kombat kulcha III

Last night I had my first trip to kickboxing, which in the first instance involved an hour long train journey to Kurayoshi and a 25 minute walk to a strangely-named meeting hall. Here I met a couple of big, boofy Japanese men, and after getting changed did an hour and a half of sporadic kickboxing. The whole situation was stunningly, surprisingly like a kickboxing session in Australia - 5 or 10 minutes of chatting with each other, then straight to business. No bows, no salutations, no bowing at your partner every time you did anything, and no secret rules. Also, even though no-one in the gym spoke a single word of english, I was able to slot straight into the activity as if I had been born there, because all the techniques had english names - jab, straight, hook, kick, etc. Right and left were the only words in Japanese, along with numbers. How terribly easy! I also discovered they have sessions in Tottori on Thursdays and Saturdays, and got a lift back with the Tottori teacher, a nice chap by the name of Saito-san who has three very large tattoos, drives a very big pimped up van, works in a scrap metal yard and lives with his father. Sound like an Australian kickboxer? You bet! It was just like being at home! (Although I think that list of attributes means something very different here in Japan!)

So on my first night I did 4 four-minute rounds of fitness and pad-work (in 2 round groups - I am very unfit at the moment), and 3 three-minute rounds of sparring with a chap called Minamoto-san who was the only man in the gym my size (also like being in Australia!) After 6 weeks without any serious physical fitness activity my timing was off, my technique was scrappy and my fitness was down, but I came out with less than the usual compliment of bruises on my legs, and in a very very good mood. The only hint of kulcha in this kombat experience was at the end, when we gathered in a circle around the instructor and had a brief 5 minute chat, in which I had to introduce my self (suchuarto des, yoroshuku onegaishimasu) and we all bowed once. That was that, we were off!

I am sure it comes as a surprise to everyone to know that the casualness of kickboxing has eclipsed the formalities of Japanese cultural life - against the unifying power of getting really sweaty with a boofy bloke, what can a few bows and speeches mean? Although of course it was just my first class, and I was similarly cheerful about Kenpo until the vice of japanese culture tightened around me ... we shall see what happens.

As a final interesting side note, when I was going to kickboxing I was still wheezing and occasionally coughing. Now, my cough is almost completely gone. Could it be that a return to exercise has knocked my breathing problems for six? And why did I just use a metaphor from cricket, most hated of activities?

Psycho Sakka

Some of my readers (if indeed I have any) may recently have become aware of a trifling contest being conducted without herald or fanfare in the northern hemisphere . In this rather unimportant event, a mere 32 nations compete in a rather bizarre ritual called 'football', and the winning team gets to take home a gold trophy shaped rather like a syphilitic penis. Since this contest is being conducted by objective, dispassionate Austrians the winner may actually get to touch the cup, unlike that rather bizarre business with the cricket, where the winner goes home with nothing and the English get to keep the trophy. But I digress! This post aims to discuss sport, not the bizarre hobbies of fat people, so I shall discuss cricket no further.

An interesting side note to this completely irrelevant matter is that both Japan and Australia have managed to brow-beat, press-gang and generally bother a small group of extremely effeminate men into going along and showing their faces at the contest. Obviously the Australians got in for nothing, since we are world-renowned gate crashers and in any case we are invited to all sporting events because we are good at nothing else. I don't know how the Japanese got invited, since their team didn't seem to be very good - but I may just be saying this because we beat them in our first match.

In any case, national pride being what it is the Japanese have decided to take this contest seriously, and have had a few events connected with it. I'm sure you are all aware of the sort of event I mean - a couple of hundred thousand people gather in an open air stadium and cheer and yell while their team is comprehensively crushed by smaller and much poorer nations. Perhaps the Japanese know exactly how the British must feel when they watch rugby (or, well, anyone except the kiwis, for whom no country is smaller or poorer).

The locals in Tottori decided to have a similar event, but down-sized to Tottori scale, and having a single Japanese friend I was invited along. This gave me an ideal opportunity to dispassionately analyse the nature of Japanese football support...

