Ojiisan

The man in this picture is my Grandfather, Carmello Caceres, who died on Saturday afternoon in a small town in Devon, aged 85 years old. I have fond memories of my Grandfather, with whom I lived for two years when I was about 8 years old, and since I cannot be in England to be at his funeral I thought I should try for a little eulogy here on this otherwise light-hearted forum. As he might well have liked, I have cracked open a beer and am sitting here in the sweltering Japanese heat remembering my time in his home and his rather remarkable story.

My Grandfather grew up in Barcelona, Spain, and at the age of 15 he lied about his age and ran away from home to join the Republican Army, which was under attack from a Fascist rebellion led by Franco. This was rather normal behaviour for a boy from Barcelona, which city can still beat seven shades of shit out of any German football team you care to mention, and of course Real Madrid to boot (with or without David Beckham); and by this action my Grandfather became one of the first men in Europe to rise up against the tide of Fascism which, with quite open consent from America and England, was sweeping rapidly across Western Europe. He was also one of the early victims of this tide, since in the Spanish Civil War he was shot in the head and had to recuperate briefly before returning to the front. My Grandfather was also a victim of the Western European attitude towards people who opposed Hitler at that time - having slapped a one-sided arms embargo on the conflict to prevent the Republicans from winning, they welcomed the soldiers fleeing to France at gunpoint and herded them into internment camps. These soldiers were forced to leave everything they owned behind, even being forced to dump handfuls of Spanish earth which they had hoped to carry with them into exile.

Of course, the political plans of the English-speaking world being what they are, the British eventually found their own interests threatened by their one-time Fascist friends, and had to turn from imprisoning my Grandfather to begging him for help. French Foreign Legion recruiters came to the internment camps and my Grandfather was quick to join up, moving from the Legion to the British Army after a year or two and distinguishing himself over several theatres. My Grandfather has had the pleasure of being shot at, bombed, shelled and generally used rudely by Fascists of every nationality and stripe from Madrid to Berlin, with a nice little detour through North Africa to complete the set. In total he spent 9 years at war, and was unable to return to his homeland at its completion. Instead he settled in England, working as a forester in the South West, where he learnt English and met my Grandmother. By the time it became safe for him to return to Spain - after the death of Franco -he probably already had Grandchildren.

My Grandfather was a singularly cheerful chap. When I was little he would get up early every morning to make breakfast for my Grandmother, and I would come down the stairs and sit in the kitchen babbling at him while he cooked. He had a huge European-style vegetable patch in our back garden, and kept an allotment around the corner where he grew christmas trees before transplanting them to the nearby Grovelly woods, where he worked and, while he worked, I played. Life in the country in Wiltshire in the early 80s was a free and easy time, just like stepping out of the scenes of the Railway Children or a Thomas Hardy novel (minus the sex and moral conundra - I was only 8!), and I think it is largely because of my Grandparents that I was able to experience as romantic and carefree a childhood as anyone can hope for.

Although my Grandparents were relatively strict and disciplinarian sorts, they were gentle folk and treated me very well. As an adult I have noticed that despite their singularly harsh and difficult early adulthoods, they have always allowed subsequent generations to do what they thought was best, and always believed our future was our own. I like to hope that the things I have done with this freedom, and the future I am trying to build for myself, met with some measure of approval from the sweet old man who I remember. Certainly his opinion of me has always been as important to me as my memories of him, and now that he has passed I would like to commend his memory to all of you.

This moment marks the passing of an ordinary man who, like many in his time, did great things simply because he felt they were right. Perhaps his generation is the only Western generation in living memory which will be genuinely able to claim that it went to war for freedom, rather than for bastardry and money, or power and black gold - and as the years pass the memories of that generation are, like my Grandfather's, fading away. Although he may have passed an ordinary man in a quiet place, he remains to me such a special childhood memory that I can still smell the tobacco in his pouch and the fire in the grate. I hope to carry these memories with me until, like all ordinary men, I also fade away. Vale, Carmello Caceres.

The view from the Bridge

Having completed three of our major tasks in Tokyo - shopping like maniacs, taking advantage of the local maids, and watching pretty girls whipped to within an inch of our delicate sensibilities - the Delightful Miss E, Sergeant M and myself visited Tokyo's other great tourist attraction, the Bridge at Harajuku. Those of you familiar with the "Fruits" book will be aware that the Bridge is where all the crazily dressed kids go on Sundays to sit about preening themselves and being too cool for school (which is probably where they are from).

