Exciting New Blog, joint Effort of the Meandering Matriarch and the Hobart Chinaman

 

ANNOUNCING A NEW BLOG!!  

I’m excited to tell you about a new blog, which is a collaborative effort between The Hobart Chinaman and me–The Meandering Matriarch.

It’s called Point : Counterpoint

At Point : Counterpoint, The Meandering Matriarch and The Hobart Chinaman debate some of the more puzzling issues of our time…the questions that go bump in the night.  We welcome your comments and your suggestions for future debate topic.  What bothers your brain in the wee hours?  We might even decide to invite you to take sides and vote for what you consider to be the winning argument.  But that’s debatable.  You can be sure that we’re always PC…or not.

CHECK IT OUT 

The first debate is the proposition:
Rod Stewart’s musical prowess is exceeded only by his fashion sense

See you there!    tHC

The Advantages of Free Range Chickens

Recently, I’ve been challenged to write on the advantages of Free Range Chickens. You know the type. Advertised as fluffing around in a sylvan idyll, light and daisies in abundance. All peace and tranquility. Ah, the free range chook. Strikes me that there’s something missing here! What of the night, the dreaded night. An anthropomorphic analogue will put us in the mood.
We humans eschew the night. As darkness falls we turn on the lights. We congregate in small places, bars and cafes to enjoy each others company. We rage and rock. And when it’s time to sleep we curl up in spaces free of the cold night air, and if lucky snuggle.
And what of a free ranging chicken facing the night? Left to the night there is no light, simply sheer terror facing the wilds alone. For the wild marsupials, foxes, domestic dogs and cats gone feral, it’s Colonel Sanders Time. Our Free Range Chicken shivers against the cold, sleet and rain, tramps through the slosh to find a perch. And roosting there contemplates the advantages of free ranging. The chook finds this a challenge. With a brain the size of a pea, existentially projecting itself into the wider, free range world, comes at a cost. Having spent it’s whole day banging it’s head against the ground then throwing up clouds of dust behind it like a rally car in the Paris to Dakar rally in the Saharan sand dunes section, a free ranging chook can only think of peace, and not,
“Where the p#%k is my next feed coming from” Chook simply wants some warmth, light, peace and quiet with friends.
Mankind has made many stumbles along the way. But domestication and animal care is not a stumble.
To save the free range chook the trauma of the night, the roosting house and safety of a barn, were invented. Yes! Invented for the well being and safety of the free ranging chook. With immunisation, running water and selected foods the outside bedraggled free ranger can only look through into the safe enclosure where well feed and cared for cousins reside, derogatorily termed “Caged”.
So much emotional energy invested in defence of free ranging, or freeing the caged. I’ve even been prevailed upon to attest the superior taste of free range eggs o’er those from their more cloistered cousins. In PC terms there is only one answer, isn’t there? I take heart though, in the end they’re all chicken nuggets!

ANZAC DAY 2012

Dawn waits lower than the horizon. In dark knots folk find themselves drawn to the cenotaph, to find a space on the wet pressed grass behind the cordoned official area. Somehow a civic protocol is observed with hushed conversation in tones murmured as if in prayer.

In this near silence we stand, though together, each alone with the thoughts that have brought us here. Thoughts of war, of peace of sacrifice, of pain, suffering, loved ones here, now and gone. In the dimmed glow of the spotlights arrayed at it’s base the cenotaph’s golden inscriptions glisten in the misting rain. Writ large I read on the column’s base plinth.

“The Great War
1914 1918″

And immediately below on the same block is added

“1939 1945″

It was “The Great War, the war to end all wars” yet the inscription reveals a scant 21 years pass before another war is great enough to warrant an addition.

Are these not then “The Great Wars”. We know them as such, World War 1 and World War 2, but through which world’s did they wreak their havoc?

WW1 laid waste the Old World, a Eurocentric world, bringing down the old, ushering in a new order. WW2 challenged the new order. For both wars the nation’s plea is chiseled into the base

“Lest We Forget”

“Lest we forget”, the words rattle in my brain.”Lest?” I find myself silently repeating, “Lest, what exactly does that mean?”. Is it “in case” or ” just in case” or ” be careful not to forget”. Does it mean that this monument stands here in case we forget? Maybe.

But what about when we repeat “Lest we forget” at the local RSL when the whirr of the pokies dulls, along with the lights at 9pm. Are we as affected by “lest” as we are by that other Aussie four letter word,which has the same low low level of usage?

Yes good old “girt” as in “….. girt by sea”. Somehow girt has coped a bum rap. We wince when we sing it, I know I do and mumble my way through it as Australia advances fair. My guess is olympic athletes are coached in girtness in case of an unexpected press conference question. Shot put and hammer throwers may have mistaken it for girth by sea.

I decide that “Lest we forget ” is a simple pledge to remember. Inscribed below it,

“The Korean War
The Malaysian insurgency
The Indonesian counterinsurgency
The Vietnam war
Peace keeping operations”

And on the right side face of the rectangular base

“The Gulf War
Afghanistan
Iraq”

I am struck that the serious wars need to be referred to as “THE so and so war”. Perhaps as public commitment to warring has waned war titles are downgraded.

Dawn eases it’s way into the night. The bugle’s cascading notes strain emotions, tears well in my eyes. I try not to forget.

.

How do you know you’ve done the right thing?

How do you know you’ve done the right thing?

I’ll confine myself to the ‘parent’s dilemma’. You bring up your children as best you can, but do you really ever know how well? How do you know you’ve done the right thing?

One son was asked to write about his recent trip to Africa, and with his permission, here’s what he wrote.

 “I have been sponsoring Imani Molusari Yohana for about 6 years and had always hoped to have the chance to meet him one day. That day was Thursday 23rd February 2012!

 In the weeks and days leading up to meeting Imani I experienced a raft of emotions. Anticipation. Nervousness, would he like me? Would he accept me? Apprehension. I sort of knew what to expect living condition wise – though how would I cope? How would I feel? My overwhelming feeling though was of great excitement.

Jane from World Vision picked me up from my accommodation and I immediately felt at ease. We chatted and naturally spoke about where I had travelled from, via where, and what my next stop would be.

 “Are you just going home after this?”

 “Yes”, I said but I couldn’t help but think my airfare to “just get me home” equated to the average Tanzanian yearly salary or thereabouts. The vast majority of people in the area were unlikely to holiday too far from their village let alone outside their home country.

After a short and at times very bumpy ride we arrived at World Vision (WV) HQ. Here I learnt heaps about the nitty gritty of exactly how WV run the Arusha Development Program. It was comforting gaining an understanding of how wisely and efficiently sponsors’ money was being used to construct wells, train teachers, develop vocational training programs and provide farming plots.

From there it was a short drive to a traditional lunch. All the while I was treated like royalty, they insisted I sit in the front seat whilst everyone else crammed in the back. Then the big moment. We arrived at Imani’s school and parked on the oval. Hundreds of faces popped out of the classroom windows and doors….gawking! I later found out that I was the 1st sponsor to ever visit the school. Imani came out of class immediately. Smiling, excitedly we approached each other, his head slightly bowed, a tradition I had not encountered before. I touched Imani’s head as is customary and there we were, 6 years of letter writing and now side by side.