... which is pyschotic. The venue for the event was a bar called "club Bridge" (or curubboo burijee as the locals call it), which consisted of a small room the size of an Australian lounge room, and an adjoining band room the size of an Australian backyard. The club had only one unisex toilet, and the front room was taken up with a single couch, a bar, two stalls and a playstation on which I was able to reenact Japan's recent defeat to Australia. I couldn't play in a way which anticipated Australia's subsequent defeat to Italy, because the Playstation didn't have a 'dirty rotten cheating scummy bastard who cries like a big girls blouse' button. Not that I could find, anyway, and there were no Italians around to help me out with their native skill for cheating, lying, pretending to be hurt and crying like babies.

But I digress (again). The two stalls in the tiny front bar were serving a) fried potatoes and b) face painting (Japanese flag only). The second room contained a stage above which hung a huge screen, a set of massive speakers, and most of the young population of Tottori (which is a rather depopulated town). The young population of tottori was dressed entirely in blue (the Japanese team's colours - you may not have noticed them during the Australia game, as they were swamped in green and gold for most of it), several were draped in the Japanese flag (which makes a rather fetching tea-towel!) and many were wearing face paint, crazy hats, and blue wigs. Two men at the front had big drums, one had a whistle, and one had a type of non-electric megaphone. When the Japanese team came onto the pitch everyone linked hands and danced up and down singing "nippon! chachacha! nippon! chachacha!" When the Japanese anthem was played everyone sang along (I kid you not!), and (interestingly) the room went instantly silent when the Croatian anthem was played.

Once the game started the psychosis set in, and for the next 90 minutes there was a constant drum beat, whistling, chanting and bouncing. Whenever a lull entered the proceedings someone fround a way to start a new chant or song, and whenever anything happened (which was a rare event, I might add), the drums went crazy. There was even a drum roll for the penalty kick, after which Kawaguchi-san became the most handsome man in Japan, ever. In between this was the constant pulse of the drums, the screeching of the whistle, the jumping and squealing. It got very hot, there was a lot of smoke, and no-one offered to kill me when they discovered I was Australian (although I apologised for good measure). The common response to Japan's crushing defeat at our hands (well, feet - we're not argentinian yet!) is admiring praise. How strange it is to be in another country and hear disinterested strangers tell you that your soccer team is "tsuyoi ne!" (strong, eh?) while at the same time knowing that your rugby team is weak. It were as if the world flipped on its axis (although at least at the moment we are beating the English in Rugby, so the universe is not quite entirely topsy turvy).

I must confess that even at its peak - the rugby world cup final in 2003 - Australian sporting fervour has never matched this crazy soccer behaviour. Of course this is partly because it is soccer, which is an infinitely more subtle and important endeavour than rugby, but also a mark of what perhaps is a simple truth about the japanese - they are completely and utterly crazy about sport. No finer example can I find of Japanese sporting fervour than this simple fact - their national sport is a fighting art for fat men (sumo) and while in Australia you have to reveal reluctantly that you participate in a fighting art, and brace yourself for the inevitable stereotype, in Japan people admire and appreciate you if you do any sport and especially if you do a fighting art. Women and men alike, the universal response to discovering I did kickboxing is "sugoi ne!" (formidable, eh?); and two of my language teachers are black belts respectively in Kendo and archery - and they're both women! (one of the men is a 6 dan black belt in kendo and comes from a family 3 generations in the sport). Just like being in england, I am able to converse every day about sport (soccer), and just like being in heaven, everyone understands straight away that I want to do a sport and that I don't feel right when I can't. This latter attitude is increasingly rare in Australia, where most people think you're gay if you don't watch sport and gay if you play any sport except rugby.

And best of all, nobody asks any questions about the advisability of my doing a martial art. Yay! Banzai!!!

