last night

Well, it`s my last night in Japan and this post comes from a bedroom in the Toyoko Inn near Narita Airport - a giant chain hotel where the corridors feel like the interior of a spaceship, and for all you would know, outside a nuclear war might have got under way...
Very different from the place I went to last Friday with Koujisan, Yuuka`s Dad: Nakanosawa Mori no gakko (forest school) is in the mountainous part of Niigata region, where people still live in harmony with the land. Bears, deer and Japanese monkeys (nihonzaru) roam wild in the thick forests composed of many different tree species. Number one (certainly for Koujisan, whose dream is to publish a photobook of them, though I can`t tell his wife) is the natual cedar, or shinrensugi. Shinrensugi may live for aeons and often their trunks develop in weird and wonderful ways, even separating into different branches which become equal partners in trunkship, allowing them to grow on steep hillsides where other trees don`t find foothold. The oldest, called the shogunsugi (boss of cedars) is 1400 years old. In other words it was already venerable when Genghis Khan led his horde west out of Mongolia. Incredible! The shogun is treated with appropriate respect and is like a temple to the Japanese. I wasn`t quite prepared for the need to put a 100 yen coin in a box and say a prayer before mounting the wooden walkway surrounding its huge circumference, but I think Kouji forgave my impatience to get close to it.
Long live the Shogunsugi!
There are so many more things I could mention from the Morigako, but it would take more time than I have now.
Anyway, it gave me a taste for disccovering more of the natural wonders of this country, which are easy to forget in the highrise hustle of Tokyo. When I come again, I want to go skiing in the Niigata area, diving off the coast of Sado Island, see the wilderness of Hokkaido and the tropical beauty of Okinawa.
Will have to get a job to do that though!
OK, thanks for reading, and putting up with my numerous digressions (he cranes his neck to see if any seats might be filled in the gloom at the back of the theatre)... This is the end of my japan blog september 2009.
(But no doubt I will go on to muse on other topics on this very same page)
Sayonara!!!

politeness

Thank you for waiting. Do you often use these words, in that precise order? I bet you don`t. But the average Japanese - unless they are hermits - seems to use their equivalent `omataseshimashita` at least five times a day if not ten. If you take longer than normal to get out of the car, if you break away from your group to put a crisp bag in the bin, if you stop to inspect the soles of your shoes for dog dirt (actually this action may not be common in Japan), you will inevitably say `omataseshimashita` or if you`re with family or close friends, the more informal `omatase`. It`s just one example of Japanese using polite conventions automatically in a situation where it wouldn`t even occur to most cultures. I`ve found this hard to adapt to at times, especially as we Europeans are used to excessive politeness actually getting in the way of easy-going relationships. I suppose the reason for this is that if you say something to someone, which is the same thing you would say to anyone, it still feels like the someone could be anyone. If you see what I mean. There are occasions where Brits still resort to conventional phrases sure: a grunted `morning` never going out of fashion, or at the opposite end of the scale, on meeting a bereaved friend, `I was so sorry to hear` tends to beat something improvised - which is like saying `I`m sad for you`, but I`m not about to sacrifice my right to compose original repartee. For yes, language, friends, is an opportunity to express individuality: the Tesco checkout wage slave at least has the choice of attitude with which to greet the customers. A cheery smile and `how are you doing, my love?` on checkout 7; the sullen, silent treatment on number 6; shoppers filing out of both, their moods minutely changed according to the queue they entered. Not so in Japan: whichever queue you enter here (and it will be short) you`ll be greeted in the same way, with a slight bow and a set phrase, something along the lines of `thank you for coming`. Your change will be presented to you in a little tray and another thank you. If you`re like me and always reply with a thank you of your own, you`ll be looked on with an indulgent smile by Japanese who might be watching - this is not the convention and so people don`t do it.
To conclude, I`ve only got two more days before flying back to Edinburgh on Monday, and this might be my last blog (I know you`ll be devastated). Next time I come to Japan, a checkout rebel, along with plenty of other things, will be on my list of things left to see.
OMATASE!!

