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what goes around...
According to the Daily Telegraph, the inventor of the conveyor-belt sushi bar Shiraishi Yoshiaki died on Wednesday at the age of 87.
In his honour, then, today's Photo of the Day comes from one of my few visits to such a place here in Japan. [As a vegetarian, I tend only to go to such places when we have guests from abroad.]
Though the conveyor-belt tends to remind me alarmingly of the time I spent working in a factory, it does add a touch of excitement to proceedings, particularly if your view of the belt extends quite some way from your own dining-place. If you can see something potentially delicious heading towards you, the anxiety of waiting to see if it will get to you before it's gobbled up by someone else, makes the dining experience rather tenser than your average meal.
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i don't understand this at all...
[from the mainichi, of course...]
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on the coast
Today's Photo of the Day is a view of the coast of Fukuoka, the city where we've lived for the past three years. Just inland from the sea, and high above the outskirts of the city runs the expressway, the tollroad by which we came from the airport on our arrival in the city.
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two from two million
According to figures from the LA Times, today's photo of the day features approximately 0.00009% of those eligible to attend the recent Suzuki summit in Torigoe.
So far as I know, though, neither went.
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Japanese exports increasing?
It looks as though a third Japanese player, Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi may be about to join Junichi Inamoto and Akinori Nishizawa in the English football leagues.
When I watched Japan play Cameroon in the Confederations Cup this summer, Kawaguchi seemed an excellent goalie, singlehandedly keeping his team in the game with some excellent saves, so it must be a little disappointing for him that he's moving [if, indeed, he is] to a club outside the English top division. He may, however, stand a better chance of actually getting a game there than his two compatriots, neither of whom has yet played a competitive minute in England this season.
Anyway, I wish him luck if he does sign for Portsmouth. Perhaps I might even get to see him play when I'm back in the country.
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The sacred tree
This post is dedicated to a colleague of mine who, right from our first days in Japan, has been unceasingly helpful and kind, and who is even now busy planning our departure [in the nicest sense].
The story I've linked to above, from the Los Angeles Times, was, by [once again] coincidence, reprinted in today's Japan Times. It shouldn't be too hard to guess why I've linked to it, or what my colleague's name is...
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the cupboard is bare...
Within hours of our arrival in Fukuoka on a dark and rainy evening in September 1998, we were welcomed to Japan with an evening of yakitori and karaoke. And on our way to the street which hosted both the yakitori and the karaoke house, we passed a convenience store.
Japan is full of convenience stores. Depending upon the route I take on my eight-minute journey to work every day, I pass between three and five of them. The majority are part of big chains, of which perhaps the most prominent is the Lawson; others seem as though they might be independent. Most are open for 24 hours each day, selling the customary papers, magazines, food and drink that you'd see in convenience stores all over the world, along with, often, a wealth of other items you might not expect to find...
The store we passed that evening turned out to be the closest to our apartment, and so we went there often - whenever we'd run out of an essential item for that evening's meal, or if we just fancied a snack or a drink. And though our Japanese skills [particularly mine] were so poor as to preclude sustained or detailed conversation, we came at least to recognise the staff, and they us.
About a week ago, we noticed that the shelves were becoming emptier, that there were notices written on the doors, and that everything seemed to be at 30% off. As the shelves gradually emptied over the next few days, we decided to ourselves that one of two things must be happening: either the store was about to be refurbished, or it was closing down. Eventually, having despaired of understanding for ourselves what was written on the notices, we asked what was going on.
It turns out that the store is closing down today. I didn't find out why - whether it's just another symptom of Japan's much talked-about recession, or something else entirely - but it seemed to heighten our sense of our own time in Japan coming to an end, in the novelistic way that otherwise unconnected events can sometimes seem to reinforce each other's meaning through a coincidence of timing.
Today's picture of the day, then, is of this store on its last-but-one day, when most of its shelves were now completely bare, and only newspapers and magazines on sale. By the time I get home from my office later this evening, it may already have shut its doors for the final time. Even though we too will soon be gone, we shall miss it.