I met Imani’s School Principal, much revered by students and society, somewhat different to some western cultures where education more of a core to kids than a privilege. We toured the school grounds and saw huts/ houses and the toilet blocks WV helped build. As we walked I noticed Imani stealing glances at me, though he would avert his gaze whenever I looked back. Shyness, respect, I’m not sure? What had I done for him to view me on such a pedestal? I felt undeserving, such a small sacrifice, relative to my life, meant so much to him.

Upon learning I planned on giving Imani a few small gifts including a mini football (with an Aussie Flag imprinted on it of course!), the Principal allowed all of Imani’s Grade 5 classmates (all boys) out of class to come and play on the oval. I tried to teach them Aussie Rules….without much success. Though it mattered little. Absolute madness on the oval! Kids running everywhere, shouting, laughing, falling over each other as they tussled for the ball. Hard, but fair – the Tanzanian way is the same as the Aussie way after all. We also played some Frisbee before I gave Imani a rubber ‘blow up’ beach ball. Embarrassingly it wasn’t a blow up one, though more of a soccer ball and needed a pump. Resigned, I began to apologise….but before I even got half a sentence out someone had whipped out a pen, pulled it apart, nicked the top off, jabbed it into the valve and started blowing up the ball! I was amazed. It took a while but it worked a treat – what resourcefulness from an 11 year old. Such a stark reminder of that ‘make do with what we have’ kind of attitude that is all too often lost.

After we were footballed out, I visited Imani’s house and met his family. His Mum, 3 brothers and sister were at home. His Dad at work and 4th brother at school. My eyes wandered as we shared stories. Again the resourcefulness, layers of newspaper as insulation. I met the cow afforded to the family by WV, learnt about their daily routines including walking for a couple of miles each morning to fetch water for the day. As the time drew near for me to depart I noticed a tear in the eye of Imani’s Mum. I understood her. So little to me, meant so much to them.

My final stop was visiting another (all girls) school that WV helped build. On the way we drove past the farming plots setup by WV for those least fortunate. As the rains had come recently they were “green”….though to you or I, they were more brown, arid and dusty, than ‘green’. Children as young as 3 years old, farming, running errands, carrying water. Though all the time smiling and waving as we passed through. Many people could not imagine living like that; they know no different. Two enduring images of the girl’s school remain with me, one quite sombre and the other uplifting. They were on the Principal’s noticeboard. One table had every child listed by name and grade with 2 columns adjacent – “Mum” and “Dad”. Some had no parents, many a Mum or Dad, though no-one with both. The other graph showed the enrolment numbers and percentage completion rate – both were steadily climbing.

That is the message I left with, one of hope”

I read this letter, understanding that for at least this son, he’s got it and so I wrote:

“This is excellent work, I am very very proud of you son. I have made minor changes; it stands alone as a very personal and inspiring piece. I read it to another blogger who likewise feels you have captured the essence of your experience and the joy of meeting Imani. You can be proud of yourself in your sponsorship, and in writing of your experience you have revealed another skill, the ability to write. Develop that too, it will stand you in good stead.

 Love Dad”

Commencing Closure

The roar of cars, trucks, the tweet and squarking of birds, it’s the start of a day.
I have a need to be here, its push and pull.

For the anger, the pain, this might see it done, it’s been a tempestuous journey. “There is no attend, simply fill out the documentation, return to this address, and Orders will be forwarded in due course” is what I read on the topmost paper in the stack. The stack had arrived, announced in a sign for registered package. I signed the form, and sent it to an address in the western suburbs. To an address, a street address, no name of addressee. Whilst I had to sign, print name and address, the return was to ‘no one.’ it felt weird. And then the reflections start. How had it come to this?

Some six months, maybe longer the sheriff had arrived. I could see over his head, from my backdoor vantage point three steps above him. ‘
‘Are you, David X?’ he enquired.
‘Who wants to know, mate?’
‘I can’t say,’ he replied, ‘Are you him?’
‘Dunno,’ I responded, asking again, ‘So who are you?’
‘Look, mate, I just need to know where David X is, are you him?’
‘So you need to know where this guy is but can’t say who you are, is that right huh?’ I asked, indignity rising.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘ I’ve been chasing this guy for a while now, at this address, so are you him or not?’ and his indignity was heading north too.
‘Might be, might not be’ I offered, ‘So what, and who the f$&@ are you anyway?’
‘Can’t say who I am,’ he replied, ‘It’s a privacy matter’.
‘What! A privacy matter, whose privacy are you invading at quarter to nine on a Friday night at a back door with all your banging and crashing?’
He had no intention of listening, but sensing a gap in the ‘maybe, maybe not’ he went on,
‘So let’s say you are this guy I am looking for, I’ve got these papers you might be interested in’ he said, reaching into a shoulder satchel at his left side.

The satchel was well worn, possibly leather. The papers he withdrew looked official. Larger than A4 sized, folded down lengthwise in what looked to be thirds, the outside typed with a crest above.
‘Hmm,’ I thought, ‘A process server’
‘So are they court documents?’ I asked.
He went silent, let his left hand with the folded document fall to his side. My eyes followed.
He saw my eyes lock onto the papers, and realized he had his quarry.
‘Look,’ he said,’I've been here several times over the last few weeks and you are never here. Sooner or later, you are going to get these, so why not now?’
I could sense his relief and my discomfort. For him just another bounty to be claimed, maybe even a success fee attached. For me, the sense that maybe this was the moment when life moved forward, in whatever way.

I took the papers, and he disappeared back round the side of the house and away. Closing the door, I looked at sheaf, official looking and court approved. Whatever could they be?

Daily Writing

“Write daily” they say. Who are ‘they’? All I know is that they aren’t me. Feeling the need to write, having the words swirling, seeing the world in word bites is paralyzing. The minutia of daily life, its crises and caresses, the boredom of it all, reins me in.

No blogging, no chapter writing, nothing, just nothing. Well not totally nothing, there’s reading the paper, old magazines in the bathroom, crime and prison series on the documentary channel, so many things, so much to do, all tripe.

            Why not a paragraph or two about not writing a paragraph or two? For the afflicted, those who feel no need to write, don’t suffer the tension of feeling the need to shape reality in written words, why read a few lines about the tension of doing it?

            For the writing afflicted, there’s a different reality, the possibility that maybe this writer “gets it” or by his scribbles clearly shows he doesn’t get it, at least not from the reader’s viewpoint.

            For the writing afflicted, I offer Strunk and White. It is a classic entitled, “The Elements of Style.” To the aficionado it’s well-known, for the emerging writer a must have, and for the afflicted, a quirky little read. Yes it’s on the web, for those who need to try before they buy. Do yourself a favour and look it up, the PDF version, and consider availing yourself of a hard copy, then keep it always near. Perhaps that last sentence would attract Strunk’s ire.

            And for the afflicted, why not read of another’s pain, the torment of not achieving something. It’s far from becoming a 6pm hero on the tv news, but at least it’s a way to share vicariously in another’s pain, whilst forgetting the everyday. Trying to imagine what it must be like to agonize and not achieve a self-set goal. Surely there are enough folk setting goals for themselves to let those who don’t, revel in the goal surplus? Who’s to be the Bear Grylls of writing? Well certainly not me within this blog limit. But he’s out there somewhere, tempting the afflicted to pen a few words, trust those words to a diary, or password protected file, for posterity. And slowly the feeling transforms into a shamed sense of realizing there’s much to write and ever diminishing time to do it. Where does that time go? In front of the TV, piffle talking, think of the ways!

            Like a wall clock, the word counter marks progress through time. My engineering mind can’t help but ratio the words per minute, and calculate the time to word goal achievement.