Irony

This morning I introduced one of the great topics of argument of the Garner family to Yuuka and her Mum. If there`s one thing my Dad can get on his high horse about, it`s irony, which he believes the Italians, my Mum`s adoptive culture, fail to understand. To fully appreciate this battle, you have to know that my Dad is completely rooted in a very English social awkwardness (though he`s lived in Scotland for ages) and can barely string two words of Italian together despite having visited multiple times. My Mum every so often feels the urge to needle him about this (`he had never been abroad before he`d met her`, etc ), stressing the fantastic taste, warmth, and social ease of Italians to implicitly contrast with said English awkwardness. Now my Dad, these situations usually being at the end of a family meal, tends to have already drunk at least four glasses of wine by this point. (they both have, though the exact respective numbers will or already have been hotly disputed) So instead of refusing the bait as he should, he becomes defensive. To the implication that he was green and untravelled, it hasn`t been unknown for him to give a detailed account of his job rolling barrels down into a pub storeroom as a seventeen year old -surprisingly this never fails to do the opposite of impressing her. But sooner or later, and probably sooner, he will use his favourite counter attack against the imagined hordes of Armani-clad Casanovas battering at his door. `They lack a sense of irony`, he will declare, and as soon as the words are out, the next stage of the battle has begun. Never one to miss an obvious riposte, my Mum shoots back: `What do you mean?` And off we go, for the next twenty minutes my Dad will attempt a definition of irony coupled with reasons why the Italians don`t possess it, and my Mum will hinder him at every turn, not least with the comeback that, as he can`t understand Italian, he is unlikely to know when irony is or isn`t being employed by them.
For my part I see what he means - appreciating irony does have something to do with a slight emotional detachment which Italians, from one angle at least - don`t seem to go in for. But what of the Japanese? This morning I thought I would investigate, so I typed in the word on Yuuka`s electronic dictionary, pushed the incomprensible translation across the breakfast table to her, and told her my Dad likes this.
Soon I had got down to one of my favourite activities, which was pedantically defining the differences between two similar words, in this case irony and sarcasm. Then her Mum got involved, and I had them both trying to give examples of ironic events - which I define according to the `spanner in the works` theory. After a couple that were merely unfortunate, Mamisan remembered a story I had already heard from Yuuka: M had been voraciously reading a Sidney Sheldon detective thriller and after three hundred pages was almost at the climax, when K (Y`s Dad) happened to pick up the book which she had put down for a second, read the final three pages, and nonchalantly announced the name of the killer. Yes, this was a classic piece of irony - I felt it immediately along with the accompanying pleasure. On reflection though, if the characters were replaced by strangers, most of the effect would be lost. It`s ironic because I know Koujisan wouldn`t really give a tinker`s cuss who the killer was, whereas Mamisan, a devotee of detective fiction, would have been thinking of nothing else but the solution.
So here`s the moral, kids - irony works best when you know the people involved. Probably. But don`t think about it. Just let it happen.
Anyway, that was just a long introduction to an account I wanted to give you of an awkward Japanese social occasion which I was involved in last night. Proper travel writing, the kind you come to this blog for. Thank you for waiting.

chanting, etc

It was 8.30 on Sunday morning when he came. I was still languishing in bed, but, eager not to miss the show, I pulled on some jeans and stumbled down the stairs, following the weird, rising and falling gurgling sound that had begun to fill the Yamada house. I entered the living room, and there he was: El Monk - kneeling before the shrine, incence smoke billowing lightly around him, only the back of his bald, liver-spotted head visible. I knelt between Yuuka and Koujisan at the back of the room. Then two seconds later I crossed my legs when the kneeling got too painful.
It was a sound unlike any other I have heard, but after a while I spotted a pattern - it went `oniononiononiononion`... oh no it didn`t - there was more to it, more like `yeronyerownyeronyerownyeronyerown` repeated endlessly, which wouldn`t be very encouraging to someone in the afterlife, you would think.
When it finally ended with the ringing of ceremonial bells, the `juushyo` was introduced to me. He wore specs and looked a bit like the Dalai Llama, with the twinkle in the eye of the able seducer I had heard he had been. He spoke thick local dialect which I didn`t understand a word of, but he seemed pleased to see me so instead of querying the economic affairs of Japanese Buddhism I just smiled.
Ok, better go now. Right now Yamada family camcorder videos are getting a grand screening in the living room. I`m sure Bondosan never had to do this in `You Only Live Twice`...