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not related to the article below...
Today's photo of the day is, for once, not related to anything I've written on this site, mainly because I didn't particularly fancy going out into the streets to find something to illustrate the article linked to below.
Instead, here's what should be rather a soothing picture of Zao, a ski resort we visited earlier this year. In the top right hand corner you should be able to make out the main beginners' ski-slope.
Normal service will be resumed, etc., tomorrow.
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strange men on the streets
One Saturday afternoon in the concourse of JR Utsunomiya Station, a young man sits on a light green cushion, face to face with a girl wearing a short skirt and platform shoes. With the clumsy sounds of street musicians echoing in the background, the man crosses his legs and says to the woman, ``Look into my eyes.''
He then grabs a brush and starts writing words with Japanese ink on washi (Japanese paper). After receiving the paper, the girl's eyes widen, she pays a small sum, shakes the man's hand and leaves the area with a smile across her face.
The 19-year-old street performer, Tadanori Matsudo, who prefers to be called a rojo-nin (street person), has just completed a deal in what has become a growing business in the economic slump: He has written a cheerful message to a total stranger.
Still publishing are the Japan Times and the Daily Yomiuri, both of which are pretty good [and free] in their on-line form.
There's also the more tabloid-orientated Mainichi Daily News, which I mentioned a few days ago: worth a look if you're interested in the seedier side of Japan.
[I'll be back to the longer-winded entries tomorrow: promise!]
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postscript...
Today's picture is by way of a postscript to the sentences I quoted from the New York Review of Books article a few days ago.
You see scenes like this everyday here in Japan, as traditional old houses are torn down and replaced with parking lots, at first, and finally apartment blocks.
Here, it's particularly sad to see that the van carrying the rubbish skip is parked on top of the tatami mats that would once have made up the house's floors.
This picture was taken in April. I'll go back to this spot in the next couple of days to see what it looks like now. I may post a picture, too.
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dog & cycle-baskets
"Japanese love their pet dogs, so they do all kinds of things with their pets. Most importantly, their pets are treated as part of the family like a young son or daughter. For example, small children are not left alone at home; they accompany their parents. Similarly, Japanese pet owners put their dogs in their cycle baskets and go everywhere with them. Sometimes, the traveling is for errands and sometimes, it is for pleasure."
The above passage comes from the textbook I used with my writing classes last semester, Jane McElroy's Write Ahead: A Process Approach to Academic Writing.
Though the book turned out to be a rather patchy guide to English prose, its grasp of Japanese culture is sounder, as today's photo of the day should illustrate. Over the past three years I've lost track of the number of dogs I've seen precariously perched in bicycle baskets or sticking their heads out from shoulderbags. I've seen kittens in bags on the beach, and hidden in handbags on the subway. And just as every Japanese mobile phone seems to have a chain of tiny characters attached, so almost every dog has some sort of pretty-pretty accessory strapped on.
The dog I saw hit by a car on the main road near my office looked just like the dog in this picture.
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corporate makeover
It's only day four, and already there's a completely new look: soon I'll have had more redesigns than readers...
Anyway, the white text on a black background was beginning to look more amateurish everytime I looked at it. A brief survey of other logs would seem to suggest that such colourschemes are exclusively the preserve of teenage anime fanboys and girls: hence the redesign.
Comments [as if] to the message board.
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riverbanks & concrete
In lieu of a full-length entry today, I'll just post a few Japan-related links.
"Everywhere you go in Japan, there are highways, railways, roads, tunnels, dams, and bridges, some of them without any discernible purpose. Riverbanks are encased in concrete and so are mountains and hills. Sixty percent of the Japanese coastline is encased in concrete."
from an interesting article by Ian Buruma in the New York Review of Books, which has recently improved its website immensely by ending its maddening practice of dividing all its articles into 8-10 individual pages.
