaming you," a friend emailed me this morning. "Just so you know. You were way too quick to start telling everyone how great it was."
Thus; I am now announcing that I have changed my mind. Autumn was shit. Summer was too hot, and winter is going to be foul. Pissy, freezing, lonely and miserable. Alright? Just so you know. I`m going to hate every second of it. I`m going to wish I was anywhere but in a Japanese winter. I`m going to wish that it was summer, or spring, in any other country. Japan and its suicidal seasons can screw itself.
Okay? That should do it.
I expect it to be sunny and pretty and Autumnal from first thing tomorrow. Or however long it takes before the Universe reads this blog and totally ruins it again.
This always happens. I wax lyrical about something - gush my little Pollyanna socks off, as I`m horribly prone to - and then it spins around, sticks its middle finger up at me and runs away laughing. Every time: no matter what it is. If I publicly declare trust in a hairdresser, she`ll automatically give me an orange mullet. If I announce that I`ve found the perfect moisturiser, it will bring me out in hives. If I say the children in my school are lovely I`ll turn round three minutes later to find them doing an unflattering impression of the way I walk, and if I confess that my writing is going well, I`ll discover that every single word I`ve written is nonsense. The minute I announce to anyone I`m in love, the object of my affections changes their minds; the minute I say I feel fanastic and healthy, I get the flu; the minute I say I want to go to a country, some kind of war breaks out there. Oh she`s gone and done it now, the Universe immediately says, and goes out of its way to prove me wrong and make me look like some kind of Anne of Green Gables on acid. This, it adds, just for the record, is called Sod`s Law. It particularly likes you, because you tempt it so openly and so damn often. Get a grip, Hollyanna.
And yet, I never learn. Logically, of course, I should just announce that the world and everything in it is crap and heading towards further inevitable crapness and be proved either right or pleasantly surprised, but you can`t fake that kind of thing. The Universe will know that I`m secretly optimistic that everything will turn out perfectly in the end, and it`ll call my bluff. Because I honestly believe that everything will. Eventually. As soon as I stopped getting punished for believing that. As soon as the Universe starts behaving the way I got told it would in all the fairytales I read when I was little, and sends perfect weather and haircuts and love and health and students.
Thus, I think I may have asked for this: the immediate death of Autumn. The minute I wrote about how perfect it was - taking the baton so neatly from Summer, moving so elegantly towards Winter - it killed itself. Mid-race, somewhere in between steps two and three. And, in the swan dive towards its 2010 end, it just managed to lob the baton towards Winter before it fell face forward into the dirt.
It`s freezing. It`s raining. It`s cloudy. The temperature - so beautifully temperate for about four days - plummetted overnight, and I woke up shivering in my cotton sheet and trying to work out where I put all my jumpers and a duvet that isn`t at the back of a cupboard, covered in mould. One week ago, I was in a vest and shorts: I am now in a jumper and tights. Autumn didn`t even bother trying: it took one look at 2010 and said Sod this, I can`t be fagged, and committed seasonal suicide. "If it doesn`t come back, I`m blaming you," a friend emailed me this morning. "Just so you know. You were way too quick to start telling everyone how great it was."
Thus; I am now announcing that I have changed my mind. Autumn was shit. Summer was too hot, and winter is going to be foul. Pissy, freezing, lonely and miserable. Alright? Just so you know. I`m going to hate every second of it. I`m going to wish I was anywhere but in a Japanese winter. I`m going to wish that it was summer, or spring, in any other country. Japan and its suicidal seasons can screw itself.
Okay? That should do it.
I expect it to be sunny and pretty and Autumnal from first thing tomorrow. Or however long it takes before the Universe reads this blog and totally ruins it again.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Cats and Dogs
"People are crazy when they're in love." - Sigmund Freud.
Which is why, when the love is over and sanity (hopefully) comes back, it's a little like watching a video of yourself, kicking and screaming in a padded cell with your arms tied behind your back. Embarrassing, painful, and - in the interest of not doing it again in exactly the same way - quite, quite necessary. Something you have to watch with one hand in front of your eyes and the other clutching a large bottle of whiskey so you can swig it from in between your fingers; especially when you finally realise that you spent 18 months of your life having what amounts to the following conversation:
Him: "I'm a cat."
Me: "No you're not, you're a dog."
Him: "I'm definitely a cat. A hundred per cent a cat. I promise you with all my heart, with every single bit of me, that I am most certainly a cat. I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life. I can't think about anything but being a cat, and I don't want anything but to be a cat. I'm living a lie as a dog. However it looks, I'm a cat."
Me: "Well... I want you to be a cat, because I'm a cat too. But I don't think I believe you. I can't help but feel that..."
Him: "I'm a cat."
Me: "Prove it."
Him: "Meow."
Me: "Now you're just a dog, meouwing."
Him: "Don't you want me to be a cat?"
Me: "Now you're just a dog, meouwing."
Him: "Don't you want me to be a cat?"
Me: "More than anything."
Him: "Then I'm a cat. What's the problem?"
Me: "The problem is that you're a dog."
Him: "Stop listening to your brain and listen to your heart and to me instead. I know you never trust anyone, but you can trust me. I'm a cat. I'm a cat I'm a cat I'm a cat I'm a cat I'm a cat."
Me (dubious but delighted): "If you're totally sure then...Okay, you're a cat. Oh thank God for that."
Eighteen months later:
Me (2 stone lighter and insane): "You're... you're still a cat, right?"
Him: "I think I might actually be a dog."
Me: "But... I don't understa... You were the one who said you were a cat in the first place. I knew you weren't and you convinced me you were!"
Him: "Are you bonkers? Look at my tail - I can wag it. And look at my ears! And listen to me: I can woof. It's as clear as daylight I'm a dog."
Heartbroken silence.
Me (small voice): "But you must have been a cat for a little while... I mean, you were so sure."
Him: "I think maybe I just got mixed up for a bit. Sorry."
Me: "Maybe you could be a cat again? In the future? If we wait?"
Him: "Don't be stupid, of course I can't. I'm a dog."
Me: "But... I'm still a cat."
Him: "Not my problem. Woof."
In this case, however, you can replace the words a cat with in love with you and replace the words a dog with not in love with you and still be very much on the money. Just as painfully obvious from the beginning, just as straight under your nose, just as absolutely impossible to miss, and yet... somehow - unlike my friends and family, throwing sticks behind me - I missed it. Although I suspected it at the beginning, and a tiny, tiny part of me knew it all the way through, I let him convince me: let my absolute love for him cloud what was in front of my face. And I totally and utterly missed it, for eighteen months.
In the absolute insanity of love, it is too easy to lose your mind: to allow yourself to believe in something that is not there, because you're fooled into believing it is. Because the truth is this: that if somebody shows no respect for you, no care, no kindness, no honesty - if somebody does not fight for you, protect you, adore you, think of you first, put you first, sacrifice for you, hurt for you - they do not love you, no matter how much or how often they say they do. And if they wag their tail and sniff your crotch and bark at strangers and roll over on grass and hump bitches - if they look like a dog, and smell like a dog, and act like a dog - they're a dog. No matter how many times they claim to the contrary, or how much you want to believe them. No matter how certain you are that you're a cat, and how deeply you want them to be. Because they aren't and never will be the same as you.
In this case, however, you can replace the words a cat with in love with you and replace the words a dog with not in love with you and still be very much on the money. Just as painfully obvious from the beginning, just as straight under your nose, just as absolutely impossible to miss, and yet... somehow - unlike my friends and family, throwing sticks behind me - I missed it. Although I suspected it at the beginning, and a tiny, tiny part of me knew it all the way through, I let him convince me: let my absolute love for him cloud what was in front of my face. And I totally and utterly missed it, for eighteen months.
In the absolute insanity of love, it is too easy to lose your mind: to allow yourself to believe in something that is not there, because you're fooled into believing it is. Because the truth is this: that if somebody shows no respect for you, no care, no kindness, no honesty - if somebody does not fight for you, protect you, adore you, think of you first, put you first, sacrifice for you, hurt for you - they do not love you, no matter how much or how often they say they do. And if they wag their tail and sniff your crotch and bark at strangers and roll over on grass and hump bitches - if they look like a dog, and smell like a dog, and act like a dog - they're a dog. No matter how many times they claim to the contrary, or how much you want to believe them. No matter how certain you are that you're a cat, and how deeply you want them to be. Because they aren't and never will be the same as you.
