Season’s Greetings, everyone! I hope you’re all having a fantastic week leading up to the holiday… by which of course I mean Halloween. Back in my youth, Halloween was the source of many a fond memory involving candy, costumes, haunted houses, and being frightened out of my wits by innocuous things. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to say that overall, Halloween was my second-favorite Christianized-pagan-holiday-turned-secular, just behind Christmas.
It’s something of a problem for me, then, that All Hallows’ Even has yet to make much of a dent over here in Japan. Sure, Universal Studios Osaka is running a Halloween-themed party all month with Peanuts characters in costumes, but aside from that and some decidedly inadequate decorations, all it really seems to offer here is green squash passed off as “pumpkin” and a few novelty baked goods. Trick-or-treating, among the 31st’s many other sublime joys, is simply unknown. I’ve made an attempt to educate my students, who do seem curious about “those pumpkin face-things” and the opportunity to get a month’s supply of sugar in a single night, but the lack of enthusiasm is telling.
And that’s a shame, because when it comes to the supernatural, Japan is a veritable hotspot. Japanese folklore is replete with tales of mystical creatures roaming the mountains and forests, and the hauntings of vengeful, wronged ghosts told and retold in bunraku puppet-theatre and kabuki plays. You would think that when a country has such a stockpile of home-grown ghouls just lying around, they would put them to work repurposing a perfectly workable holiday for native sensibilities, but it just didn’t happen. Nevertheless, they at least provide me with a fascinating glimpse into the stories that have kept generations of Japanese up at night.
For starters, there are a ton of mythical creatures to be had in Japan. Aside from ghosts, the (legless) apparitions of the deceased, there are also oni (ogres who are alternately evil antagonists and mischievous-but-dumb troublemakers), tengu (strange avian creatures with long, beaklike noses), kappa (man-sized, turtle-like river creatures with a taste for young children), noppera-bo (humanlike-but-faceless tricksters who enjoy freaking out unsuspecting people by wiping off their features after lulling their mark into a false sense of security), tsukumogami (inanimate objects that gain life and creepy faces after 100 years of existence), and kodama (tree spirits that inhabit forests by the millions). Even real animals get in on the act, with foxes, badgers, and tanuki (think: the special suit in Super Mario Bros. 3) portrayed as shapeshifters who make sport of humans who ought to know better. If I were a Japanese child, I don’t know if I’d ever feel truly safe with such things lurking all around me. I mean, who wants to pull out an umbrella only to find it staring back?
As if that weren’t enough, if it’s a ghost story you want, there’s a ton of those to choose from too. There is the Yotsuya Kaidan, where a Samurai plots to kill his wife Oiwa and remarry, only to face the consequences of his actions; the Bancho Sarayashiki, where the servant Okiku is framed and killed for destroying an heirloom plate of the samurai who covets her; Yuki-Onna, whose snow maiden of the title lures men in the mountains to their deaths; Botan Doro, with a man’s otherworldly lover, and Hoichi the Earless Minstrel. These and many more were first compiled in English by Lafcadio Hearn (otherwise known as Koizumi Yakumo) at the turn of the 20th Century, and that’s still one of the most convenient places to find them all in one spot; check out Kwaidan or In Ghostly Japan for more like these.
For those wishing for something a little more modern to scare them senseless, however, Japan has a flourishing genre of horror films, or J-Horror, which have made a splash big enough for at least some of them to get big-budget Hollywood remakes. Perhaps you’ve seen a few of them already. One such film is The Ring (Ringu), the story of a cursed videotape that kills those unfortunate enough to watch it. It also draws liberally from older Japanese ghost stories, with the well borrowed from the story of Okiku, and Sadako / Samara’s appearance based more-or-less directly on Oiwa from the Yotsuya Kaidan. There’s also The Grudge (Ju-On), where the curse of a vengeful ghost begins to spread its influence along with its victims. And then there’s Dark Water, where what seems to be a leak in the ceiling above a young mother’s apartment turns out to be far more sinister. And just this year, there was another remake: One Missed Call (Chakushin Ari), where cell phone calls presage doom.
Generally speaking, the American versions of the above films change the characters and setting to the US (with the notable exception of The Grudge, which stays in Japan but brings in some American characters for the audience to indentify with), while polishing the visual effects and making the storylines more straightforward. As for whether the originals or their remakes are better, I think that’s a decision best left up to the viewer, but I do tend to prefer the originals. There are subtitled versions out there for those who don’t understand Japanese and are feeling particularly adventurous.
For Japanese horror even more off the beaten path, there is Suicide Club, where a rash of seemingly-unrelated suicides in Tokyo is just the tip of the iceberg. This is something of a cult film, even in Japan, with the public divided over its subject matter and the goriness of certain notorious scenes. And lastly, there is Audition, which I only mention because I’ve seen it, and not to recommend. I watched it once, and it was the closest I came to being physically ill due to a movie. Perhaps for those accustomed to more recent things like Saw or Hostel it’s nothing new, but I have to say this: piano wire should only be used for pianos. Ugh.