Buruma is reviewing Haruki Murakami's book on the Tokyo subway gas attack of 1995, along with another book about the "Dark Side of Japan" by Alex Kerr, whose ongoing dialogue with James Fallows on a similar topic can be found on the Atlantic website.
I'll write something more detailed in a week or two about the way in which every article on Japan published in the Western press, no matter how perceptive or intelligent, has to mention at least three, and generally more, of the following subjects: teenage girls, hair-dye, the recession, Uniqlo, the subway system, salarymen, love hotels and ultra-hi-tech gadgetry. For the moment, though, I'll just point you in the direction of the New Statesman's take on the Japanese economy which, at a quick check, uses only three of these cliches [but it is quite a short article].
Finally, I really ought to link to my favourite source of tabloid, sleazy news here in Japan, The Mainichi Daily News. I've been reading it for a while now, enjoying its guide to all the news that the higher-brow Japan Times doesn't bother with [especially the "tales from the tabloids" round-up WaiWai], but now it appears that the excellent Caterina, whose weblog is one of the few "personal" weblogs really worth reading, has also somehow discovered it - why, I don't know, since it's not the sort of thing you come across if you're not connected with Japan. Anyway, her post on the matter is delightful, and should be read forthwith.
That's enough for now, except to remind you about the Photo of the Day, which today ties in with the quote from Ian Buruma in the NYRoB. Adieu.
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The Besto Rental Store
Last night we stayed at home and watched a video: Ken Loach's Riff Raff. Pretty much everything I'd heard about Loach had made him out to be a director whose work I'd expect to find interesting and provoking, but the only previous film of his I'd seen, 1996's Carla's Song, had rather disappointed me. Though sympathetic to its attitude towards the situation in Nicaragua, I'd found the film's politics overly laboured, and rather unsuccessfully integrated with its storyline.
There are probably plenty of places online where you can read far more incisive, and better-expressed, criticism of the failings, or otherwise, of Carla's Song, so I won't pursue the matter. If you strongly disagree with me and want to take the matter further, you can always mail me about it. Anyway, we were actually watching Riff Raff more because of Robert Carlyle than out of any particular desire to give Ken Loach a second chance. And, for the record, we rather enjoyed it.
I mention Riff Raff only really to introduce the subject of today's entry: video rental in Japan. As someone who fits embarrasingly neatly into the 'sensitive English graduate' cliche of preferring European art-house cinema and US indie movie-making to your general Hollywood blockbuster fare, I've never really bothered with rental stores in Britain. Unless you want to watch the latest Robin Williams film, you're wasting your time there, and anyway, for eight years I was fortunate enough to have a local public library well-stocked with art-house classics.
British rental stores resemble Japanese ones in much the same way that Jeffrey Archer does Dostoevsky: there may be some superficial similarities between the two [both writers, both imprisoned], but the latter possesses infinitely more variety and far more depth.
Where my local rental store in Britain might possibly have a single copy of Betty Blue, the opening minutes worn virtually bare through repeated viewing and the rest pristinely unwatched, my local store here in Japan probably has a whole shelf devoted to Jean-Jacques Beineix. The copy of Riff-Raff we watched last night, for instance, could have been located either in the store's Robert Carlyle section [not just The Full Monty and Trainspotting but also Priest, the excellent Go Now, and, bizarrely, a complete collection of Hamish Macbeth], or in the Ken Loach corner [Raining Stones, My Name is Joe, and Ladybird, Ladybird, among others].
I don't mean to suggest that Japanese video stores are a paradise of art-house delights. They too have shelf-upon-shelf of Proof of Life. It's just that these stores are so massively stocked that simple economies of scale seem to ensure that for every twenty copies of the latest Meg Ryan vehicle, there's bound to be a copy of some obscurely golden Billy Wilder rarity, or the latest masterpiece of small-scale French domestic intrigue [the fact that I can't generally understand these because they're only subtitled in Japanese, not English, is hardly the stores' responsibility: you can blame my schoolboy French for that]. And that's not to mention the fact that they also rent out audio cds, both singles and albums, almost immediately after they're released for sale.