In the moments when we are locked in those heartbroken, padded cells - with our arms behind our backs and the video of our insanity on loop - all we can hope is that if we watch carefully, then we will know how to recognise real love when we see it, and recognise its absence when we don't. Learn the signs to look for, and the signs to walk away from. So that, eventually, we never have to go back there, and we don't have to watch anymore videos. Because we've found a kind of love that stays, even when the craziness goes. A love that's bigger than madness.
When it's love - real love - nobody needs convincing. When it's love, there are no doubts, no paradoxes, no moments of confusion: no lies, no cruelty, no selfishness. When it`s love, it is simple, it is uncomplicated and it is easy to believe in. Because if it looks like a cat, it behaves like a cat, and it sounds like a cat, then it is a cat. If it doesn't... then it isn't. It's a dog, and it always was and always will be.
And - just as a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog - so the same can always be said for love.
Monday, 20 September 2010
Teams
I've seen many amazing things during a year in Japan. I've seen a man walking cats; I've seen Mount Fuji at sun rise; I've seen three year old children pretending to be carrots and dragons and bean filled bread. I've seen water that lights up and stars that fall down, and trains more packed than trains have any right to be. I've seen typhoons and snow and palm trees and rice fields; parks filled with pink blossom and restaurants filled with beds and cafes filled with kittens; Cinderella speaking Japanese and dogs wearing dresses and men in suits sleeping on benches in the middle of the day.
But I've never seen anything quite as amazing as my school's Sports Day.
I didn't like Sports Day when I was at school, but - in fairness - there wasn't much to like. It was one day every year when the popular children - also known as the sporty, flexible, genetically agile children - got to show off by running faster and jumping higher and throwing further than everyone else, and everybody else stood around in bored huddles trying not to look bitter about it. Parents were roped in to watch up to the age of 11, but this simply meant that there were more witnesses to the en mass humiliation: more people to hide behind their hands when you tripped over the sack or dropped the egg or brought your pissed off three-legged partner down in a heap on the floor. After 11, the parents were removed (probably through request), and then you just had to endure six or seven years of never, ever being high fived for any activity you attempted in public again.
So, when they started talking about Sports Day in Kitago, I was predictably unexcited. There is nothing more depressing than being one of 400 reluctant and bored children, unless it's being forced to watch them being reluctant and bored when you're supposed to be on holiday. Even when I was allocated a team, I wasn't particularly bothered. 'Teams' meant nothing when I was a child, because it was never about working as a team. What colour t-shirt you were wearing was pretty irrelevant when you hadn't actually contributed towards the scoreboard at all, and - when the winners were cheering at the end, and the losers were throwing things at each other - they made it pretty clear that you had no call to either be upset or jubilant about it with them, because you hadn't been a part of it in the first place.
It was therefore with much surprise that I got to school at the beginning of this term and looked at my schedule. I had three lessons to teach in four whole weeks, because the rest of the time was allocated as "Sports Day practice".
"Practice?" I said to Harai in surprise. "Do you mean they all do PE non-stop for three weeks?"
Harai frowned at me.
"No, practice Sports Day means practice Sports Day."
He can be frustratingly obtuse sometimes: mainly because the concept of any other way of life - of any way of being anything but totally and utterly Japanese - never even occurs to him ("why would I want to go abroad?" he asked me once, despite being the English teacher. "I don't like abroad").
"But... What do they practice?"
"Sports Day."
"What is Sports Day?"
"Sports Day is Sports Day."
"Sometimes," I told him, getting up to make myself a frustrated coffee, "you can be a pain in the butt, Harai, you know that? And if you didn't make me laugh so often I'd probably move my desk."
It took me another 24 hours to realise that Sports Day in Japan is absolutely nothing like Sports Day in England: it is Sports Day. It's not a day to show off individual merits: far from it. It's a whole school celebration, and the only opportunity the students have to show mum and dad just how well behaved they are, and just how perfectly trained they can be, and just how harmoniously and peacefully and uncomplainingly they can work with their classmates. There are no individual sports: even running, the only thing they can do on their own, is divided into the two teams - red and white, the Japanese national colours - and they're running for their colour, not for themselves. Everything else is a group effort, it lasts the entire day, and mum and dad and grandma and grandad and aunty and brothers and sisters and far-flung third cousins bring tents and beer and picnics and camp out around the edges of the field from as early as the evening before.
It is, in every single respect, a festival. And not least because of the dancing.
There are three hundred children at my school (not including kindergarten), ranging from 5 years old to 15, and every single one of them danced. In between the astonishing group sports - relays, tugs of war with 100 people on each side of the rope, en mass ball throwing and getting the littlest student to climb over the bent over backs of his classmates wearing a pointy straw hat - there were dances. Dances like no other dances I've seen: practiced to within an inch of their lives, perfectly co-ordinated and done with utter enthusiasm by even the smallest child. The five year olds did '5,6,7,8' by Steps, the six year olds did 'Oh Mickey, you're so fine' and the seven year olds danced with yet more pointy straw hats to the theme song from Pokemon.
It was the older students, however, that truly astonished me. 200 students, all performing the Soran Bushi - a traditional fishing dance from Hokkaido - at the same time, with the same energy, and with the same dedication, wearing exactly the same outfits. Over and over and over again. Every day, in the midday sun, for three weeks, without complaining. Until - come Sports Day - it was one of the most amazing, moving things I have ever seen: a true representation of the wonderful spirit of Japanese education. That of harmony, and diligence, and passion. And untiring, unquestioning obedience.
They put their entire hearts and souls into the whole day, just as they had undergone being screamed at by the PE teacher for 3 weeks solidly beforehand (hence, incidentally, my dream). They marched in perfect time, like a tiny army, and they saluted at perfect angles, and they bowed simultaneously, and they sang their school song and national anthem with gusto. They painted their own team mascots and they swept the field and re-did the white lines and helped each other carry chairs and pin up flowers. They cheered each other on and when one of them tripped over they ran to pick them back up again. There was no bitchiness, no jealousy, no snidiness. The two children with Downs Syndrome were included in every single sport, and gave speeches at the end along with the leaders. And, when it was over and the parents had tipsily filmed every single second of it, the whole field - a thousand people - cheered the winners and cheered the losers. Equally.
At the end of Sports Day in England, there was a sensation of relief. Of being glad that it was all over for another year, and of vaguely aggressive team dynamics: violence towards those that did well, resentment towards those that did not. The culmination of hours of boredom and ego struggles: of showing off and humiliation and feeling not quite good enough. At the end of this Sports Day, my students cried. The 15, 14, 13 and 12 year old leaders - many of which were boys - stood in front of hundreds of people and openly sobbed their hearts out: gave heartfelt speeches of thanks to their team mates for trying so hard, and for giving so much, and for working so well together. The little ones sat on my lap and chatted to me in excited Japanese: told me that they would be a part of it next year, wouldn't they, and would I help them run as fast as the big boys did? And - as bemused as I initially was ("why are they crying, Harai? They just won, didn't they?") - it didn't take long for my own tears to form. Tears of pride in these wonderful, warm children, and tears of gratitude that I had been part of a beautiful Japanese tradition that very, very few foreigners ever get to see. A tradition much more precious than drinking tea or visiting a shrine or wearing a kimono. Because it's a tradition I have actually been part of, and given my heart to.
My team won, as it happens: the red team whooped arse. But the sensation was one I have never experienced before, being - as I am - a naturally competitive and independent and possessive pain in the bottom. One of genuine joy and satisfaction and happiness for every single member of my team - myself included, despite not running anywhere at all (although I did carry a number of chairs) - and also that of matching joy and happiness for every single member of the one that lost: the team we had run against. Who were equally as brilliant as the team that belonged to me, and I was equally as proud of.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging independence and ambition, but the English school system does it absolutely the wrong way. They make it about the self - about winning, or losing, on your own - and so this continues into adulthood: the feeling that you try hard only to be better than everyone else. Sports Day in Japan is the opposite. It is about warmth, and teamwork, and effort for the sake of others as well as yourselves. About passion for the whole, and not for the individual; compassion, and respect, and emotion, and obedience. About being part of something bigger than just you.
And - as a foreigner, accepted as part of the tiny, rural Kitago community with enthusiasm and grace - I am infinitely grateful that I am allowed to share a little piece of that.
To be a part of their team.
But I've never seen anything quite as amazing as my school's Sports Day.