But enough on films to scar impressionable young minds; the important thing is that, with a wealth of ghost stories and other curious tales here, I can at least keep myself in the Halloween spirit, even if the only evidence that it’s Halloween comes from a few cutesy decorations and green squash being passed off as “pumpkins”. That, and the prodigious amounts of Halloween candy my parents have sent me, in an apparent ploy to thwart my efforts at the gym. Now if I could just get Japan to adopt Halloween as readily as it absorbed Valentine’s Day…
29 October 2008
22 October 2008
A language divided
I’ve written a lot thus far on various aspects of living in Japan, from the living accommodations, to the food (especially the food), the local customs, and the like. But as I’ve mentioned previously, I am employed here teaching English. It’s a lot of fun – working in the educational system, and with kids, gives a certain insight into what makes Japanese people who they are – and not a lot of money. The upshot of this, however, is that my daily life is infused not only with the study of Japanese and its various idiosyncrasies, but also with taking a magnifying glass to my own native tongue. So, please bear with me this week while I take a momentary break from talk about Japan proper, and turn my gaze instead to the other elephant in the proverbial room: the English language.
At first glance, English seems quite straightforward: it is, after all, the language that you and I speak (or at least I would assume you speak, since you’re reading this article, aren’t you?), and the idiom in which we spend our days conversing, gossiping, vituperating, writing, and otherwise communicating. And while we may hold a certain disdain for, say, marking the plural with an apostrophe, or using “your” for “you’re” – to say nothing of the language’s daily slaughter on the Internet – we can at least be confident that there is a “proper English” that we all learned in school and can rely on to make ourselves understood. Right?
…Not exactly.
One of the joys of working in English-language education is sorting out the English you actually speak from the English you teach your students, because as it turns out, there is absolutely tremendous variance in what’s considered “proper English”. The language has no central governing body akin to the Académie française for French or the Real Academia Española for Spanish, as the insanity of our spelling system can attest to. Instead, tradition is what rules the day. We as Anglophones just so happen to have 400 years of such divergent tradition, and as you can imagine, America and Great Britain (not to mention the disparate parts thereof) disagree on what counts as “proper English” on a frightening scale.
George Bernard Shaw – the English playwright who gave us what would become My Fair Lady, and he himself essentially Henry Higgins incarnate – was absolutely correct when he described the UK and the US as “two countries separated by a common language”. I should know: two of the other native English teachers in Matsubara are from England and Wales, respectively. We have butted heads time and again on aspects of the language I once thought so utterly incontestable that I scarcely stopped to think about them. Now I look at every word and turn of phrase as if for the first time, wondering just how universal it really is.
Now, perhaps you disagree with me here. After all, you’ve probably read a British book or several in your lifetime (ones concerning a certain bespectacled boy being the most likely candidates at the time of this writing), and British TV broadcasts and movies that make it overseas are still understandable to the American viewing public. But don’t be fooled: part of this is self-selection at work, since generally only titles “international” enough find any traction overseas, and even then they get meddled with. The aforementioned Harry Potter series was actually “translated” into American English by US publisher Scholastic, with some of the more confounding Britishisms – jumper for sweater, trainers for sneakers, and vest for T-shirt, for starters – changed to terms more readily identifiable to American children. They even went so far as to change the first book’s title, Philosopher’s Stone – the “Holy Grail” to alchemists, from which they hoped to make the Elixir of Life – to Sorcerer’s Stone, in order (as one Internet denizen put it) “to make it more obvious to religious fundamentalists that the book is about magic and therefore dangerous”. So sometimes, the British English you’ve actually seen wasn’t really.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the biweekly ALT meeting at Matsubara City Hall, where the two British teachers regularly air their grievances on this point. I should explain first that the English textbooks in Japan use American spelling and grammatical conventions, and that most of the Japanese English teachers have been educated in the same. So not only are the Brits incensed at having to teach “trash” instead of “rubbish”, “forty” and “color” without the “u”, and “soccer” for the sport whose true name has been “stolen” by “rugby for pansies”, they also have to deal with teachers constantly “correcting” their English, which is “not wrong, just different”.
While I mostly have no problem on these counts, one thing in particular rubs me the wrong way. One of the characters in the textbooks is from Canada, and in the second year, there is a section about Toronto, her hometown. However, the Air Canada Centre is referred to as the “Air Canada Center” so as not to confuse the students. Being the hockey fan that I am, there is no way I couldn’t be annoyed by that – it’s where you go to watch the Maple Leafs lose, for crying out loud! You just don’t do that to a hallowed institution like hockey.
So I feel for them, I really do. But then again, that “not wrong, just different” quote was originally more strident and contained a juxtaposition of “Yank” and an expletive (which I’ll spare your delicate sensibilities), so I also take a certain devilish glee in undercutting their pretensions to linguistic superiority. For example, did you know that the “-ize” ending in words like “realize” and “summarize” comes with a recommendation from no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary, which denounces the “-ise” spelling so beloved in Britain as a non-standard variant? It’s true.
And so it goes, with them ribbing the two Americans over our pronouncing “latter” and “ladder” the same, and us coming back with their pronunciation of the letter “r” (or “ah”, in their case), them getting us on our fondness for “transportation” where “transport” will do, and on and on. On a separate occasion, the Welsh ALT labeled my pronunciation as “degenerate” for being unable to distinguish between “no” and “know”, or “choose” and “chews”. As it turns out, both pairs of words are members of lexical sets that only Welsh people can readily tell apart, so really his declaration about my English was just his provincial dialect peeking through the cracks of his studied Received Pronunciation. We all had a good laugh (or at least I laughed at him) about that one.
At the very least, both sides can agree to be perplexed at the Japanese idea of English, which includes such bizarre coinages as “symbol mark” for “logo”, “hello work” for “employment office”, and “my car” for “[one’s own] car” (i.e. “Leave your ‘my car’ at home and take the train!”). It just goes to show that whatever linguistic barriers we may face on our opposing sides of the Atlantic, we’re still far more similar than we are different. That, and Japan really needs to employ native English speakers in areas other than teaching the language.