Kombat Kulcha II

Five weeks ago, before I was struck down with the most ferocious and unpleasant cough ever to eviscerate a human being, I had my last lesson at Kenpo. It was my last lesson because I have discovered to my chagrin that Kenpo contains a good deal more kulcha than kombat. As most of you would be aware, although I have a very limited affinity for kombat I have absolutely no knowledge of or capacity to learn kulcha. Even in English. So when I am at kenpo I am constantly trampling on their many little cultural rules, and they cannot explain them to me because my Japanese is, well, crap. The actual actions of the art I can pick up fairly quickly by trading on my limited affinity for kombat (to learn which no language is necessary, once you have a little experience). I cannot, however, pick up kulcha just by watching, since this would imply some ability to refrain from offending others and, as you all know, I have no such ability.

Having embarrassed myself several times in class for no reason I could quite understand, I went downstairs afterwards and had to stand through 8 speeches by various members of the class, in which I did not understand a single word. I was then handed a pamphlet on the spirituality of Kenpo whcih it will probably not surprise you to learn was written entirely in Japanese. I subseqently discovered that the Japanese in the pamphlet is fiendishly difficult and that the so-called "spiritual sports" have a special language which they use in class, somewhat like the passive voice in English (so maybe one does not punch; a punch is performed). The truth of this latter claim will remain a mystery to me, since I shall not be returning to Kenpo.

Fortunately one of my Japanese teachers has found a kick-boxing school in nearby Kurayoshi. Kickboxing has no kulcha, just kombat, and I already know it. I was due to visit last Wednesday but my lungs spontaneously exploded, so I am going this Wednesday. I will hopefully discover a school with limited kulcha and maximum fitness and kombat. Kurayoshi is an hour by train - but hey, such a journey will be just like being in Sydney! At least if I go there once a week I will get to keep my hand in until I can find a more permanent situation. I am only in Tottori another 6 weeks before I go to Hiroshima for a month, then move to Matsue. So there is no real point in devoting myself to anything at this late stage.

So, I have been defeated in my attempts to learn a spiritual sport. But that's okay, really, because how can a man as completely devoid of spirituality as me hope to understand such a concept in any case? If I may paraphrase another great atheist, I have been all over the universe and been in some pretty tight spots, and I have never seen a situation that couldn't be resolved with a bit of luck and a good Thai kick.

Hotaru

Several of my more devoted readers (those of you who completely lack a life) have been publicly pondering what on earth a Hotaru is, so I shall enlighten you now: it is nothing on earth, but rather a tiny denizen of the faerie realm which deigns to visit Japan for two weeks of the year, choosing, I suppose, Japan's more remote and fertile forests as a fecund backdrop for its own annual mating rituals. When caught in the act this magical creature transforms into a little bug, which perches on one's hand and glows with a perfect and innocent light. In English Hotaru are called Fireflies, and when one sees them it becomes immediately obvious how superstitious people came to believe in fairies.

Japanese people love fireflies (for good reason, I say!) and my friend Mr. Hiroki is particularly fond of them, having not been able to see them in his native city of Nagoya. Every year many towns have a firefly festival (hotaru matsuri), in which they visit a remote and pure spot to witness the magical theatre which these gentle creatures provide. I could not wait for Tottori's festival and instead pressured Mr. Hiroki to take me to his favourite spot a week early. He agreed and three weekends ago Mr. Hiroki and his girlfriend Ms. Kaori took me to the temple where the Hotaru are best viewed. This temple is surprisingly close to the city, but like many temples in Japan it has a long rambling country walk behind its grounds. This walk leads along a deep, tree-lined cutting down which flows a strong and babbling brook. The walk crosses a bridge and leads up some stairs to a small lake surrounded by thick forest. There are no lamps or lanterns, and from the gate to the lake the only artificial light comes from the front of the temple. On the night of our visit the sky was clear and the moon full, so the whole scene was bathed in a gentle silver light, enough to find our way along the path but not to scare the Hotaru. The Hotaru themselves hung in a diffuse groups over the stream, drifting randomly about in slow circles and pulsing with a surprisingly bright luminescence. They looked for all the world like drifting embers or sparks, except that their movements were too directed to be mere Brownian motion. Occasionally one would detach itself from the thin cloud of sparks and drift across the path, and once or twice I was able to catch one on my hand, where it glowed brilliantly for a moment before launching itself back into the air. Fireflies are just insects, and as a consequence I think are better viewed from afar, but the glow is fascinating and in the darkness the sight of my friends' faces glowing in the light of a captured firefly was quite enchanting.

