Rhythms

July 1st and the beaches are now officially open, as is Mount Fuji - so it's now OK to go for a swim, or a long semi-vertical walk, whereas yesterday it would have caused consternation. Our local beach has had 6 or 10 rather magnificent bamboo beach bars erected on it over the last month, sunk into the sand, so tonight we felt obliged to show willing and respect local customs by sitting in one of them, 20 yards from the Pacific, the gentle rollers washing rythmically like they do (I never know how to spell rythm/rhythm/rythym... it's rhythm). Nice bar staff. Could become a habit - local customs and all that.

Ball games

Marvellous game, tennis. Cerebral yet visceral - like jazz.

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Great combination of power, technique, grace, constant improvisation, intelligence - so little is down to luck, unlike soccer for example - 'boot it and see'. Also, unlike soccer, there is an almost complete lack of tribalism - who cares if Ivanovic is a Russian, a Serb or a Canadian - as long as she plays well. And the women's game is so good these days. Love it - love it all. Marvellous game.

Blooming in the rainy season

Bucketing it down outside - cats and dogs. The hydrangea outside my window is happy - hydrangea means water-cup, presumably because they like water, as they bloom in the rainy season.

Just been down the supermarket and was impressed and slightly embarrassed by the checkout guy's over-the-top ingratiating service technique - as if I were the Crown Prince on an official inspection rather than some guy in a pair of grubby shorts buying a six pack and a bunch of bananas. They are an amazing people - and so contradictory. The other day I stayed in a very posh, traditional ryokan - old-style hotel, with the full works - beautiful gardens with Japanese maple dangling over carp ponds with turtles to boot, tatami throughout inside, loads of old wood, including massive 400 year old beams in the restaurant. Great onsen - thermally heated public baths, inside and out.

As we entered and left, a shoe man would bow deeply, greeting us and sending us off with an irasshaimasei! or an iterasshai! (or something along those lines) while banging on a hall drum to let everyone know the honourable guests were on their way - prompting more staff to appear, smiling and bowing deeply. At the very elaborate breakfast we had a personal obaasan (little old lady) pouring our tea, refilling our rice bowls etc as if we were 5 year olds. Japanese meals are very complex in that there are usually a dozen or more small dishes and so the waitresses go through a sometimes lengthy explanation as to how to deal with the unknown item - you have to add this sauce and mix it with that thing, etc. Can you imagine this happening in the UK?

Anyway, I was just thinking about contradictions, here in the most contradictory culture on Earth. A country where people are so convinced of the superiority of their way of doing things while simultaneously bending over backwards to be 'international'. By the way, we ended up the night before last in an excellent Mexican restaurant - or was that a dream? I recall large jugs of margarita... Last night we were sitting by the water's edge while a very convincing samba-type jazz band were performing Mas que nada and The girl from Ipanema and so on, in perfect Portuguese.

Do you find that if you don't do what other people want you to do, they then tell you you're selfish?

Do you find that the people who tell you you're bad at keeping in touch never call you up or email you?


Or is that just me?

http://www.jinya-inn.com/

http://mikelidgley.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

Rebounds

A friend from the States, the country of multiple marriage and divorce, told me the other day that there is a kind of folklore there that the third marriage is golden. The first time round, you are young and inexperienced and don't understand how hard it is to make a marriage work, so you eventually split and are drawn to someone with different qualities, the opposite, perhaps. Your first partner was boring and steady, so you are drawn to the wild, or vice versa. So that quickly doesn't work because you're with someone on the rebound from your first big love. But by the time the third one comes along, the theory goes, you know who you are, what you want, how to get it, and most importantly how hard you have to work to keep it.

Looking back, I can see how I have been rebounding back and forth like a pinball all my life!

Sketch by Rodin

Typhoons

The tragic loss of life in Burma and the Philippines recently was caused by a combination of a natural phenomenon (typhoons) and man-made negligence. I have found it odd that I knew about both Typhoon Nargis, that hit Burma, and Typhoon Feng Shen, that hit the Philippines, four or five days beforehand - because I get sent automatic emails by

http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/

I get them because I'm interested in sailing. But if I can get them, surely the governments of Burma and the Phillipines can get them too - and prevent ferries, for example, from going out to sea when there is a Red Alert - a 100% chance of a certain area being hit within 24 hours?

Halves

I've been helping a friend for the last two days - she and her 'half' kids had to move out in a hurry, big hurry. As she's a gaijin, outsider/foreigner, her kids are considered to be only half-Japanese, haafu, the bottle's half-empty, and despite having a Japanese father, and born in Japan, they will not be given Japanese nationality, because they are only half. This is despite the fact that every day the population of Japan goes down by 450, due to the declining birthrate.

We were all weekend in a panic trying to clear out the house, where they had lived for two years. Mid-afternoon a posse of neighbours turned up outside - had they come to ask how she was? Perhaps to offer help? No way - they had come to point out that she had put the rubbish out on a Sunday when the rubbish collection day was Monday so could she please take the rubbish to the municipal garbage dump today and not leave it overnight, under nets, and it was only plastic, not food, but still - it's the principle that counts?

On the way to my friend's house I was on the train and a small, frail, bent-double old lady fell down on the floor of the train. She couldn't get up without help. No-body moved an inch. She kept trying but men, women, young and old, all sat still staring into the mid-distance as if nothing was happening. It took a gaijin, me, to go over and help this little old lady up to her feet in the middle of a train carriage. No-one taught them what to do and say when a little old lady falls down in the middle of a train - so they don't move a muscle.

A couple of days ago I was on the train on the way to work and I realised something unusual was going on - I could hear people talking. This is very unusual. Normally, and I speak from experience, 200-300 people can be packed into a train carriage and you will usually not hear a word. Utter silence - apart from the clickety-clack of the trains on their rails and the earphone muzak. But here I was next to a North American mother talking to her 10-ish year old son, or less - I couldn't help overhearing, as they were next to me, and their non-stop conversation ranged all over the place, and included the meaning of government - what does government mean - what do they do, etc.

And I thought - how unusual - and I compared that 10-year-old to the 18 and 19 year olds that I confront every day, who usually list their hobbies as sleep, shopping and going to Disneyland, if that.

The other day I went to the Post Office to send some money to my bank account in England. There is a form to fill in: Name and address of sender of money - me, Japan. Name and address of receiver of money: me, Japan. Name and address of payer in of money - me, Japan. They couldn't handle this. An hour later and three, maybe four forms filled in in triplicate, we finally arrived at something which the bureaucrat could accept: Sender of money - me, my present address in Japan. Receiver of money - me, at my last address in Japan, in England.. So not only did I no longer live there, at that address in Japan, but clearly that Japanese address was not part of Britain - but nevertheless this surreal combination of nonsensities satisfied the screwed up version of reality that this particular Japanese bureaucrat felt he needed. Reality? Who needs reality?

Welcome to Disney-Japan.

Rant over.

Atami

Bit misty and overcast first thing in Atami.


















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The sun started to clear the mist as we rounded Manazuru Point.















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.The Captain enjoying a cuppa in the middle of Sagami Bay.




















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Steaming into Hayama at 6 knots.
















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Back at Enoshima for a sunset beer.




















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Just got to the university accommodation in time for lights out.