Nattou my god

Right, I think finally it`s time I said more about that all-important topic - FOOD!
In the past three days I`ve been out two nights to restaurants with Yuuka`s family, first on Saturday for `kuru kuru` sushi - which is where the dishes come round on a conveyor belt and you pick off the ones you want. At the end they charge you according to how many plates you have piled up on your table; there are bronze, silver and gold plates for three different price levels. We had forty four plates and I was frightened of the cost, but Papa Koujisan paid, as usual waving away my attempts to contribute.
That night I tried many daring things, including salmon roe(Japanese caviar), kanimiso, and my old nemesis, nattou. First two of those were actually tasty, even though kanimiso looked like diahorrea, as I whispered to Yuuka and she then broadcast to the table. Nattou, if you don`t know, is a popular Japanese bean paste of a unique filmy, frothy consistency, like viscous spittle. Basically, its appearance is enough to make a rhino gag and the taste isn`t much better. On this particular occasion it was inside innocuous looking sushi wraps, which made it even worse; like lying down on a soft bed and knowing that a cockroach nest is going to fall out of the ceiling onto your head. After one wrap, consumed whole as is the Japanese custom, I was just able to get to my beer in time not to be sick.
From then on, I knew that nothing they could throw at me would be any worse. (In fact I love the food here - I`ve just concentrated on the worst for entertainment value).. Ok, next time I`ll write about the womanising monk. That`s a promise!

Monk!

Religion in Japan. Right. Ahem. This topic is probably the topic of numerous weighty tomes by lifetime scholars but I`ll attempt to cover it in a short blog for the benefit of you, my vast and credulous readership who could, at any moment, desert me for the relevant wikipedia page.
The Japanese, unique among developed nations, accomodate two major religions side-by-side. These are shinto, the older pantheistic religion, and buddhism, which came, like many aspects of Japanese culture, originally from China, at some point in the misty past.
Interesting thing: Shintoism has no concept of a life after death. It seems to be all about imprecating different Gods (thunder, rain, wind, etc) for good fortune in this life.
And that`s probably why Buddhism makes such a nice spiritual bedfellow. You probably already know as much as me about Buddhist beliefs on reincarnation and coming back as a different part of the natural world (i.e. not very much, but you get the general idea).
Hhhm, all of a sudden I have less confidence in what I`ve written. I`ve just asked Yuuka and she says she`s never heard of Shinto. But I`ll accomodate that into my theory anyway, which is that Buddhism does a much better job of that all-important aspect of religion - turning a profit. All the Buddhist temples are loaded with charm sellers, with different charms for diverse matters as specific as keeping your luggage safe on a long journey. They also have o-mikuji, which is where you pay 100 yen (50p) and choose at random a paper telling you what your luck is going to be. From what I`ve seen of Yuuka`s family, they take these quite seriously, and bad luck from a mikuji is a cause for alarm and discomfort. So much so that they might pay another 100 yen for a second go.
Sure, sure, these slot machines for the soul fulfil people`s needs, and there`s not going to be so much money in it for the temples. Think of all the paper they have to buy, and the incence - for all I know they barely cover overheads. But yesterday Yuuka`s family told me about another aspect of Japanese buddhism that I had no idea about.
When I first rolled up at the front door on sunday (a little nervous) I was immediately whisked through to the living room of Granpasan`s ground floor flat to `meet Obajan`. Almost certain Granny had passed away, I wondered what was going on, but actually I just followed Yuuka`s example in kneeling before a kind of shrine which had been created at the fireplace. Candles were lit, incence burned, and we both prayed (though I have to say I just looked at Granny`s photo and felt, slightly eerily, that she was looking back at me). Apparently however, it is not only me and the family, who do the praying. Tomorrow, a monk from the nearby temple - a notorious womaniser, so they say - will come to perform his monthly benediction. You`ve guessed it - this is not a free service. When a Japanese dies, their family pay a vast sum - at their direction - to ensure their spirit receives a favourable reincarnation. Your prestige in the next world depends on how long a name you get - the longer the name, the more it costs. Your money also buys monthly visits from a monk (the more you pay the higher the level of monk) who chants and does other monk-like stuff. I ventured to ask Yuuka how much her Granpa (very old, very fearful of death) wants to leave to the Jinja (temple). When I named what I thought was a ludicrous figure - in the hundreds of thousands of pounds - she said it would be much more than that. Oh my God! If every Japanese death is followed up by these kind of payments, the temples must be wealthy beyond belief. What I can`t tell you is what they do with their money. Do they dutifully invest it in new robes and training manuals, save it up for a rainy day, or buy shares in missile defence companies? Are the Yakuza gangs involved in the whole business?
Tomorrow your correspondent will meet the womanising monk, and, if not find the answers to these questions, at least tell you if he tries it on with my girlfriend, her mother, her sister, or even me (if I wear a yellow kimono and bat my lashes). Til then. Mata atode