At the top of the hill the fireflies hung over the lake, and as they drifted their lights were reflected in the water, the moon being just bright enough to cast shadows. This was the point where the fireflies truly seeemed like fairies, dancing a slow and incomprehensible dance over the lake.

Many people had chosen the same evening to come and see the fireflies, and nany people were walking up and down the hill when we arrived. All were talking very quietly so as not to disturb the object of their journey, and when we reached the lake and sat down I noticed that all the benches around the lake were taken up with small groups of young people, who had come to the lake to watch fireflies and talk quietly. Something very interesting about Japan is that young people seem to be very interested in the festivals and rituals of Japanese life, even those which perhaps to the mind of the average westerner might seem a little stuffy or not particularly vogue. They seem to be particularly interested in festivals connected to animals and nature, and not just because (as in the case of the cherry-blossom festival) they include large amounts of drinking. I think young Japanese people are, by and large, hippies. They also perhaps show a greater cohesion with older generations than do young people in western countries. Why this should be I do not know.

While we sat by the lake I managed to converse with Ms. Kaori (who speaks almost no english) in Japanese, with occcasional help from Mr. Hiroki, and explain to her that in Australia we do not have nature festivals. Having that very week learnt how to compare two things in Japanese, I was able to give a rather simplistic comparison of environmental policy and attitudes in our two countries. Japanese people are universally shocked to discover that Australia's rivers are dying and that our only coherent environmental policy is rapid deforestation. Deforestation is tantamount to heresy in this, the most heavily forested developed nation in the world.

Having done these things, we left the fireflies to their slow and stately mating dance and returned to Mr. Hiroki's house, having completed a most satisfying and edifying Japanese ritual. My next ritual comes in September, when I go to listen to the voices of the suzumushi (singing insects), again, I hope, with Mr. Hiroki and Ms. Kaori.

Animals I have seen

here in the wilds of Tottori there are many animals, mostly skulking in between the nasty local trees as they wait to ambush passing life forms with great and disgusting bursts of cancerous pollen. I feel I should post briefly on the variety of fauna I have encountered over the last few weeks, excluding Hotaru (creatures so magical that they get their own post, lucky little things). This post fits very nicely between that on Taiko (since it was at Taiko that I saw one particularly cool beasty) and Hotaru (which are the highlight of my animalian adventures so far).

Animals I have seen so far include:

• stink bugs by the million, mostly a lurid green which makes them a little like very stinky snot balls. Japan has a diversity of insects which would boggle the mind of the average Australian, being used as he or she is to funnel webs, blowflies and mosquitoes. The stink bugs come in to the fifth floor of my residence through open windows, and lurk about the sink waiting to befoul one`s dishes as one washes them
• butterflies, many of them beautiful and very large (there was one the size of a small bat in Hiroshima)
• every possible form of dangerous flying insect you can imagine, on steroids. This includes hornets the size of jet planes, bumble bees capable of carrying helicopters (and twice as noisy) and about 80 varieties of wasp all possessed of stingers so large the locals use them as a kind of durable drinking straw
• frogs and turtles, which abound in every pond and puddle everywhere
• herons and cranes, which stand sentinel over every rice paddy
• a Tanuki!!! This Japanese raccoon dog of legend was hiding in a culvert near the Taiko, and Mr. Hiroki and I disturbed it while waiting for Kaori-san to meet us. The Tanuki is a little bigger than a cat, fat like a wombat, covered in spiky tufts of fur, and has big dog-like eyes that look startled. It ran away, but it was very cute
• A fox!!!! This fox was running across the road in ordinary suburban tottori as I walked home from Mr. Hiroki`s house. It was carrying a mouse and running with that dainty long-legged prance which distinguishes foxes from more doggy members of the animal kingdom. It was maybe a bit skinny and scrawny but still very pretty. And before anyone feels the need to comment that they`re pests - being a pest doesn`t make you any less beautiful.
• Kittens! There are a million feral cats on the university, waiting to feast on the remains of foreigners who collapse from allergy-related head explosions, and in June they give birth to millions of tiny cute feral kittens. These cats are of the hard-arsed "I`ll scratch your eyes out if you even look sideways at me" variety, and they are armed, usually with chunks of wood they have salvaged from rubbish piles around the uni, so you can`t get too close to them, but sometimes they meow at you when you are eating. I think when they grow up the kittens join the Yakuza, but when they are little they are very cute.