So, in a brief note on the need to write daily, I’ve come to the conclusion that writing fills that inner need to say what’s in my head, as well as I can, and often.

Someone

For sometime I worked with recently arrived migrants, providing support across a wide range of daily living problems. Margarita had been in to see me earlier in the day. Her second request was to do something about her car which had been damaged in an accident. The details were tumbled up, sketchy and Margarita’s request of me unclear. Clement the telephone swahili interpreter helped me decipher the story and here it is!
When ‘someone’ drove her car to the Plaza with her permission on Sunday he [cos a someone would be a male...wouldn’t it??] backed the car into a wall at the motel. She said the car was still drivable, and this precipitated her true request. She needed the car driven from the motel to her new house. I had spent day’s setting up the new accommodation, the centrelink pays, the utilities etc… but that’s another story.
Margarita said she had tried to get on to numerous community friends, none of whom could or would assist to drive the vehicle to a new location. She could not drive, but had bought the car so that others might chauffeur her to her appointments.
As a last resort she said she had ultimately got on to Golam, who was otherwise known as ‘someone’ [at this point the reader may gasp and sotto voce repeat ‘Oh my God’!!!!!]
He had come around to drive the car away, tried, then advised Margarita the car was in fact undrivable. So I thought, why not go to the motel, get some jumper leads and at least get the car out of the motel so they could relet the room.
At the motel I found her vehicle, parked in front of the unit she had been staying in for several weeks, with its rear end looking like it had been hit by a big big truck at about 60 kph. It was as they say ‘severely damaged’.
I went to the motel manager. She was extremely pissed off, big time. She contained her rage and any danger she might have threatened me with by keeping the door to her office locked and spitting her words at me through the mesh. Thank god for that, cos the wire screen filtered most of it. Spittle hung there across several of the mesh holes, gravity taking hold. I watched fascinated.
She said that last night, very late, her slumbers were broken by a tremendous crash, which when she investigated she found to have been caused by someone driving into the parking spot in front of Margarita’s unit and then reversing and then going forward at speed, braking, then reversing back at speed though not braking, progress being impeded by a substantial block retaining wall. She said that someone repeated this to and fro motion until the car could no longer take it.
Ms Spittle made hand gestures at 10 and 2 o’clock making the 10 rock up and down between 8 and 12 and the 2 simultaneously and synchronously rocking between 2 and 4. She commented that “Someone didn’t know how to turn.” African people she continued confidently, “Only know how to drive in a straight line.” She then raised her eyes, like headlights between her arms, flailing her arms around, like a kid driving a dodgem at a fairground.
By now after several previously unsuccessful attempts, the mudguards of the car were now imbedded in the tyres, the boot reduced to half its length and no taillights shone through the shards of broken brake indicator and backing light covers. Someone tumbled from the car. Someone? OMG yes the very same someone. Pissed as a fart, drunk as a judge, stoned, under the weather, sloshed, wasted, he was drunk, very. Ms Spittle called the police but said she didn’t have someone’s licence or address but had the car rego and she’d use that to charge the owner for the towing fee to move the vehicle. She said ‘someone’ was a frequent caller over the past few weeks.
I left Ms Spittle and scurried away to my car, told Margurita her car was a write off, and that without any insurance she should consider seeking restitution for the damages from Golam. [fat chance]
Well now it was time for the power at the unit! We drove there, I wondered what was going to happen to her car, but clearly that was for another day.
There was no power in tall unit. All the switches were properly set in the unit’s switch board.
With the help of the man in unit 4, whose tee shirt bore the message not to screw with pitbulls, we unscrewed the hasp on the locked main power board and flicked switches up and down till they all looked the same in all the units.
I checked with Country Energy to advise a supply interruption and they called back to say would be an hour or so as there were no other calls in the area.
So I texted my coordinator,

sms reads: Still stuck here. No country no energy. Getting dark sea clouds rolling in. Street lights on

I called Country Energy again at 1920 and at 1928. Aaron told me there were more urgent faults at Corindi Beach and we would have a further wait.

sms reads: Good to hear the crew is up Corindi beach, he told me to “just hang on in there mate, we will get to you some time”

By now it was dark, and we were hungry, so I went up to Maccas and got us a good feed of 4 Mcdouble’s and 2 Double cheeseburgers.

sms reads: I bought the mcafrican lady a suite of fried patties between sesame seed buns plus gherkin. We liked them full and fat

An hour later at 2017 I called Country Energy to be told that “didn’t I know they had prioritised work on and that heaps of people were without power and that they’d get around to us sometime tonight.”
More waiting!
Well I thought what’s she going to eat in the morning. It’s a bit glum without light so I went up to the Plaza shopping centre and got some candles, Monte Carlos and scotch fingers at Woolies before it closed.
On return we lit the candles, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom, which gave a nice atmosphere, very restful. We could now see our way into the dunny!
Margurita got some kip on a blanket on the floor in the unit while I waited in the street.

sms reads: Poor lady she has gone to sleep on the floor on a rug in the flickering warming glow of the pillar candle (scentless) while i keep watch for the energy men.

sms reads: She is fast asleep. Mild here by the sea. The light from yon windows beams shafts slightly illuminating the gloom

Then at 2108 a vehicle turns up with its search light on scanning the letterboxes for the numbers. I think its the energy men but it’s a taxi and a passenger gets out. He stands on the kerb and scans around. I see his face lit by the screen of his mobile as he makes a call. Margurita’s phone rings from inside! He prattles a little then walks past me without acknowledgment and down the right side driveway.

sms reads: Now a taxi arrives. He gets out and makes a call. Her phone rings making me superfluous. D’oh!

Together they settle in. Feel kinda like a pimp scanning the street hopefully.

When a panel van, and then an enormous truck pull up, I guess these are energy men. They tong everything, tong this, tong that before deciding its a fault between the main board and the internal board so there ain’t nothing they can do, mate.
I leave a note for Margurita to take round the corner to the agent first thing in the morning. The note urgently requests an electrician to attend.

sms reads: My guess is the candles were a good choice tho rose or lilac scented might have celebrated more carnally her first night in new a home

sms reads: Heading home. Margurita and paramour to sup on the monte carlo and scotch fingers she and i were to enjoy

A light shower commences, misting the window screen of my car as I switch on the ignition to start the wipers.

By 2155 I am homeward bound.

Nippon 29. The Match

Nippon 29 the Match

Daily we make the journey from the hotel to the venue. The temperature of the clumps of frozen snow in front of the cream brick gymnasium is actually warmer than inside the stadium.

Each day three hours before the game we head out. Prematch preparations are a chance to see around Suragadai University. A private institution, it’s buildings are very much modelled on the academic edifices of the west. Atop one building are steepled shaped roofings, parapets and vaulted glassed windows. On closer inspection, through the tele on my camera, I see they are fake. The room sizes contained would be barely larger than a garrett, so they are not offices. They are simply for appearance.

The bus trip with a mix of hyped up athletes has it’s moments. Some falsetto tune has engrained itself on someone’s boom box, and it belts out in the final few kilometres to the venue daily. To hear beefy men singing in tiny Tim voices about how beautiful they are takes a little getting used to. In fact I never do. There is also the doof doof thump which seeps from the back to the front of the bus. I wonder daily what the white gloved bus driver must think Japan.