toilets, etc

Phew, that`s over. Now we can get back to other matters, of which there are two I particularly want to tell you about.
The first is a technological innovation commonplace in Japan that most Europeans seem to have no notion of. It`s an area where the British are not so far behind, but the French remain in the dark ages. I am talking about toilets - the kind you place your bum on.
Everywhere I`ve stayed,including Yuuka`s house, has what they call `an oshiri shower.` Oshiri means bum. You have a little control panel with an array of buttons on the wall just at sitting down level next to the pan. The buttons have writing and symbols on them which if you are like me, you will have a hard time deriving any meaning from, and thus be too scared to use. This morning, after my excretive affairs were discussed at length over the Yamada family breakfast (constipation on first arrving in Japan, followed by it`s inverse:`geri`), I was cajoled into using the oshiri shower properly for the first time. On a previous occasion (at the spa) I had toyed with it gingerly, but actually found the spurt missed the key spot, if you follow my meaning. My error, apparently, was this: you have to move to find the oshiri shower, not the other way round. The optimum way to do this, Yuuka`s mum informed me, is by a kind of seated salsa arse jiggle.
Happily, I was able to put the instruction to effect, and even moved on to the third and strongest setting. The effect was pleasing I suppose, and maybe more hygienic, but it doesn`t obviate the need for toilet paper. I will put it down as an example of how the Japanese love any form of technology that increases their comfort.
At a cost of about two hundred quid (to update a standard toilet) it's not that expensive either. Though let`s face it, most people have more pressing needs on which to spend their filthy lucre.
Oh, one more thing: there are three pink buttons too, underneath the main shower trio, which apparently are for `female needs`. I wonder if I should have a go...

Second thing I wanted to mention was the Japanese attitude to religion. But it`s actually too big a topic and I can`t be bothered starting now. Mata atode!

Bond film part 3

CONTINUED

My God this story has taken over my blog like an infection: where are the day to day accounts of the things I`ve seen, the photos uploaded? All abandoned, thrown by the wayside. But such is the nature of Cold War my friends... there is no room for tourism when nuclear weapons thrust phalically at the skies, spy cameras are hidden inside rocks and journalists shot for exposing the truth.
It was with this in mind that I responded, instinctively, not pausing to think. If only Nigel Short had done the same he might have beaten Kasparov. But Britain`s chess king was a bumbler, a John Major-esque　figure. For this ruddy-faced Khruschev, two days in Japan and primitively alpha-maling his way around a spa bath where the Japanese themselves were all discretion and courtesy, some directness was required.
I will now give you the dialogue in full, with the last lines added.
My Opponent will be termed `Bear`.

Bear: Uav uma skula
PAUSE - I TURN TO LOOK
Bear: You have woman`s colour (pointing to my kimono)
Me: (stunned)Oh.Really.
Bear: Yes. This is man`s colour. (pointing to own)
PAUSE
Me: You must have been in Japan for a long time.
Bear: No. I have been here since Monday.
Me: But you already know which colours are for men and which are for women.
Bear: (smile breaking, teeth gnashing) It is a hundred times I have visited. But it is very simple.
Me: Not for me. Where are you from originally?
Bear: (now clothed in male kimono, starting to exit) I am from Russia. ****ansk.
Me: Ah. (what did he just say? It definitely ended in `ansk`)
Bear: See you later.
Me: See you.
EXEUNT BEAR

And there I think, it is best to leave this story. If you want any further details, you know how to contact me.

