Graduation Season

Right now, Japan is thick in the Graduation Season.  Up and down the country, schools of all sizes and levels are seeing off their leaving students in a great flourish of formal pomp.

The world at large perhaps became very familiar with the Japanese Graduation ceremony last year, as the Tohoku Earthquake happened during the midst of that season.  Graduation is an emotional time for students as it is, but for those schools heavily effected, it was a truly heartbreaking time.

The traditional ceremony is highly standardised, and anyone who has attended one in, say, Kyushu will likely tell the same story as someone from Hokkaido.  It's a very formal, stiff-backed ceremony.  Everyone is dressed in their finest suits or kimonos, and there is a lot of bowing and speeches.  That being said, it usually takes place in the largest building in the school: the sports hall.  Nevertheless, the airy hall is dressed up for the occasion with great curtains of red and white, and a stage heaving under the weight of flowers.  There is usually a sign denoting what number graduation ceremony this is in the school's history (again tying it heavily with tradition), and each and every graduating student will make their way slowly and solemnly up to where the Principal stands to bow, collect their certificate, bow, leave the stage, bow to the teachers...an then promptly drop their certificate back onto a table.

Then come the speeches.  Of course, there's the Principal, but there are also members of the PTA and the BOE, people who the students may only ever meet at ceremonies like this.  Near the end comes the singing: the 1st and 2nd year students sing farewell, then the 3rd years get their own goodbye song.  Then they exit in double file to polite applause.  The whole ceremony takes about 2 hours.

Now, I know I've made the whole thing sound very long-winded, ostentatious and boring.  And it is, to be honest.  But I do like it.  As I said in a previous post, it seems like the UK is deeply against anything that isn't deemed absolutely neccessary.  There's some pros to this mindset, of course, but then again I spent 7 years in one school.  I knew people there for 7 years.  And yet we never had a proper sending-off.  Yes, we had an informal party, and a prom.  But this was all manic fun, where everyone segregates off into their usual gangs and there aren't really any goodbyes - and of course, you don't really get to say farewell to the rest of the school, either.  Your time at school just kind of...fizzles out.  The Japanese graduation ceremony, on the other hand, gives a very clear-cut ending to your time at that school, and is a chance to say goodbye to everyone, familiar or not.

It's not perfect, though.  My biggest problem I have (and I'm not alone in this) is the lack of any real meaning in a Junior-High or Elementary School graduation.  But it's not graduating in the sense we know it: it's not about passing test results (and if it is, they are tests where the bar is set deliberately low so everyone will pass), and it's not really a Big Send-off into the wide world - all Elementary School kids go on to Junior High, usually the same one, and effectively all Junior High School students go on to High School or other studies.  With this is in mind, all the pomp and bluster and speeches and "Omedetou"s (Congratulations) seem oddly hollow and lack any real sense of acheivement.

But I do like the ceremony.  Yes, it may not be very meaningful, but it does give students a point in their school life to build to, rather than petering out like I did after 7 years.  And it gives one last chance to say your farewells - and for some schools around the country, that gained true poignancy last year.

The Tohoku Earthquake: My Day (Part 3)

When I got back to my apartment, I was relieved to see that everything vital was still in tact.  True, there was a broken mug here and and some dents in the furniture there, but these are mendable, replaceable things - it chilled me to think that even at that moment, not too far away, people where losing things that could be neither mended nor replaced.

That being said, from my own personal viewpoint, it was still creepy to see my apartment ever so slightly shuffled around.  Imagine if you came back to your home: which would disturb you more, to see the whole place upturned, or just a few things moved around?  To have your own personal space disturbed by nature itself was a weird feeling.

Mercifully, my power was working, and I immediately fired up my laptop.  While I waited, I switched on the TV and tried my phone again.  Now I had access to media, I needed to feel as connected as possible to what had happened.  I still didn't completely understand what had happened.  I still couldn't get through to my family on the phone, and the Internet was temperamental, but it was better than nothing, and again I had to remind myself that there were bigger problems unfolding elsewhere.  I watched NHK with numb horror as fires erupted seemingly from the middle of a newly-claimed ocean, and entire towns were being swept away.  Even after the main event of the Earthquake, the facts were still blurred, but seemed to be escalating in scale.  It had been upgraded to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest Japan has ever experienced, and the tsunami warnings were growing ever higher.

Finally, I got through to my family, who were understandably relieved and tearful.  I quickly relayed what I knew to them: how far I was from Sendai, how far inland I was...in hindsight, it seemed unbelievable to even think a tsunami would reach this deep into the Kanto Plain, but it was a day that anything seemed possible.  Even in the back of my mind, I was preparing to evacuate to the nearby hills should the worst come to pass.

The aftershocks never stopped, and they were muscular enough to be considered standalone quakes in their own right.  I hadn't showered.  I hadn't changed out of my work clothes.  I hadn't eaten.  I could only stay glued to my screens and try to absorb what was going on.  I still didn't truly believe it: were entire homes really being pushed aside by a towering tsunami?  Was that ever-growing death toll true?  It seemed all the more surreal to think that this was all happening so close to where I was now, which by comparison seemed so peaceful.  I'd pulled myself away from my apartment long enough to head to the supermarket to buy provisions for the shortages I knew were coming.  It was all so quiet, so...normal.  Music still played in the shops.  The shelves were still, at that point, full.  The cashier greeted me as always.  Only the occasional shudder underfoot seemed to tie my experience to the worst-affected.