Harajuku is a pretty cool place, about the size of Melbourne with similar buildings and a similar feel (but no trams). Off the two main streets it is as quiet as the grave, and the houses are very pretty. It has a singular absence of skyscrapers and a very large number of cafes, clothing stores and, of course, hairdressers. The hairdressers are very cool and Harajuku probably has more clothing stores than Melbourne. Also, on a Sunday afternoon, probably more people (but less Greeks). At the top end of Harajuku is a very quaint railway station built for the Olympics, and a huge park whose entrance is dominated by a massive red Torii gate. I was not on that bridge to look at shrines, though, because the bridge is itself a Shrine to modern pop sub-culture, and Japan has modern sub-culture in spades. Sadly, however, 99% of the people on the bridge were foreign tourists taking pictures of the locals without even asking. The locals ignored the whole thing or posed nonchalantly. There were not many of them either, though I was only on the bridge for 2 ten minute stretches. They gather in little groups and hang about chatting - one group had a little birthday party, and another group were eating their lunch. The only difference between them and any other group of lounging students was that their clothes were crazy.

The girl here is in my opinion the best dressed of the day, though by far not the craziest (this honour is reserved for the mermaid twins - see the Illustrations for more pictures of the crazy crew). Many of the fashions on the Bridge were a kind of gothic version of Japanese national costume, which point I find rather fascinating, and contrary to popular myth there were no gothic lolitas. I was saddened by the huge number of tourists taking pictures, and the sense of being at a perfromance in someone's living room, uninvited. Still my Japanese is now good enough to ask a complete stranger if I can take their photo, and I think I used it judiciously. Taking someone else's photo without asking is generally something of a faux pas hereabouts (every Japanese person I show these photos to asks me first of all - did you ask for permission?), so I am glad I did. Later in the afternoon the kids I photographed on the Bridge were yelling at tourists to leave them alone, so I think I probably did a wise thing. Next time I am in Tokyo (and there will be a next time) I sincerely hope that my Japanese is good enough to ask a few more salient questions. I will be sorely disappointed if it is not...

Of Cartoon Bondage

Tokyo is a city of many strange things, and perhaps the strangest of the lot is the antics of the young people in the electronics district, Akihabara. Here as soon as one exits the station one is greeted by a bevy of girls dressed in crazy overdone Victorian maid outfits, handing out fliers advertising shops and cafes. There are also various people wandering about dressed as their favourite anime stars. This is a little strange in broad daylight in a busy street, but one has to sample the situation to feel fully part of the Tokyo experience. So it is dear reader that I found myself frogmarched by the Delightful Miss E into one of the strangest places in Tokyo - the Cute M Maid Cafe , in which young ladies dressed like Victorian maids serve you drinks and food in a very dainty and rather overtly subservient way.

Should one happen to click on the little button that says "Maid" on the above website, one will find the full complement of cosplay sweeties laid out before one's wondering eyes. For the purpose of your edification I can assure you that our primary Maid for the afternoon was the young Miss named Hime, on the left in the middle. She was very sweet. Also perhaps Kanade assisted us a little but I am not sure. The uniforms you see them wearing in the pictures are exactly the uniforms they work in - click on young Ayuna for a full-body shot of the fashion at this particular cafe.

Because Japanese language has particular forms for different levels of politeness, it is possible to know exactly how subservient your waiter/waitress is, and in this case they were very subservient. Even the simple act of refilling our water glass required an apology for interrupting, a very careful pouring of the water, two more apologies, and then the Maid had to step back from the table one step and bow to almost a 45 degree angle (in modern Japan one only receives this bow occasionally) - to everyone at the table separately, on some occasions. The service was profoundly embarrassing but the young ladies carried it off with such a genuinely sweet manner that it was difficult to believe they were doing it just because they had been paid to.

Interesting also was the presence of a number of women in the cafe (besides the Delightful Miss E), some without men to accompany them. Downstairs was another cafe, cafe Passion, where the girls behave not like maids but like imoto - little sisters. This cafe had such a long queue that we didn't bother waiting. These cosplay cafes are dotted all over Akihabara, as are the girls in uniform whose job is to guide people to them - we asked one girl in a pink maid outfit who not only told us where to go but advised us on which ones were best to go with a woman. A fascinating tour through a strange nerdy underworld indeed!

Of Human Bondage

Having completed the first phase of our Tokyo campaign - subduing the shopping district of Shinjuku, and exhausting most of our arsenal in the process - the inimitable Sgt M, the Delightful Miss E and I moved on to the most difficult and challenging part of our campaign, the conquering of the night life in nearby Kabuki-Cho. This of course was going to involve an all night struggle, possibly with a forced march at the end. Since I had guided Sgt M through the wilds of Northern Honshu, and the Delightful Miss E had seen him safely through the sinister and smokey gentlemen's clubs of Hiroshima, we left it to Sgt M himself to choose the best terrain for our nocturnal endeavours in Tokyo.