At first glance, English seems quite straightforward: it is, after all, the language that you and I speak (or at least I would assume you speak, since you’re reading this article, aren’t you?), and the idiom in which we spend our days conversing, gossiping, vituperating, writing, and otherwise communicating. And while we may hold a certain disdain for, say, marking the plural with an apostrophe, or using “your” for “you’re” – to say nothing of the language’s daily slaughter on the Internet – we can at least be confident that there is a “proper English” that we all learned in school and can rely on to make ourselves understood. Right?
…Not exactly.
One of the joys of working in English-language education is sorting out the English you actually speak from the English you teach your students, because as it turns out, there is absolutely tremendous variance in what’s considered “proper English”. The language has no central governing body akin to the Académie française for French or the Real Academia Española for Spanish, as the insanity of our spelling system can attest to. Instead, tradition is what rules the day. We as Anglophones just so happen to have 400 years of such divergent tradition, and as you can imagine, America and Great Britain (not to mention the disparate parts thereof) disagree on what counts as “proper English” on a frightening scale.
George Bernard Shaw – the English playwright who gave us what would become My Fair Lady, and he himself essentially Henry Higgins incarnate – was absolutely correct when he described the UK and the US as “two countries separated by a common language”. I should know: two of the other native English teachers in Matsubara are from England and Wales, respectively. We have butted heads time and again on aspects of the language I once thought so utterly incontestable that I scarcely stopped to think about them. Now I look at every word and turn of phrase as if for the first time, wondering just how universal it really is.
Now, perhaps you disagree with me here. After all, you’ve probably read a British book or several in your lifetime (ones concerning a certain bespectacled boy being the most likely candidates at the time of this writing), and British TV broadcasts and movies that make it overseas are still understandable to the American viewing public. But don’t be fooled: part of this is self-selection at work, since generally only titles “international” enough find any traction overseas, and even then they get meddled with. The aforementioned Harry Potter series was actually “translated” into American English by US publisher Scholastic, with some of the more confounding Britishisms – jumper for sweater, trainers for sneakers, and vest for T-shirt, for starters – changed to terms more readily identifiable to American children. They even went so far as to change the first book’s title, Philosopher’s Stone – the “Holy Grail” to alchemists, from which they hoped to make the Elixir of Life – to Sorcerer’s Stone, in order (as one Internet denizen put it) “to make it more obvious to religious fundamentalists that the book is about magic and therefore dangerous”. So sometimes, the British English you’ve actually seen wasn’t really.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the biweekly ALT meeting at Matsubara City Hall, where the two British teachers regularly air their grievances on this point. I should explain first that the English textbooks in Japan use American spelling and grammatical conventions, and that most of the Japanese English teachers have been educated in the same. So not only are the Brits incensed at having to teach “trash” instead of “rubbish”, “forty” and “color” without the “u”, and “soccer” for the sport whose true name has been “stolen” by “rugby for pansies”, they also have to deal with teachers constantly “correcting” their English, which is “not wrong, just different”.
While I mostly have no problem on these counts, one thing in particular rubs me the wrong way. One of the characters in the textbooks is from Canada, and in the second year, there is a section about Toronto, her hometown. However, the Air Canada Centre is referred to as the “Air Canada Center” so as not to confuse the students. Being the hockey fan that I am, there is no way I couldn’t be annoyed by that – it’s where you go to watch the Maple Leafs lose, for crying out loud! You just don’t do that to a hallowed institution like hockey.
So I feel for them, I really do. But then again, that “not wrong, just different” quote was originally more strident and contained a juxtaposition of “Yank” and an expletive (which I’ll spare your delicate sensibilities), so I also take a certain devilish glee in undercutting their pretensions to linguistic superiority. For example, did you know that the “-ize” ending in words like “realize” and “summarize” comes with a recommendation from no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary, which denounces the “-ise” spelling so beloved in Britain as a non-standard variant? It’s true.
And so it goes, with them ribbing the two Americans over our pronouncing “latter” and “ladder” the same, and us coming back with their pronunciation of the letter “r” (or “ah”, in their case), them getting us on our fondness for “transportation” where “transport” will do, and on and on. On a separate occasion, the Welsh ALT labeled my pronunciation as “degenerate” for being unable to distinguish between “no” and “know”, or “choose” and “chews”. As it turns out, both pairs of words are members of lexical sets that only Welsh people can readily tell apart, so really his declaration about my English was just his provincial dialect peeking through the cracks of his studied Received Pronunciation. We all had a good laugh (or at least I laughed at him) about that one.
At the very least, both sides can agree to be perplexed at the Japanese idea of English, which includes such bizarre coinages as “symbol mark” for “logo”, “hello work” for “employment office”, and “my car” for “[one’s own] car” (i.e. “Leave your ‘my car’ at home and take the train!”). It just goes to show that whatever linguistic barriers we may face on our opposing sides of the Atlantic, we’re still far more similar than we are different. That, and Japan really needs to employ native English speakers in areas other than teaching the language.
15 October 2008
Fruit, and things related thereto
With autumn in full swing here in Japan, yet another special season is gearing up, which I am thrilled to be a part of. The autumn shrine festivals here in Osaka, with their massive and ornate danjiri carts, are beginning to wrap up, but something even better is already here. It’s something that brings me quiet joy through the long winter months and brightens each dreary day. That’s right: it’s mikan season.