As the night wore on, I knew I'd have to turn in for the night.  I felt that horrible sense of uselessness creep up on me again.  How could I even think of something as comfortable and normal as sleep at a time like this?  But I could barely keep my eyes open by 1am.  I crawled into bed, and with the TV still struggling to keep up with the unfolding tragedy and the never-ending quakes, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

And that was my day.  That, of course, was barely the beginning.  But that's for another time.

The Tohoku Earthquake: My Day (Part 2)

There was no time to learn more.  It was time to evacuate.  I followed the march of stunned students out of the doors onto the school grounds.  Suddenly the outside world seemed more antagonistic than it had only minutes ago.  Where had the warm Friday afternoon gone?  Seemingly out of nowhere had come billowing clouds, a howling wind and a bitter cold.

The students huddled on the floor in groups to stay warm.  There had been no time to grab warmer layers.  There were no outward displays of panic, but I can read the air well enough to tell the difference between calm and a brittle tension.  Personally, I felt outside of myself, as though I were experiencing everything second hand.  Pulling my jacket tighter around me, I waited impatiently for the Vice Principal to finish talking to the students.  Now the initial shock was morphing into anxiety.  All I knew was that there had been a massive earthquake, even by Japanese standards, that there was a tsunami warning, and understandably dazed newsreaders were telling people to get away from the ocean.  This was all I knew at that point.

How was I feeling?  I don't know.  Perhaps I still had that dull roar pounding in my ears.  Was I scared?  Yes.  Not just for myself, but for everyone I knew, too.  I checked my watch.  3:00pm.  6:00am in the UK.  Would my family be awake yet?  Would it even be news over there?  And what about my friends?  Were they safe?  I knew nothing about how massive the Earthquake had been at that point, but I knew instinctively that it had hit them all.  From Niigata to Osaka.  And hard.

Finally, the students stood, and they filtered back into school.  They were all to leave immediately.  No student was to travel alone.  Teachers would follow shortly after.  At least, that was the plan.  For by the time half of the students had re-entered another building, there it was.  An aftershock.  I could see the school move, and I could feel the ground sway underfoot.  Myself and some other teachers dashed back inside to re-evacuate.  We ran up and down the corridors, shouting for anyone else remaining to get out as the shaking subsided, strengthened, then subsided again.

There was nothing left to say now.  All we could do was wait, watch, and feel.  Everything seemed to be curiously over-focused and saturated in colour.  It was a thick overcast but everything seemed as violently colourful as a blazing summer's day to me.

At last, we all re-entered, more wearily this time.  The staff room filled up, and the TV was once again switched on.

Whirlpools.  Water charging down streets like a flash flood.  Cars tossed about like toys.  People stranded on rooftops as the raging water lapped at their feet.  My Japanese ability told me enough of the facts: An estimated 8.5 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, in North-East Japan, with tsunami warnings of over 10 metres in some places.  There was already a death toll.  It was in double figures then.

I and many other teachers reached for their phones.  They too had friends and family to check upon, but we all hit upon the same snag: we couldn't make calls.  Whether it was because of the Earthquake or because the millions of other people in Japan were trying to reach out at once, I didn't know, but I more than ever I felt that horrible sensation of being in the middle of something huge and terrible that everyone would talk about later, perhaps even for weeks after, but for now I was cut off from everything and everyone I cared about.

Then there was lots of bags and jackets zipping up and laptops clicking shut.  It was time to go.  And never before have I been as frustrated with the slowness of my bicycle than I did then.  The 4km bike ride back to my apartment is lengthy at the best of times, but today it seemed to drag on indefinitely.  Yet the journey felt...normal.  Cars drove by as normal, the trees still swayed and yes, the rickety old houses I'd grown used to passing each day were still there.  It was only when I passed through the thickest part of the countryside did I realise the one difference, the smallest one, and yet perhaps the worst: the birdsong had gone.

The Tohoku Earthquake: My Day (Part 1)

It was Friday afternoon.  There was no 6th period on Friday, so students were already swelling the corridors, bustling around and cleaning (or pretending to clean).  It was, of course, just like every other Friday.  There was a bustling, cheerful air about the place, with everyone looking forward to the weekend.  I'd made plans to meet up with my friends to go to the Plum Blossom Festival in Mito that weekend.

I was in the staff room, helping the students stationed there to clean up.  A couple of students were pulling the vacuum cleaner around while I would pull out the chairs from under the staff tables so they can sweep under them.  Then I heard a word: jishin.  Earthquake.

I looked around.  The curriculum coordinator teacher, Mr. Ogawa, was pointing at one of the telephones that stood on a plastic stand.  It was indeed shuddering.  It wasn't a big deal for the first few seconds we stopped to pay attention.  Earthquakes are a part of life in Japan.  But I'll admit that this was the first one I'd felt during school, for I was feeling it now, under my feet, and getting stronger.  It was only when another teacher ordered everyone to duck under a desk did I register, numbly, that this was serious.