I didn't like Sports Day when I was at school, but - in fairness - there wasn't much to like. It was one day every year when the popular children - also known as the sporty, flexible, genetically agile children - got to show off by running faster and jumping higher and throwing further than everyone else, and everybody else stood around in bored huddles trying not to look bitter about it. Parents were roped in to watch up to the age of 11, but this simply meant that there were more witnesses to the en mass humiliation: more people to hide behind their hands when you tripped over the sack or dropped the egg or brought your pissed off three-legged partner down in a heap on the floor. After 11, the parents were removed (probably through request), and then you just had to endure six or seven years of never, ever being high fived for any activity you attempted in public again.
So, when they started talking about Sports Day in Kitago, I was predictably unexcited. There is nothing more depressing than being one of 400 reluctant and bored children, unless it's being forced to watch them being reluctant and bored when you're supposed to be on holiday. Even when I was allocated a team, I wasn't particularly bothered. 'Teams' meant nothing when I was a child, because it was never about working as a team. What colour t-shirt you were wearing was pretty irrelevant when you hadn't actually contributed towards the scoreboard at all, and - when the winners were cheering at the end, and the losers were throwing things at each other - they made it pretty clear that you had no call to either be upset or jubilant about it with them, because you hadn't been a part of it in the first place.
It was therefore with much surprise that I got to school at the beginning of this term and looked at my schedule. I had three lessons to teach in four whole weeks, because the rest of the time was allocated as "Sports Day practice".
"Practice?" I said to Harai in surprise. "Do you mean they all do PE non-stop for three weeks?"
Harai frowned at me.
"No, practice Sports Day means practice Sports Day."
He can be frustratingly obtuse sometimes: mainly because the concept of any other way of life - of any way of being anything but totally and utterly Japanese - never even occurs to him ("why would I want to go abroad?" he asked me once, despite being the English teacher. "I don't like abroad").
"But... What do they practice?"
"Sports Day."
"What is Sports Day?"
"Sports Day is Sports Day."
"Sometimes," I told him, getting up to make myself a frustrated coffee, "you can be a pain in the butt, Harai, you know that? And if you didn't make me laugh so often I'd probably move my desk."
It took me another 24 hours to realise that Sports Day in Japan is absolutely nothing like Sports Day in England: it is Sports Day. It's not a day to show off individual merits: far from it. It's a whole school celebration, and the only opportunity the students have to show mum and dad just how well behaved they are, and just how perfectly trained they can be, and just how harmoniously and peacefully and uncomplainingly they can work with their classmates. There are no individual sports: even running, the only thing they can do on their own, is divided into the two teams - red and white, the Japanese national colours - and they're running for their colour, not for themselves. Everything else is a group effort, it lasts the entire day, and mum and dad and grandma and grandad and aunty and brothers and sisters and far-flung third cousins bring tents and beer and picnics and camp out around the edges of the field from as early as the evening before.
It is, in every single respect, a festival. And not least because of the dancing.
There are three hundred children at my school (not including kindergarten), ranging from 5 years old to 15, and every single one of them danced. In between the astonishing group sports - relays, tugs of war with 100 people on each side of the rope, en mass ball throwing and getting the littlest student to climb over the bent over backs of his classmates wearing a pointy straw hat - there were dances. Dances like no other dances I've seen: practiced to within an inch of their lives, perfectly co-ordinated and done with utter enthusiasm by even the smallest child. The five year olds did '5,6,7,8' by Steps, the six year olds did 'Oh Mickey, you're so fine' and the seven year olds danced with yet more pointy straw hats to the theme song from Pokemon.
It was the older students, however, that truly astonished me. 200 students, all performing the Soran Bushi - a traditional fishing dance from Hokkaido - at the same time, with the same energy, and with the same dedication, wearing exactly the same outfits. Over and over and over again. Every day, in the midday sun, for three weeks, without complaining. Until - come Sports Day - it was one of the most amazing, moving things I have ever seen: a true representation of the wonderful spirit of Japanese education. That of harmony, and diligence, and passion. And untiring, unquestioning obedience.
They put their entire hearts and souls into the whole day, just as they had undergone being screamed at by the PE teacher for 3 weeks solidly beforehand (hence, incidentally, my dream). They marched in perfect time, like a tiny army, and they saluted at perfect angles, and they bowed simultaneously, and they sang their school song and national anthem with gusto. They painted their own team mascots and they swept the field and re-did the white lines and helped each other carry chairs and pin up flowers. They cheered each other on and when one of them tripped over they ran to pick them back up again. There was no bitchiness, no jealousy, no snidiness. The two children with Downs Syndrome were included in every single sport, and gave speeches at the end along with the leaders. And, when it was over and the parents had tipsily filmed every single second of it, the whole field - a thousand people - cheered the winners and cheered the losers. Equally.
At the end of Sports Day in England, there was a sensation of relief. Of being glad that it was all over for another year, and of vaguely aggressive team dynamics: violence towards those that did well, resentment towards those that did not. The culmination of hours of boredom and ego struggles: of showing off and humiliation and feeling not quite good enough. At the end of this Sports Day, my students cried. The 15, 14, 13 and 12 year old leaders - many of which were boys - stood in front of hundreds of people and openly sobbed their hearts out: gave heartfelt speeches of thanks to their team mates for trying so hard, and for giving so much, and for working so well together. The little ones sat on my lap and chatted to me in excited Japanese: told me that they would be a part of it next year, wouldn't they, and would I help them run as fast as the big boys did? And - as bemused as I initially was ("why are they crying, Harai? They just won, didn't they?") - it didn't take long for my own tears to form. Tears of pride in these wonderful, warm children, and tears of gratitude that I had been part of a beautiful Japanese tradition that very, very few foreigners ever get to see. A tradition much more precious than drinking tea or visiting a shrine or wearing a kimono. Because it's a tradition I have actually been part of, and given my heart to.
My team won, as it happens: the red team whooped arse. But the sensation was one I have never experienced before, being - as I am - a naturally competitive and independent and possessive pain in the bottom. One of genuine joy and satisfaction and happiness for every single member of my team - myself included, despite not running anywhere at all (although I did carry a number of chairs) - and also that of matching joy and happiness for every single member of the one that lost: the team we had run against. Who were equally as brilliant as the team that belonged to me, and I was equally as proud of.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging independence and ambition, but the English school system does it absolutely the wrong way. They make it about the self - about winning, or losing, on your own - and so this continues into adulthood: the feeling that you try hard only to be better than everyone else. Sports Day in Japan is the opposite. It is about warmth, and teamwork, and effort for the sake of others as well as yourselves. About passion for the whole, and not for the individual; compassion, and respect, and emotion, and obedience. About being part of something bigger than just you.
And - as a foreigner, accepted as part of the tiny, rural Kitago community with enthusiasm and grace - I am infinitely grateful that I am allowed to share a little piece of that.
To be a part of their team.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Summer leaves
Today, it is Autumn.
Last Tuesday, it wasn`t Autumn. Thursday, it wasn`t Autumn. Yesterday, apparently, it wasn`t Autumn. Today, it`s Autumn.
In England, the year is undecided and vague. It thinks it might be Summer - has a vague feeling it should probably be sunny - but it`s not absolutely certain, so it shrugs, clouds over and rains instead. After that, it`s also pretty sure it should be Autumn, so it gets a little bit colder, a little bit cloudier, and carries on raining. Winter? A little bit colder again, complete cloud coverage, and still raining. What`s supposed to be Spring is just a slow, rainy, cloudy run-up to the indecisiveness of Summer, where it then starts all over again. Seasons in England, therefore, are just temperature differences in rain, and whatever the animals and plants can decide might be the appropriate response to this indecisiveness: abruptly mate, shed leaves, grow leaves, bloom, die. Whenever they think they probably should. Judging by the temperature when it`s not raining, how cold the rain is, and how long daylight hours are (ie: how long they can see the rain for).
It`s not like that in Japan. The year isn`t confused in the slightest. You know it`s spring, because you wake up one day and it`s warm and all the trees are pink. You know it`s rainy season, because it suddenly starts raining and then - when it`s done soaking everything in sight - it stops. It stops raining. Summer is hot and humid, winter is cold and icy. And Autumn? That happens abruptly too. Obediently, methodically and unquestionably. Politely. Just when it`s supposed to.
As a result, Autumn turned up at some time last night. I walked into my living room this morning, and stopped: mid-yawn. The incredible heat and stickiness in the air - there since some time in April, and unbearable since July - have gone: literally disappeared within a few hours. And, almost as promptly, the Summer leaves have started going yellow and dropping. Yesterday, there were no leaves on the floor. Today? There are leaves on the floor. The Summer, as it seems, got up and left. It must have been some kind of night-time Season relay; Summer ran as fast as it could until about 3am, and then it handed the baton over to Autumn who picked it up smoothly and continued the race. At which point Summer bowed out gracefully, and Winter started stretching in the background and running on the spot. Spring - I`m guessing - is now getting dressed in the changing rooms.