Bonf film continued

CONTINUED...(see below for details)

It`s important, at this moment, that you have an acurate picture of what my kimono actually looked like. If it were, for example, pastel pink with a dancing fairy motif, it would be fair to say I had it coming. (Uav uman skula). But it was not thus. My kimono was lemon yellow with narrow white stripes, patterned admittedly with navy and red flowers, but this is Japan, where flower patterns are normal - and anyway, it had been approved as sufficiently masculine by Yuuka and Mamisan, neither of whom (I think) particularly want me to advertise myself as a potential homosexual partner.
With that cleared up, let`s return to the dialogue. I already felt its significance - this was the key moment in any Bond flick, known to afficionados as The First Verbal Skirmish. It may take place on the golf course (Goldfinger), or often over the card table, before the big bets are laid and tense silence takes over(Casino Royale). A steam bath changing room, naked face to face, seemed no less an appropriate setting. Brevity is critical in these exchanges. They are never wordy debates on the relative merits of power strategy (guarded defence of imperial interests versus holding the world to ransome), but rather, terse pugilistic salvos, delivered in a casing of ironic good humour. All this of course, it was abundantly clear my opponent understood perfectly. 'Uav uma skula` as an opener, unbalancing me, then swatting my weak parry ('oh, really') with the deadly `This is man`s colour`. I was on the floor, reeling - like Rocky in the first two rounds against Ivan Drago in Moscow, all over the place, out of my depth.
But like the Stallion, I had my pride. I didn`t have Adrienne, but then neither did he in that one. She was at home in the US of A. Just like Yuuka was in the woman`s onsen next door, separated by a wooden, if not iron, curtain. I had to do this alone.
So bunching my fist into as tight a ball as I could, I took aim and delivered, totally out of the blue, an uppercut that sent twelve of his teeth skittering out across the changing room floor. In slow motion.
Of course I didn`t - that was me losing track of what film I`m trying to base this damnably overlong account upon.
I stuck to the plot, and I stuck to my guns. As you may know or guess, I am quite a polite person. I don`t go looking for fights and insulting people. You might call me mild-mannered, which hopefully is the good side of meek (this was no place for meekness). And so I decided to base my comeback on that old rhetorical strategy which I will term `the Ulterior Assumptive Hypothesis`. What the **** is that, you ask. Well, it is probably best explained by telling you what I said, which was...
`You must have been in Japan for a long time`.
Yes. That was it.
Do you want it again.
`You must have been in Japan for a long time.`
Note the present perfect modal construction please. It was - and therein, I felt, lay some of it`s elegance - like a fine chess move, an acknowledgement that the best riposte to a bludgeoning attack was not emulation but its opposite: to the Subject Verb Object Queen`s check I had pulled out a minute grammatical pawn maneouvre. I do not want to show myself wounded, my reply said, with your audacious and probably unwarranted critique of my masculinity - to do so, as much as to absorb it without answer, would entail my defeat. So instead I will present the initiative back to you, in a form of neutrality loaded with scepticism nicely camouflaged as geniality. In short: OK, you started this attack, please continue or withdraw.
A momentary wind of confusion blew across the face of the bear, but only very minute, so slight as to be imperceptible.
`No. I have been here since Monday`, he pronounced, and the smile widened to a grin.
It was now Wednesday morning. The attack was back on, the approach the same, but the stakes more than doubled - my subtlety had been thrown back in my face, not even given the credit of a proper answer. Was I to accept this and fold, or see his bet and abandon diplomacy?

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Onsen or hot spa bath occupies as important a position in Japanese culture as, maybe, the post pub kebab does in Britain. To visit a spa resort is a way of cementing communality, not least by being naked together in a small hot area, and thus like golf - which only differs in taking place (usually) clothed in a large cool area - it is beloved of businessmen, that most important element of the society. NB Sorry for these long, multi clause sentences - it`s the contagious Tristram Shandy effect... Anyway, we were not businessmen but Me, Yuuka, and Yuuka`s Mum, aptly named MamiSan. Men and women bathe in separate areas so that avoided any awkwardness... or so you would think!!!....