I cannot describe to you what it felt like.  The whole building felt as if it had snapped from it's foundations and was sliding around on marbles, back and forth, back and forth, for the longest two minutes of my life.  It's not even so much the earthquake itself so much as what it does to you: it makes you feel completely disconnected from anything solid.  You ever had those nasty, plunging sensations in your chest, when you feel panic, real, wild panic set in?  Imagine that feeling, continuously, for two minutes.

But there was the added effect that, even with my complete lack of experience, I knew that I was in the middle of one of Japan's biggest Earthquakes.  I knew there and then that this would be international news.  And I was in the middle of it, right now.  It wasn't a thrill: thrills are positive feelings.  Thrills make you feel powerful and pumped up.  This was an anti-thrill: sure, my heart raced and I felt very aware of myself and my surroundings, but I felt weak, useless, tiny and insignificant up against nature at her most cruel.  I was stuck in the middle of something big, and there was nothing - nothing - I could do but hold on.

This was, as best as I can put into words, how I felt.  But this is all analysis and after-the-fact.  At the time, all these feelings clashed simultaneously, continuously over those long, two minutes, compressing into a dull roar in my ears.

Then, slowly, the shaking tapered away.  I couldn't be sure if the shaking truly stopped, because my hands hadn't.  We waited.  There's no reason or rhyme to earthquakes, and another one may well have been on it's way.  But it didn't.  We'd gained respite at last, or at least, a chance to try - and fail - to comprehend what had just happened.  Teachers and students alike stared at each other in silence.  One teacher regained enough sense to grab the TV remote and switch on the staff room TV.

Newscasters in hard hats.  Studios in a frenzy.  Prefecture after prefecture scrolling by with levels of earthquake strength.  And in the corner, a map of Japan, nearly the entire coast surrounded by an angry red line as if the entire country were under quarantine.  Tsunami Warning.  Head to higher ground.

The Tohoku Earthquake: Introduction

 March has arrived.  And with it, the cold weather has begun to lose it's sting, and spring is in the air.

But when March finally arrived, there was only one thing on the collective minds in Japan.  Even if we didn't want it to be, it was thrust upon us upon the morning of the first, as the ground shook with yet another muscular quake.  I'm talking, of course, about the Tohoku Earthquake, which as of this Sunday, March 11th, at 2:46pm, will be one year in the past.

I've hinted at the Tohoku Earthquake in previous posts, but I haven't really delved into my experience in full, for experience I did (though I was lucky enough not be in the most heavily scarred prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima).  I want to be clear, though, that this isn't because I didn't want to talk about it: I remember when I returned home for Christmas, and my friends and family were curiously quiet on the subject until I breached it.  It turns out that they thought I didn't want to talk about it.  A kind gesture, to be sure, but I think they overestimated just how bad it was for me personally.  Sure, it was bad.  It was terrifying, unnerving and left me with a pervading sense of dread, but it wasn't so bad that I can't bring my myself to relive it.  Which I will do this week, in parts, culminating on Sunday itself.

RIP The Cynic In Me

There are many, many things I love about Japan.  Well, of course there is; I wouldn't fly thousands of miles from my native country and spend so much money, time and effort setting myself up here.  Admittedly, over time the delights of Japan fade into the background of daily living, but they're always still there, albeit more subtle.

One of these things is the lack of cynicism in Japan.  It's true that I am a naturally cynical person: you can ask anyone who knew me back when I resided in the UK that my default mindset was that of being mildly irritated.

I wasn't the only one.  It seemed to me that so many things exist in the UK just to make you angry or frustrated.  Television, for instance.  It was quite telling, for instance, that one of the programs on just before the New Year's countdown was 'Most Annoying People of 2011', which we actually watched for a few minutes.  It seems I, along with so many other people, get a grim kick out of sneering and sniping at others, and I play right into the provider's hands time after time.

I cannot even describe to your the overriding atmosphere of cynicism in UK, either.  Maybe it's because the native tongue is my first language, and I understand all that I hear, that could be a factor.  But that couldn't just be it: on the two occasions I've returned to the UK to visit family, within days I feel my new sunny outlook clouding over with it's old feeling of annoyance.

But this simply doesn't exist in Japan.  Much is made of the unreadable Japanese, but I will tell you something, there can be no doubting that the people are definitely happier.  There may indeed be a level of putting-on-a-face, but even with that, I can guarantee that if you could measure how mollified and calm people are, Japan would rate higher than the UK.  Far higher.

It just seems that whenever something nice happens in the UK, or there's a great idea, it gets moaned over and shouted down.  The Olympics, for example.  I'm as conscious of white elephants as the next man, but anyone who denies that the Olympics are a force for good are kidding themselves.  Yet kid themselves they do.  Ask any man on the street in the UK, even London, what they think of the upcoming Olympics right now, and there's a good chance your majority response will be a negative one.  There won't be an overriding reason for the negativity, it's just that cynicism and pessimism are the default.

And this is for something big, mind.  I feel like the UK misses out on so many good initiatives because of towering cynicism sometimes.  We Brits can't seem to welcome anything that won't be free, of benefit to everyone and have an amazing point to it.  Take the Melody Roads in Japan, for example.  Here and there, in Japan, is a stretch of road covered in strategically-placed ridges, and if ran over at the right speed, the reverberations in the car will sound like a song.