The match against Japan is a must win match, a draw is no good.
There are four fans for Australia where I sit, the stadium is full of Japanese supporters. The body heat from all the fans has heated this frigid hall more than on any other day. Cow bells and the incessant blaring of the hooters compete with the over volume loud speakers, it is ear crushing in volume. The sampled music relates to never giving up, not being second, and the bitterness of defeat. I wonder what flavour we will be tasting in ninety minutes or so?

The game starts at a furious pace, both teams are vying for their chance to play in the December world championships in Switzerland. Japan are soon two up, and it takes an effort to pull back this advantage. At two all there seems to be a pattern of play which has worked this time, which somehow eluded the team previously. A further Japanese goal imbalances the Australians but in a power play, following a two minute penalty to Japan, Timbi scores his first international goal for Australia, the teams are locked at three all.
The intensity picks up. When Japan draws a goal ahead there’s two minutes left to play. Desperation sets in and the Aussies play goalie less. It’s a gamble and it doesn’t play off. Not maintaining enough forward pressure an easy goal against the run of play is dribbled in by Japan. The return of the Aussie goalie is too late and the taste is of bitterness, tartness, slightly diluted with tears, though none are shed. For some there won’t be another chance at this level, the next world championship chance is now two years away and it’s a long time to keep fitness. For those who warmed the bench, there’s the thought that maybe they could have made the difference. The coach is faced with the thoughts of whether the whole tournament strategy was correct. The dejection is obvious. It was always a possibility, now the reality sets in.

End of game festivities by the winners are looked upon by the losers dolefully. It’s a sad sad sight. There is no second chance. In time the pain will subside.
The return bus trip is different. Hopes and dreams have evaporated, wasted chances rued. No doof doof, no falsetto, nothing at all. What to say, when there is nothing to say. The effort has not been wasted, simply not rewarded. Did they give it their best shot? Later the post-mortems start, the strategies failure and the coaches decisions. But for the score board, the same would have been hailed as sound decisions.
A few jokes are told with nothing to do with floorball. There is none of the annoying music, but what a price to pay for homecoming serenity.

Nippon 28. Food glorious food

Nippon 28. How soon it ends.

Rising as dawn breaks, the sounds of scurrying with breakfast preparations by Emi and her sister readying themselves for work rise from below. I have packed and checked the room obsessively. I eat quickly while the girls make ready. I know I will be burdened by my pack and have suggested we leave five minutes earlier than planned for the train. Together Emi and I trudge to the station. The light is soft and milky, little stirs in the houses we pass. We find a spot towards the end of the station and join a queue for a door. Emi’s sister arrives a minute or so later, we exchange goodbyes.
The chosen place turns out to be challenging. I hoist my pack into the crush of folk in the compartment, we somehow squeeze in. There’s not much space at all and no way to privately say goodbye. People get off and on, more on than off, and the press is suffocating. The second station further on is Emi’s, she will change to to get on the rapid express via Kyoto, but be better able to board the train here. I know this and wonder how to say
“Goodbye, Emi, thank you for your kindness, please thank again your family for having me.”And as the words form in my brain and rush to my mouth, she is gone, absorbed into the throng of people headed across the platform to catch the rapid. All that’s left is a faint relief that the compartment is less crowded and from being supported by the legs of others, my pack falls over. Whoops!
I ride the Shinkansen for the last time. Without meaning to I am on the all stations Kodoma, rather than the faster Hikari. Great choice by accident really, two more hours to write and think, the images, feelings and strangely enough the lack of smells overcome me. I snooze. I have in mind the sample shop Emi has located for me, and with much asking and barely being able to squeeze my pack into a locker I sally forth from Ueno station in pursuit of the samples.
It’s not often that Maccas gets a mention let alone seven eleven but here we go. The google map shows these symbols in a sea of kanji. My eyes have grown weary trying to decipher the kanji on a map and identify the shop or road sign. Lucky I like puzzles, or maybe I’m simply stubborn. The symbols on the map guide me terrestrially as the southern cross does celestially, though not here. On the nights I have looked I have seen the north star. Together with the complete inability to feel comfortable with north and south without my compass, my disorientation is complete. Nevertheless I turn into the street of a thousand cooking utensil shops. I am swayed to look and look and look. It’s like entering a street Bunnings, where you could spend all day wondering at the craftsmanship or ingenuity of designers. But I have a purpose. This sample shop has taken the effort of three of us to find and I am within blocks of it. When I see it across the road I almost commit a mortal sin and jaywalk to it.
The shops has all manner of samples. I notice they are not cheap. There are the meal platefuls almost always displayed in any restaurant’s front window. Then there are the individual pieces, sushi sashimi, tempura prawns, and on and on a whole feast of inedible meals. I chose carefully, adding selected pieces to the tray I carry about. Its like being at a smorgasbord, making sure you eat healthy, thinking of your diet. And then as at a smorgasbord I throw caution to the wind and drop pieces onto the tray without looking at the price. Yes it’s more than I had intended, but no I wont be sad when I play “Let’s have a Japanese make believe meal” when back in Hobart. I think I saw one Japanese restaurant there once.
On the way back to unstuffy my pack from the station locker ( damn thing would barely fit until I backed my bum solidly into the straps and top of pack sticking defiantly out ) I have flashbacks of home. My poor efforts to drape door ways in kimono silk have come at some cost. Here are the real things, at reasonable price in every imaginable design. I’m hooked, why not buy three. Likewise some red lanterns. Good work! And when I get back to the locker I have an additional kilo, maybe more and the dilemma of how to safely pack these things.
“Leave it to later” say to myself and brace myself for the three trains with two changes I need to make to find Timbi’s hotel at Kawagoe. I collapse into the first train, but can’t relax, the trains are speeding between and through stations, a mistake here will cost at least an hour.

Nippon 27. Goodbyes

Nippon 27. Goodbyes

Arriving back in town, we decide on a coffee. Not as easy as it sounds, for there are favourite and very favourite coffee places. There are lots of coffee places to walk past in the search. By the time we reach town favourite one is closing so we try for number two. My eye isn’t keen enough to detect what makes a good one or a bad one, well maybe a not so good one.
Eventually we find what they are looking for, I just need some warm fluid. We sit and chat, it’s a wonderful time to listen to how life is for these girls. Everything seems so removed from my life in Australia, then again the daily grind, the long hours and commutes and variable shift hours in casual work are the same here as there. Travel and English is possibly one way out. From the people around us in the coffee shop I imagine that what these girls have done, traveled alone to far away places would be regarded as bold. There is little in their demeanour which gives their intrepidness away. They have taken the English, which all in Japan learn at school and extended it to immersing themselves in foreign culture to speak better. And they have succeeded. What they now need is conversational practice, and thats what we do.
With coffee finished, we head out into the street and make our goodbyes, Yuka takes her little hamburger sample phone dangler and gives it to me, in case I don’t find the food sample shop in Tokyo. It’s a thoughtful gift. I am touched.