DRAMATIC PAUSE IN WHICH YOU MAY IMAGINE THE WORST

Bond. James Bond. Who was not, as a twelve year old boy, in love with those words? Especially if they were pronounced Jamesh Bond, by a certain Sean Connery, King of Scotland. It might be no small part of the reason I now have a Japanese girlfriend that my favourite Bond film was You Only Live Twice - the one where `Bondosan` goes to fight Blofeld in the most ridiculous volcano island hideaway doubling as a nuclear weapon launchpad ever created, and ends up snogging gorgeous Kissy Suzuki in the bottom of a small row boat while the whole damn pile blows up behind them. Yes, that one. The one where Sean wears sky blue pygamas and still looks cool.
Long intro. Sorry. The point is, Russian villains. The whole essence of Bond, and the reason we might be due a comeback, is Russian villains. The Cold War. Only in that era of ludicrous world domination plans, could Bond thrive and prosper. West v East, the Bear v the Whale, all that jazz. You see what I mean.
So, we`re coming near the point. We have the perfect setting, remember: dramatic forested mountainsides visible through steam rising off the heated baths; an opulent hotel resort of the kind where 007 invariably stays and meets his latest adversary. Me, the British (Scottish) hero on an as yet mysterious mission in a foreign land - at the precise moment of the story unrobing my kimono borrowed from the hotel`s own stock to enter a state of unaccustomed, but by no means uncomfortable nakedness in the pristine changing room. The kimono I then fold and place with my towel in a basket at the small central bench area, poised to take said basket and place it in one of the pigeonholes (is there no more glamorous word??) before striding through to the baths, the mountainsides, etc. But. BUT! I am not alone. A man is in front of me, a Japanese man it seems, combing his hair at one of the mirrors with a look of exacting concentration. So far so normal, yes, but then a voice from behind. `Uav oomun skula` says the voice, rich and strong. Do I turn? Of course not, the voice`s owner is addressing his friend in Japanese　- I will wait for the reply and try to gain a whiff of understanding. And yet - strange　thing - no reply comes. Is the man at the mirror deaf? Is the man behind mad? The first of these queries being impossible to answer I turn to investigate the second, only to be greeted by - before I even have a chance to absorb the puffy face, the shining blue eyes, the sinister hairless torso... - a repetition of the words I first heard.
'Uav oomun skula` - only now resolved miraculously, with the aid of a finger pointed at my basket, into `You have woman`s colour`. That conclusive. That final. That was what he wanted to tell me, from behind, with no prior introduction or warning. For a few seconds I say nothing - I just gaze at him, and he smiles at me, ruddily, if such an adverb is possible. Finally I realise the next move is, has to be, mine.
`Oh,` I say. `Really.`
`Yes` he declares, and points from the offending article to his own sober blue and navy robe. `This is man`s colour,` he concludes triumphantly.

TO BE CONTINUED!!

Shandy

My Japanese has performed quite well since I arrived, but it`s still pretty limited. Listening to Yuuka`s family chatter away, I occasionally pick up the sense of a conversation, and often get individual words or phrases, which I can use as clues to try working out what they`re talking about. It can be tiring though, and last night for a while I retreated into Tristram Shandy (I took that and Moby Dick) which contains about the most convoluted and tortuous sentences of any book in the English language. Have you read Tristram Shandy, or maybe seen the Steve Coogan film (surprisingly good, for the first half at least)? It`s basically the fake biography of this character who, after three hundred pages, is still struggling to get round to the actual moment of his birth, so carried away is he with filling in every last part of the background circumstances. This is all part of the joke of course. It`s a story that has nothing to do with storytelling and everything to do with rambling on, going up pointless alleys of debate, coming back again, forgetting where you were, taking another chapter to find out, and then revealing something whose urgent need to be told is by no means obvious anyway. I realise I`ve just pretty much described the conversation at one of our family meals (maybe yours is the same), and that`s the other big part of TS - it shows you how every family develops its own obscure conversational pathways which no outsider (who isn`t treated to a 600 page account) could ever come into and understand. Even in the same language!! Just imagine then, in Japanese!!!
Actually, I think I understand the tensions in Yuuka`s family quite well... she`s filled me in on them - but only the bits that can be made into a story. Not the tiny details, the words that trigger memories, the repeating debates - that would be impossible. I`ll keep looking for clues though...
Enough philosophisising. Today we`re going to the onsen - Japanese spa baths. I`ll be getting naked with some salarymen in a hot and steamy room - Ace!!