Sergeant M being the young man-about-town that he is, he chose the most sinister and expensive spot he could, a likely-seeming Goth club called Midnight Mess. This fine looking club commenced at midnight on Saturday, cost 3000 yen to get in (that's $35 kiddies), and was the first club of this sort which the Delightful Miss E had visited for almost a year - in Hiroshima she is restricted to the vagaries of Trancing, and of course in Tottori there is little to be done in the evening except turn Japanese.

So there we were, the three of us, at the bar at half past midnight ready for a surprise attack, and the first warning presented itself - the only patrons were foreigners. The presence of foreigners in Japan usually does not stand for anything good (present company excepted of course), and just as the Nova teachers generally seem to be the bottom of the uni-dropout barrel, so the goths appeared to be drawn straight from the bottom of the not-happy barrel. Nonetheless, we persisted. The club had its own charms, as one can tell from the picture at the head of this post, but not many people. A band played, and they were good. For about an hour the music was good, and certainly the gin and tonics were not diluted...

Unfortunately things took a sudden change for the ... worse ? ... after the band. Instead of better music and the stage turning into a dance floor we were confronted with a Japanese man dragging two girls onto the stage by their hair. A woman ran on and helped him tie one of these two lasses (who was wearing bandages over her face) to a chair while the man stripped the other girl and hung her from the ceiling. Even with the slapping and the nipple pinching this did not take him very long - he certainly knew what to do with his hands.

Not being one to turn down the view of a naked girl when it is offered me, and having suddenly realised why the club cost 3000 yen, I decided to move in to the front where the audience was gathering to witness the spectacle. I think I can spare you the vivid details, dear reader, as can Sergeant M, since the whole thing horrified him and he had to retreat to his table (from where I think, incidentally, he had a quite decent view). The girl hanging from the ceiling was rather sexy too, and I think that Matt just wanted to protect her. He probably made a wise move, as the Korean girl at her first Goth Club ever would attest to, because some 10 minutes later the man with the deft hands starting dripping candle wax on the lips of the girl with the bandaged face. This was all a little too far off the standard porn-movie crypto-bondage track for me, and I had to join the Korean girl in looking away (though I think she may have looked a tad more horrified than I did). Call me squeamish, but it looked like it hurt. Probably the point, really.

This little spectacle took about 30 minutes in all before the girls were led satisfied off the stage, only to return amongst the crowd a few minutes later to collect their belongings. The MC, whose picture you can see in Midnight Mess's website, subsequently invited audience members onto the stage, and two pretty Japanese girls got up from the crowd to take their turn at the wheel, as it were. One of these gave a rather extensive show, and in the nature of most B&D work it started interesting but got tedious fast. At this point my endurance was starting to wane, as was my interest in watching semi-naked strangers writhing on the other side of the room. The Delightful Miss E would probably concur in saying that 30 minutes is enough bondage for us (*cough*) and we wanted a return to good music and dancing. Sadly it wasn't to happen, and for the next hour the lucky girls got slapped and felt up by half the audience, including one of the two sad old trannies (did I mention the sad old trannies?) and her girflriend's best friend. I should say at this point that the balance of foreigners to Japanese goths had become a little more even, but this didn't stop the biggest, fattest foreign man from volunteering for a bit of the action. Fortunately the MC spared us all his blubbery nakedness in ropes, and he stood fully clothed on stage with his hands tied behind his head, smoking a cigarette. Tasteful. Just what I expect from my fellow white man. Good thing he showed the usual endurance of the fat foreigner and sat down after 1o minutes, fag in hand. Anyway, while the nice Japanese lady was being threatened with a 3' long glass dildo (did I mention the 3' dildo?) the three of us gathered in a (completely platonic) huddle, worked out when the next train was, and split for the exits.

So it was that our big night campaign came to a fizzling halt. A combination of poor choice of terrain, failure to adequately research local conditions, and inflexibility in the face of superior enemy tactics left us with no option but to engage in a mad rout to the railway station. We were just in time for the 5am train, even with allowance for some dawn-light snapshots on the way. My recommendation to those who follow in my footsteps in Tokyo is this - if the advert for the club says goth/fetish/dark/experimental don't go unless dancing is not the first thing on your mind. And having heeded my warning, if you do go make sure you wear your best underwear.

Civilisation at last

So it was that the inimitable Sgt M, the Delightful Miss E, and my own boring self found ourselves accidentally in a Hotel in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, this Thursday last. We had arrived by Shinkansen (bullet train) in this swarming metropolis with a very clear set of goals - crazy shopping, crazy kids, crazy dancing. I had been saving half my scholarship for 3 months in advance of this 4 days in the swarming centre of the world, and here I was, bag in hand (well, bags, actually, because I was carrying half of Sgt M's baggage - apparently in Australia "unaccompanied" means "accompanied by one of your friends"). I had the fullest intention of disgracing myself in the eyes of the entire world by going overboard in a million shops.