Nippon 26. Bruce

Nippon 26. Bruce

His feet look like boiled lobsters. He smiles as we all joke together. We have been speaking in English, practicing. Emi has been speaking about her mum showing her calligraphy, and what fun we had. The man poet has placed his entries in the slot and asks if he may see the girl’s work. He approves.
When his partner arrives he explains to her in perfect English what we have been doing, it’s a revealing moment, unexpected, then again not. I review my mental tape of anything I may have said which might have caused offence while we had sat there chatting for thirty minutes or so before he rose to leave. The tape was blank.
With softened warmed feet in our shoes we float along the the pathways to the bamboo groves. On the way we come across the home of a hermit haiku master of the seventeenth century. Its closed but over the wall theres a link to England, at the time of the Bard.
In Stratford upon Avon I’d stood in front of Shakespeare’s house before entering, marvelling at the thatched roof, which looked like a plumped hairstyle in the basin cut style sitting on the building’s brow. Here was the same thatched roof, under which elegant haiku were written.
We enter the groves, the bamboo sways, the tops forty or fifty feet above, the afternoon sunlight all but blotted out. It’s a forest which has been tended. The stumps of lopped stalks show where the thinning has taken place, though the use is unclear. Perhaps scaffolding material, maybe furniture, no one knows. Small shrines along the narrow roadway and two cemeteries give a sense of the age of the forest. Some newish looking very upmarket ryokans and hotels give the sense of the crowds that the girls say come here for the spring and the fall. I can but imagine the beauty of the autumnal leaf fall or the blossoming which will follow my visit in the next month or so. Nevertheless, the forest and the bare deciduous trees have a stark edginess which matches the crispness of the season.
We stop where the bamboo is densest, and it’s a call for a photo. Somehow the girls sense the need for an asian pose and they obligingly hold up their fingers in the V shape favoured from Korea/Japan, all the way around to the subcontinent. What it means is unclear. It doesn’t appear to be rabbit’s ears. In the Australian usage, the sign is surreptitiously raised behind an unwitting photographic subject’s head in faint mockery. The V used here appears to be more of ” Hi there, hello” and when you see this pic of me I am saluting you with good wishes. Then again I could be entirely wrong. Probably am, my enquiries of the girls lend no explanation.
When we leave the forest we walk the street of the little village which makes it’s living from the grove tourists. One shop is called “Bruce” what the hell could that be about? After examining the merchandise it’s no clearer. Bruce is a fabric man about nine inches long. A pencil case. Bruce has a zipper from his crotch to his neck. Little arms and longer legs have him in a pose not unreminiscent of da Vinci’s proportion of man drawing with arms and legs similarly extended. Bruce though is in every different fabric imaginable. Most likely off cuts, there are all colours, texture, patterns and designs. There are smaller decorative non pencil cases for use as key ring hangers, Bruce as mobile phone danglers, and there in the back of the shop is the Bruce making machinery. I hope they are making money from what strikes me as a bad idea poorly executed, then again this is Japan.

Nippon 25. Poetic licence

Nippon 25. Poetic licence

When the scrolls are put way we leave. From Karasaki station a view of Japan’s largest fresh water lake is glimpsed between some buildings, maybe a kilometre distant. The lake’s water is used as drinking water for the shoreline cities, after careful treatment. Karasaki is wedge between water and mountains not at all uncommon in Japan. Any flat land is intensively used.
In Osaka Emi has a plan to find the food samples in a mega department store. Girls her age attend the information booths and are always helpful. When we arrive on the fourth floor, we find only toy food samples, I want the full sized ones. We leave disappointed.
Osaka station is the city’s answer to Kyoto’s. The shopping complexes tower high above the station footprint, the station being a collection of Shinkansen, the high speed rail, JR and private tracks, JR and private subways. At least some direction signs are in English.
We leave Osaka to meet Yuka in Kyoto. She waits for us at a bus stop in the outer city, and together we walk to lunch. The girls have chosen their favourite place to eat, several blocks away from the main road, in a never to be rediscovered location. It’s traditional, I resist the temptation to say very traditional, not knowing what either means. A wetted cobbled entry courtyard where we remove our shoes, in my case boots has me hopping around like an ibis in mud, thankfully not landing an unbooted foot on the living space side, a mistake for which I was corrected, at the palace yesterday.
In soft whitish sandals, a little small for my size ten feet we shuffle around three corners, up a little rise into the most perfect of settings o’er looking a garden of great delicacy. The girls lower themselves as awkwardly as I do, making me feel a little more at home. My left knee wants to get in touch with my left cheek instead of staying crossed with my right leg. I forget the aches and send myself a brain memo to get up slowly to save popping a cartilage.
We are welcomed to the restaurant by the owner and waitresses ply the table with heated towels, and set places before each kneeling guest. Now I feel like in am “in” Japan.
We chat over the meal, we are silent when thinking to reply. Yuka works in a hotel, and travelled to New Zealand to study English, like Emi who went to Ireland. These girls are intrepid. They meet studying English and still do so. Having a foreigner to practice on is a real treat. Together they speak a little Japanese only when needed to deal with the staff.
I gaze into the garden, and all too soon it is time to leave. We play with the owner’s dog while waiting to pay our bills. It is surprisingly reasonable, about AUD 12. I ask why.
“Oh we could never afford to come here at night” says Yuka, ” This is one of the best restaurants in Kyoto for night dining, this is only the lunch”
So how lucky am I!
After some discussion with Emi, Yuka takes the lead and we are soon on a subway then a subway then a little train, they have in mind the bamboo groves. I had seen these mentioned in the books and on the maps, where they appeared to be closer than the journey we were making seemed to indicate.
“Are we far from the city now?” I ask them.
“Quite far” is the reply, and I am really no better informed. Dumb question really.
On the platform at the end of the line, he ticket man asks if we want to take a hot foot spa. Looking at each other we smile “Yes”
For a modest price we are handed towels and directed back up the platform to a little wooden building at the end. A man sits at the end of one of the wooden tables whose legs are in the hot spring. There are two adjacent tables with a slatted wooden bench seat around the spa. Its hot and steam rises into the cold air giving a sense of relaxation and welcome. We arrange ourselves around the far wooden table, the man is concentrating intensely on writing with a pencil on a form. There’s a pad of forms and a tin box with a slot near its top with signs indicating that the best of the haiku written on the subject of the spa will be displayed on the station noticeboards. A chance to be recognized, so we too set to the task. The girls take the task seriously, heads down, the quietness is momentarily broken by the arrival of a train and the commencement of it’s return journey. I try to imagine where in Australia we might find the opportunity to scribble a ditty about some scenic attraction. I can recall seeing some examples public written work, though not in the sonnet poetic form favoured by the Bard, more doggrel ditties such as,

“Here upon the can I sit
Waiting for a little shit
When it comes I’ll be relieved
Wiping arse with prickly leaves.”

Or the more directed proposition

“For a great time phone kylie 044230988″

Or the footy slogan appealing to club loyalty such as

“Go Cats”

I recall at one workplace place being honoured as a manager for my change management skills. Within three months some one had inscribed my name below my bosses accolade

“Brial is a killer”

Adding

“Poon is a cunt”

Apart from these types of written displays Australia seems bereft of publicly written poetry.

Here’s what I came up with in the haiku form, three lines five syllable, seven syllable, five syllables

“Hot springs heats my feet,
Train speeds up the mountain top,
Friends meet, life is good.”

I posted it in the slot, with my email address. I doubt I will be hearing from them.