For those of you have have not yet had the opportunity to engage in such a sublime indulgence, allow me to explain. Mikan (scientifically speaking, Citrus unshiu, sometimes called “Satsuma” in English) is a variety of orange-like fruit that originated in China way back, and is beloved today in Japan. Of course, it goes without saying that it is dear to my heart as well. It looks, on the surface, a lot like a Mandarin orange or tangerine – all citrus plants are genetically malleable enough to be considered basically one big species, so I guess technically it is – but the mikan is infinitely superior. For one thing, mikan are super-easy to peel. The skin is soft and can be removed with bare hands, which is a great relief for anyone who’s ever struggled with an orange in one hand and a knife in the other (read: me). Also, they are much sweeter. Oranges are all well and good, but when you’ve got a mikan at peak ripeness, there’s no contest. If bliss were a color, it would be orange.
The other thing about mikan that suits me just fine is how prodigious amounts always seem to end up in my possession. They’re already relatively inexpensive compared to most other fruit in Japan due to their sheer abundance, but half the time they just fall into my lap without me having to do anything. I cannot overstate this enough: some days, it seems like I just happen to run into someone I know, and before I even know what has happened, I’ve had an entire bag of them pushed into my arms for no reason other than that my friend has “too many” and I just happened by. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that Japanese people have their own private mikan groves hidden away somewhere (don’t ask me where), specifically for the purpose of unloading them on unsuspecting foreigners. If I were a paranoid man, I might even come to suspect that they were doing this just to supply me with a steady store of mikan throughout the winter months (after all, fruit is by no means cheap here). But can you really be considered crazy if your delusion is that everyone’s conspiring to give you things?
At any rate, my infatuation with mikan is the reason I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to visit a real mikan orchard this past weekend, and even pick some for myself. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that they’re even better straight off the tree, even if they were still a bit on the green side at this time of year. I might have to go back a bit later in the season when they’re fully ripe, just to experience the full flavor of a freshly picked mikan. As it is, there’s no possible way I could have my fill of the things, so I know I’ll be back there sooner or later. They’re just that good.
In other fruit news, it’s also persimmon season in Japan. I never really got to eat persimmons back in the US, so my first experience with them was after I came here. They’re actually quite nice, with a slightly pumpkin-y texture and a subtle flavor, but here’s the thing: they’re only good when they’re fully ripe. If you eat them before they’re ready, they’re horribly bitter. I learned this the hard way, and it is a lesson I will never forget. Nevertheless, as I’m biting in and secretly praying that I got a ripe one this time, it’s definitely a distinct experience with flavor. I’ll just keep a glass of water nearby – you know, just in case.
Lastly, I’ve noticed lately that it’s become increasingly hard to find bananas at the supermarket when I do my weekly shopping. At first, I chalked it up to seasonal unavailability (after all, imported fruit in the off-season is expensive), but then I remembered that all bananas in Japan are imported, so that couldn’t be it. The mystery was finally solved when I was watching a talk show, and they began a lengthy discussion on the new “banana diet” craze that’s apparently sweeping Japan right now. As near as I can tell, the idea is that the dieter has a banana – with water and nothing else – for breakfast, and eats whatever she wants for lunch and dinner. (And I say “she” because it’s being specifically marketed towards women here, along with every other diet.) While I obviously don’t doubt that bananas are a great source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber for a balanced diet, I can also state with some conviction that it’s a load o’ hooey. For one thing, while eating better reduces your calorie and fat intake, you still need to burn the fat you’ve already accumulated. Furthermore, if you’re off the hook to eat “anything you want” for the other two meals, you’ll probably overdo it and end up gaining weight instead of losing.
But of course, it’s no use telling that to the people who fall for these diet fads hook, line, and sinker. For all of Japan’s technological wonders and medical breakthroughs, a lot of its people still tend to exhibit general ignorance about matters of health. Traditional Chinese remedies, often with no proven effectiveness, are sold alongside proper pharmaceuticals in drugstores, and fad diets like the banana one seem to renew themselves every couple of months, just as the previous one is going out of style. And then there’s the smoking, which I mentioned in an earlier column. On the other hand, I really shouldn’t be too surprised – the US can be the same way (for just one homeopathic placebo “cure” I’m sure you all know: “HeadOn! Apply directly to the trash bin!”). As an outsider here, it’s just that more obvious to me how ridiculous it can get. But I digress, as this is fast becoming more of a rant about how I can’t find any bananas at the store than anything else. Anyhow, I think that’s quite enough fruit for one sitting. Let’s talk about something else next time, shall we?
For those of you have have not yet had the opportunity to engage in such a sublime indulgence, allow me to explain. Mikan (scientifically speaking, Citrus unshiu, sometimes called “Satsuma” in English) is a variety of orange-like fruit that originated in China way back, and is beloved today in Japan. Of course, it goes without saying that it is dear to my heart as well. It looks, on the surface, a lot like a Mandarin orange or tangerine – all citrus plants are genetically malleable enough to be considered basically one big species, so I guess technically it is – but the mikan is infinitely superior. For one thing, mikan are super-easy to peel. The skin is soft and can be removed with bare hands, which is a great relief for anyone who’s ever struggled with an orange in one hand and a knife in the other (read: me). Also, they are much sweeter. Oranges are all well and good, but when you’ve got a mikan at peak ripeness, there’s no contest. If bliss were a color, it would be orange.