Is it useful?  Hell no.  Does it benefit anyone or have a point?  Or course not.  But it's a lovely little touch that can put a real smile on your face.  There's thousands of examples like these in Japan, little visual and interactive trinkets that would never have worked in the UK for moaning about eyesores or pointlessness (and of course, for the chance of a good old moan.  People famously complain about things they have no idea about).  But it's these little touches, these little curiosities, that can really lift your mood.  Doesn't that make them worthwhile.  Look at the huge Gundam statue in the picture above, for example.  You just couldn't get away with this kind of thing elsewhere.  But you can in Japan, and Japan is all the better for it.

Naturally, being more passive to crazy ideas has pros and cons.  Japanese people could be accused of being easily swayed into agreeing with something they don't necessarily agree with.  For example, nobody could deny the brilliance of the train system, from a pedestrian's view they can be terrible eyesores sometimes, carving right through a city like a river.  Chances are it was met with minimal resistance, too.

But on the whole, I love that Japan and it's people are, on the whole, less cynical than the UK.  Some things may be so mind-numbingly daft and stupid but I can't help but roll my eyes sometimes, but on the whole it's a nice feeling to be less angry at everything all the time.

The Long Haul

As March approaches, we are approaching the period known in Japan as 新生活 (Shinseikatsu, literally meaning new life).  It's a time of general upheaval and change for people's lives, be it starting a new school (school years start in April in Japan), a new job, going to university, and/or moving to a new place altogether, probably to cater for the former.

Well, after nearly two years in Japan, it looks like I will be experiencing my first real 新生活.  Don't get me wrong, I've already become accustomed to spring-time being a period of major changes in my life (two years ago was when I moved to Japan, and last March...well, I think we all know what happened there), but this will be my first proper physical move within Japan.  I will have a new job and a new apartment, and generally, my circumstances look set to get much better - not that they were bad in the first place!

I'm stupidly excited, but also quite nervous.  True, this isn't the plunge into the unknown as it was two years ago, but it feels like I'm properly settling myself into Japan now, no longer in limbo.  I'll admit, the toughest period for me was around October/November time, when I had to do some serious soul-searching to decide, as Mick Jones once sung, "Should I stay or should I go?" It was the hardest decision I had to make, far harder than the transition from 1st to 2nd year, because I knew that if I decided to stay this time, it would mean Japan for the long haul.  There comes a period when you have to start calling a place home.  Was I ready to call Japan that?  In the end, I found the answer was, yes.

Since then, it's been a flurry of activity.  The next couple of months will be hectic, stressful and vital, but ultimately, I know I've made the right decision now.  I miss the UK, my family and my friends there, and if I had Zeus-esque powers I'd move the UK and plonk it nearer to Japan so I'd be closer to them (and cheaper too!), but in the end, I found I just wasn't ready to end my time in Japan quite yet.  I'm quietly proud of just how far I've come in just two years, how much I've seen and experienced, and I'm not ready for that to end yet.

To all who read my blog, I hope you will join me as we plunge deeper down the rabbit hole...

My Town - For Now

And so, the harum-scarum nature of my blog continues by finally introducing the town I live in - the one I've resided in for some two years, and will soon be leaving for the bright lights.

Welcome to Namegawa.  It's a small, laidback town that lies about 40 miles north of Tokyo.  Now, as you perhaps know, being 40 miles away from 'Tokyo' doesn't mean anything, and indeed, I could walk from my house to central Tokyo without leaving an urban area.  But Namegawa sits on the very edge of the city scape, where it bumps into the mountains.  To say it has the best of both worlds is something of a stretch, but there is definitely an element to that.  Because Namegawa's trump card isn't what it has, but where you could be in a very short space of time.

But first things first, Namegawa itself.  It is very much a town of two halves.  In the south, surrounding the train lines, is the built-up area.  Not too built up, though: it's mostly suburbia and some low-rise depots, but it is very pleasant.  The area where I live is especially pleasant, because it is a band new area: even in my short time here, I've noticed at least a couple of dozen new houses sprout up, and one school.  The downside?  There is nothing else here.  Okay, so you've got the train station, supermarket and home centre within easy reach, but by and large it's a largely featureless grid of houses.

To the south, it's very much the 'inaka' (countryside).  The grids of houses give way to grids of paddy fields, with only the occasional wooden house, and the gentle hills are topped with thick mops of trees.  While I wouldn't call the settlements here rundown as such, you definitely wouldn't mistake which area was newer.  It's all very charming in it's own way, but it's remote, and there's not much to pull you out there.  With one very big exception - Shinrin Park.

Shinrin Park is a huge quasi-national park that takes up at least a quarter of the town.  It is huge, full of features too many to count (including a bouncy castle that looks like a weird mountain, but the best thing about it is the sprawling network of cycle lanes, running through the park like a web of mini-roads just for bikes, and my word, is it fun.  With friends barrelling along beside you, it's many-times over as entertaining.  Is it worth travelling far and wide for?  Yes.  Absolutely.

There is one more feature to mention of Namegawa (and, sadly, it really is only one more).  That is the observation tower, which sits atop a wooded hill in the middle of the town.  While not as essential a visit as Shinrin Park, it's definitely worth a look if you have the time, especially on a clear day, when the views are spectacular.  You can see all the way from the mountains of Gunma to downtown Tokyo.