Niigata

I arrived yesterday evening at Yuuka`s family`s house in Niigata. That`s on the Western coast of Japan, the other side from Tokyo. We took the bullet train across the country, and seemed to get there in no time at all. I`d heard (fro my my old geography teacher, Mrs Willis) that Japan was still pretty rural outside the big cities,and that looked true from the train windows. All the arable land was sectioned off into fields, mostly for rice, and there were even people in traditional wide-brimmed hats working in them. A lot of narrow roads between the fields with tiny figures cycling along. After Tokyo Sci Fi city it could have been fifty years ago, if it wasn`t for us whizzing past in the Shinkansen.
It was fascinating to meet Yuuka`s family after hearing so much about them. After many 'Meet the Parents' style predictions it was actually a complete success. Even old Granpa, who had become a legendary figure of foreboding (not met a foreigner since the War) smiled at me. We shook hands. It felt like a diplomatic event.
Yuuka`s mum cooked a pasta dish that was worthy of any Italian restaurant, and I was able to communicate with them in my crack Japanese. In fact my only fear is that she goes overboard in trying to welcome me...for example a new fluffy toilet cover had been purchased for my benefit.
I was then treated to a viewing of all Yuuka`s baby photos. Amazingly she has changed very little since she was one year old. One of the photos had a close-up of a large boob being sucked by baby Yuuka, but I managed to stop myself before the question `whose is that?' slipped out. Not for the first night at least!

FISH

Sunday morning in Tokyo, and we're at the Nishitetsu Inn Hotel. Last night we met Koujisan (Yuuka's Dad) and his Chinese Assistant Chaosan - actually this is the last day in Tokyo as the four of us are taking the shinkansen over to Niigata this afternoon, where I'll stay with the family (also mother, daughter, and possibly psycho Granpa lurking next door).
So, down to business... Japanese food! But first I have to tell an interesting story. Yesterday we went to Odaiba, a kind of Pleasure Island type place in Tokyo Bay, only with a lot more diggers and less naughty boys turning into donkeys. We went in this huge arcade because Yuuka and Keiko (our friend from back in Edinburgh) wanted to do a Puri Kura, which is best described as a teeny bopper pop star photo shoot inside a booth. So we did that - I can't say it was my cup of tea but they enjoyed it - and then I got pretty fascinated by these two rows of basins filled with a mini horde of plain black fish, each a different size but the average being maybe about finger-length. The basins had little wooden stools set up in front of them, and the whole area was cordoned off, clearly indicating it as some sort of attraction, though actually no one was there. I assumed you had to catch them or something - I couldn't understand a word of all the writing in Kanji on the posters. Well anyway, I thought it would be a bit of old style fairground fun after the Puri Kura silliness, so I sais to Yuuka I wanted to do it. She said, are you sure, and I said, yes, yes, but what is it actually. You put your feet in the water and the fish clean your feet, she said. Ok, pretty weird, but intriguing, so I said yes. Two minutes later I was led over by a girl who delivered an incomprehensible spiel to one of the basins. I took off my socks and plunged my feet in, a wee bit apprehensive I have to say. As soon as I did this it was like the piranha scene in Doctor No - thrashing and foaming in the water - a complete frenzy... all the fish thrust themselves on my feet and started nibbling... within second I had only two toes... Ok, I lie, they just tickled - a lot. They were eating my dead skin. My dead skin! Can you imagine? Who would want to eat that? But these fish did. They loved it. After a few minutes they decided my left foot provided the better pickings. The tickling had turned to a pleasant sensation, and I had to shoogle the left to encourage some to my right, but it didn't work, they kept going back - all those afternoons playing football on the meadows did have a purpose after all - what a lot of work those fish had to get through!
Right, Yuuka says I have to go. Next time food, really...