So today's photo of the day was taken in our favourite local rental store [there are 3 within walking distance of our apartment]: the appropriately-named Besto. And tonight, assuming I've finished setting up the links for this in time, we'll be watching Loach's "Raining Stones"...
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more photos [1]
This isn't strictly a new entry, but I thought I ought just to draw attention to the fact that the "Photo of the day" isn't the only photo on the site. The pictures on this page are from a very enjoyable end-of-term party I was kindly invited to a month ago. They've been on-line for a couple of days now, but the link's been rather hidden away in the right-hand column. I'll be adding more pictures in day or two. [Oh, and the new Photo of the Day" will be up later today. Honest.
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'irasshaimise', or 'welcome'
Whenever someone comes to stay with us in Japan, we always make sure to show them an episode of The Simpsons.
This isn't because The Simpsons is a particularly Japanese phenomenon, though the family is currently featured in advertisements for CC Lemon, a popular carbonated drink.
It's because one of our favourite episodes of The Simpsons involves a visit to a sushi restaurant. Marge and Lisa have for once persuaded the rest of the family to be a little more adventurous in their eating habits, and so the whole family [Maggie included] turns up at the "Happy Sumo".
As they walk through the door of the restaurant, the family is shocked when the staff welcome them by shouting, loudly and enthusiastically, "irasshaimise".
After the hostess explains to them that this is simply the Japanese way of greeting customers, Homer responds by bellowing "Hello" back at them.
When we first arrived in Japan, Jessica and I were as surprised as The Simpsons by the fact that waiters, waitresses and shop assistants everywhere would seem to shout at us whenever we entered their establishments.
Now, after nearly three years and endless 'irasshaimise's, we're used to such a welcome, but it can still unnerve those unaccustomed to Japan, which is why we show our guests this video.
This message is intended as an 'irasshaimise' to this weblog, "Forty Days in Japan". I'd like to welcome any readers, Japanese or Western, however they have reached this site, and whether they know me or not.
Over the next forty days I'll be writing about my experiences in Japan, with photographs and links to relevant websites, as I have in this posting. I'll be updating the page [and the Photo of the Day] everyday, so please come back often to see what's new.
If you have any comments, please feel free to
add them to the message board or e-mail me at [email protected] [cut out "REMOVETHISPART", of course].
That's all, except to explain why today's Photo of the Day is of the Nishijin branch of Book Off, a well-known chain of stores selling used CDs, computer games and books.
Of all the places we've visited in Japan, probably the loudest and most alarming "irasshaimise" we've heard has been in this store. We don't know whether it's Book Off company policy to try to deafen customers as they walk in the shop, or whether the staff are simply very enthusiastic, but this is now the only place in Fukuoka where we still jump in surprise when we enter. For that reason, this picture of the entrance of Book Off Nishijin [taken last night, just after someone had entered the shop] is today's Photo of the Day.
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this isn't really a link
This weblog is now, officially, open.
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Friday, August 31, 2001
06:13 p.m.
Friday, August 31, 2001
04:54 p.m.
Thursday, August 30, 2001
05:18 p.m.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
06:21 p.m.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
10:18 a.m.
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
09:44 a.m.
Tuesday, August 28, 2001
06:08 p.m.
Monday, August 27, 2001
04:06 p.m.
Monday, August 27, 2001
03:46 p.m.
Sunday, August 26, 2001
02:39 p.m.
Saturday, August 25, 2001
06:00 p.m.
Saturday, August 25, 2001
11:27 a.m.
Friday, August 24, 2001
03:02 p.m.
Thursday, August 23, 2001
07:21 p.m.
Thursday, August 23, 2001
11:46 a.m.
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
04:54 p.m.
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
07:59 a.m.