In the end it was the Delightful Miss E who disgraced herself, following me around through 16 levels of men's clothing department stores drooling at every man in every shop. I completely failed to take photographs of these beautiful men (it didn't even occur to me at the time) but I should have, because they are quite resplendent visions of masculinity, all sinew and bone and big hair and perfect clothes. I am of course only equal to these men in one very basic respect - I fit their clothes. I cannot explain to the average over-sized Australian man what it is like to finally be able to walk into any clothing shop you like and just know that the clothes will fit. I am slowly replacing my selection of Australian pants which slide off me without being unbuttoned, and my Australian shirts which are designed for pregnant men, and replacing them with cheap, fitted and perfectly fitting Japanese gear.

Not that it all went my way, of course - nothing does in this sort of campaign. I also followed Emma through many of her favourite types of shop - cigar shops, anime shops, clothing shops. We found many Gothic Lolita shops, which are surprisingly cheap (for those of you who know about that sort of thing and might be interested) and where Emma bought one or two small things; and there were various other things to be purchased. We were sore by the end of two days of this!

The Gothic Lolita look makes perfect sense against the backdrop of Japanese manners, which are in many ways trapped in an almost Victorian (as in 19th Century) sense of Manners. One does not drink tea, one takes tea (Japanese has the same verb for medicine and drinks, as English did a hundred years ago). There is a special implement over here for cleaning one's ears, and a certain sort of established formality which is redolent of a lost era. It came as no surprise to me, then that the ground floor of the Isetan Men's store contains, amongst other fineries, a bespoke perfume retailer (for men) and a cigar shop which has $500 enameled pipes on display, decorated with Oni or dragons or centipedes. They have implements for the sophisticated man here which have long since been forgotten in the west - fans, for example, snuff boxes, fob watches and waistcoats. And the men in Tokyo and Hiroshima make sure they use them. I challenge my Australian reader to find a bespoke men's perfume retailer anywhere in the English-speaking world outside of New York and London. This old-world manner combined with the extreme busy-ness and size of the city, its thronging hordes and enormously sophisticated modern technology, makes it seem for all the world like a kind of manic steam-punk science fiction without the steam - Blade Runner and The Diamond Age spring most immediately to mind. This post's picture is of Matt and Emma at Shibuya, apparently the world's biggest intersection, and at night with rain falling this place really does seem like something straight from a science fiction movie. Lord knows it is hectic enough at midday on a Friday!

In any case, the Delightful Miss E and I spent two full days shopping, with a brief break to visit a maid cafe and Yoyogi-Koen, where we put a little more effort into taking photographs of local strangeness. More on this shall follow. Rest assured that at the end of my weekend I returned to Tottori with $50 to my name, very firmly hoping that my pay would come through on the 25th.

Which, thankfully, it did.

The kindness of naked strangers

I have had the pleasure of spending the weekend with the inimitable Sergeant M , who has come to Japan with the sole intention of seeing the delightful Miss E and myself, and also of drinking copious martinis. Since there is only one place in Tottori where one can buy copious Martinis, it was my task to furnish Sgt M with some other campaign plan which would leave his liver intact for the rigours of Hiroshima. For this task I drafted in the stunningly handsome Mr. Hiroki (who I admit looks a bit more stunned than stunning in this picture) and his charming and pretty girlfriend Miss Kaori. They have the singular advantages of being Japanese, stunningly good looking, amazingly cool, and quite well-acquainted with the local area. They also have a car.

Our first two days in Tottori were spent in car-free activities such as visiting the strange white house called the jinpukukan (I think), struggling around koyama in the stinking heat on borrowed bicycles, and staring in horror at man-sized newts in the local museum. Have I mentioned that Japan has a man-sized newt which is well at home in the rivers and dunnies of Tottori? Fortunately for all of civilisation it lacks teeth, but if you were to bump into this bugger mid-squat near a lonely onsen I'm sure that the lack of teeth would not be immediately noticeable.

But I digress... yesterday was the day of our big Japanese Tour, when Sgt M and I met Mr. Hiroki and Miss Kaori and drove about Tottori doing Very Japanese Things. We drove in Mr. Hiroki's car because, sweet and innocent though she may seem, Miss Kaori has removed the backseat from her rather formidable sports car and replaced it with speakers, so there is no room for guests. Our first stop was a sushi restaurant, where on only his 3rd day in Japan Sgt M showed himself a willing sort, and ate Nattou as well as sea-urchin, possibly the two most grotesque things in the Japanese diet. The sushi was delicious and filling and well worth the wait (also very cheap!). The nattou was not, of course.

After this we drove to Kurayoshi, the next city along the Sanin Coast, stopping along the way at a lookout near Miss Kaori's hometown, where the much more expert Sgt M took some photos and i took a snapshot of the three of them against the backdrop of distant mountains and a grey sea. At Kurayoshi we stopped at a cafe and had some coffee and sherbert (gelato) while looking at the cafe's rather pleasing little Japanese garden; we then resumed our journey to our main goal, Misasa Onsen.