I arrive in Japan

Today was my first proper　day in Japan - yesterday I was jetlagged out when I arrived and spent the afternoon walking around like a zombie.
Yuuka had booked a coach tour of Tokyo which left from the station at 9.00, so I got my first taste of a packed subway train on the way. It wasn't quite at the level of guards ramming people in like stuff in an overpacked suitcase, but I did feel the potential for things to get that way, if the trains were anything less than punctual to the second. On the subject of the notorious exactness, discipline and politeness of Japanese people, at lunchtime on our tour the bus had stopped outside a hotel while we went to have a succulent barbecue cooked on a lava stone from the Mount Fuji area (the food, not us). When we returned five minutes early, the driver was not having a fag or reading the Sun with his feet propped up on the wheel - he was polishing the wheel hubs, with a level of concentration that would shame a painter. And earlier, on the previous stop, we saw an old-fashioned tea ceremony in a tradition which began with Buddhist monks in the fourteenth century, when tea first came to Japan from China. Everybody sat around a low table while two ladies in kimonos conducted the ceremony - they were the tea masters. Every movement from the cleansing of the ladle with a ceremonial cloth, to the handling of the bowl itself, is ritualised to a precise form. It's something you only see in Western culture in a sporting context, from anxious looking, waif-like creatures with scraped-back ponytails. (I'm not going to talk about the Scotland team any more in this post - should Burley go? In a word, yes! Who should replace him? In a word, Jordan!) There, stop. What was I saying? Oh, yes, precision. Well the Japanese do seem to walk a funny kind of tightrope between zen-like spirituality and frenetic rushing around. The temples attract a lot of people who you wouldn't see in European churches - salarymen, students, all sorts, having a quick (ritually formal) pray, then re-hitting the throng of the streets to have a meeting about making an even faster phone, or whatever it is they all do in these gigantic Tokyo office blocks.
Anyway, that's enough insights for today - I'm going to go out in search of BAN GOHAN with my wonderful kanojo. Next subject for this blog will be Food I think... Mata ne!
　

Flight to Japan

I decided to blog about my visit to Japan (rather than dialogues between Penguins and Polar Bears) beginning on Tuesday. I fly out with KLM from Edinburgh via Amsterdam, arriving in Tokyo at 9am local time on Wednesday. I'm spending three weeks in the land of the rising sun before returning to Scotland to 'thaul the winter's sleety drizzle'.
First question: what to do on the plane? It's a fourteen and a half hour total travel time, which I've never dealt with before. First key is obviously to avoid deep vein thrombosis. Frequent brisk marches up and down the aisle should see to that, with perhaps a calisthenics session over Moscow.
Next moot point: reading materials. Do I read up on the local culture, and try to bone up my Japanese in prep for meeting Yuuka's family? Or do I engross myself in a lengthy classic novel - say Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy, or Anna Karenina or even Moby Dick - one of those notorious behemoths that I've never quite got round to reading and always meant to? Adavantage of the latter - should pass the time quicker, and make me an intimidating intellectual powerhouse in the eyes of my fellow passengers. On the minus side, I will touch down in Tokyo in the mindset of a dilettante eighteenth century English rake - either that or a Russian nobleman anxious to discover the meaning of life at the same time as marrying off his daughters. Which is preferable? OK, yes, theoretically I could go for the tedious option of combining the two, but I'm inclined to think with the classics it's all or nothing.
Of course I could just cut the reading altogether and take advantage of the on-flight film option I presume will be available. Not sure about this one. What will I do when the film finishes? I've always found that watching a film makes me acutely conscious of not being as comfortable as I could be. If I'm on a cinema seat I want to be on the sofa. If I'm on the sofa I want to be in bed... and so on. But if I'm on the plane seat I'm not going to be going anywhere fast, so that may be frustrating. Not to mention I don't get to choose the film, and there's a high possibility it'll be dire. And it'll be really annoying to be watchign the same film as joe bloggs in the next seat, only half an hour behind. In such circumstances, the dignity of the printed word seems more and more attractive.