Life in Tottori is lived very close to a ring of thickly forested mountains, and I think within half an hours` drive of my home there are bears. Frog season and the season of singing insects (suzumushi) is still to come, so stay tuned for further adventures with mysterious japanese creatures.

Saikko Taiko

My friend Hiroki-san, or Mr. Hiroki in English, has a pretty and charming girlfriend called Kaori who has for the last 10 months been engaged in the hobby of Taiko drumming, a traditional Japanese musical form which involves various cool drums, a rather nice sounding bamboo flute, that crazy instrument the Japanese pluck on that sounds like a baby choking on a scared kitten, and traditional dancing. On Saturday Mr. Hiroki invited me along to Kaori`s latest performance, which was at a hotel near a lake nestled in the hills south of Tottori. I was having quite a bad morning on account of my rather unpleasant allergic reation to everything, but I have never been one to allow my imminent death to interfere in a good time (as opposed to my work or study responsibilities, which I will drop at the slightest sign of trouble), so I went along.

Yesterday was a cheerful, sunny day which was in Mr. Hiroki`s estimation quite hot (at least 30 degrees, he claimed, but I think he was talking fahrenheit). We had lunch at a cheap udon place and then tottered along to the hotel, which is in a picturesque spot. Here in Tottori you only have to turn sideways and you are surrounded by densely forested hills, rice paddies and water courses. As we drove to the hotel we passed planted rice paddies where herons and cranes stood to attention, waiting patiently for that special magical moment when tadpoles transform into frogs and leap into the mouths of predatory animals. I am looking forward to that moment - the frogs will be everywhere, and I want one to hop onto my shoe and blink at me in its little froggy way. I think some of the frogs may already be out, because I am sure I have seen a dead one; but enough of such speculation.

The Taiko started soon after we arrived, and involved maybe 4 sizes of drum, one big enough to be on a battleship, and about 10 or 15 people of both sexes hitting them with large wooden drumsticks. It started with a duet by two of the plucking instruments, to which Kaori and some other women performed a slow traditional dance which looked a little like tai chi. The women then retired to their drums, and there commenced maybe 10 minutes of fairly solid drumming which was so loud and thorough that I could feel it in my chest. This maybe wasn`t so good, since it led to a spasm of coughing so bad I had to flee the room and die in the bathroom. As a consequence I missed a cool-looking dance with fans, but came back in time for a final round of heavy drumming and chanting. Taiko has a fine rhythm, and combined with the costume and the ritualｓ which inevitably attach themselves to all forms of Japanese life it is a fascinating thing. I certainly hope I can see some more before the end of summer!

Doctor What meets the Cyber Doctor

As I mentioned below I have spent the last month writhing in agony from what I had originally assumed was a particularly vicious dose of asian bird flu. After 2 weeks it was starting to appear that maybe it wasn`t bird flu; and then I went to hiroshima and it got worse, so I supposed it must be some sort of cold, since I didn`t sleep much in Hiroshima for rather enchanting reasons which are best explored with a visit to the Deilghtful Miss Ember`s blog. But after another week I got desperate and decided to do what I had really been hoping to put off - I visited the doctor.

