Stevie Blunder??

Yes I know it's a crap title. Anyway...learning Japanese is a slow process. And for me, it seems. slower than for most people. Before I moved to Japan, I tried to learn a bit of Japanese. Showing off to one of my students one day, I casually remarked " kyo wa masui desu ne". She politely pointed out that I'd somehow combined samui' ( cold) and 'atsui' (hot) to come up with a word that actually means 'anesthesia' and is not normally used to refer to the weather in Japanese. or indeed in any other language known to man.

The English are famed for their desire to talk about the weather, but in fact the Japanese are equally bad. Anytime I'm out with Chiaki she'll make a point of reminding me how hot or cold it is about every ten minutes. So you'd think that by now there would be no problem for me. Not so, dear reader.
After much discussion and deliberation, I've started giving some lessons to Chiaki's sister, Ako. She's doing really well and is a delight to teach. So every other Tuesday I stop off in Omori on my way back from Yurakuchko ( which means I can do a complete Yamanote circuit. One day I'll able to recite all the stations in order, like a character in a Murakami (H) novel. And bore people to death in bars)
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago it was a particularly nasty cold, wet. miserable day. I got into the lift in Ako's appartment block and found I was sharing it with a workman. I didn't have to say anything, but suddenly my mouth disconnected itself from my brain and I heard my voice say...... ( no, not 'masui') ' 'Chotto atsui desu ne" As the words left my lips, I prayed that my companion was deaf. He wasn't. I think.
Without blinking, he murmured "So desu ne" as the lift doors opened onto a grey sky that was threatening snow and a temperature of maybe minus seven. So why didn't he question my obviously absurd comment? I have the following theories:

1. He was just being polite.
2. My pronunciation was so bad he thought I said 'samui'
3. He wasn't deaf, but a bit hard of hearing
4. He had been working really hard and thought I was sympathising with his overrheated condition.
5. He could see I was a foreigner and assumed I was an Eskimo (or Inuit as is now p.c.)
6. He was from Northern Hokkaido. or an Eskimo ( or Inuit as is now p.c)
7. He could see from my imposing physical appearance that I work out at the gym on a regular basis so he was afraid to disagree in case I became violent.

9. Er............ he was just being polite.

Thank you workman - san for not making me more embarrassed than I already was!

The Night of the Long Potatoes

I have a feeling this blog is going to meander a bit but, of course, there are those who maintain that the journey is of more importance than the arrival so..... To start with, what happened to Autumn? One day it was hot, the next it was cold and we're in mid-November and the trees are only just beginning to consider turning that fabled Japanese russet-brown colour.
Talking of seasons, my wife, Chiaki is, as you may know, from Sapporo. And twice a year her mum sends us a big, beautifully packed, box of seasonal vegetables. This year was no exception As Chiaki opened the box to discover potatoes (2 varieties) onions( rather a lot, but of course they keep) and 4 packets of Hokkaido curry (keeps forever) I could see from her slightly glazed expression that imminent, if short term, dietary changes were on the horizon.
I willingly complied. French ONION Soup, mashed POTATO (with a beaten raw egg) Spaghetti Bolognese ( more ONION,) Jacket POTATOES - I thought I was doing OK. Then one Sunday Chiaki suddenly mentioned 'potaffu' I'm sorry but that's the best I can do- you see though my wife is talented in many, many ways, I'm afraid French pronunciation isn't one of them.) As the day went on, I gradually realized that what she kept referring to was, in fact 'Pot au feu" the traditional French beef and vegetable stew cooked for many hours. Or rather it WASN"T that, but the Japanese version which seems to include pork, chicken stock and a tin of tomatoes, and is ready in just over an hour. "No. I don't really fancy it" was my murmured reply the first fifteen times 'potaffu' was suggested. Then it hit me. THE LONG POTATOES (from her mum) We hadn't used any of THE LONG POTATOES. (particularly good in stews) We were disrespecting THE LONG POTATOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Culturally sensitive as ever, I rapidly counter-suggested that "Guiness Stew" could easily be adapted to include some, in fact quite a few, LONG POTATOES. And that's what I cooked the next day. Very nice it was too. Chiaki looked up from her plate from time to time and gave me her 'You're in my good books for the moment' smile. And peace reigned once more in this small corner of Japan.