The other thing about mikan that suits me just fine is how prodigious amounts always seem to end up in my possession. They’re already relatively inexpensive compared to most other fruit in Japan due to their sheer abundance, but half the time they just fall into my lap without me having to do anything. I cannot overstate this enough: some days, it seems like I just happen to run into someone I know, and before I even know what has happened, I’ve had an entire bag of them pushed into my arms for no reason other than that my friend has “too many” and I just happened by. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that Japanese people have their own private mikan groves hidden away somewhere (don’t ask me where), specifically for the purpose of unloading them on unsuspecting foreigners. If I were a paranoid man, I might even come to suspect that they were doing this just to supply me with a steady store of mikan throughout the winter months (after all, fruit is by no means cheap here). But can you really be considered crazy if your delusion is that everyone’s conspiring to give you things?
At any rate, my infatuation with mikan is the reason I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to visit a real mikan orchard this past weekend, and even pick some for myself. From firsthand experience, I can tell you that they’re even better straight off the tree, even if they were still a bit on the green side at this time of year. I might have to go back a bit later in the season when they’re fully ripe, just to experience the full flavor of a freshly picked mikan. As it is, there’s no possible way I could have my fill of the things, so I know I’ll be back there sooner or later. They’re just that good.
In other fruit news, it’s also persimmon season in Japan. I never really got to eat persimmons back in the US, so my first experience with them was after I came here. They’re actually quite nice, with a slightly pumpkin-y texture and a subtle flavor, but here’s the thing: they’re only good when they’re fully ripe. If you eat them before they’re ready, they’re horribly bitter. I learned this the hard way, and it is a lesson I will never forget. Nevertheless, as I’m biting in and secretly praying that I got a ripe one this time, it’s definitely a distinct experience with flavor. I’ll just keep a glass of water nearby – you know, just in case.
Lastly, I’ve noticed lately that it’s become increasingly hard to find bananas at the supermarket when I do my weekly shopping. At first, I chalked it up to seasonal unavailability (after all, imported fruit in the off-season is expensive), but then I remembered that all bananas in Japan are imported, so that couldn’t be it. The mystery was finally solved when I was watching a talk show, and they began a lengthy discussion on the new “banana diet” craze that’s apparently sweeping Japan right now. As near as I can tell, the idea is that the dieter has a banana – with water and nothing else – for breakfast, and eats whatever she wants for lunch and dinner. (And I say “she” because it’s being specifically marketed towards women here, along with every other diet.) While I obviously don’t doubt that bananas are a great source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber for a balanced diet, I can also state with some conviction that it’s a load o’ hooey. For one thing, while eating better reduces your calorie and fat intake, you still need to burn the fat you’ve already accumulated. Furthermore, if you’re off the hook to eat “anything you want” for the other two meals, you’ll probably overdo it and end up gaining weight instead of losing.
But of course, it’s no use telling that to the people who fall for these diet fads hook, line, and sinker. For all of Japan’s technological wonders and medical breakthroughs, a lot of its people still tend to exhibit general ignorance about matters of health. Traditional Chinese remedies, often with no proven effectiveness, are sold alongside proper pharmaceuticals in drugstores, and fad diets like the banana one seem to renew themselves every couple of months, just as the previous one is going out of style. And then there’s the smoking, which I mentioned in an earlier column. On the other hand, I really shouldn’t be too surprised – the US can be the same way (for just one homeopathic placebo “cure” I’m sure you all know: “HeadOn! Apply directly to the trash bin!”). As an outsider here, it’s just that more obvious to me how ridiculous it can get. But I digress, as this is fast becoming more of a rant about how I can’t find any bananas at the store than anything else. Anyhow, I think that’s quite enough fruit for one sitting. Let’s talk about something else next time, shall we?
08 October 2008
Communing with nature... more or less
For the second week in a row, I have been reminded of the beauty of Japan. This time the culprit is the yearly retreat for the chorus that I sing in here. We went up into the mountains of southern Osaka Prefecture for a weekend of rehearsals, excessive food intake, and no cell phone or Internet service whatsoever, at a facility just slightly nicer than your average US summer camp. And for the first time in a while, I felt a pang of homesickness.
I don’t need to remind you how much nature the North Country has to spare, seeing as how if you’re reading this, you’re there already. But for me, I’ve been living and working in cities for the past year, among buildings, roads, the occasional agricultural spot, and more buildings. Sometimes I need reminding of just how much splendor nature can have to offer, and I was glad to have the Japanese countryside there to remind me this weekend.
Of course, I don’t think I’ve mentioned the chorus in too much detail yet either. Long story short, when I was working in a different city prior to Matsubara, I opined (complained, really) to one of the teachers on the fact that I hadn’t gotten to sing in any kind of group since I got to Japan, and I’d like to change that. As luck would have it, she just so happened to be a member of the Tondabayashi Mixed Chorus, and one trial rehearsal later I found myself signed up, attending practice every other week, and making friends with the other members.
Being a part of the chorus has been quite the experience in itself, made even more appreciable by the fact that getting in seemed to just happen to me without much effort on my part. It’s often said in Japan that in life, your connections matter more than anything else, and in this case, I can believe it. It might be nice if there were members closer to my own age, but I do enjoy the special status accorded to being both the only foreigner and the only under-25 in the group, so I guess it works out in the end.