The Doctor was an interesting experience, having in common with Australian Doctors the desire to diagnose asthma as quickly as possible. His diagnostic technique involved one question (do you have allergies) and a check of my breathing, upon which he determined I must have asthma. After all, it`s spring in a country I have never lived in, which is famous for its spring blooms; I couldn`t possibly have a previously unrecognized allergy. So he gave me stimulants, and now I am slowly recovering. I also threw out a kind of fake tatami rug from my room, which has a quite strong smell which I can actually feel burning my lungs when I breathe in. I had been pretending the problem wasn`t being caused by the rug (and also pretending that it doesn`t matter that my room smells a bit like a barn) but it had to go. I also yesterday went to a Taiko drumming performance in a hotel. The drumming had a phenomenal effect on my lungs, and I had to dash to the bathroom to cough them up, after which everything seemed to get a lot better. Life without lungs is more than its cracked up to be! I recommend taiko drumming as a cure for tuberculosis.

I suppose the taiko is a tale in itself, during which I stumbled on a tanuki and got told I was handsome, all rare events (especially in Australia). I shall tell this later, though. For now I have digressed to the tune of some 3 paragraphs, and must force my thoughts back into order and discuss the Doctor.

When I walked into his room the doctor was waiting for me. He was sitting at his desk in a position of thoughtful readiness, pen poised ready to write the "a" for "asthma", and he was wearing one of those masks you see in footage of tokyo. In Japan people sometimes wear surgical masks to work, and you see them walking along the street wearing these white paper masks tied behind their ears,. Legend has it they wear these masks to protect themselves from Japan`s massively polluted air, in this country which is really just one big city. The reality here of course is that most of Japan is forest and they don`t drive cars, so the air is very clean. I think actually people are wearing these masks because they don`t want to spread their cold to other people. But it is possible that the doctor was wearing a mask to protect himself from my cold, which when you think about it is actually a pretty sensible thing to do.

Unfortunately the mask completely obscured the nice man`s features, so you couldn`t tell what he was thinking, and when he spoke the mask moved with his breath. Before he spoke he had to breathe in and the mask sucked against his face; then it moved when he talked, all completely expressionlessly. The effect was rather like talking to a robot, which spoke with some sort of pneumatic system that pushed its synthetic skin. It was kind of disconcerting. Also, when one is speaking a second language one often chooses poor phrases, and Japanese people sometimes sound quite blunt when they speak english (even though they are trying to be very polite). For example it is impolite to say "you" in Japanese, but polite to refer to ones friend as "that man" or "that woman", which translates in English to he and she - so people speak about their friends or partners in their presence as if they were the cat`s mother. Which to the Japanese seems very polite but is not to us. So my cyberdoctor used some rather blunt phrases, while talking with an expressionless face that made a sucking noise.

This was my first brush with the masked Japanese person, and it was overall rather creepy. Although hygiene-wise these masks are probably an excellent idea, i recommend strongly against their adoption in the modern workplace. So stick that in your AWA and smoke it!

My 15 minutes

Most of you being presently in a nation of 20 million Australians (and 1 citizen of Hell currently refusing to live in Canberra as it is supposed to), you may be surprised to hear that here in Tottori I am the only Australian. That`s right, as far as I know the only Australian. This means that I cannot speak with false modesty (since only Australians understand this absurd form of interaction), most of my curses and insults fall on deaf ears, and I cannot buy vegemite. It is truly an uncivilised place. Since most of you are living in Australia you may also not be aware that there is a tournament just under way in Europe, called the Football world cup, which will decide the fate of billions. Australia has somehow managed to get a special dispensation to avoid following the rules of this tournament (even though they were set down by God, or possibly at a conference attended by all the Gods); as a result, we are fielding a soccer team to this tournament. The USA have also managed to avoid the rules (possibly because they are in direct communication with God), and have also fielded a soccer team. No country which fields a soccer team can ever win this tournament, so it is probably only a kindness that has allowed inconsequential nations like the USA to have a chance to bask in the reflected glory of nations which are actually important, like Brasil and Argentina. But I digress! Our soccer team has its first match against Japan`s team, which plays an even more obscure game that they call sakka, and so also has no chance of winning this tournament. Japan is in uproar over the fact that their favourite foreign nation (Australia) is about to play them in its least favourite game (soccer). And what do the Japanese do when they are in uproar? They have a tv show where people talk to a crazy man; and then to settle the matter they have a cooking competition. The local Tottori tv station decided to do this and thus needed to find themselves an Australian to talk to, and to cook some Australian food. Rather than importing from Osaka someone who can actually speak Japanese, they used devious alchemical methods to find me, and on Tuesday last week I was drafted into a tv show to talk to a crazy man and then engage in a world cup cooking contest against representatives of the vastly important nations of Germany, Ecuador and Korea (all of whom could somehow speak fluent Japanese). They could have found an American too... there are many ... but it was essential that they find an Australian and I was the only one.