Nippon 24 trip highlight

Nippon 24. Trip Highlight

Dawn has broken, the house creaks good morning. Somewhere a door slides open, it’s breakfast time. The dining room heater chases away the night’s cold into the passageways, I take my appointed seat.
Many foods are served, the tv chats away to itself, I only recognize figures, red and blue for max and min temperatures.
“What does your dad do now,” I ask Emi.
“Um, he how do we say, he um, er ” and she puts her hands to her face trying find the words to express his hobby.
“He collects, um, makes collections of the names, um the namings of families, you know?”
“So he collects these names. But how?” I ask and wonder what he is collecting and also how.
“He collects the names, how you say the family names of Japanese families, there are many many of them.”
“So where does he find these names, are they in telephone books, or prefecture records?” I wonder aloud.
“Yes, yes,” she replies, ” He makes them into lists ” and I guess that perhaps it’s the chronology and evolution of the names and where they are derived from. Perhaps in the way in which Smith is a shortening of blacksmith, an iron working trade now nearly vanished. I gain an understanding that this etymology of names is also location based almost down to village level.
It seems to be an academic pastime and suited well to a retired teacher whose life has been words.
“And your mum,” I enquire, “Does she too have a hobby?”
“Ah yes, mum does the writing with the brush, how you say”
And before she can express the word I butt in with,
“Oh, calligraphy!”
“Yes that is correct, is this the proper way to say ‘cah – lig – laffy’ “
“Yes that’s very good and you could grr more when you say ‘laffy’, more like grraffy”
We exchange a laugh, as Emi goes on to explain that her mum has been doing classes for about ten years.
“Your mum must be very good at this” I comment, as Emi relays the conversation to her mother in Japanese.
“She has been practicing, she will show you some of her work.”
Emi’s mum searches through the low cabinets, then back across the lounge to the kitchen and out into the hall.
She is gone for a little time, we chat about where we will go today, before meeting her friend in Kyoto, while her mum searches.
Mum returns, under her left arm two square long boxes perhaps five by five centimetres and sixty centimetres long. In her right hand she carries more carefully another similar box. She kneels on the floor, laying the pair of boxes to one side and places the right hand box on the carpet in front of her. All the time she is explaining that her work is not very good and that she has much to learn. Emi translates.
From the box laid flat she takes out, then unfurls a scroll on which are several verses of a poem six or seven lines per stanza. She reads aloud to herself but for our benefit, the poem written by her teacher. It is clearly a scroll of importance for her. In the peace of her living room I feel that respect and pride in the craft worked on this scroll. More meaningful to me than seeing the writings of famous folk, unknown to me, in a museum, castle or, oh no, a temple!
Mum puts away the teacher’s scroll and takes the first of her scrolls.
Five characters in a strong hand have brushed the words of a poem or saying onto the parchment. Once started there is no turning back. Perfection is only achieved in completion, the time to stand, and observe the harmony and balance created on the parchment, which had not before existed.
An animated conversation between Emi and her mum takes place. A character is described by her mum, then Emi questions her about it’s meaning in this context. Clearly Emi can read the words but it’s the place in this writing which gives it a meaning, a poetic meaning which she is struggling with. Worse still she needs to find the words to tell me and convey the beauty of what is written in English. Patiently we wait while Emi ‘s mum passes on that which in usual circumstances is less often thought about.
“Mountain, is this word” which though it sounds different I recognize from the Chinese script.
“Then wind, then smell, then spring, is smell the right word?” she asks.
“Maybe, odour? ” I try.
Mountain, wind, odour, spring, hardly sounds the stuff of poetry.
This is not an easy translation to make, requiring understanding the subtlety of one’s own language to distill into the essence of the other language.
“Maybe it’s mountain, breeze, fragrance, spring” she guesses and this seems right to me
“Wow, that sounds right for English, Emi, ” I say.
The beauty of the balance of the black characters on the paper represents hours and years of practice. To achieve the level of confidence required before the five or so minutes of writing, requires great mastery. A stilling of the heart and nerves to be steady of hand and totally within oneself. The outcome is pure simplicity.
Mum takes her second achievement from it’s box, and lays it alongside, mother and daughter have a discussion which I am sure has not happened before in this room about these works, but had it been had, surely not at seven thirty on a Tuesday workday morning. When the second scroll has been explained, there is mutual agreement to take a few pics of these rare objects.
Emi’s mum hold’s two scrolls up and Emi the third. The look of serious pride on mum’s smily face as she stands dwarfed bedside her work are the highlight pictures of my trip. There will be pictures of O- Toni, the peace bell, even snow drifted villages in fellow travellers cameras. These are the only pictures of these scrolls and I feel so so privileged.

Nippon 24. Trip highlight

Nippon 23.

Nippon 23.

Hunger gets the better of us, the seafood place is nearly closed, but in a street a few blocks down a restaurant specialising in tempura beckons. The serving is so large its hard to finish, but I make the supreme effort. We waddle away full of food, finding the fabrics street, in fact the street in which Emi once worked. Whilst the shutters are down on the majority of shops the few open are upmarket, the fabrics superb. Prints and materials to wrap presents in, all manner on kimono lengths and wedding fabrics. All made in Japan, it’s such a contrast to see pride in country of origin, in fact I don’t think the purchasers here would ever bother to think that they would buy from overseas, it’s very much a closed market. On the roads, the cars are all Japanese and all nearly new. A Peugot here a BMW there, but they are rare. It requires serious money to buy other than Japanese.
On the way home we head underground to the subway. A band is setting up. The lead is tuning a Swedish folk instruments which is bowed like a violin, but the left hand presses on a keyboard which impacts the strings. It’s a rare sound, and rarer are the Irish, or is that sexism rollicking folk songs and reels which the band entertains the growing audience with. It’s a promo for their concert tour in the week ahead through Kyoto, and they do a brisk trade in their CD and invites to their paid venue.
In time we make the trains, they are packed, it’s an experience I had been trying to avoid and at the same time wanted be be able to say that I had been a Japanese commuter sardine, at least once, and now I can say that. There is no need to hold the hanging strap, it’s impossible to fall over when somehow or other there has seemed always to be room for at least one more person in each overcrowded compartments.
When we return to the house everyone has gone to bed, we have been out more than twelve hours, it’s been so so different with a guide to take the edge off always fearing being lost.