There's very little evidence as to what Jimi Hendrix actually thought of potatoes, but he was a genius. I'm not really a huge Hendrix fan, but when I listen to the bass figure in "Hey Joe" Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum ..... badarbadak daar, it never fails to thrill me. The story goes that the bass player (Noel Redding) had gone to the pub. When he came back, the bass line was done! By Mr H. I doubt very much that Jimi actually invented the line, but if you or i had found it, we'd have probably built a career around it. Jimi uses it just three times! And one of those is on the fade-out.
And if you listen to Dylan's original 'All along the Watchtower' (which is good) and then to Hendrix's version - WOW!!!! It;s a guitar symphony. Jimi beats the shit out of the white blues boys like Clapton, because while they were sitting around learning solos from blues records, he was out on the road playing soul and R'n B. So he plays rhythm AND lead, often at the same time. Behind the electric guitar gymnastics on 'Watchtower" there's a 12-string acoustic (or two) being rhythmically hammered to death. By Mr H. Genius. Two songs my I-pod can shuffle forever.

The Asagaya Jazz Festival(and other matters)

My wife, Chiaki, and I both like jazz. Or rather we both like SOME jazz, but not necessarily the SAME jazz, She's a big bossa fan, so she likes Cuban jazz. I'm a blues fan so love anything that's blues - based. We both love Miles Davis, but in fact what we really love is 'Kinda Blue' Miles. You get the picture?

Anyway.... Last Thursday Chiaki told me there was a Jazz Festival in Takadanobaba (walking distance from here) on Saturday and Sunday. Would I like to go? 'Sure' I said.
Saturday was quite busy. I had to meet two new students (Saori and Yohei) as well as doing some regular teaching. Chiaki had her usual Saturday morning cleaning blitz, followed by a stressful visit to the hairdresser's. By 6.00, I had 2 FANTASTIC new students, (I have to say that, because Yohei reads my blogs) the flat was again spotless and Chiaki's hair looked great, but we were both a bit tired. A quick beer at the Thai restaurant, then off to Baba for a yakitori and some jazz. On the way, Chiaki revealed that the festival wasn't actually IN Baba but 2 stops away on the Chuo line. Eventually we ended up in a whisky bar,exhausted, and decided to go to the festival the next day.

However,on Sunday, first we had to PUT THE IKEA TABLE TOGETHER. We started, happily, at around 12.00 and when the fourth leg finally agreed to become part of the table, and we'd managed( with the help of about 25 friendly neighbours) to lift the table into an upright position, realising in the process that, without moving most of the existing furniture into the garden, we didn't have enough room for the table, it was about 4.00, and we hadn't eaten anything!!!! Exhausted, (again) we managed to crawl to 'Freshnessburger' and then, finally, decided to hear some jazz. 'Actually' Chiaki said 'It's in Asagaya, it's four stops from Baba.' Only 10minutes. It was. But it wasn't.

After about an hour we got there. We walked around Asagaya for about two hours (it seemed to me) asking people with increasing desperation "Where's the Jazz Festival'? There were posters everywhere but not one note of music to be heard. Finally, a conversation in which the word 'kino' kept cropping up. 'Kino'?? Kino' ??????. Yes, folks 'yesterday' The ONE DAY Asagaya Jazz Festival had finished on Saturday, at midnight.

As we trudged home, in a silence punctured only by the occasional 'gomen nasai' from my wife. I vowed to cheer myself up by buying something jazzy from I-Tunes. And I did! 'Striking it Rich' by Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks. Just recently re-released. A wonderful semi-acoustic mixture of jazz, blues, and country with some superb guitar, violin and double bass. And some very funny lyrics. Dan must be in his sixties now, but I saw him live a couple of years ago, and he was brilliant. Probably better than anyone at the Asagaya Jazz Festival. I hope so.

By the way, Chiaki and I are now talking again, and the table looks good. And if you look on I-Tunes, you can see a small, but perfectly formed, review of 'Striking it Rich' by Steve-chan!

The Guy On The Plane

It's been a while. Actually 3 months in England, teaching, acquiring new debts, watching the financial world teeter on the brink of collapse, experiencing the novel concept of the one-day-summer (temperatures suddenly zoom into the thirties for 24 hours then sink into miserable rainy grey the next day.) Anyway.......
I'm back in Mejiro, Tokyo.

The flight was pretty good. That dangerous (anywhere else) trick of sinking a whisky and American, then two large glasses of wine on an empty stomach, then confusing said stomach with a BA meal did it for me. I drifted off into a comfortable daze as 3 episodes of The Simpsons, a kung-fu movie With Jet Li and Jackie Chan, some strange comedy ( Dave????) and a documentary on The Blues flashed by. However............. I was suddenly woken by an extremely loud whisper from the (Japanese) guy sitting next to me) (we were at the front, so just the 2 of us)

' DON"T TOUCH ME!'
"er... what????
'STOP TOUCHING ME. YOU KEEP TOUCHING ME!'
" er.. gomen nasai. But this is a plane. There's not so much room. Anyway you just touched me.
'YOU TOUCH ME 60 TIMES. STOP PLEASE STOP.'
'Er .... sorry but the arm-rest isn't very wide."
'YU STAY YOUR SIDE! OK! I STAY MINE!'
'Er .. OK,OK Let;s do that.'

(5 minutes later)
'YOU TOUCH ME AGAIN! STOP!
'Ok,ok. Maybe I'm gay or something. Jesus!! You never been in a Yakitori bar???? Want me to draw a line down the middle? Just chill out!!!!!!'

End of conversation. We didn't talk for the next 5 hours. Breakfast was a sullen silence. We'll probably never talk again. I sincerely hope so. And I thought Japanese people, given the population density, were used to living in close contact with each other. And that the importance of politeness is to defuse potential conflict in an over-crowded society. (see Steve's forthcoming book ' Yakitori' : 'The Japanese Psyche In Michrochosm: a Socio - Culinary Investigation' )

He was reading something in French as well. Maybe that explains it.

Fantasy

The night before we'd gone to see Dake and Zono play their last gig at Traumaris, the best bar in Tokyo, which was about to close down. They did an incredible version of 'Fantasy' by Earth, Wind and Fire and while I'm not the world's biggest fan of seventies/eighties soul music, I decided to buy the track from I-Tunes.
As I pressed "buy", something strange happened. The screen went blank, and I-tunes politely asked me to re-register my account. Equally politely, I agreed to do so. However, when I eventually got back in-store I noticed I had bought an album by EW and F. And not just any album, A triple album of 39 tracks including 10 minute long DJ re-mixes!

Yes, it was expensive. I was not a happy man. Either I deleted 38 tracks, or "shuffle" would give me a dose of remixed EW and F every time I didn't want to hear it. But being from Yorkshire, I couldn't bring myself to waste all that money and I began a personal campaign to try to love the music. The campaign was not a great success!

A few weeks later, my computer crashed. Of course, that very day I;d been thinking of doing a new back-up, but unfortunately...........I hadn't.

I had burned one track on a compilation CD for my wife: "Fantasy". It remains the most expensive track I have ever bought. 4,000 plus yen for one track. Nearly one private lesson. 5 days supply of beer. A pretty good tempura meal. One and a half Murakami novels. (etc.)

Steve's first haiku (the not very good one)

So, I sat in the park in Mejiro for an hour, one day last June, trying to learn Hiragana. It was a beautiful sunny day (but not too hot) Strangely, nobody else was sitting where I was sitting -near the water. As I left the park, I started to itch. By the time I got home for my next lesson, my arms looked like red base-ball bats. As I desperately headed for the local chemist's, these words entered my head:

Itaii desu.
Teien no ka wa
Shizuka desu

いたいです　
ていえんのかは　
しずかです
I think it loses a little in translation:

Ow! That hurts.
The mosquitos in the park
Are silent

Did Basho get his inspiration in the same way? I guess we'll never know.

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Make My Day!

The Mystery of the Moving Island

There's a beautiful little park in Mejiro -10 minutes from the station. With a waterfall and ducks. I try to go there at least once a week so it's like my own personal park. Rarely crowded and great for a picnic lunch. Most of the park is water and there's a kind of large island. One day as I went into the park, I was shocked to see that this island had moved. Impossible, I thought, those rocks are huge (but then the Japanese are famous for moving fully grown trees so.......)

I told my wife Chiaki about this mystery and last Saturday we went there together. Unfortunately she couldn' remember how the park had looked the last time she was there (probably because she had been too busy taking photos of the baby ducks) but she refused to believe such a large island could have moved (or even been moved)

In frustration, I bet her 1.000 yen. So she asked the park atttendant if the island had,indeed, moved, prefacing this request with some extremely rapid Japanese which seeemed to include references to 'my insane foreign husband' but I could be wrong.

A lot of quite loud laughter ensued. I, of course, politely joined in.

As we left the park I wondered why the park attendant had felt it necessary to lie. Perhaps the island had moved one night and everyone was too embarrassed to admit it.

I gave my wife the 1.000 yen of course.
But not without a slight feeling that events had conspired against me.

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Make My Day!

Sapporo New Year

We got back from Sapporo (via Otaru) last Thusday. Exhausted after the usual 5-hour plus journey we discovered my wife, Chiaki was ill. Then so was I. The boxes of tissues were soon gone.

As always, Chiaki's family had been incredibly hospitable, and the food was amazing. I even enjoyed The Kick-boxing on TV.

One special memory, though is on New Year"s Day after a very long walk in the snow looking for a post-office, we were frozen and stopped into a shopping mall to warm up and have a coffee. The Beatles' 'Hey Jude' was playing on a really great sound system. Magic!!!!!!! This is the meaning of life????

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Make My Day!