I`m thrilled with the change, because it is a change. Casseroles and leaves and golden light and cardigans and socks and all the things missed since last Autumn. And then coats and red noses and twinkly lights and cold hands and all the things missed since last Winter; flowers and birds and butterflies and removal of the coats in Spring, and then another long, hot, flip-flopped summer. The joy of four distinct Seasons.
I miss England, and I`ll miss seeing another English September: miss the beauty of a red and gold wood and conkers and smoke rings and red scarves and squirrels and my Autumnal sister (who has always loved this season the best).
But I won`t miss the rain. And I won`t miss the constant indecision. Like everything else in Japan, the weather here is well behaved: timed perfectly, polite, regimented and reliable. A race that runs smoothly, from Season to Season.
And - for an English person, used to the rain - that makes a beautiful change.
Last Tuesday, it wasn`t Autumn. Thursday, it wasn`t Autumn. Yesterday, apparently, it wasn`t Autumn. Today, it`s Autumn.
In England, the year is undecided and vague. It thinks it might be Summer - has a vague feeling it should probably be sunny - but it`s not absolutely certain, so it shrugs, clouds over and rains instead. After that, it`s also pretty sure it should be Autumn, so it gets a little bit colder, a little bit cloudier, and carries on raining. Winter? A little bit colder again, complete cloud coverage, and still raining. What`s supposed to be Spring is just a slow, rainy, cloudy run-up to the indecisiveness of Summer, where it then starts all over again. Seasons in England, therefore, are just temperature differences in rain, and whatever the animals and plants can decide might be the appropriate response to this indecisiveness: abruptly mate, shed leaves, grow leaves, bloom, die. Whenever they think they probably should. Judging by the temperature when it`s not raining, how cold the rain is, and how long daylight hours are (ie: how long they can see the rain for).
It`s not like that in Japan. The year isn`t confused in the slightest. You know it`s spring, because you wake up one day and it`s warm and all the trees are pink. You know it`s rainy season, because it suddenly starts raining and then - when it`s done soaking everything in sight - it stops. It stops raining. Summer is hot and humid, winter is cold and icy. And Autumn? That happens abruptly too. Obediently, methodically and unquestionably. Politely. Just when it`s supposed to.
As a result, Autumn turned up at some time last night. I walked into my living room this morning, and stopped: mid-yawn. The incredible heat and stickiness in the air - there since some time in April, and unbearable since July - have gone: literally disappeared within a few hours. And, almost as promptly, the Summer leaves have started going yellow and dropping. Yesterday, there were no leaves on the floor. Today? There are leaves on the floor. The Summer, as it seems, got up and left. It must have been some kind of night-time Season relay; Summer ran as fast as it could until about 3am, and then it handed the baton over to Autumn who picked it up smoothly and continued the race. At which point Summer bowed out gracefully, and Winter started stretching in the background and running on the spot. Spring - I`m guessing - is now getting dressed in the changing rooms.
I`m thrilled with the change, because it is a change. Casseroles and leaves and golden light and cardigans and socks and all the things missed since last Autumn. And then coats and red noses and twinkly lights and cold hands and all the things missed since last Winter; flowers and birds and butterflies and removal of the coats in Spring, and then another long, hot, flip-flopped summer. The joy of four distinct Seasons.
I miss England, and I`ll miss seeing another English September: miss the beauty of a red and gold wood and conkers and smoke rings and red scarves and squirrels and my Autumnal sister (who has always loved this season the best).
But I won`t miss the rain. And I won`t miss the constant indecision. Like everything else in Japan, the weather here is well behaved: timed perfectly, polite, regimented and reliable. A race that runs smoothly, from Season to Season.
And - for an English person, used to the rain - that makes a beautiful change.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Three
Three is not a number you can sniff at.
A triangle is the strongest shape in the world; there are three primary colours; earth is the third planet in the solar system. Atoms consist of three parts. In almost every main religion the number three is dominant: the Christian Holy Trinity, the Hindu Trimarti, the three Jewels of Buddhism, the three Pure Ones of Taoism. The devil`s mark is a multiple of three. There are three states of time: the past, the present, and the future. Shakespeare has three witches; Dante`s Divine Comedy has three parts of thirty three cantos; there were three rings in The Lord of the Rings. There are three Blind Mice, three Musketeers, three Little Pigs, and three Bears. When fairies and genies grant wishes, they do it in threes. And BoysIIMen had – and possibly still has - three members.
Three, therefore, seems like a good number to base an adventure on.
Since my panic attack in Le Louvre – if anything is going to remind you of your own insignificance, it`s being surrounded by Michelangelo and Raphael and Da Vinci (and other Ninja Turtles) – I`ve been trying to decide what I want. Not what other people want for me, or what I want to keep me close to other people or to make them proud of me, but what I want to do with my life: or, at the very least, a part of it. What will make me happy, without needing anybody else to be there for it.
And I`ve decided. I decided a while ago, and have been working on the details: booking and paying for parts of it. And I did all this, sadly, before I read Eat, Pray, Love, in which Liz Gilbert does almost exactly the same thing. Which at least confirmed what I suspected anyway: that when a poor little middle class girl gets dumped and feels a bit lost in life, sodding off round the world is probably the way to make her feel better and simultaneously make everybody quite rightfully hate her for being so gloriously spoilt and self-indulgent.
Copycat accusations conceded - because I have every intention of being just as spoilt and self-indulgent as I can while I still can - my plan starts in September next year, when I leave Japan. It will last roughly 9 months, and it will be about the number three. I will visit the three remaining countries I`ve always wanted to go to most, divided into equal(ish) sections. Except that they will be my three countries, for my reasons. To celebrate being gloriously single, gloriously alone, and gloriously without any responsibility at all. Apart from the responsibility of making myself a better, nicer person.
The first country I visit will be Thailand. After two years in formal, restrictive Japan, I want to relax and drink beer and swim and enjoy something a little less organized, and a little more dishevelled. I want to dance on a beach at four am as the sun comes up wearing beads in my hair. I want to meet people and never find out their names. I want to fall asleep in a hut next to a turquoise ocean with the sun on my face. I want to dive with the fish and turtles, under the water I love so much. I want to explore islands ringed with white sand. I want - essentially - a very, very long holiday.
I am then going to Nepal, to teach English in a Buddhist monastery, and in my spare weeks I will trek, paraglide from a base near Everest, white water raft and explore the Himalayas on pony back, or any kind of back I can find (walking where absolutely necessary). I will learn as much as I can from the Tibetan monks and Buddhism and the peace and beauty of the mountains. I will experience as much as I can possibly experience. And – hopefully – give back a little something as well. This is where I will be when I turn 30. Because it seems like a good place to turn 30 in.
My third section will be spent in South India, where I am volunteering in an orphanage in the middle of a large slum for three months: helping clean, feed, de-lice and entertain the children by trying to sing for them and play football. Simply because I want to do something in my life that is not entirely about me. Which, rather neatly, will make me feel nice and fluffy, so it will obviously still be about me. But in the best way I can think of.
Mum - who hyperventilated 18 months ago when I told her I was moving to the most developed country in the world - had just one thing to say to my new, very undeveloped nation based plans. And that was: "Well, there goes another year of me not sleeping then."
It might not be the right path for everyone, but it`s the right path for me. I don`t want to find `The One` yet; I don`t want a `Proper Career`; I don`t want a house and a mortgage and a new sofa and a dog and weekend trips to Ikea. I don`t want a local pub, and I don`t want the same group of friends, every weekend. I don`t want love, and I don`t want marriage, and I don`t want babies: not yet, not now. I don`t want a culture I know like the back of my hand, and a life I understand without trying. I want adventure and excitement and experience: I want to wake up in the morning, knowing I`ll see something I`ve never seen before. I want to gulp it all in: new sights and sounds and people and smells and conversations and ideas that I`m so damn hungry for, all the time. I want to swallow it all. I want to enjoy the rest of the part of my life that`s mine -nobody else`s - and I want to cram as much of the world into me as I can. So that I`m full to burst with it, and I`m ready to share it with others.
