The Flower That Blooms But Once A Year
The note reads something like; “This is the flower that only blooms once a year. Please enjoy.”
It and the flower were placed there by my landlord, I think.
What flower it is I couldn’t tell you but it looks pretty I hope you’ll agree.
Something Wicked This Way Comes: 2
A typhoon is scheduled to hit Osaka tomorrow. I have just got in from the supermarket and it is absolutely pissing it down. The type of rain they put on meditation CD’s. It sounds nice but is cold and relentless.
Despite every precaution, a trench coat on top of a rain jacket, the four minute roundtrip has still left me wet. I am not sure of the difference between a typhoon and a hurricane. Something which until global warming spiced things up had something to do with hemisphere’s and water pressure, I think.
What I can tell you for fact is that it is very wet outside now. Tomorrow is also the day that my school was to hold its sport festival. This has now been put back to Friday. I teach at a joint junior and senior high school. The high school third years were to have performed a dance in traditional Japanese costume. Howling winds and chilling rains would not be the ideal weather conditions for such a performance.
A sandy playing field would not be my location of choice in typhoon time. The winds and rain can be lethal in some extreme cases. Sadly every year yields a few deaths from natural disasters in Japan. I hope this one passes without incident.
Mayonnaise is Toilet Paper
I want you to think about a phrase and tell me what you think it means.
“Mayonnaise is toilet paper.”
An interesting statement, with a pleasing phonetic roll, it contains little inherent meaning to the native English speaker. Utter these words to a class of Japanese ten year olds and there is every chance that they would think you are introducing yourself, and that your name is Toilet Paper.
I was teaching an elementary school class in the Japanese countryside when one of the more rowdy and rotund boys in the class told me in Japanese that he could speak English. I feigned surprise and asked him to demonstrate. Within an almost maniacal look of glee on his face he spouted forth:
“Mayonnaise is toilet paper,
Mayonnaise is toilet paper,
Mayonnaise is toilet paper . . .”
I creased up and the rest of the class roared with laughter. This was gibberish of the highest order and as such deserved to be congratulated. I told the class that he could indeed speak English and that he was very clever.
To the ears of young Japan “My name is” sounds not dissimilar to a popular egg based white sauce. They should not be reprimanded for this. In Japan mayonnaise is known by its Western name but pronounced something like “my-yo-nay-zoo.” ‘My name is . . .’ when spoken in a Japanese accent sounds a little like “my-e-nay-mu-is-zoo” to the ten year old wag it is a simple, yet irresistible, leap to mistake the two.
Phonetics is one of the hardest things about teaching English in Japan. The strict way the Japanese language is ordered means that even advanced linguists often ignore foreign sounds and syllables. Trying to get Japanese students of English to move outside of the regimented boundaries of their own language is a big challenge facing teachers on these shores. Start the process too early and you risk alienating the next generation, too late and the fault lines will be permanently engraved.
Any language can sound strange through the ears of another. I was having lunch with a Japanese colleague back when I worked for a large American clothing company in London. He was telling me about his trip to the US. I mentioned that I had an uncle in LA at which point he almost choked on his Marks and Spencer’s sandwich. In a London accent, “My uncle,” sounds a lot like the rudest Japanese word for a woman’s belle chose – “manko.”
We became good friends and I now live in Japan. Language is a powerful tool. Even when misused it can have dramatic effects and repercussions. And cause great amusement.
Honda Keisuke: The Future of Japanese Football
This is Honda Keisuke. He is a 23 year old Japanese footballer who plays for VVV-Venlo in Holland.
He has been in blazing hot form this summer leading to a string of transfer rumours. Liverpool are just one of the clubs to be linked to him in recent weeks.
Such has been his impact this season that VVV will be happy for the transfer window to close without losing their captain.
It looks like being a very good season for Honda. A star very much on the rise and with a World Cup next year who knows just how bright his light will shine.
Fred Piquionne
This is who Portsmouth’s hopes for survival in the forthcoming Premier League season rest.
Zut alors.
The Return . . .
Well . . . yes, and here we go again . . .
So, I’m back. From where . . . you might well ask. Lets just call it “another place.” Dark like midnight, it is not always better to follow the money. But then you don’t need me to tell you that.
Where I’ve been. What I’ve done. The weather. My dinner. All will be revealed in due course.
For now though let me just say that despite losing 4kg since I last wrote here, I am well and will be returning back here soon.
Stay tuned but just don’t hold your breath.
To The City
The sign on the front gate gives you a detailed warning but the picture in its midst tells you all you really need to know. A crossed out hunting knife with red dripping from the blade leaves little to the imagination. My new school is not violent. But by the standards of my last place of work here in Japan it is like I have crossed the tracks and entered the badlands.