As some of you will no doubt be aware, an Onsen is a pool of hot water welling up from beneath Japan's rather unstable surface. The Japanese, like the New Zealanders, like to sit in these hot pools stark naked while swapping stories about how deeply they are willing to bow to strangers (or sheep). In some cases whole towns spring up around onsens, for all the world like Lourdes (if it were blessedly free of French people). Misasa is such a town. It has the singular privilege of having an outdoor onsen which is right next to the river (but too hot for Japan's man-sized newts to sneak in under cover of my nakedness). Mr. Hiroki's plan was to sneak us into this onsen at dusk, so that we could lie back in the steaming water and gaze at the stars while our blood boiled. I thoroughly approved of this plan, but Sgt M was not so sure at first, given the extraordinary value of his Crown Jewels and the amount he has had to insure them for, as well as his singular lack of experience in public bathing etiquette. I also have no experience of public bathing, so wanted a local guide. Enter Mr. Hiroki!

So it was that we found ourselves walking across the bridge looking at the view of the valley, half an hour prior to sunset. The view from the onsen itself I show here:



Unfortunately I cannot show you the view from Misasa bridge, because it includes the Onsen. That's right, the rather inadequate bamboo screens around the onsen do not quite hide the nakedness of its occupants from the view of the main bridge through town - or the restaurant we ate in, either, from the windows of which one can see all that is to be seen. Miss Kaori walked across the bridge with a towel over her face so she did not have to witness the dreadful spectacle of all those toothless Japanese newts, but this was only the first of many surprises. This is Hiroki's favourite onsen because of its evening views, and in his eagerness to introduce us to it he neglected to mention it is a mixed sex onsen. For a brief moment I had a sudden fear that I would be bathing with Miss Kaori, but she assured me afterwards that there was no risk that this was ever going to happen. Whew!

So it was that we found ourselves getting naked in front of 6 Japanese men and an old Japanese woman. I should also mention that under the waning evening light our terribly pale Australian bodies glowed like the stars reflected in the pool. Having attracted as much attention as we could with our radioactive skin, once we were in the water the inevitable conversation started. One of the men in the small group using the onsen drifted up to us, so that he hung in the water very near our palely luminous, bobbling bits, and began asking us where we were from, what we were doing, and so forth. This conversation inevitably ended as one would expect when a naked white man talks to a 40-something Japanese man in the country - with him poking my tattoo and trying to wash it off, while peering very closely at my naked chest and asking questions about the design, how long it took, etc. I have become used to answering these questions, though, although perhaps not while naked, so it was okay. Part of the reason we were at this onsen was that other onsens prevent us from entering on account of these same blots on our otherwise flawless (!?) skin, so I suppose it was only inevitable that the nice chap should have some questions. He was, of course, unfailingly gentle and kind, and all of his questions and behaviour left us feeling completely at ease and comfortable. He then subsided to the other side of the pool to drape his towel on his head.

Once we were safely ensconced in the scolding water Miss Kaori came down to join us, dipping her dainty feet in the onsen and sitting fully clothed on the edge chatting to Mr. Hiroki while we bared our not inconsiderable wares to the world (well, except for the dark and the rippling water). Matt even got to show Miss Kaori his tough-sticker, which is a singular achievement since it is just above his bum. At various points we had to stick various parts of our bodies out of the water in order to cool off, then subside again, but I think adversity was a good teacher and we got the hang of using our modesty towels very quickly. Miss Kaori saw no more than was strictly necessary, I am sure.

As always after bathing I was dizzy and weak, so after we had emerged dripping from the steaming water we retired to the restaurant which commanded a view of the same pool, and polished off a mountain of food. From there, tired and relaxed, we returned to Tottori, Sergeant M having successfully experienced the very essence of rural life, and conquered his fear of naked communal bathing, all in one easy afternoon with good friends. Huzzah! No more casual and pleasant introduction to Japanese Volcanic Bathing could be hoped for in this long green land! And so now Sgt M heads off to Hiroshima, where he will remove unnecessary internal organs through the application of copious quantities of astringents in a variety of fascinating bars to which the Delightful Miss E will introduce him. In 4 days I meet him again in Tokyo, where the three of us will show an unrelenting commitment to partying and shopping.

Kombat Kulcha IV

Tonight was my third night at kickboxing, or rather perhaps I should say swimming, since at the end of the night I was so sweaty that I could squeeze water out of my shirt without wringing it, just like after you get out of the swimming pool (this is not an exaggeration). My first kickboxing session was at a town near Kurayoshi, but now I am training at their other school, which is at the Budoukan in Tottori. A Budoukan is a building devoted to martial arts, Budou meaning martial art and kan meaning big building. As can be seen from the picture, the building is, indeed, big. When I came to Japan I thought I would be training in pokey little rooms with no space to move, but here you can see that there is a lot more space than one would find in an Australian gym. it should be noted that this room is on the first (not the ground) floor of the Budoukan. There are more training rooms below. The windows on the far side of the photo look out upon another wing of the building, in which kendo was being conducted when this photo was taken. The other wing of the building is just the same size as this one.