At any rate, this retreat was especially interesting for me because it meant a chance to go “off the beaten path”… by which I mean, by roads. Having road access may not exactly make it the most out-of-the-way location by American (let alone North Country) standards, but the difference is certainly tangible. We turned off the highway, onto a network of winding, unnervingly narrow (but still paved) roads, and found ourselves passing through a series of smaller settlements, and up forested mountainsides. It was absolutely picturesque. The closest rail station was miles away.
Being, as I am, an advocate for convenient public transportation, it might seem incredibly odd for me to be calling the lack of train access a good thing. But actually, I liked it a lot for two reasons. First, it gives me a place to explore that I can’t easily get to any other way (so there will still be something left out there even after I’ve traversed the entire length and breadth of this country by foot and by train). Second, the very look of the place (as well as the typical urban sprawl just down the hills in central Kaizuka) had me quite convinced that the lack of easy non-car access was a major factor in keeping the area pristine. Bring in a rail line, and suddenly you have throngs of commuters shuffling off daily to Osaka and Wakayama, thus new development and new residents demanding all the comforts of city life, like McDonald’s, Mister Donut, and UNI-QLO. The next thing you know it’s just another suburban wasteland. Easily reached and pedestrian-friendly, perhaps, but still despoiled. So for once, I was happy to be out of the way, and entirely reliant on other people to get me back to civilization at the end of it.
Anyhow, Saturday was a gorgeous autumn day, and the weather up at the retreat was perfect for cooking outside, which is what we did. It was my first outdoor barbecue here in Japan, and despite the menu (beef yakiniku with yakisoba noodles after), it was pleasantly satisfying (and stomach-expanding). I can’t say whether the surroundings actually helped our singing any, but it certainly contributed to a convivial air among chorus members, and we all chatted away into the night over leftovers from the barbecue and other things inappropriate for snacking on at 2 in the morning.
When I did finally retire for the evening, it was to the communal bedroom, where ten baritones and basses had a waiting futon laid out over the tatami mat floor. As I stepped into the room, I was taken aback momentarily to find that outside the window was complete and utter silence – not particularly arresting back home, but a novelty after living for the past year in a variety of places set dispiritingly close to major roadways or rail lines. Reveling in this discovery, I settled in to the futon and shut my eyes… to be awakened moments later by some unearthly loud snoring from one of the other basses. He was even louder than my father gets in his sleep, which is an impressive feat. So, I ate more than my fair share, and then didn’t exactly get a good night’s rest, and then Sunday was cold and wet. But the surroundings were so beautiful that it was hard not to like the trip overall.
As we headed back the next day, I wanted to stay just a little bit longer – and also, for the first time since coming to Japan, felt just a little bit like getting a car. Expensive, impractical, and backwards though they may be, I would be able to get into all the truly out-of-the-way places where the trains don’t go. Maybe someday. For now, at least I can look back fondly on a weekend up in the wilderness with my fellow singers.
I don’t need to remind you how much nature the North Country has to spare, seeing as how if you’re reading this, you’re there already. But for me, I’ve been living and working in cities for the past year, among buildings, roads, the occasional agricultural spot, and more buildings. Sometimes I need reminding of just how much splendor nature can have to offer, and I was glad to have the Japanese countryside there to remind me this weekend.
Of course, I don’t think I’ve mentioned the chorus in too much detail yet either. Long story short, when I was working in a different city prior to Matsubara, I opined (complained, really) to one of the teachers on the fact that I hadn’t gotten to sing in any kind of group since I got to Japan, and I’d like to change that. As luck would have it, she just so happened to be a member of the Tondabayashi Mixed Chorus, and one trial rehearsal later I found myself signed up, attending practice every other week, and making friends with the other members.
Being a part of the chorus has been quite the experience in itself, made even more appreciable by the fact that getting in seemed to just happen to me without much effort on my part. It’s often said in Japan that in life, your connections matter more than anything else, and in this case, I can believe it. It might be nice if there were members closer to my own age, but I do enjoy the special status accorded to being both the only foreigner and the only under-25 in the group, so I guess it works out in the end.
At any rate, this retreat was especially interesting for me because it meant a chance to go “off the beaten path”… by which I mean, by roads. Having road access may not exactly make it the most out-of-the-way location by American (let alone North Country) standards, but the difference is certainly tangible. We turned off the highway, onto a network of winding, unnervingly narrow (but still paved) roads, and found ourselves passing through a series of smaller settlements, and up forested mountainsides. It was absolutely picturesque. The closest rail station was miles away.
Being, as I am, an advocate for convenient public transportation, it might seem incredibly odd for me to be calling the lack of train access a good thing. But actually, I liked it a lot for two reasons. First, it gives me a place to explore that I can’t easily get to any other way (so there will still be something left out there even after I’ve traversed the entire length and breadth of this country by foot and by train). Second, the very look of the place (as well as the typical urban sprawl just down the hills in central Kaizuka) had me quite convinced that the lack of easy non-car access was a major factor in keeping the area pristine. Bring in a rail line, and suddenly you have throngs of commuters shuffling off daily to Osaka and Wakayama, thus new development and new residents demanding all the comforts of city life, like McDonald’s, Mister Donut, and UNI-QLO. The next thing you know it’s just another suburban wasteland. Easily reached and pedestrian-friendly, perhaps, but still despoiled. So for once, I was happy to be out of the way, and entirely reliant on other people to get me back to civilization at the end of it.