So there I was in a tv station, trying to remember that a clause somewhere in my scholarship says I have to engage in cultural exchange even though i can`t speak the crazy local dialect, and this guy was screaming at me in colloquial Japanese, talking so fast that his lips were falling off and he dropped 5 syllables from the word for thankyou (which has between 7 and 75 syllables depending no how you say it). I was asked whether my team was strong (I said no), and where we would finish (I said the finals, which is an example of irony, which no-one understood but which everyone thought was really funny), and then I asked not so nicely if I could be not asked anymore questions (since it is embarrassing to be asked 6 times in front of 10 people in a tv studio and still not know one word of what was said). The host was exactly like the hosts of Japanese tv stations for which Japan is famous - he was crazy, bugged his eyes out when he talked, and spoke really fast and in a really excited fashion. I was waiting for him to flourish a live scorpion and demand that I eat it while dancing naked on a bed of ants. once the interview was over we went to a kitchen on the other side of town and I cooked the only "traditional" food that is edible, fish and chips. I did beer batter fish and chips, which led to a very amusing moment where the crazy commentator started jumping up and down screaming something like "bbbbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuu!!! beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuu! Osotorariajin wa beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrru tsukaimasu!!" (In english: beer, beer, the australian man is using beer). When I put my beer battered fish into the pan his head actually exploded from the excitement. I tried to say that in Australia we drink beer, we cook with beer and we shower in beer, but I accidentally said wake up instead of using the special verb for showering, so that didn`t get into the final cut. But there is an amusing shot of me pouring beer into a measuring cup and sort of half toasting the camera, while the host explodes in a rain of brain gore. The funny thing about this host is that when he was off camera he was just like every other Japanese man: demure, polite, shy, soft-spoken. You could see him transforming with some kind of magical power just before the cameras turned on.

Anyway overall I was in a rather grim mood because I was sick, I was having a really bad language day, I couldn`t understand anything, and I sometimes feel very lonely here mostly on account of the fact that all the foreigners are complete arseholes. When you come to Japan you can expect to be lonely until you make Japanese friends, because I can assure you that the other foreigners in this country you would not piss on if they were on fire. Unless by pissing on them you could dampen the fire a bit and make their deaths take longer, but even then you might ask a local to do it so that you didn`t have to dirty yourself. So I was pretty grim, and probably not the best person to have on a tv show with cheery smiling people. My food was good though, for fish and chips - but asking an Australian to cook traditional food in a cooking contest is like inviting an armless man to a boxing match. Or in fact rather like inviting Australians to play in the World Cup. Where`s the fun? So in the end the Ecuadorian won with a suitably crazy combination of prawns, orange juice and popcorn which was a lot better than it sounds. In between all this craziness the two judges of the food were completely and totally serious.

So there you have it, my 15 minutes of fame have been expended on a rather amateur cooking contest in a regional tv show in Japan. Even though I was grim at the time the show turned out okay (I watched it yesterday), and I feel rather privileged to have engaged in one of the iconic rituals of modern Japan - the televised cooking contest. And I even have the video as proof I was there (if ever I run for parliament I shall have to destroy it). What a souvenir of my brief time here!!!!