As far as I can tell, this building is established and run by the prefectural or city government, and has a few staff members to keep it running. People who want to fight just kind of turn up and book a room. The building is probably the same size as the museum (which is very close by). Now that's what I call kulcha!!!! These buildings are scattered all over the cities of Japan - it is not sufficient to say the budoukan in a big city, but rather which budoukan. This is an example of a society in which kombat is given the respect it deserves, and treated properly as kulcha.

There are more examples than this, however, and I shall now present you with a tale of kombat kulcha in which the protagonist is so stunningly out of place, and her behaviour so normal in her own society, that I fear some of my dear readers will suffer apoplexies of brain fever when they realise how differently this one thing is viewed here. Two weeks ago one of my teachers changed. The change in teacher occurred because the previous teacher is going to give birth, so had to swap for a less gravid woman. The previous teacher was a 4th dan black belt in Kendo. The new teacher is probably not, though it's difficult to take anything for granted here. This new teacher, Ito Sensei, is a middle aged university teacher, and a woman. She somehow found out that I do kickboxing, and so launched into a discussion of K-1, the televised kickboxing which is hugely popular here. The discussion involved her asking me if I watched last weekends fight, and then proceeding to tell me that she and her husband watch all the fights because she loves K-1 and she particularly loves Masato, her current favourite fighter, because he is 'really dangerous and very handsome.' Now that's kombat kulcha!!

When was the last time in Australia that I had a discussion with a middle-aged university lecturer about how cool a kickboxing fighter is? That's right, never ... although I have had many discussions where such people have told me I am crazy and my sport is stupid. When I left class my mind was reeling at the enormity of the difference between these two societies - in the one society my hobby is honourable, exciting and important, so important that governments build big buildings expressly for us to use; in the other society it is is bad, dangerous and silly, so bad and silly that governments pass special laws to prevent women doing it ...

Now that's what I call a difference! Since I came here the response to my hobby has been universally one of approval, respect and appreciation. Many people say "I wish I could do something like that! I want to be disciplined like you!" Many people say "yes, I like fighting sports!" Many people say "That's excellent!" No-one says "You're crazy and will probably die." I must say that I am appreciating this particular difference rather a lot.