Which leads me neatly onto Namegawa's trump card.  You see, Namegawa doesn't really have a lot going for it beyond the basic aspects for getting by.  At night, I despair as I watch my area basically turn into a ghost town.  Seriously, the blackouts that blanketed Japan after the earthquake last year made minimal difference in Namegawa.  There's much to be said for the slow, relaxed pace (indeed, after a hectic weekend, returning here can be a very soothing experience), but as it sits on the edge of the city and countryside, it can't really boast to be either.  What it can boast, however, is insultingly easy access to both.

Hop on a train and you can be in Tokyo in one hour.  Go in the other direction and you can be in Gunma in one hour, too.  And properly big cities and malls lie only half an hour away.  And, if you live in the southern suburbs of Namegawa (which most are likely too), then a train station lies only a 5-10 minute away.  Not many places can boast such a proximity to a train station with a line that can have you in either the urban jungle or, err, rural jungle in no time, and with a low fee to boot.

It's not a perfect town by any means, but I have seen far worse, and when I leave it, I will miss it.  It may be a bit too sleepy and featureless for my liking, but my life in Japan, whatever it will amount to, started here, and it will always be precious to me for that.

Small-Minded

"Japan is a small country."

You hear this phrase with surprising frequency in Japan, often with no context at all.  It leaps out of nowhere like some kind of stealth proverb.  It made me wonder why it's such a big deal to the locals.

First of all, my own answer to this phrase is "NO IT BLOODY ISN'T!"  Plonk Japan in the middle of Europe and it would be the 5th largest country, bigger than either Germany or the UK, and by head count, there would be no contest.  Europe's most populous country is Germany with 82 million.  Japan is 128 million.

The trouble is, Japan doesn't compare itself to European countries.  For you see, Japan has it's very own World Map that provides a cunning optical illusion.  Instead of the World Map we're all familiar with, which has GMT 0 down the middle, the Americas to the left and Asia and Oceania to the right, the Japanese World Map places Japan in the centre of the world, with the Pacific Ocean squatting right over the proceedings and pushing all of the land masses off to the edges, like the fat kid pushing everyone else out of focus in a family photo.

The result of this bizarre reshuffle reveals Japan to be surrounded by largeness:  the USA, Canada, Russia and China loom around poor lil' Japan in the vast ocean like circling sharks.  Poor old Greenland is either cleaved in two or, in this case, ceases to exist altogether.

But let's look at facts, not perceptions.  Japan is in the top third of the world for countries by land mass, and it's the 10th most populated.  Now, some of my American friends may side with the Japanese here and back up the claim that Japan is indeed small by a size relative to which they're familiar.  But there's no avoiding the fact that smaller and less populous countries the world over rarely, if ever, hoist up their smallness as a banner to rally under.  If anything, they're more likely to be beating their collective chests and talking themselves up.

So where does this insistence on smallness come from?  I think part of it might be to do with the population density: you can't help but think small when there is so little space to go around.  Even I have to admit that my refusal to recognise Japan as 'small' isn't the whole story: a large portion of the land is mountainous and therefore impossible for the urban sprawl to gobble up.

The other explanation is that Japan doesn't like to appear outwardly aggressive.  This relates back to points I made in my 'Kawaii!' post.  Japan doesn't like to inflate it's own ego, but rather humble itself, to the point of being churlish.

"But wait!" I hear you say, "If they don't want to appear egotistical, why push their country front and centre of the map?"  That is a very good question, and one I don't have a straight answer to here.  The Japanese have a curious mixture of a superiority/inferiority complex when it comes to comparing itself to the rest of the world.  On one hand they will point out something they cannot do "because they're Japanese," and on the other they will point out something you cannot do "because you're not Japanese."  It's a bewildering contradiction, one that I am yet to understand.

Still, no biggie, eh?  After all, Japan is small...

Show Me The Money

The image of Japan as a tech-driven, sci-fi wonderland is in some ways absolutely true, especially in the big cities.  Towers drenched in neon leap over you, vending machines scan your face and recommend a drink for you, and bullet trains zip you from one end of the country to the other in no time at all.

But there are just as many examples of the lesser-developed Japan that may just surprise the uninitiated.  I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but some things we may take for granted in the West are rare or even non-existent in Japan.  Radiators, for instance.  And insulation (if you hadn't guessed, I'm feeling cold right now!).  But nowhere is this more evident than with money.

Before I left the UK, I'd grown used to reaching for the plastic when paying for my goods.  Even the most tumbledown, backwater shop has a creaky card-reader they can dust off these days.  Not so in Japan.  It is still by and large a cash-driven society.  You want to buy something?  You will be paying by cash, my friend.  Only in the biggest chain stores are card payments a sure choice, but even then, if you're paying with an international card, it can be more awkward than you'd think.

It can be a real pain when ATMs are so few and far between.  A Japanese person would be shocked to see that our ATMs are out in the open, as in Japan they are all indoors, which can make looking for one harder than it should be.  And even then, you need to look out for the time and day: you could be charged for the privilege, even if it's your bank's own resident machine (as if there are little people inside who demand the extra pay for the inconvenience of working the ATM pulleys and levers on a Sunday...).  Worse still, the ATM could be closed altogether.  Therefore, you get into the habit of taking advantage of a free ATM whenever you can, so it's not uncommon to be walking around with huge wads of yen in your pocket, something you could only get away with in Japan.

In some ways, though, I kind of prefer it this way.  You feel more in control of your own finances, and you will always have a good idea of what you have in your account.  And because you never pay by card, you don't have to worry about rogue card payments you'd forgotten about suddenly plunder your balance dry.  It also encourages you to be more sensible, too, and less prone to impulse-buying.  If you go for a night-out, you'll be pegged by the money you pulled out for the occasion.

The system is inconvenient, yes, and it is steadily changing.  And it needs too: Japanese people find it WAY too easy to save and aren't spending enough to keep the economy ticking over, apparently.  Maybe removing these bottlenecks is a good start.  But, for now, I'm glad I don't have my money on tap 24/7.

"Demons out! Luck in!"

 

Today, February 3rd, is the day of a delightful little Japanese festival/custom known as "setsubun (節分)".  It literally means "season partition", because it signifies the end of winter and the start of spring (at least, that's what the calendar likes to think.  There are many more cold weeks ahead!).  But it's perhaps better known as the bean-throwing festival.

It's closest Western relative is Spring Cleaning, only that is a physical clearing of the home, whereas Setsubun is a spiritual one.  The tradition is for a member of the family to adorn the mask of demon (or a full-on suit if they're feeling up for it), and dash around the house while everyone else in the family pelts them with beans.  The beans, called "fukumame (福豆)", which means 'fortune beans', and throwing them at a cosplaying relative while chanting "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" (鬼は外! 福は内! "Demons out! Luck in!") signifies the purifying of the house of all the badness built up over the past year, giving room for, hopefully, some good luck for the year to come.

I like Setsubun.  It's a fun little tradition that isn't obtrusive, and sits just right on the balance between fun and meaningfulness.  Shops everywhere sell cute little demon masks for kids to wear, and supermarkets sell big bags of beans and nuts for throwing and eating.  Even my school lunch today had a little packet of fukumame with it.

In the West, I feel that we are sometimes over-cynical of traditions, for being pointless, meaningless or just an excuse for shops to make money.  Japanese traditions aren't necessarily any deeper or significant than other celebrations around the world, but they're definitely approached in a more pragmatic way.  Do the Japanese seriously believe throwing roasted beans at a family member in dress up wards off evil spirits?  Of course not.  But they might see it as a harmless bit of fun that can tighten family bonds.

Flu season

 It seems a bit backward to talk about something very specific about winter-time in Japan without really mentioning the season before.  But trust me, I could be here forever and a day talking about Japan's relationship with the weather and the changing seasons (even now I'm bursting to talk about the legendary 'Japan Has Four Seasons' slogan), and besides, winter ain't going nowhere for the time being.

No, in Japan it is now 'flu season'.  I remember this period all too well last year.  The second one student slouches off to the nurses office and shows the signs of インフルエンザ (Influenza, so terrifying it is referred to in full name here, like Voldemort, only the other way around) then the school launches into quarantine/siege mode.  Tables with hand sanitiser sprout up on every corner like some kind of Red-Light District for hygiene, the windows are bolted shut, and a Whiteboard Memorial chart tallying the fallen students goes up under the school schedule.  It's a teacher's grim duty to erase a '2' and write a '3' sometimes, as though sending a telegram to the parents.  Then, of course, sanitise their hands after.  Dirty, dirty whiteboard marker.

 I can't speak for other schools, but in our staff room, stoves are wheeled in.  You see, Japan doesn't do radiators.  If there was anything I could introduce to Japan, it would be a toss-up between radiators and Dandelion and Burdock.  But stoves are the next best thing.  They do the job reasonably well, except they can often befoul the staff room with the stench of oil (this includes classrooms too).  This, however, I can deal with.  What I find hard to abide is how the tops of our stoves have hulking great bowls of water boiling away on top of them.  This, combined with the lack of air-circulation due to everything being shut, means that some 30-plus adults sit in a stew of each others exhalations for several hours each day, which is a recipe for catching the flu if ever there was one.  That, and the humidity makes me feel oddly giddy.  Add to this the tea-lady's well intentioned serving up of hot lemon, and I even I wonder if I'm already ill.

I don't mean to come across as though I know better by default, but I have to admit I find the 'flu season' in Japan fascinating, not just in how it copes with it, but how it prevents it.  Everywhere you look, for kids and adults alike, are signs encouraging you to wash your hands, gargle and mask up (see above).  No doubt, Japan works harder than any other nation to avoid falling ill, and yet just as many students seem to tally up on the flu board as I recall during my own school days, if not more so.  Make of that what you will.

Mountains!

The swell of Scafell Pike, the highest point in England at 978m.

 Anyone who knows me knows I love to walk.  I've been known to walk for multiple miles at a time, out of sheer boredom or time to burn.  And when I begin to plan something, that's when I'm a danger to myself.  In 2007, I mapped out a 100-mile hike around the UK's Lake District, over a span of 8 days.  The reason?  Absolutely nothing beyond needing something to do in my time off.

A ntaural progression from hiking is scaling mountains.  But the UK, while it has what you could technically call 'mountains', aren't really Mountains.  Even the highest point, Ben Nevis, is 1,344m above sea level - not to be sniffed at, for sure, but most other countries eat that kind of altitude for breakfast.  And while I am well aware there is some good rock climbing and scrambling to be had in the Lakes and Cairngorm and the like, that wasn't what I was after: I wanted some good, honest one-foot-in-front-of-the-other heights to scale, to feel that slow-burn sense of progress as the world shrinks away below you, until you look back down upon what you've achieved.  In that sense, living in the UK was a bit like being a pyromaniac in Atlantis.

Fast forward to Japan, though, and I suddenly felt like an over-sized fish in a goldfish bowl thrown into the ocean.  I'd always known that due to it's birth along a crossroads of tectonic lines, Japan was always going to be rockier than the UK's rolling green hills.  What shocked me was just how much rockier it was.

           The Chichibu mountains seen from Namegawa.

 There's a line of mountains visible from my town (seen above), for starters, each peak instantly taller than all but the highest points of the UK.  These form part of the Chichibu National Park.  On the very end is a prominent, pyramid-like peak called Kasayama (on the right in the photo, just to the right of the intruding phone-pole), which I resolved to conquer the very moment I saw it on my very first train journey.  When I eventually did in May 2010, it was a very humbling experience.  It was much, much taller and further away than I thought.  More than that, Kasayama is a comparatively gentle bump by comparison to what else Japan has on offer.

During the Golden Week of 2010 (a bunch of bank-holidays in the spring that effectively make a whole holiday), I went on a road-trip with some friends from Gunma to Kanazawa, and we crossed some beautiful country.  And those Mountains!  Jagged peaks pierced the skies, the powder-snow discernible from the clouds, torn like cotton woll across their moody faces.  It was awe-inspiring, and slightly scary, to look at them.  I'd never seen Mountains like that in my life, and new that my tepid beginnings in the UK had made me big-headed when it came to them.  There would definitely be a sense of achievement from atop these Mountains, but it would never be as simple as the step-by-step I'd grown used to.  They were at once forebidding at inviting, basically saying "Come and have a go if you think you've got the legs!"

Kamikochi, a prime mountain-climbing spot in Japan.

I've climbed some Mountains in Japan since then, but that's another story.  For now, I just wanted to share that sense of wonderment (and, I have to admit, fear) at what I was seeing far exceeding anything I'd imagined.  I've had many moments like that since I've come to Japan, but because of my love for hiking, this was one of the strongest, and will always stay with me.

The Medusa Stare

Oh boy.  I'll need to tread carefully on this one, as it's a subject that people can get, perhaps understandably, irate about, because it's quite contentious and not even I know what my own feelings are on this.  It's about staring.  But wait!  I'm not talking about the rampant stares you receive from the natives, but the stares from one's fellows minorities as a 'foreigner' in Japan.  In fact I don't even mean staring, but the polar-opposite: the anti-stare, something that I dub the Medusa Stare.

Let me explain what I mean.  Japan is a very homogenous country, with 98.5% of the population being native Japanese.  Even from that remaining 1.5% we still have some 2 million foreign nationals.  However, nearly two-thirds of these are of Asian appearance (ie. Chinese and Korean), and don't physically stand out.  Which is not to say they get an easier time of things - anything but - but that's a whole other blog post.

Those of a non-Asian appearance, however, do physically stick out, and the presence of a foreigner in even the most cosmopolitan areas is still unusual.  What's rarely appreciated, however, is that from our point of view it is also an unusual sight.  I'm not saying it's right, but I cannot help it if my eyes fall on the only other westerner on the train.  Likewise, it's perfectly fair if his or her eyes land on me.

Of course, it's natural to feel awkward if you accidentally make eye-contact.  Most people look shyly away at that point, and again that's a normal reaction - two strangers lock eyes and they quickly break the stare - it's not an ethnicity thing.  You just increase the chances of it by your comparatively unusual appearance.

That's fair enough.  What winds me up is the 'Medusa Stare': when someone forcefully keeps eye contact away from someone, even though it's obviously the only thing you're paying attention to.

Anyone else who has lived in Japan or even stayed on a long-ish holiday has surely experienced this.  Another foreigner passes you by, their gaze fixed pointedly in the middle distance as they march stiffly past you.  You can palpably feel the tension on them.  I'm no expert in body language but I know when someone isn't looking at you and when they're not looking at YOU.

 It shouldn't be a big deal, and in the grand scheme of things it isn't.  But it still winds me up the wrong way.  As I said, in Japan, you will be unusual to behold.  For some people, this is a real kick (even I have to admit getting a guilty buzz from it from time to time), but for a small handful of people, this superficial recognition is like some quick n' easy celebrity status, instead of real, earned popularity.  They relish the idea that they're special, of being The One that stands out from the crowd so effortlessly.  And, as another foreigner crossing their path, you ruin their fantasy.  You serve them a living, breathing reminder that their illusion of being so special is just that: an illusion.  So what do they do?  They blank you out completely, as if to say "Get out of my Japan, this is my special place, not yours."

I'm not saying all people who look determinedly away are like this.  Some people are just trying to be achingly polite, as if to say "Look, I'm not staring at you!  Your unusual appearance hasn't grabbed my attention at all!".  But some definitely are.

It's for this reason that I hate the Medusa Stare more than the actual stares from the Japanese.  The latter is just amazed at your existence, and the former wishes you didn't exist at all.

Ode to Okonomiyaki

There's no doubting that your diet changes when you move country. Since moving to Japan, I eat more fish, less sugar, WAY more rice, and tragically Yorkshire Puddings have disappeared altogether.

There are some discoveries, however, that you wonder how you ever did without. For me, okonomiyaki is one of them.

Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) literally means 'cooked how you like it'. It's the Japanese equivalent of an omelette, only it's far more super-charged and awesome than that (no disrespect to omelette-lovers out there). The throw-whatever's-at-hand-in-it nature of the recipe makes it an extremely versalite dish with hundreds of variations, but the following is the classic Kansai style (seen above): flour, water and egg, added to cabbage and leek to form a chunky mush, fried in a pancake style, adding meat before you flip it over. It's all topped off with a sweet sauce, streaks of mayo, Katsuobushi (かつおぶし, fish shavings - it's tastier than it sounds, honest!) and peppered with aonori (tiny specks of seaweed).

Doesn't sound too special? Hold fire on your judgement until you've tried it, because Okonomiyaki is so much greater than the sum of it's parts. It's absolutely delicious, moreish and leaves you utterly satisfied. Better still, even though it looks and tastes like a belt-buster, it's quite good for you, what with the main bulk of it being vegetables.

I won't go into details of the recipe here (partly because of the flexible nature of it) but you can find a link to the classic recipe here.* I heartily recommend trying it out. It's a very simple dish to make and pays back your effort many times over. Don't be surprised if it makes it onto your regular dish list. It sure made mine!

*If you live outside Japan, you may struggle to find things like katsuoboshi and aonori, but to be honest they aren't essential. The Okonomiyaki sauce, however, is essential. But fret not, because you can make you own with ease! It's simply 3 parts tomato ketchup, 1 part soy sauce and 1 part Worcestershire sauce. Enjoy!

Pop Calling the Kettle Whack

I watched a fascinating program on TV last night.  It was literally entitled 'Japan vs China vs South Korea' and that's exactly what it was...well, kinda.  There's no love lost between this triangle of nations, and it could have been a real in-depth debate about the long-standing issues between the Asian giants.  Alas, it was a pretty toothless light entertainment show fronted by TV personalities representing each country (the Japan 'team were headed by loudmouth lard-monster cross-dresser Matsuko Deluxe (pictured above), and they dabbled in pretty pointless questions such as "Why is K-Pop so popular in Japan?' (incidentally, Matsuko's retort was that K-Pop is just a bad imitation of U.S. Pop.  Which could replace 'Pot Calling the Kettle Black' as the definition of towering hypocrisy.

But what riled me the most was the blatant passive-aggressive circle-jerking over Japan.  Okay, so it's a Japanese TV show, but it was so balls-out unfair and downright mean that I nearly choked on my Octopus Balls.

Example one: In a promotional-like video, the first thing Japan's segment showed was the awesome Sky Tree, now the second tallest building in the world.  Best foot forward, yes?  But then it proceeded to pull out a picture of the Canton Tower, and compare lengths, which the Sky Tree won by a mere 34 metres.  It was one step from the leaders of each team whipping out their own manhoods and seeing who could pee highest up the wall.

When China's own segment came up, what was the first thing it showed?  The Great Wall?  The Forbidden City?  The glittering skyscrapers of Shanghai?  Well actually, it was a crowd.  Just...a crowd.  And not a slick, sexy high-production value crowd.  A filmed-on a calculator shuddering mudfest of a crowd.  The Japan team and the studio audience proceeded to laugh.  It was possibly the most malicious, loaded laugh I've ever heard.  Clearly the China team had no say in putting their own case forward.  It's also the height of richness that the Japanese would dare slam China for it's apparent crowding when any given commute on a train can turn into a mobile sardine can of human flesh.

Example two: When the inter-team debate, such as it was, began in earnest, the host pulled out a special guest to voice their own opinion.  Was this an expert in Asian relations?  No she was a member of the Women's Japanese Soccer Team.  With all due respect to her, she was far from an expert and further still from being impartial.  It effectively gave the Japan 'team' an extra side to argue from.

You simply could not get away with this nauseating level of jingoism in the U.K. (Unless you're a writer for the Daily Mail).  It did nothing but show the Japanese up as being childish, unwilling to play fair and brain-numbingly hypocritical.

That all being said, it wasn't all bad.  As limp-wristed as the topics were ("Why doesn't Korea have many TV personalities" was one, as if this is a bad thing), there were some decent segments, especially the part following the lives of inter-asian couples living in the differing countries.  And, when all is said and done, Japan needs more probing, 'uncomfortable' debates like this.  Japan is a country that largely shys away from difficult questions and is super-sensitive to criticism (as the tubby in a one piece showed), so this is a step in the right direction.  True, questions like these were about as penetrating as a snow on steel, but it's a baby step in the right direction.

And finally, it was refreshing to see the Chinese team get the last (and best) word in: when they said that they have made many things the Japanese use everyday, the Japan team challenged them to name one.  The Chinese guy then proceeded to point to the Kanji (literally 'Chinese Characters') on each and every one of their name badges.  Like a boss.

You can watch the full show here (in Japanese).