Nippon 22. Walking Kyoto 2. Awesome

Nippon 22. Walking Kyoto 2. Awesome

The shrine is not as extensive and any panorama of old from it’s front gate is now obliterated by a sea of traffic lights.
“We came here to celebrate New Year,” Emi says, it was very very cold, and there were thousands of people, the places were packed down this road ( the one leading directly away from the shrine, and on the cross arm roads. There many many of police.”
I try to imagine the throng, at least the cold is here, but at near to midday it’s hard to imagine the press of people and tourists on that night.
“When midnight came, people politely crapped, and the tourists were amazed,” she said.
I was amazed too as she continued,
“The tourists expected fireworks and huggings and kissing but after the time passed the crowd went away to home again.”
“Ah,” I said, “So people came to the temple to wait for the midnight time to pass, clap and leave.”
That seemed to make more sense to me now, so I smiled knowingly
“What would you like to do now, do you prefer seafood? Emi asked.
“I love seafood, any seafood,” I said.
“But do you like the seafood not cook?” she asked a little more quietly.
“Oh yes! Shall we eat seafood for lunch then? I replied.
So we head off in search, through covered walking market streets, each specializing in this or that. Fabrics, meats, utensils, crockery and the like. Many shops selling the same or similar goods makes for price competition and eases the distribution task for the wholesalers. The array of goods is endless.
In the utensils street, there’s a tea pot shop. Emi has walked on by, but I stop to examine the displays in the open shopfront, then go in. There are crockery, iron, brass, porcelain and copper teapots. There is no way to simply decide which is right. Is it size or weight or price? I chose a price point and look for design in that range. One stands out. It’s dimpled on the outside with a sassy little stainless steel strainer, it’s so damn cute. The price becomes immaterial. My penchant for converting everything to Aussie dollars is put to one side. The proprietor carefully wraps the pot, then boxes it, wraps the box, before slipping the box into a red crimson carrier bag. I am so proud carrying the bag from the store into the crowded mall.
We wander the mall, and I assume we are looking for the seafood house. We seem to pass many, from what I see of the sample meals displayed in the windows. The samples fascinate me. They are accurate and ubiquitous, well at least in the category of restaurants I am looking into.
“Do not worry we will come to the restaurant soon” say Emi. It’s clearly her place, she loves the sights and speaks animatedly about this and that. We enjoy the chance to hone her speaking skills, she is enjoying herself as it must be difficult without the chance to bounce words off ears which are more attuned to precision pronunciation.
“This is a shop which only makes metal kitchen um …” she says struggling to find the collective word.
“Utensils?” I say “Would that be the word you are looking for?”
“Hai!” she replies and we both laugh.
The store front is more elaborate than many others, a skilfully lit window shows a fine array of knives, shredders and mesh scoops.
Along the left and right walls inside, hundreds of knives hung. Beautifully shiny, they could be silver, but they are steel of the highest quality. The sizes range from chopping knives, the size of hatchets down to the smallest spring knives, the blade curvature set to suit the user and the use to which the knife is put. Each one is handcrafted, the name of the shop and the maker chiseled into the blade on its thicker topside to the topside close to the handle.
We wander up and down examine the wall mountings, and look into the glassed in cabinet display in the centre of the shop. Laid out there are associated sharp things, all hand made. On the left wall, near the front, are tea strainers and metal canister tea caddies. They are in copper and give a sense of perfection when the outer lid is slid to close over the inner sleeve. The fit is exact. The squeezing together of lid and barrel compresses the trapped air, like an engine piston shoving into a cylinder. I can’t resist opening and closing the display caddies, the smaller and the larger ones. The larger one in copper with hand soldering evident on the inside rim of the lid, will be the perfect complement to my teapot.
Emi finds an assistant who finds a sister canister of the one displayed under the shelf and together we take it to the counter.
“Is this a gift?”I am asked in Japanese. Emi translates.
“Well it is for my self ,” I admit.
“What would you like written on the lid,” I am asked. Emi queries me.
“Kyoto would be lovely please Emi,” I tell her and she quickly writes the characters onto the pad which is offered, handing it to our assistant.
By now he is aproned, behind the counter, and has the canister unwrapped, shows us it is unblemished and places the lid over a steel mandrel, slightly smaller in size than the body of the canister. With the deftest touch using a four ounce hammer tapping a fine chisel he inscribes the kanji script for Kyoto onto the lid. It’s done in minutes. He lifts the chisel to see where to start the next character stroke, each stroke is fully formed without him able to see where he is chiseling. He twists the edge of the chisel to form the sweeping and straight lines, most impressive being the curvatures like the number 3 done in a singles sweep, fingers twisting the stamping chisel, the tip of the chisel controlled by skilled finger and wrist twists. It’s a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Without exaggeration, it’s awesome.

Nippon 21. Glass as Art

The upstairs room in which I have slept is accessed by a steep wooden flight of stairs. It’s a cross between a ladder and staircase. In the morning I stumble down in the freezing cold. Someone has been awake before me, the table is already laid with yet another little feast. It’s been decided we will walk in the city around the Gion, the geisha district, then the markets where we arrive in the weak mid morning light.
No geisha, no bars, all shuttered up readying for tonight’s action. Strangely for an area which is renowned for it’s nightlife, there is no garbage from a night’s revelry. A slow revving black Lamborghini slides out of a side lane.
“Yakuza, I whisper”
No answer, so I leave it like that. Maybe a successful merchant, and we stroll on. Stroll on to the banks of a canal, set between dressed granite blocks, a glimpse of old Kyoto. Geisha houses, tea houses, and residences all timber, with that Japanese history feeling in brown and browner, maybe some black. Three geisha walk before us, along the canal’s edge.
“Are they geisha?” I ask somewhat redundantly.
” Well they might be” Emi says.
“Might be, … Huh?” I respond, “How so, might be”
” Might not be geisha, might be dressed up as geisha” she replies.
And dressed up they are, obi, white socks, wooden sandals, hair piled up with decorative silver or gold, finely ornamented from above their ears, and bejewelled hairpieces. The trio turn, to the photographers with them who catch them posing and primping. But there’s something not quite right. The photographers seem to be part of the party rather than simply photographing some geisha they have caught out for a stroll. The geisha seem to move in a manner less elegant than I had imagined, is that possible?
“They are tourists” Emi whispers to me, ” They have come and been made up to look like geisha and to walk the streets for a little and have their pictures taken. The whole performance must have taken an age to set up, especially in make up and wardrobe. I am reminded of what happens at the Gold Coast. Newly wed or about to be wed, take the advantage of a few days off of work to come to Australia, to be decked out in full white bridal outfits and be photographed in settings especially designed as backdrops, the outsides of a church, local parks, or grounds of civic buildings, maybe even the sandy expanses of suntanning beaches.
The wanna be geisha sway away strolling down a narrow lane way to their next picture opportunity.
We stroll too. Up hills across slopes and into very minor streets. Away from the Gion district housing changes, it’s light retail, and amongst the shops, one stands out, a fine antiques store. In the window my eye is caught by some glassware, a single lampshade in fact. It has a toadstool brown gaze, almost black.
“Emi, let’s look in here” I say to her, and she scurries back from three shopfronts further down the road”
“Ok,” she says “What have you seen, that is a very expensive shop”
The proprietor speaks perfect English, and shows me another the piece similar to the one in the back of the front window, though this piece is taller and more slender, also in the very early art deco style. In fact this heavy ware is not exactly glass, more a cross between. Glass and pottery. It can be dated to an exact period from 1901 to 1914, the craftsmanship of one french a prodigious talent. This heavy glassware style was only made by him, reviving the parre terre technique, first accidentally discovered by the Egyptians, when fires lit on the ground vitrified the sand silica in certain circumstances. The revival was short lived, the art book volume the shop owner shows me has pictures of the smaller piece in the shop window, and a very similar version of the taller lamp shade. As casual as I can summon, I ask,
“How much is this one?” I say pointing at the taller piece in the shop.
He goes to his counter and looks up his register.
“That one is rare” he says, “I have not found another for sale in the world though a handful are known to exist from the records of the maker. It’s ¥1.5 million”
My head calculator takes the fifth zero off the end of the one point five million to come up with one hundred and fifty thousand. For ease of calculation I round down to one hundred and forty thousand. If I take an exchange rate of AUD 1 = ¥ 70 then seven goes in to one hundred and forty thousand. It goes in twenty thousand times actually. Twenty thousand dollars, Australian.
Emi was right, it was an expensive shop.

Nippon 20. Kyotonese family

Nippon 20. Kyotonese family.

We walk from the strret lights of the main road into the half light of lesser laneways. Past sleeping houses no sound, no wind, just our tentative conversation. The pack on my back makes difficult face to face conversation, I feel embarrassed to speak english more slowly, when I should be trying japanese. Not knowing where the paths lead I seek out landmarks in the dark, an off centered corner here, two lampposts close together, an electricity transformer perched precariously high on a landing. I am trying to make the trail of breadcrumbs of the fariytales in the event I should need to find my way back out.