Inaka

Exposure therapy, I have heard, is an excellent way of curing phobias and other minor ailments. This piece of essential pop psychology struck me like a bolt out of the blue as I was riding to the gym this week, and I was forced to a sudden screeching halt on my quaint little bicycle. True, it may have been a dragonfly the size of a rock dive bombing my head which actually caused me to stop my bicycle, or the stunning view of the Koyama pond (which can be seen from the illustrated archives), but minor details of this story are probably going to prove irrelevant when viewed in the yellow glow reflected from the hairy bum of its main antagonist; so please, dear reader, trust me when I tell you I had many reasons to come to a screeching halt.
There are in fact many dragonflies zipping about Tottori at the moment, so many that they could be classified as a public health hazard. These dragonflies are so large that from the 5th floor of my accomodation I can see them scooting low over the paddocks of the neighbouring farm, and when they land I can discern the shape of their bodies from a good 30m away (this is probably not an exaggeration). The dragonflies move in gangs, they listen to loud music but they at least obey the Japanese prohibition on eating while moving - the other day one landed in front of me and took the time to spitefully bite the head off a fly that it had slung under one jaw. I swear it would have spat it on me if it were not busy sucking out the juices. But at least it wasn't moving! This is a big no-no in Japan.
But I digress! It takes more than a mere dragonfly, or even a horde of dragonflies the size of small dragons, to scare a man as robust about the cheeks as I have become. No, only one thing scares me - trees. Evil, malicious, leafy little bastards which sneak around the edges of roads waiting to hurl sinister biological agents in my face, exuding the stench of evil fertiliser and eyeing passing foreigners balefully from beneath their oh-so-pretty canopies. I don't trust any of them! Not since I developed my special case of arboreal tuberculosis! Which has of late been fading away, and hence the exposure therapy. I decided to confront my nemesises, the trees, and prove that it takes more than a threatening wave of a leaf to keep me in my place.
With this thought firmly in mind I decided to dismount from my very manly bicycle and venture into one of the many forest-hills that are scattered about Tottori's urban landscape. Tottori is spread around these hills, which burst thickly forested from the middle of schoolyards, suburbs and roadways with impunity. They are part of the reason that the town is a little bit inconvenient, because it has to spread around them. From outside they look completely impenetrable, but there is usually a pathway leading into them, and often a shrine, or a rope hung around the biggest tree (which is essentially a shrine). The particular forest-hill pictured here has a little pagoda stuck on top of it, and the whole edifice emerges between a small stretch of allotments and a high school. It clearly is the motherlode as far as asthmatics are concerned, so it seemed ideal that I should penetrate it, roughly thrust myself inside its cool and sheltering canopy, and so pierce to the heart of its hidden secrets, thus proving that my rude and intruding manhood is more than a match for the dark and shadowy heart of nature.
Having girded my loins I marched along the pathway past the high school and forced myself upward into the forest hill. It was really rather pleasant inside, as one might expect if one were to carry this metaphor to its conclusion. It was cool, the trees seemed not to intrude overmuch on the path but spread their sheltering boughs above it, and someone had recently mowed the lawn. The pathway wound upward around the hill and onto a small plateau, which formed a kind of pretty glade completely covered by forest canopy. The inside was throbbing and pulsing with the song of the cicadas, and the sound of the outside world was muted by the thick, lush trees. Strangely, everything smelled of cut grass, and there was not even the smallest hint of weakness in my lungs. I redoubled my efforts, and pushed further towards the secret heart, the pagoda of joy which promised so much at the end of my hard and ruthless intrusion into the inner sanctum.
At this point, however, the forest became a little less pleasant. Pushing past some trees, I felt something brush against me and suddenly found myself dusted with cobwebs. Ah! I thought, the feeble defenses of inchoate nature! See how in its formless weakness it tries to frighten me away with weak tricks, the careless brush of a spider web, the buzzing of a distant insect. It would take more than a play on my weaker senses to drive me from my ultimate heady goal! Not when I was so close, and pushing ever upward!
Still, passions can weaken even the most resolute of invaders, and I found myself checking the path carefully for secret spies and sinister many-legged agents of the darkness. Soon, however, I broke into the light and there, ahead of me, situated in the edge of a pleasant glade of overhanging trees, was my final goal, the pagoda! Oh sweet, secret resting spot, respite from the buzzing throbbing insects, the clinging heat and the cloying fear of rude nature, that Other which all brave men are raised to despise and to crave - here it was! With a spring in my step I advanced to my final, ecstatic destination ...
... only to find myself confronted by the spider you see at the top of this post, the nastiest, meanest, yellowest-arsed, most ugly piece of pure long-legged death I have yet seen in this rather overly arachnified nation. There she sat (and I have no doubt it was a she!), fat and golden in the middle of her intricate web, expertly wrapping a fly in her inescapable and terminal webs...
... the same webs, I realised, as had perhaps scattered on me earlier - what if one of those great fat yellow things had fallen on me, and was even now stealthily making her way downward to my manhood, all eight sinister eyes focussed on the goal of wrapping it up and taking it away. Oh ultimate, ungodly fear! Sinister nature's secret agents invading the most sacred sceptre of my masculinity, stealing away my power! And all because I had the audacity to penetrate to her lair, seeking her innermost secrets! In horror I dropped my bag and hurriedly brushed the cobwebs away, desperately seeking the great, evil creature which surely must have beset me.
Fortunately I found none, but now my nerve had failed me. Pausing just long enough to take several shots with my trusty camera, so that I could record my bravery for posterity, I turned and ran screaming back towards civilisation, and emerged moments later back on the road, shrivelled and shrunken and cowering in fear, the goal of my intrusion once more whole, intact, unsullied, simultaneously inviting and yet deadly ... and all set up to guard that horrible hidden inner sanctum, where the evil one waits ...

... still, at least my allergy seems to have gone!

ps nemesises was a joke ... just in case you think my english has been decaying here in the land of the penultimate verb.

pps no animals were harmed in the making of this analogy

Friends

The stunningly handsome man you see before you is Mr. Hiroki, great and glorious Japanese friend of Yours Truly, who one day in April saw me failing to find a book in a bookshop but was too shy to approach me and help. The next time he saw me he very politely approached me and asked if we could be friends. Since then we have seen something of one another at least once a week.

Mr. Hiroki is in the faculty of engineering studying the design of low-power wind farms, an entirely wholesome whale-loving sort of a pursuit, and spends the remainder of his time madly studying English. Mr. Hiroki has also had the singular pleasure of having been to Australia, where (I think) he visited the Gold Coast and Sydney. Here we see him staring implacably across the sea of Japan to distant, inscrutable North Korea. Not quite the Gold Coast, but it has sand and waves. A short distance behind him his girlfriend Miss Kaori has just competed in a marathon.