There aren`t many fairies or genies around these days, and waiting for them to arrive seems to take an awful long time. But - in the process of hurting and healing - I`ve realised something. I have my own magic lamps: as many of them as I want. I am free to go anywhere I want, and lead any life that suits me. Whenever I want. I can make those wishes, and I can grant them myself. And keep making them, and keep granting them, for as long as I want to.
And Thailand, Nepal and India? They`re just the first multiple of three.
And they`re just the beginning.
A triangle is the strongest shape in the world; there are three primary colours; earth is the third planet in the solar system. Atoms consist of three parts. In almost every main religion the number three is dominant: the Christian Holy Trinity, the Hindu Trimarti, the three Jewels of Buddhism, the three Pure Ones of Taoism. The devil`s mark is a multiple of three. There are three states of time: the past, the present, and the future. Shakespeare has three witches; Dante`s Divine Comedy has three parts of thirty three cantos; there were three rings in The Lord of the Rings. There are three Blind Mice, three Musketeers, three Little Pigs, and three Bears. When fairies and genies grant wishes, they do it in threes. And BoysIIMen had – and possibly still has - three members.
Three, therefore, seems like a good number to base an adventure on.
Since my panic attack in Le Louvre – if anything is going to remind you of your own insignificance, it`s being surrounded by Michelangelo and Raphael and Da Vinci (and other Ninja Turtles) – I`ve been trying to decide what I want. Not what other people want for me, or what I want to keep me close to other people or to make them proud of me, but what I want to do with my life: or, at the very least, a part of it. What will make me happy, without needing anybody else to be there for it.
And I`ve decided. I decided a while ago, and have been working on the details: booking and paying for parts of it. And I did all this, sadly, before I read Eat, Pray, Love, in which Liz Gilbert does almost exactly the same thing. Which at least confirmed what I suspected anyway: that when a poor little middle class girl gets dumped and feels a bit lost in life, sodding off round the world is probably the way to make her feel better and simultaneously make everybody quite rightfully hate her for being so gloriously spoilt and self-indulgent.
Copycat accusations conceded - because I have every intention of being just as spoilt and self-indulgent as I can while I still can - my plan starts in September next year, when I leave Japan. It will last roughly 9 months, and it will be about the number three. I will visit the three remaining countries I`ve always wanted to go to most, divided into equal(ish) sections. Except that they will be my three countries, for my reasons. To celebrate being gloriously single, gloriously alone, and gloriously without any responsibility at all. Apart from the responsibility of making myself a better, nicer person.
The first country I visit will be Thailand. After two years in formal, restrictive Japan, I want to relax and drink beer and swim and enjoy something a little less organized, and a little more dishevelled. I want to dance on a beach at four am as the sun comes up wearing beads in my hair. I want to meet people and never find out their names. I want to fall asleep in a hut next to a turquoise ocean with the sun on my face. I want to dive with the fish and turtles, under the water I love so much. I want to explore islands ringed with white sand. I want - essentially - a very, very long holiday.
I am then going to Nepal, to teach English in a Buddhist monastery, and in my spare weeks I will trek, paraglide from a base near Everest, white water raft and explore the Himalayas on pony back, or any kind of back I can find (walking where absolutely necessary). I will learn as much as I can from the Tibetan monks and Buddhism and the peace and beauty of the mountains. I will experience as much as I can possibly experience. And – hopefully – give back a little something as well. This is where I will be when I turn 30. Because it seems like a good place to turn 30 in.
My third section will be spent in South India, where I am volunteering in an orphanage in the middle of a large slum for three months: helping clean, feed, de-lice and entertain the children by trying to sing for them and play football. Simply because I want to do something in my life that is not entirely about me. Which, rather neatly, will make me feel nice and fluffy, so it will obviously still be about me. But in the best way I can think of.
Mum - who hyperventilated 18 months ago when I told her I was moving to the most developed country in the world - had just one thing to say to my new, very undeveloped nation based plans. And that was: "Well, there goes another year of me not sleeping then."
It might not be the right path for everyone, but it`s the right path for me. I don`t want to find `The One` yet; I don`t want a `Proper Career`; I don`t want a house and a mortgage and a new sofa and a dog and weekend trips to Ikea. I don`t want a local pub, and I don`t want the same group of friends, every weekend. I don`t want love, and I don`t want marriage, and I don`t want babies: not yet, not now. I don`t want a culture I know like the back of my hand, and a life I understand without trying. I want adventure and excitement and experience: I want to wake up in the morning, knowing I`ll see something I`ve never seen before. I want to gulp it all in: new sights and sounds and people and smells and conversations and ideas that I`m so damn hungry for, all the time. I want to swallow it all. I want to enjoy the rest of the part of my life that`s mine -nobody else`s - and I want to cram as much of the world into me as I can. So that I`m full to burst with it, and I`m ready to share it with others.
There aren`t many fairies or genies around these days, and waiting for them to arrive seems to take an awful long time. But - in the process of hurting and healing - I`ve realised something. I have my own magic lamps: as many of them as I want. I am free to go anywhere I want, and lead any life that suits me. Whenever I want. I can make those wishes, and I can grant them myself. And keep making them, and keep granting them, for as long as I want to.
And Thailand, Nepal and India? They`re just the first multiple of three.
And they`re just the beginning.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Nanban Man
Every time I think Japan has given me everything there is to give, I find a little bit more.
Part of the much hailed beauty of this country is in the contradictions it offers: modernity versus tradition, innocence versus seediness, solitude versus chaos, natural reserve versus friendliness, hedonism versus rigid taboos. But there is no contradiction I love quite as much here as the solemnity with which humour is always, always approached. A solemnity that only makes comedy here funnier, more surreal, and more absolutely Japanese.
Much of it has hit the West already. Japanese quiz shows are all over the internet: people trying desperately to jump through strange holes before they fall into water; men trying earnestly to play football while wearing binoculars on the wrong way round. Manga cartoons, of course, are famous all over the world: the strange, large eyed cartoons that have little stories and tendencies to undress for adult men in books they read publicly on trains and at bus stops.
What are less famous internationally, however, are their cartoon characters: made out of everything, and intended for everyone. The Shinkansen train has a cartoon with a face on it; water bills have water droplets with – yes – faces on them. Children adore little green cartoon creatures - half bean-half dog (Mameshiba) - who tell you irrelevant facts in tiny voices as you try and eat them, and adults worship a bear called Rilakkuma (Relaxybear): a cartoon middle aged man who zips himself up in a bear suit when he wants to `relax` with his teddy bear and small yellow duck friend. The most famous cartoon character in Japan, in fact, is the absolutely surreal AnPanMan: a hero who has a head made out of bean-filled bread (AnPan), and who flies around Japan saving the hungry by tearing off pieces of his head and feeding them with it. With his friends, ChocoPanMan and MelonPanGirl, he is worshipped by children all over Japan: children who buy shoes, pencils, bags, t-shirts with his round, creepy, half eaten head on it. Children who love a good hero they can nibble before dinner.
What I didn`t realize until today, however, was that these surreal cartoons aren`t just limited to national treasures. Oh, no. They have regional heroes too.
“And who are these dashing young men?” I asked Harai today, pointing to his new plastic folder (Harai who, I add, is a fully grown man). Three shiny lycra`d figures in bright pink, blue and green – with white gloves - were performing rather elegant fight stances on the front of his stationary.
“This,” he said proudly, “is Miyazaki heroes.”
“All men?” I asked, staring at their lycra crotches carefully.
“No. Of course not. The green one is a woman.”
“And what are they for? Who do they fight?”
“They are called JinKenJi. Which means Human Rights Rangers.”
I started laughing because Harai was very, very serious about this.
“What`s this one called?” I pointed to the shiny pink one.
“His name is…” and he paused to look it up on his computerized dictionary. “Prejudice.”
“And this one?” I pointed to the blue one with his hands on his hips.
“That is Discrimination.”
“What about the girl Ranger?”
“She is Bullying.”
“And do all Prefectures have their own Super Heroes?”
“Of course. Nagano has Rice Man. He is like this but white with rice coming out of head.”
“They should have a Chicken NanBan Man,” I told him flippantly, still laughing. Chicken NanBan is a local Miyazakan delicacy: deep fried chicken covered in egg and tartare sauce.
“Oh, they do,” he told me, nodding fervently. And then he drew a picture of a chicken man wearing a black leather jacket. “This is Chicken NanBanCho. It means Chicken Nanban School Hero.”
I started snorting uncontrollably.
“Oh God, this has just made me so happy. Where`s the sauce?”
“It`s on his head,” Harai said solemnly, pointing at it without so much as a flicker.
At which point I started squealing with laughter and had to wait a few minutes until I could get my breath back.
"You`re all crazy, you know that?" I finally told him.
"No," Harai said. "We`re very normal. You are crazy."
Which, I suppose, is a legitimate argument against a girl who last night dreamt about a blue ghost kitten and tried to feed it yoghurt.
Japan is the funniest, craziest country in the world: not least because it has no idea. And that, in my opinion, is always the best sort of comedy.
The totally solemn kind.
Part of the much hailed beauty of this country is in the contradictions it offers: modernity versus tradition, innocence versus seediness, solitude versus chaos, natural reserve versus friendliness, hedonism versus rigid taboos. But there is no contradiction I love quite as much here as the solemnity with which humour is always, always approached. A solemnity that only makes comedy here funnier, more surreal, and more absolutely Japanese.
Much of it has hit the West already. Japanese quiz shows are all over the internet: people trying desperately to jump through strange holes before they fall into water; men trying earnestly to play football while wearing binoculars on the wrong way round. Manga cartoons, of course, are famous all over the world: the strange, large eyed cartoons that have little stories and tendencies to undress for adult men in books they read publicly on trains and at bus stops.
What are less famous internationally, however, are their cartoon characters: made out of everything, and intended for everyone. The Shinkansen train has a cartoon with a face on it; water bills have water droplets with – yes – faces on them. Children adore little green cartoon creatures - half bean-half dog (Mameshiba) - who tell you irrelevant facts in tiny voices as you try and eat them, and adults worship a bear called Rilakkuma (Relaxybear): a cartoon middle aged man who zips himself up in a bear suit when he wants to `relax` with his teddy bear and small yellow duck friend. The most famous cartoon character in Japan, in fact, is the absolutely surreal AnPanMan: a hero who has a head made out of bean-filled bread (AnPan), and who flies around Japan saving the hungry by tearing off pieces of his head and feeding them with it. With his friends, ChocoPanMan and MelonPanGirl, he is worshipped by children all over Japan: children who buy shoes, pencils, bags, t-shirts with his round, creepy, half eaten head on it. Children who love a good hero they can nibble before dinner.
What I didn`t realize until today, however, was that these surreal cartoons aren`t just limited to national treasures. Oh, no. They have regional heroes too.
“And who are these dashing young men?” I asked Harai today, pointing to his new plastic folder (Harai who, I add, is a fully grown man). Three shiny lycra`d figures in bright pink, blue and green – with white gloves - were performing rather elegant fight stances on the front of his stationary.
“This,” he said proudly, “is Miyazaki heroes.”
“All men?” I asked, staring at their lycra crotches carefully.
“No. Of course not. The green one is a woman.”
“And what are they for? Who do they fight?”
“They are called JinKenJi. Which means Human Rights Rangers.”
I started laughing because Harai was very, very serious about this.
“What`s this one called?” I pointed to the shiny pink one.
“His name is…” and he paused to look it up on his computerized dictionary. “Prejudice.”
“And this one?” I pointed to the blue one with his hands on his hips.
“That is Discrimination.”
“What about the girl Ranger?”
“She is Bullying.”
“And do all Prefectures have their own Super Heroes?”
“Of course. Nagano has Rice Man. He is like this but white with rice coming out of head.”
“They should have a Chicken NanBan Man,” I told him flippantly, still laughing. Chicken NanBan is a local Miyazakan delicacy: deep fried chicken covered in egg and tartare sauce.
“Oh, they do,” he told me, nodding fervently. And then he drew a picture of a chicken man wearing a black leather jacket. “This is Chicken NanBanCho. It means Chicken Nanban School Hero.”
I started snorting uncontrollably.
“Oh God, this has just made me so happy. Where`s the sauce?”
“It`s on his head,” Harai said solemnly, pointing at it without so much as a flicker.
At which point I started squealing with laughter and had to wait a few minutes until I could get my breath back.
"You`re all crazy, you know that?" I finally told him.
"No," Harai said. "We`re very normal. You are crazy."
Which, I suppose, is a legitimate argument against a girl who last night dreamt about a blue ghost kitten and tried to feed it yoghurt.
Japan is the funniest, craziest country in the world: not least because it has no idea. And that, in my opinion, is always the best sort of comedy.
The totally solemn kind.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Mum
Sometimes in life, all you need is your mum.
The last few days have been unpleasant. I've been plagued with nights filled with horrible dreams - last night I woke up screaming, with my heart about to burst, and ran into the kitchen with my duvet (where I promptly curled up on the floor and went back to sleep) - and I've been exhausted constantly. The room I locked him in - somewhere in the back of my head - has inexplicably opened, and I've been unable to put him back in again no matter how hard I try: I've been crying unexpectedly and without sound in toilets, in restaurants, and in the car on the way to work. I've been sweating constantly, hungry constantly and bad tempered with everyone; my skin has erupted, and I ache all over. My writing has slowed to a complete halt, reading hurts my eyes, and - more to the point - I would give everything I have for one decent cuddle. Everything.
If my mum was here, it would have taken her three minutes to work out what's wrong with me.
"Baby," she would have said as I sobbed into my rice crackers. "Go to bed. You're sick."
"I'm not sick. I'm fine."
"You're sick. You've got a high temperature, you won't stop crying, and you're snapping at anyone within a two hundred metre radius. Go to bed, darling. The day is not going to get better."
"I don't have time to be sick, mum," I would shout, throwing something across the room and stamping my big old 28 year old feet. "I've got too much to do!"
"Does the world feel like hard work today?"
"I guess so."
"Do you feel like you're swimming through it?"
"Yes."
"Do your emotions feel uncontrollable? Do you want to speak to him desperately, for no reason at all? Just because you miss him? Because you're tired and want to hear his voice?"
I would probably start crying again at this point.
"Mmm," I would whimper.
"Are you hot?"
"Very."
"Does your throat hurt?"
"Yes."
"Then you're sick. Go to bed, darling. I'll bring you some ice cream and magazines."
And then she would cuddle me.
Except that mum's not here, so it's taken me a lot longer on my own to realise that I'm not well: at least three days of screaming and sweating and sleeping and crying and wondering if I'm going mad. Three days of trying to fight through it, without a mum by my side.
I'm going back to bed, and I'm staying there for the rest of the day. And I'm not listening to my emotions, and I'm not listening to my urges to call boys that don't actually like me anymore, and I'm not listening to the constant need to cry, or to eat, or to cover myself in ice because I'm goddamn burning up. I'm just going to drink water, and watch videos, and sleep. The only thing I can't do is give myself a cuddle.
There are times in life when the only thing you really need is your mum.
And today, I think, is absolutely one of them.
The last few days have been unpleasant. I've been plagued with nights filled with horrible dreams - last night I woke up screaming, with my heart about to burst, and ran into the kitchen with my duvet (where I promptly curled up on the floor and went back to sleep) - and I've been exhausted constantly. The room I locked him in - somewhere in the back of my head - has inexplicably opened, and I've been unable to put him back in again no matter how hard I try: I've been crying unexpectedly and without sound in toilets, in restaurants, and in the car on the way to work. I've been sweating constantly, hungry constantly and bad tempered with everyone; my skin has erupted, and I ache all over. My writing has slowed to a complete halt, reading hurts my eyes, and - more to the point - I would give everything I have for one decent cuddle. Everything.
If my mum was here, it would have taken her three minutes to work out what's wrong with me.
"Baby," she would have said as I sobbed into my rice crackers. "Go to bed. You're sick."
"I'm not sick. I'm fine."
"You're sick. You've got a high temperature, you won't stop crying, and you're snapping at anyone within a two hundred metre radius. Go to bed, darling. The day is not going to get better."
"I don't have time to be sick, mum," I would shout, throwing something across the room and stamping my big old 28 year old feet. "I've got too much to do!"
"Does the world feel like hard work today?"
"I guess so."
"Do you feel like you're swimming through it?"
"Yes."
"Do your emotions feel uncontrollable? Do you want to speak to him desperately, for no reason at all? Just because you miss him? Because you're tired and want to hear his voice?"
I would probably start crying again at this point.
"Mmm," I would whimper.
"Are you hot?"
"Very."
"Does your throat hurt?"
"Yes."
"Then you're sick. Go to bed, darling. I'll bring you some ice cream and magazines."
And then she would cuddle me.
Except that mum's not here, so it's taken me a lot longer on my own to realise that I'm not well: at least three days of screaming and sweating and sleeping and crying and wondering if I'm going mad. Three days of trying to fight through it, without a mum by my side.
I'm going back to bed, and I'm staying there for the rest of the day. And I'm not listening to my emotions, and I'm not listening to my urges to call boys that don't actually like me anymore, and I'm not listening to the constant need to cry, or to eat, or to cover myself in ice because I'm goddamn burning up. I'm just going to drink water, and watch videos, and sleep. The only thing I can't do is give myself a cuddle.
There are times in life when the only thing you really need is your mum.
And today, I think, is absolutely one of them.
Monday, 13 September 2010
Ghosts
The nightmares are back. They kept me busy for almost all of last night.
The first was unimaginative, painful and not that rare. A drawn out, close-up incident with The Boy - so close I could smell him - from which I woke up crying my heart out on a wet pillow.
When I eventually got back to sleep, the second was a little more imaginative, but no less disturbing. The PE teacher at my school climbed out of my cupboard - I had my eyes open, and I actually saw him climb out, dressed in his PE kit - and started yelling at me.
"What are you sleeping for?" he shouted.
"I`m sorry," I mumbled in panic, jumping out of bed. "I must have drifted off."
"Have you been crying?" he demanded.
I shook my head.
"No."
"You have! You`re a disappointment. Get to school."
I stood in the middle of the room, looking around in the confusion I always get when I can see my dreams like apparitions in front of me and I think I`m awake.
"But... it`s dark," I pointed out.
"I don`t care! Everyone is waiting! Pull yourself together!"
"Sorry," I said, and then I bowed - physically bowed, in my pyjamas - and asked him to leave the room so I could get dressed. The PE teacher climbed back into my cupboard, and I promptly closed the door and got back into bed.
"I`m going to be in so much trouble when he gets back out," I mumbled under my breath, "but I`m so tired I just don`t care."
And fell straight asleep again.
The third dream I don`t really remember. I remember thinking something was coming through the window for me, and I remember being very, very scared. I remember not wanting to cry again. And, when I woke up this morning, my entire room was rearranged.
"What mean, room rearranged?" Harai asked this morning when I told him about all three episodes.
"My bed was on the other side of the room. My bedside table was in the middle. My computer desk had shifted a few feet, and the computer was under it."
He looked alarmed.
"You have ghosts?"
"No, I did it myself. I vaguely remember dragging my bed across the floor in a mild state of hysteria."
"Oh," Harai said, speechless and with wide eyes. He says "oh" a lot when I tell him these kinds of stories.
"I have a theory," I told him. "I think the three combined nightmares show that I feel guilty because my heart is still broken and I still hurt, that I`m scared of being judged for it, and I`m trying to change my whole life so that I move away from being hurt again because I`m frightened. And I moved my computer under the desk because I`m trying to protect my writing. But I`ve pushed it all down so far now that I`m acting them out in my sleep now instead of thinking about them when I`m awake."
Harai glanced at me doubtfully.
"Maybe you drink alcohol before bed?"
"I wish. Maybe I should start." There was a pause. "Do you think I`m craz...."
"Yes." There was no hesitation at all: he didn`t even let me finish the sentence.
"No, but, do you think I`m crazy to..."
"Yes."
"Let me finish! Do you think I`m crazy to still be crying in my sleep?"
"No. PE teacher in cupboard and moving beds, that`s crazy."
"You don`t ever get things like that when you`re asleep?"
"No. I think Japanese don`t. And you know what else crazy?"
"What?"
"PE teacher doesn`t speak English."
Harai was right, though. Not about my craziness - that`s probably a given - and not about the PE teacher (he doesn`t speak a word), but about the ghosts. That`s exactly what they are: the lingering remnants of the past, the present and the future, haunting me in my sleep, just as they did Scrooge. Picking and poking at me because I`m not talking to them anymore when I`m conscious. Climbing out of my cupboards and making me cry and rearranging my furniture. But without the natty songs and big fluffy faces they had in The Muppets version.
There`s nothing I can do. That`s what ghosts do: they haunt until they`ve got something better to occupy themselves with. And I can`t complain. At least I`m unconscious for most of it.
In the meantime, I`m going to set them to work on the rest of my house: see if I can`t get them to do the washing up or zen my living room into a different shape. Perhaps do my laundry. Cook me dinner. Make themselves useful.
And, perhaps if I ask nicely and I`m kind to them, they'll sing me back to sleep when they`re done.
The first was unimaginative, painful and not that rare. A drawn out, close-up incident with The Boy - so close I could smell him - from which I woke up crying my heart out on a wet pillow.
When I eventually got back to sleep, the second was a little more imaginative, but no less disturbing. The PE teacher at my school climbed out of my cupboard - I had my eyes open, and I actually saw him climb out, dressed in his PE kit - and started yelling at me.
"What are you sleeping for?" he shouted.
"I`m sorry," I mumbled in panic, jumping out of bed. "I must have drifted off."
"Have you been crying?" he demanded.
I shook my head.
"No."
"You have! You`re a disappointment. Get to school."
I stood in the middle of the room, looking around in the confusion I always get when I can see my dreams like apparitions in front of me and I think I`m awake.
"But... it`s dark," I pointed out.
"I don`t care! Everyone is waiting! Pull yourself together!"
"Sorry," I said, and then I bowed - physically bowed, in my pyjamas - and asked him to leave the room so I could get dressed. The PE teacher climbed back into my cupboard, and I promptly closed the door and got back into bed.
"I`m going to be in so much trouble when he gets back out," I mumbled under my breath, "but I`m so tired I just don`t care."
And fell straight asleep again.
The third dream I don`t really remember. I remember thinking something was coming through the window for me, and I remember being very, very scared. I remember not wanting to cry again. And, when I woke up this morning, my entire room was rearranged.
"What mean, room rearranged?" Harai asked this morning when I told him about all three episodes.
"My bed was on the other side of the room. My bedside table was in the middle. My computer desk had shifted a few feet, and the computer was under it."
He looked alarmed.
"You have ghosts?"
"No, I did it myself. I vaguely remember dragging my bed across the floor in a mild state of hysteria."
"Oh," Harai said, speechless and with wide eyes. He says "oh" a lot when I tell him these kinds of stories.
"I have a theory," I told him. "I think the three combined nightmares show that I feel guilty because my heart is still broken and I still hurt, that I`m scared of being judged for it, and I`m trying to change my whole life so that I move away from being hurt again because I`m frightened. And I moved my computer under the desk because I`m trying to protect my writing. But I`ve pushed it all down so far now that I`m acting them out in my sleep now instead of thinking about them when I`m awake."
Harai glanced at me doubtfully.
"Maybe you drink alcohol before bed?"
"I wish. Maybe I should start." There was a pause. "Do you think I`m craz...."
"Yes." There was no hesitation at all: he didn`t even let me finish the sentence.
"No, but, do you think I`m crazy to..."
"Yes."
"Let me finish! Do you think I`m crazy to still be crying in my sleep?"
"No. PE teacher in cupboard and moving beds, that`s crazy."
"You don`t ever get things like that when you`re asleep?"
"No. I think Japanese don`t. And you know what else crazy?"
"What?"
"PE teacher doesn`t speak English."
Harai was right, though. Not about my craziness - that`s probably a given - and not about the PE teacher (he doesn`t speak a word), but about the ghosts. That`s exactly what they are: the lingering remnants of the past, the present and the future, haunting me in my sleep, just as they did Scrooge. Picking and poking at me because I`m not talking to them anymore when I`m conscious. Climbing out of my cupboards and making me cry and rearranging my furniture. But without the natty songs and big fluffy faces they had in The Muppets version.
There`s nothing I can do. That`s what ghosts do: they haunt until they`ve got something better to occupy themselves with. And I can`t complain. At least I`m unconscious for most of it.
In the meantime, I`m going to set them to work on the rest of my house: see if I can`t get them to do the washing up or zen my living room into a different shape. Perhaps do my laundry. Cook me dinner. Make themselves useful.
And, perhaps if I ask nicely and I`m kind to them, they'll sing me back to sleep when they`re done.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Goya and Natto
I've eaten myself into a corner. And I'm not sure how to eat myself back out of it again.
Japanese food, for a Westerner, is extremely strange. When I first got here, I barely ate anything: I ate rice balls, and crisps, and plain noodles. In a restaurant, I'd eat edamame beans, and ask for pizza. Regardless of whether or not they served pizza. I was - frankly - convinced for a long time that I'd probably starve to death, or over-pizza myself into a coma. And for a while it looked like that might happen; I dropped two stone in the first six months, and got to a stage where even the smell of cheese and tomato did bad things to my stomach.