Anyhow, Saturday was a gorgeous autumn day, and the weather up at the retreat was perfect for cooking outside, which is what we did. It was my first outdoor barbecue here in Japan, and despite the menu (beef yakiniku with yakisoba noodles after), it was pleasantly satisfying (and stomach-expanding). I can’t say whether the surroundings actually helped our singing any, but it certainly contributed to a convivial air among chorus members, and we all chatted away into the night over leftovers from the barbecue and other things inappropriate for snacking on at 2 in the morning.
When I did finally retire for the evening, it was to the communal bedroom, where ten baritones and basses had a waiting futon laid out over the tatami mat floor. As I stepped into the room, I was taken aback momentarily to find that outside the window was complete and utter silence – not particularly arresting back home, but a novelty after living for the past year in a variety of places set dispiritingly close to major roadways or rail lines. Reveling in this discovery, I settled in to the futon and shut my eyes… to be awakened moments later by some unearthly loud snoring from one of the other basses. He was even louder than my father gets in his sleep, which is an impressive feat. So, I ate more than my fair share, and then didn’t exactly get a good night’s rest, and then Sunday was cold and wet. But the surroundings were so beautiful that it was hard not to like the trip overall.
As we headed back the next day, I wanted to stay just a little bit longer – and also, for the first time since coming to Japan, felt just a little bit like getting a car. Expensive, impractical, and backwards though they may be, I would be able to get into all the truly out-of-the-way places where the trains don’t go. Maybe someday. For now, at least I can look back fondly on a weekend up in the wilderness with my fellow singers.
01 October 2008
The perils of urban sprawl
Japan truly is a beautiful country. You might suppose that I always think this, having liked the place enough to want to spend years in it at a time, but unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Luckily, I was reminded of this fact today, when I went with a number of people in the local English conversation association to a glee club concert at Kwansei Gakuin University near Kobe. Almost as soon as the train pulled out of Osaka, suddenly the tracks were flanked by green, with tree-lined roadways, thoughtfully planted terraces, and ample park space in almost every direction. Such was the contrast from the city I had just left, that for a moment I wondered where I was.
The answer, of course, was Nishinomiya City, about halfway between Osaka and Kobe, just over the border in Hyogo Prefecture. And what a difference that made! I actually felt a slight twinge of guilt at having been surprised that a Japanese city could pull off urban planning competent enough to remember to leave space for people to breathe. Alighting from the train at Shukugawa Station, we made our way along a winding riverside park, up roads that had been widened with pedestrians in mind, to a university campus that was built, while not in traditional Japanese style, with attention to detail and a complete avoidance of the usual concrete bunkers of learning that seem to be the rage in this country.
All that just serves to drive home a point: Japan has some serious problems with urban sprawl. Matsubara, where I live, is crammed end-to-end with roads, buildings, elevated expressways, and more buildings. Such green as exists tends to be shunted into criminally small public parks, or over the wall in someone’s private garden. It sometimes seems like trees are treated as such a rarity that they must be kept together, apart from civilization… while every inch of human habitation must be paved over with concrete. All this makes for somewhat dreary scenery on my daily commute, and nature an entity that must be sought out to enjoy, rather than existing passively alongside everything else.
The sad thing is, it wasn’t always like this. In the foyer of Matsubara city hall is a wall of pictures taken just after the city’s incorporation in the 1950s, just over half a century ago. From the position of city hall, there was farmland in every direction, with the cities of Sakai and Osaka faintly visible on the horizon, and Matsubara proper a much more modest and uncrowded affair. You would scarcely guess this from the current situation, which has those same acres of farmland crammed from stem to stern with buildings of every description, an unbroken sprawl from Matsubara to Sakai to Osaka and back.
Everything changed at just about the same time that Matsubara City came into being: no longer saddled with the US Occupation, Japan aimed for the sky, and achieved spectacular economic growth – but along with this came people by the trainload from the countryside to work in the new industries, along with dramatically increased car use and the need for elevated expressways (in case you haven’t guessed, I rather despise them as a blemish upon the landscape).
Even today, with Japan in the midst of a decade-and-a-half economic slump and an ever-shrinking birthrate, the cities continue to grow, fueled by immigration from abroad and the continued decline of rural communities which lack enough jobs (or sustainable industries) to support their own residents. It’s gotten so bad that some villages and towns have been officially declared “depopulated” (that is, lacking enough full-time residents to warrant remaining as an independent municipality), with rural areas skewing disproportionately old as nearly all the youth have left in search of work. Some places, to stem the flow, have even begun promoting the rustic charms of “country living” (not to mention generous subsidies) in order to get people back into their emptying streets. The level of desperation would be comical, were it not so dire for the communities in question.
I sympathize with their plight, having spent a not-altogether-disagreeable childhood in Clayton, and sometimes even entertain the notion of moving out to the countryside: teaching in some remote school where I might be the only real live foreigner the students will ever see; settling down with one of the townsfolk and raising 2 kids – more than the national average – with better-than-average English; actually getting to know my neighbors; and spending evenings down at the local izakaya over a pint of happoshu. But then again, I also enjoy getting around by bicycle and not needing a car, so I suppose in the end it works out to a mostly even trade. But I digress.
In some ways, I understand the dilemma that Japan faces as a whole: being mostly mountainous, it has to be very conscientious in allotting what habitable area it has between open countryside, agricultural activity, and human residences / businesses / factories / roads / railways / etc. Be that as it may, the current line of thinking results in a dramatic segregation between nature and everything else, as though someone had erected an invisible barrier emblazoned (in whatever language of chemical signals it is that plants understand) with “NO PHOTOSYNTHESIZERS ALLOWED”. The sole open green space in my neck of the woods that doesn’t belong to tiny public parks belongs instead to criminally small rice paddies that at any rate get cut down at harvest time.