Life in Japan at present would be a sad and unfortunate experience were it not for Mr. Hiroki and the other individuals who have decided I am good English practice despite my insane accent. When I am not spending time with these people I have to hang out with the foreign students, who are universally bad, bad people and who do everything they can to make me unhappy. Tottori is not so much fun as the big cities if you do not have a bit of local knowledge, and if you do not have a car the local knowledge is not very useful. Mr. Hiroki is a good source of both of these things, so we have done things together which I could not have done alone. We also drink together, watch soccer, and generally just get up to good old-fashioned boys-y mischief.

Other Japanese people I have spent some time with over the last few weeks are the irrepressible Miss Youko, never unhappy and always helpful with Japanese; the quiet and terribly shy Mr. Keigo, and now his friend Miss Ran; and the inseparable pair of Misses Hiroko and Kana, both of whom are extreme hippies blessed with an irrepressible streak of kindness. I spent some 4 hours in their company on Friday, alternately practising English and Japanese and discussing a diverse range of topics to the best of our limited abilities. Miss Hiroko is visiting England for 3 weeks and wants to rapidly improve her already quite good English. These two are English students in my Tuesday night "class" (if I may use the term loosely).

The hardest thing about being in another country - whether or not you speak the language - is, I think, missing your friends at home. Especially when because you do not speak the language you are very limited in your choice of who you can meet and what you can do with them. Not being able to choose ones friends is a terrible curse, and so I am glad that Mr. Hiroki has chosen me. Without him life in Tottori would be terribly dull, and what is worse it would be lonely. So let us all take our hats off to the kindness of strangers!

Let them eat cake

Several weeks ago while I was walking home suffering under the combined burdens of my irrepressible allergies and a heavy load of shopping I was ambushed by a young woman called Saeko, who rushed up behind me on her dodgy bicycle saying "Excuse me!" until I stopped. There followed a brief conversation in which she told me that she had seen me around the university a few times and had been too scared to approach me, but really wanted to make friends with me. Could she have my phone number?

I can sense my gentle readers snorting through their coffee at this, but wait! Spare me your antipodean cynicism. We are in Japan now and everything is different, including the innocent way in which people approach other people. It was by this exact same method that I met Mr. Hiroki, who just walked up to me and offered to be friends. At the time various people made some rather unfair observations about Mr. Hiroki, all of which proved completely unfounded, but because of my fresh-faced, optimistic and naive view of people I was willing to trust him, so that now I have a very fine friend. I decided to extend the same optimism to Miss Saeko, and by the middle of the following week I was able to make an arrangement to meet at a mysterious event called a "Pafekon." I had, of course, assured Miss Saeko immediately upon making contact with her that I was in no wise single, and yet I suspect this was not necessary - I really think she just wanted to make contact in order to practise her English. She has also previously been to Australia, and is interested in foreigners - but who isn't in this country?

So the following Friday I met her at the university and we went to the mysterious Pafekon. Saeko speaks much better English than I do Japanese (hardly surprising!) and wishes to study abroad. She also has an enormous number of friends, many of whom are in a mysterious university club which organises events. The pafekon was such an event, and was built around the simple activity of tasting Parfait. In Japan Parfait means various flavours of icecream stacked on top of each other with cunning additions, so maybe is a bit like a knickerbocker glory. We had to sample 8 of these monstrosities as part of a table of 6 people. There were 8 tables of 6 people, two MCs, and an army of chefs. It was kind of like a trivia night where you have to rate the beer, and the beer is made of ice cream. In between each round of ice cream we had a little quiz, run by the MCs, but all the quizzes were word games. Some involved guessing new words based on tricky things to do with Hiragana which I did not understand, and others involved guessing Kanji from their constituent parts. It is quite an amazing sight when someone presents you with a collection of straight lines, crosses and boxes and with one look one of your team writes down a crazy kanji. Impressive!

All of this was conducted with typical Japanese rowdiness, the MCs being loud and crazy and jumping around a bit and talking really really fast, the crowd all yelling and cheering, and everyone chattering on to me in hugely fast Japanese that I could not understand. Occasionally they produced broken sentences in English, although one girl at my table had lived in New York as a child and her English was quite good (but she was, of course, too shy to use it).

The ice creams I had to taste were, to say the least, interesting. Some had a wierd Japanese traditional 'sweet' sauce on them, green tea ice cream or sponge cake, and sometimes rice balls (mochi). Quite bizarre combinations, really. I only liked one, so I rated it number one. The one I liked came last, and the wierd Mickey Mouse one came first. Yay.

Finally, after all the Kanji had been guessed and all the Ice Cream eaten, the game was over and everyone got up to leave. At this point Saeko said "goodbye", waved to me, and almost sprinted out. Not sure what happened there. Maybe she doesn't like me... I have not mailed her since, having been busy now that I am beginning to recover from my near death experience with pollen, but she has not mailed me either. What is the mysterious thing one has to do to offend a 19 year old Japanese girl? Essential information, I'm sure we can all agree ...