With enthusiasm and coy embarrassment, Emi points to a house coming up on the right side of the next corner. It’s two story and from the angle we approach seems to be of the same size as the houses we pass. Then again how would I know.
“Welcome to our home, I am sorry it is so messy” she says as she pushes open the glass panelled timber framed front door. The door isn’t locked. I step into the veneered timbered vestibule, a step lower then the matted floor of the dwelling.
“Please let me take your pack” she says as I struggle with the hump on my back trying to lean down to undo my boots. I sway about like a pregnant camel.
“No, no I insist, ” I say none too convincingly. But she takes the pack anyway and drags it through the doorway just ahead and to the right. There is a strong smell of warmth flooding though the doorway, a tv to the left and a corner lounge propped across the space to make a separate living area from the dining table.
“This is my mother, ” says Emi.
I bow low in deference, she likewise, welcoming me to her home. Her face beams . She is very clearly proud of her daughter. From the kitchen, hidden way to my right Emi’s dad emerges. He is straight backed, with studious glasses framing a gauntish face, cheeks slightly sunken.
“Hello ” he says and bows, ” Welcome to our house, we are pleased you,….could come to… visit with us” he says in perfect though faltering English. He is ten years retired from a career teaching English at schools. English is compulsory for high school students. A lack of practice with native speakers has rusted his confidence, though his grammatical understanding is strong.
“You must be very tired” Emi says, and translates this for her parents. Her mother has already been fussing with food and a simple meal is laid out, rice, soup and some vegetables, possibly from their earlier dinner. It’s delicious and warming, the family gather round while I demonstrate my chopstick skills.
“You use chopsticks well”, the father says.
“Yes I learnt as a small child” I reply.
The parents withdraw and we are left alone. The warmth of the room though not rising has eased my aches.
“What would you like to do tomorrow,” Emi ask, “We have many famous temples and shrines around Kyoto”
My face screws up a a little and she smiles back.
“So not the temples then?” she guesses.
“Well unless I must, I would prefer not to, thanks”, and she laughs approvingly.
.”Well Kyoto is not just temples, let me think a little and we can go early in the morning.”
After leafing through my pics on iPad, she gets the idea, yes there ‘s a few temples but she picks up on the natural scenery, the built environment and the homeless people.
“Ok, she says, “We can walk around the Gion in the morning, and the market, we don’t have to see the temples”
“Well, I won’t be able to red what they are about, nor do I understand the symbolism, beautiful and all as they are” I say.
“Yes you are right and I am not so interested myself, I thought people coming here would want to see them all” she explains.
“Well maybe one if we stumble on it” I compromise and she laughs softly.
“Ok one then, but we won’t make a point of going there, I can explain on the way when we walk, ok?”
“Ok”
So it’s settled and we decide to be up early to make the most of the day
“If you want a bath , the water is still there, my family have all used it, but by morning it will be cold”
“Are you sure?” I say, “That would be lovely, thank you.”
“You are very welcome” she says.
It’s a phrase that I will here often over our time together.

Nippon 19. Meeting mine host

Nippon 19

The castle grounds close to the echo of the loud spoken female voice threatening the closure of the “Big Wooden Gate” of the Shogun’s palace
“Go to the gate you come in” she invokes. The small group in the souvenir shop wrestles finalizing purchases. I am in several minds at once. Not being able to photograph inside, the grandeur and majesty is not captured in the postcards I leaf through. Small replicas of the most stunning of the screen paintings are displayed, and to help the buyer they are helpfully labelled as only being available here. My purchases are made to the clatter of shutters rolling to the floor, press them safely into my day pack and am near to last through the low door let in the side of the main gate. I avoid a night with the Shogun.
A very crowded bus takes me to the safety of the station. The rush hours are in full cycle. Determined office workers make for their trains, certain of where they are headed. Some are diverted by the chance to win a prize in a lottery or wheel of chance which I stand watching for some time, unable to work out what the prizes are or how the tickets are purchased. I find later that the tokens redeemed are for shopping above a certain value which entitles the buyer to one or several chances. I try to work out what they are winning and why most everyone is happy with the outcome. Smiles, the first I have seen in public. I have several hours to kill, time to write and time to people watch. It’s cold in the station forecourt but the public eating area is provided with foot level heaters which I snuggle up to while drinking hot chocolate, comfort food against the uncertainty of whether I will meet with my host later in the night at 10 pm.
To be sure of being on time I leave early, arriving on the destination station an hour ahead of time, to wait in the waiting room way out in the suburbs. More writing, two trains come and go after the one I arrived on, to make the time close enough to ten o’clock. Upping my pack I head out into the comparative darkness of the streets. Dialling the number in the phone box, memories of the Nagoya phone box time come back. This time however there’s and answer in English.
“Hello, it’s David, is that Emi?”
“Yes it is Emi, are you at the station?” comes the reply.
“Yes, I have arrived I am in the phone box outside the station, I just arrived”
“Really” she says “I will be there quickly,”Are you in the phone box outside the station?”
“Yes, right outside the station, on the main road I think”
“Ok, I am here then” she says.
And as I turn away from the phone after hanging up to pick up my pack, there’s a lady standing behind me putting away her mobile.
“Are you David?” she says.
“And you are Emi?”
I think she has got out of the car which has been parked adjacent to the phone box as if waiting for a commuter to arrive.
“Yes” she says, ” I am Emi, you are much bigger than I thought you would be”
And she is much smaller than I thought she would be.
We chuckle in the light of the lamp post.
“So nice to meet you” we cross repeat.
She hasn’t come in a car. She has been waiting in the station entry possibly for as long as I have been writing in the waiting room on the platform above.

Nippon 18. The No Tea Ceremony

Nippon 18 The No tea ceremony

Crossing through the station from the Shinkansen tracks in the crowd, my pass VIP’s me through the wicket. Guide books can remark how some places should be seen, this is one of them. The entrance to the station soars above the forecourt, in a cavern of steel, glass and excitement. In one direction two even story towers are bisected by a cascade of stairs to the right side of which is an escalator rising seven stories. Seen from the skywalks at the tenth level looking down the the people ascending and descending are extras in a scene reminiscent of Kafka.
I wander around and up and down, past sculptural pieces to bring a sense of well being to the building. A plaque explains the design principles of the gate to Kyoto, the building fills the brief.
To save my back and maintain my energy, pack and all have been stuffed into a locker for the day, of maybe three hundred lockers I am lucky to have got one. My emailed instructions had given me line and station, which common sense told me me I should ensure I could find in this myriad of tracks later in the day. Ten pm is no time to be getting lost in a station.
I decide to take lunch in a little restaurant at the fourth level off the stairway. There’s an air of elegance. Five cubes of beef in a stewed broth and swirl of cream traced through the light chocolatey broth. A quartet of egg and ham sandwiches, no crust, a delicate bowl of yogurt top with a segment of mandarin and raspberry confit.
Eventually I find the bus to the temple, underground my sense of direction has gone haywire, worse I don’t trust my compass anymore blaming the steel in the con feet for it’s gyrations and my lack of ability to stay on any course I decide based on it’s swinging and swaying. The bus threads its way up oneway street. Anywhere beyond the main streets and avenues laid gridwise like Manhatten, the buildings are lower and interspersed with domestic houses and houses with shops as fronts. It’s seems to take ages, I am glad I have not hired a bike as was my intention. The terrain is flat, but there’s a lot of distance to cover, before the Niji castle is reached. That’s far enough for me. I’m outta here, off the bus and into the castle. