The crane and the turtle

This is the sight that was before me as I sat in on a bench in Hibiya park (H. - you may remember this from your visit here).
I was very well prepared today - knowing the museum I was visiting was near this lovely park, and knowing too that the day was going to be fine, I brought a packed lunch with me and made the most of the sunshine.
If you look carefully at the picture you can some some very classical Japanese images. There's an orange carp (鯉 - koi), a white heron (鷺 - sagi) and a little turtle (亀 - kame).
I know that there's also a big turtle - it's clearly fake. The smaller one on the rock, though, is up for debate. I've been fooled before - when those little suckers sun themselves by the waterside they do take on a certain statue-like quality.
I say again though, I'm not an authority. For months now, I have been taking care of and watering a house plant that I'm starting to think could in fact be plastic!
If I were a truly cultured Japanese man, I would have written an elegant poem about this beautiful and fortuitous scence. But I'm not, so a blog entry will have to suffice.
I am cultured enough, however, to know that this scene pretty much respresents (and hopefully predicts for me) long life and happiness.
In Japanese, there is an expression 鶴亀 (tsurukame - crane and turtle). The purists among you will be shouting, 'But it was a heron not a crane!' Well, in answer I say, 'Same family - cut me some poetic slack.' As both creatures are said to enjoy particular longevity, the expression has come to mean ' I hope you have a long and happy life.' You'll often see the two depicted togther on folding creens, jewellery boxes, lacquer dishes... I guess really anything that would traditionally have been given as a gift at some celebration, especially at a wedding.
So to you , gentle reader, I say 'tsurukame' from the bottom of Tokyo's heart.

Tokyo is greener than you think

I visited a museum right in the centre of Tokyo today. It's called the Idemitsu Museum, and it's located on the ninth floor of a building just opposite the Imperial Palace.
I took a photo of the view to show you what the centre of Tokyo looks like - much greener than you imagined, I should think. As I said before, it's not at all the type of cityscape I expected to find before I moved here
I really love this part of Tokyo. It reminds me of New York or Paris or the other great cities of the world. Wide boulevards. Tall skyscapers. Lush gardens hiding a little cafe or a quiet corner to read in.
However, walk twenty minutes in one direction and you're in the neon and concrete heart of the city. Twenty minutes more, and you can be in a tightly packed, maze of backstreets, home to old restaurants, shops and houses. Twenty minutes more, and you hit some old, Buddhist temple.
This town has so many different sides to it - I can't wait for you to get here and see it, Big Sis.

Teaching English

I'm reading a book by an American author and linguist who has lived in Japan since the early nineties. It's really good. The fluent way he writes in Japanese is a real inspiration, though I get a bit annoyed when I have to look up these really academic words and expressions he tends to use: I think he's just showing off.
The papers often print articles over here about how 'we' Japanese seem to come last or thereablouts in league tables of the countries that speak English as a second language. It's a bit of a national complex.
This author had a really interesting theory about where the weakness lies.
In Japanese schools, when you start to learn English, you start with a very basic sentence structure like, 'This is a pen.' or 'John is a boy.' Sounds logical, right?
But it's not much bloody use to you as a communication tool if you have zero vocabulary.
When I started studying Japanese (or French, for that matter), one of the first things I learned to say was 'What is this?' or 'How do you say this in Japanese / French?'
It seems so obvious. I mean look at how a kid of two or three learns - a thousand and one questions.
I hope I can use this simple shift in mindset to help future students...
{Cut to me dressed in Mother Theresa-like robes curing the poor, huddled masses of their verbal constipation, intransitive objects and ill-defined articles.}

Sanitized Freak Show

This is a picture of the Yoyogi Elvis Dancers. They're these guys who meet up every Sunday at Yoyogi park in Tokyo and dance around to 'Jail House Rock' or other kinds of Rock-a-billy music. They go the whole hog with their leather outfits, winkle-picker shoes and gelled up quifs.
They're not alone. In the same small area you can see aspiring rock bands, young girls (and some men) dressed as Gothic Lolitas, punks, baby dolls and other characters right out of a Japanese animation.
It's a rare chance for great bursts of self-expression in a conformist society, and has turned into a major tourist attraction. In the picture you can see stalls selling hotdogs, takoyaki (たこ焼き - calamari fried in a sort of batter), okonomiyaki (お好み焼き　- a mixture between a pizza and a pancake or omlette) and even candyfloss! It has a real carnival atmosphere.
But I think the fact that it's restricted to one area, that these people all group together rather than go it alone and that it's even scheduled to the same day every week shows that it's still not quite a social revolution - rather a very polite and sanitized Japanese-style bit of teenage rebellion.

Assertiveness Course

My sis and I were talking about assertiveness courses a while ago. It got me to thinking that I really need to take one.
Three days ago I was posting a parcel by registered mail. I had filled in all the necessary details except the date.
The lady at the counter kindly told me I'd forgotten this inormation. I replied, 'Oh! What date is it today?'
She slowly sounded out (in Japanese of course) two...thousand...and...FOUR...april...third...
Now even as she was saying it I knew she was wrong. But at first I still didn't have enough self-confidence to stop and correct her.
A few seconds later I wised up said, 'Didn't you mean 2006?' and changed the date but I was really angry with myself. Rather than face the discomfort of going against someone in a position of power, I wanted to just accept her mistake.
I'd make a great cult follower!

Blossom Watch 2006 - Final Entry

This is the last peep you'll hear out of me this year about cherry blossoms. The season is nearly over. It's been great but there are some downsides to enjoying these beautiful petals.
The other day was beautiful, warm and sunny, with a very strong wind. This is the perfect sort of weather to enjoy some 花吹雪 (Hanafubuki - a blizzard of petals).
As the petals wither and fall from the tree, they are caught up in the breeze and come falling down around you ina torrent like a blizzard of snow.
It really was a great pleasure but a foolish thing to do for someone who suffers from allergies. The experience was like a shot of pollen to the veins. I've spent the last couple of days 'riding the pink dragon' - the exquisite pain of some serious cherry-petal-induced hay fever.
I should be right in a few more days.

Right-wing ice-cream vans

Last week I visited Nogi shrine in the centre of Tokyo. This is where a Meiji-era general, Nogi, is revered by quite a few Japanese.
General Nogi and his wife committed 殉死　(junshi - the act of a subject commiting ritual suicide when his master dies) upon the death of Emperor Meiji in 1912.
Nowadays this is difficult for Japanese people to understand. However, in feudal times it would have been natural, the retainer seeing the lord as near God-like.
The general’s house is austere but picturesque. I guess the cherry blossoms helped to soften it up a bit. But overall it had a very sad atmosphere. Black and white portraits of the dead couple stare out at you through the house’s windows, and you can’t help but wonder what sort of bonds of loyalty or honour or sacrifice they believed in.
The actual Shinto shrine is adjacent to the house. It’s small and pretty and quite what you’d expect a shrine to look like.
Usually such shrines are to honour nature or animals, with Shinto-ists believing that everything in the environment has some sort of spirit.
However, over time many such places have come to enshrine human beings - some good, some bad and some very, very bad. This issue raises its ugly head every year when Prime Minister Koizumi chooses to pay his respects at Yasukuni shrine. Yasukuni entombs the spirits of many millions of war dead, including convicted war criminals.
I have no idea what this guy Nogi was like. But I got a very uncomfortable feeling entering the shrine.
Outside they had a big poster which read ‘If a woman is ever made Empress of Japan, this shrine will shut its doors!’
The whole topic of the possibility of female succession is a real hot potato over here right now. It looked like the constitution was going to have to be changed to allow Princess Aiko to become Empress on the death of her father (the now Crown Prince Naruhito). But her aunt, Kiko, had the fortune (or misfortune) to go and fall pregnant in her mid-forties, bringing about the possibility of a male heir being born.
I stand square behind the idea of letting Princess Aiko ascend to the throne regardless, though I fear she’ll have a really sad and crappy life, despite all the wealth and palaces, and so on.
Many of the people who oppose the idea are right-wingers, not unlike European Neo-Nazis.
To illustrate my point, and heighten my discomfort, a skinhead man dressed in black was worshipping at the shrine as I entered. Bent at the waist an almost ninety degree angle, I knew he meant business and saw this as a very important place. Most right-wingers are not too keen on foreigners living in their country, so I didn’t exactly feel I should hang around too long.
Right-wingers haven’t always made me nervous though.
When I first moved to Japan, gangs would occasionally drive around a nearby neighbourhood, blasting out patriotic music at ear-splitting volume. I could only see them from afar and remember thinking the first time I saw such a vehicle, ‘Wow! That’s a bit loud for an ice-cream van! They’ll scare all the kiddies away.’ Little did I know I was the one who was supposed to be doing the running. They’ll have to try harder than that.