Instead of this arrangement, if Japan’s urban planners were to just stop trying to cram as many people as possible into as small a space as possible, I think they would find there was still plenty of leeway to plant more public green space and spread trees and such a bit more liberally throughout the landscape. That, in essence, is what made Nishinomiya such a shock to the system: it’s like somebody took a minute to think things through, and realized that it really would be a nicer place if people were given the space to actually live in the city instead of merely dwell there.
Make no mistake about it: Japan truly is a beautiful country, when it wants to be. And while it may have its fair share of spaces that rival the worst of American urban blight, there are places that are equal, if not superior, to what the North Country has to offer in the way of green, open space. The key is to get the mixture right – and that’s precisely why I’ve decided that the next chance I get I’m going off to explore southern Hyogo Prefecture and its eminently livable environs.
The answer, of course, was Nishinomiya City, about halfway between Osaka and Kobe, just over the border in Hyogo Prefecture. And what a difference that made! I actually felt a slight twinge of guilt at having been surprised that a Japanese city could pull off urban planning competent enough to remember to leave space for people to breathe. Alighting from the train at Shukugawa Station, we made our way along a winding riverside park, up roads that had been widened with pedestrians in mind, to a university campus that was built, while not in traditional Japanese style, with attention to detail and a complete avoidance of the usual concrete bunkers of learning that seem to be the rage in this country.
All that just serves to drive home a point: Japan has some serious problems with urban sprawl. Matsubara, where I live, is crammed end-to-end with roads, buildings, elevated expressways, and more buildings. Such green as exists tends to be shunted into criminally small public parks, or over the wall in someone’s private garden. It sometimes seems like trees are treated as such a rarity that they must be kept together, apart from civilization… while every inch of human habitation must be paved over with concrete. All this makes for somewhat dreary scenery on my daily commute, and nature an entity that must be sought out to enjoy, rather than existing passively alongside everything else.
The sad thing is, it wasn’t always like this. In the foyer of Matsubara city hall is a wall of pictures taken just after the city’s incorporation in the 1950s, just over half a century ago. From the position of city hall, there was farmland in every direction, with the cities of Sakai and Osaka faintly visible on the horizon, and Matsubara proper a much more modest and uncrowded affair. You would scarcely guess this from the current situation, which has those same acres of farmland crammed from stem to stern with buildings of every description, an unbroken sprawl from Matsubara to Sakai to Osaka and back.
Everything changed at just about the same time that Matsubara City came into being: no longer saddled with the US Occupation, Japan aimed for the sky, and achieved spectacular economic growth – but along with this came people by the trainload from the countryside to work in the new industries, along with dramatically increased car use and the need for elevated expressways (in case you haven’t guessed, I rather despise them as a blemish upon the landscape).
Even today, with Japan in the midst of a decade-and-a-half economic slump and an ever-shrinking birthrate, the cities continue to grow, fueled by immigration from abroad and the continued decline of rural communities which lack enough jobs (or sustainable industries) to support their own residents. It’s gotten so bad that some villages and towns have been officially declared “depopulated” (that is, lacking enough full-time residents to warrant remaining as an independent municipality), with rural areas skewing disproportionately old as nearly all the youth have left in search of work. Some places, to stem the flow, have even begun promoting the rustic charms of “country living” (not to mention generous subsidies) in order to get people back into their emptying streets. The level of desperation would be comical, were it not so dire for the communities in question.
I sympathize with their plight, having spent a not-altogether-disagreeable childhood in Clayton, and sometimes even entertain the notion of moving out to the countryside: teaching in some remote school where I might be the only real live foreigner the students will ever see; settling down with one of the townsfolk and raising 2 kids – more than the national average – with better-than-average English; actually getting to know my neighbors; and spending evenings down at the local izakaya over a pint of happoshu. But then again, I also enjoy getting around by bicycle and not needing a car, so I suppose in the end it works out to a mostly even trade. But I digress.
In some ways, I understand the dilemma that Japan faces as a whole: being mostly mountainous, it has to be very conscientious in allotting what habitable area it has between open countryside, agricultural activity, and human residences / businesses / factories / roads / railways / etc. Be that as it may, the current line of thinking results in a dramatic segregation between nature and everything else, as though someone had erected an invisible barrier emblazoned (in whatever language of chemical signals it is that plants understand) with “NO PHOTOSYNTHESIZERS ALLOWED”. The sole open green space in my neck of the woods that doesn’t belong to tiny public parks belongs instead to criminally small rice paddies that at any rate get cut down at harvest time.
Instead of this arrangement, if Japan’s urban planners were to just stop trying to cram as many people as possible into as small a space as possible, I think they would find there was still plenty of leeway to plant more public green space and spread trees and such a bit more liberally throughout the landscape. That, in essence, is what made Nishinomiya such a shock to the system: it’s like somebody took a minute to think things through, and realized that it really would be a nicer place if people were given the space to actually live in the city instead of merely dwell there.
Make no mistake about it: Japan truly is a beautiful country, when it wants to be. And while it may have its fair share of spaces that rival the worst of American urban blight, there are places that are equal, if not superior, to what the North Country has to offer in the way of green, open space. The key is to get the mixture right – and that’s precisely why I’ve decided that the next chance I get I’m going off to explore southern Hyogo Prefecture and its eminently livable environs.
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