It is now some six weeks since I left the Tango peninsula at the northernmost tip of Kyoto prefecture – a green and pleasant land famous for its silk, serenity and scenic views. I had been seduced by two years of small town life. Knowing everyone and everywhere although pleasant was also numbing, I had begun to feel lethargic. If familiarity breads contempt then I left at just the right time.
I will remain intoxicated with the charms of the Japanese countryside but at my heart I am a child of the city. It feels good to be back amongst the bustle and grime. Osaka is a city of some 8 million people. Renowned by the rest of Japan for the warmth and brusque inhibition of its residents Osaka is often compared to Liverpool or Manchester in England. Like all big port cities there is a hardness to the people but also an intoxicating sincerity and readiness to relax.
In many ways it reminds me of my hometown. Not the international moneyed mega-city London, but the more weather worn, down at heel, ‘south-of-the-river’ city of a thousand stories. Osakan’s are not afraid to laugh, at themselves or with strangers.
I now live in Abeno, which is part of Tennoji, in the South of the City. A once notorious entertainment district tainted with the proletarian allure of gambling, prostitution, high times and organized crime. While the party has long since moved on and the area has the general feel of one that has seen better times, not abetted by its status as the home of Japan’s homeless community, it still has character.
At night the neon glows above red lit passions. From my house I roll down the hill. Passing through the prostituted lanes, checking my reflection in the blacked out window of the Yakuza’s car, under the covered markets and down the fish smelling shopping arcades. A sign reads ‘Welcome’ in four languages – people and their stories filtering underneath. This is where I call home now.
JET Programme Group C 2008 – Yosano Town
This is a follow up post to this one. I am soon to leave the fair town of Yosano, in the sunny northern reaches of Kyoto prefecture. I will be replaced by a Group C member.
I would like to contact my replacement before they arrive and I leave. If you are they please feel free to get in contact.
Peace.
Expensive Japanese Beetle
I was leaving school when I saw something shimmering in the noonday sun. It was an insect, the name of which i cannot remember. It was lying on its back, frantically trying to right itself. I have heard that these shiny metalic beasts are increasingly valuable as their numbers are ravished by hungry jewelers. If money is green this bug looked rich indeed.
I contemplated letting the little guy perish and keeping him as a memento of my countryside days but I didn’t. Using a dry leaf I gave him the help he needed to get back on his feet. Taking care not to run him over with my bicycle I left him trudging wearily toward the shade, the sun glinting beautifully on his emerald wings.
JET Programme Group C
If you are coming to Japan on the JET Programme as a member of Group C you are cool. I was a Group C member back in 2006, I am also cool.
There are various reasons you might be part of Group C, or the latecomers, as they are sometimes known. Some people had commitments – weddings, funerals etc – holding them back. Others were on the “Alternate List” – I was one of these, the unfortunates who for whatever reason are not immediately offerred a position but kept in reserve to fill any unaccepted offers. I like to think that I was placed on this list because they, the JET contracting powers, thought I was likely to accept a “proper” job instead of coming to Japan – how wrong they were.
Either way I was a Group C’er. We still got to “enjoy” our Tokyo orientation although there was only 100 of us as oppose to the 1,000+ members of Groups A and B. You might find it harder to bunk lectures at the smaller meeting, please try your best, but the shorter time (1.5 days vs 3) was surely a blessing. Speechs in Japanese and lectures about educational theory are that much more painful when jet lagged.
I was one of only two Group C’ers heading to Kyoto.
When I arrived in my town it was already late August. I didn’t know it but this was another blessing. The weather although still unbearable to a fresh of the boat Englishman was slowly turning to the tail of summer.
So after a sweaty weekend riding my bicycle around rice fields I was welcomed to my new workplace, the Junior High School. In the mornings I played football and sweated. In the afternoons I sat and did absolutely nothing in the staffroom. This staffroom bound inertia is one of the worst aspects of the JET Programme. One of my more pro-active 2006 Kyoto newbie colleagues used this time to master the basics of Japanese grammar. Every time I tried to study though I would succumb to slummber.
Please think of this time as your own. There is very little “work” for you to do. You will have one lesson to prepare – your self introdution lesson – where you should show pictures of your family, your likes and dislikes and funny things about your country. Don’t worry you will speak too fast and complicatedly for all but the most freakishly able of students to comprehend what you are saying. Hence the importance of pics.
The Japanese teachers in the staffroom will be seriously interested in you. It will feel like they are studying your every move, which they are, but in a curious-friendly manner rather than anything too hostile. They will want to talk to you but if they don’t, don’t worry. They are not rude, just shy.
So Group C members you are lucky as you will have approximately three weeks less of this staffroom thumb twiddling. You can use that time to say goodbye to your folks, friends and native cultures.
Also use the time to master hiragana and katakana as best you can. There is no excuse. Do it. Now. Think constructively about it and you can have them pretty much locked in an evening or two. I didn’t and it took me about a year.