Needless to say - from glancing at my stomach as I type - I didn't starve to death. In fact, I've since learnt to love traditional Japanese food so much that - far from missing British food - when I go home to England, I crave the things I left behind in Nichinan. Things that made no sense to me a year ago I'm suddenly ravenous for: green tea, umeshu, rice, sushi, sashimi, tofu, yaki soba, miso soup, sesame, coffee jelly. When I landed in England after eight months away, I quite fancied beans on toast. When I landed in Kyushu after two weeks away, the first thing I did was head straight to a Japanese restaurant in the airport and gorge myself on soy-marinated fish.
There are two things, however, that are - without exception - controversial foods in Japan. Foods that spark debate between Japanese people themselves: will make the most openminded Japanese housewives glare at you, and make the sweetest Japanese children pretend to vomit on the floor.
The first is natto. It's essentially the soya bean - which is the basis of almost every single Japanese dish (soy sauce, tofu, edamame) - except that it's fermented. Like blue cheese, and with the same sort of mouldy, off taste. It comes in little packets, and when you mix it it immediately froths and becomes stringy and sticky: covered in a cheesy, runny, glue like matter. A smelly, cheesy, mould like matter. It's very healthy - nobody argues that - but a large proportion of Japanese people think it's revolting. And almost every single foreigner does. In fact, it's one of the first questions any foreigner gets asked: "Do you eat natto?" A sort of culinary cultural initiation. Like black pudding in Scotland, or my mum's roast dinner in England.
I love natto, thank God. I love blue cheese, I love Marmite, I love olives, and so a mouldy bean is right down my street. Which makes me, apparently, an honorary Japanese citizen. "You're more Japanese than I am," a Japanese friend told me yesterday. "I wouldn't touch that stuff if you paid me. It is very, very, very disgusting."
The second controversial food, however, I do not love. The second, I do not love so much that I find it difficult to touch it without gagging. And - having only tasted it recently - I finally know why every single child in Yokohama, when asked what they hated in the world, told me that it was this.
And this - the most debated over food in Japan - is a vegetable called goya.
It looks harmless: a frilly kind of dark green cucumber. Cut up, it even looks quite pretty. Healthy. Lacy, even. Like a dressed up piece of salad. It tastes, however, like acid. It is so bitter, and so strong, that one mouthful will last a few days: eating away at your tongue until you never want to eat anything else ever again. Burning through your taste buds until they've given up completely and committed mass suicide.
And - through politeness - I am now being forcefed this revolting plant by Baba, who thinks I love it.
It's my fault. She offered me a tiny bit, cooked by her own fair hand, so I ate it, tried not to grimace, and said "wow, it's delicious!" Because that's what you say when somebody cooks you food.
"You like it?" she said in - I realised too late - surprise. "Excellent!"
And she turned up twenty minutes later with a pot of it. Wanted to watch me eat all of it. All of the acid plant from hell which tastes like it came from another planet, simply because they didn't want it near them anymore.
"Eat!" she demands. "Eat more! More! You are tall girl!"
And so I stood there, and I ate the thing I hate more than anything else in the world, and I tried not to cry. I smiled, and I nodded, and then swallowed the nasty gunk down, and I told her it's lovely. Because I have no idea how to tell her it's disgusting without showing her that I lied in the first place.
"Well?" she said when I'd finished the last mouthful. "Good?"
"Great!" I told her, hoping I could puke it back up when I was back inside my house.
"Brilliant," she answered, smiling. "Because I absolutely hate the stuff and my husband makes me cook it all the time."
Three days in a row, she's brought me goya. Three days in a row I've been forced to eat it, and forced to swallow it. And I'm starting to hide behind the curtains whenever I see a pot in her hand, because - honestly - I'd rather eat my own hand.
In learning to love Japanese food, I've opened my culinary experiences wide open: I've discovered a cuisine I adore.
I've also discovered goya.
And when I eventually leave Japan, this is not something I'll be packing to take home with me. Although I'm not quite sure how to tell Baba that.
Japanese food, for a Westerner, is extremely strange. When I first got here, I barely ate anything: I ate rice balls, and crisps, and plain noodles. In a restaurant, I'd eat edamame beans, and ask for pizza. Regardless of whether or not they served pizza. I was - frankly - convinced for a long time that I'd probably starve to death, or over-pizza myself into a coma. And for a while it looked like that might happen; I dropped two stone in the first six months, and got to a stage where even the smell of cheese and tomato did bad things to my stomach.
Needless to say - from glancing at my stomach as I type - I didn't starve to death. In fact, I've since learnt to love traditional Japanese food so much that - far from missing British food - when I go home to England, I crave the things I left behind in Nichinan. Things that made no sense to me a year ago I'm suddenly ravenous for: green tea, umeshu, rice, sushi, sashimi, tofu, yaki soba, miso soup, sesame, coffee jelly. When I landed in England after eight months away, I quite fancied beans on toast. When I landed in Kyushu after two weeks away, the first thing I did was head straight to a Japanese restaurant in the airport and gorge myself on soy-marinated fish.
There are two things, however, that are - without exception - controversial foods in Japan. Foods that spark debate between Japanese people themselves: will make the most openminded Japanese housewives glare at you, and make the sweetest Japanese children pretend to vomit on the floor.
The first is natto. It's essentially the soya bean - which is the basis of almost every single Japanese dish (soy sauce, tofu, edamame) - except that it's fermented. Like blue cheese, and with the same sort of mouldy, off taste. It comes in little packets, and when you mix it it immediately froths and becomes stringy and sticky: covered in a cheesy, runny, glue like matter. A smelly, cheesy, mould like matter. It's very healthy - nobody argues that - but a large proportion of Japanese people think it's revolting. And almost every single foreigner does. In fact, it's one of the first questions any foreigner gets asked: "Do you eat natto?" A sort of culinary cultural initiation. Like black pudding in Scotland, or my mum's roast dinner in England.
I love natto, thank God. I love blue cheese, I love Marmite, I love olives, and so a mouldy bean is right down my street. Which makes me, apparently, an honorary Japanese citizen. "You're more Japanese than I am," a Japanese friend told me yesterday. "I wouldn't touch that stuff if you paid me. It is very, very, very disgusting."
The second controversial food, however, I do not love. The second, I do not love so much that I find it difficult to touch it without gagging. And - having only tasted it recently - I finally know why every single child in Yokohama, when asked what they hated in the world, told me that it was this.
And this - the most debated over food in Japan - is a vegetable called goya.
It looks harmless: a frilly kind of dark green cucumber. Cut up, it even looks quite pretty. Healthy. Lacy, even. Like a dressed up piece of salad. It tastes, however, like acid. It is so bitter, and so strong, that one mouthful will last a few days: eating away at your tongue until you never want to eat anything else ever again. Burning through your taste buds until they've given up completely and committed mass suicide.
And - through politeness - I am now being forcefed this revolting plant by Baba, who thinks I love it.
It's my fault. She offered me a tiny bit, cooked by her own fair hand, so I ate it, tried not to grimace, and said "wow, it's delicious!" Because that's what you say when somebody cooks you food.
"You like it?" she said in - I realised too late - surprise. "Excellent!"
And she turned up twenty minutes later with a pot of it. Wanted to watch me eat all of it. All of the acid plant from hell which tastes like it came from another planet, simply because they didn't want it near them anymore.
"Eat!" she demands. "Eat more! More! You are tall girl!"
And so I stood there, and I ate the thing I hate more than anything else in the world, and I tried not to cry. I smiled, and I nodded, and then swallowed the nasty gunk down, and I told her it's lovely. Because I have no idea how to tell her it's disgusting without showing her that I lied in the first place.
"Well?" she said when I'd finished the last mouthful. "Good?"
"Great!" I told her, hoping I could puke it back up when I was back inside my house.
"Brilliant," she answered, smiling. "Because I absolutely hate the stuff and my husband makes me cook it all the time."
Three days in a row, she's brought me goya. Three days in a row I've been forced to eat it, and forced to swallow it. And I'm starting to hide behind the curtains whenever I see a pot in her hand, because - honestly - I'd rather eat my own hand.
In learning to love Japanese food, I've opened my culinary experiences wide open: I've discovered a cuisine I adore.
I've also discovered goya.
And when I eventually leave Japan, this is not something I'll be packing to take home with me. Although I'm not quite sure how to tell Baba that.
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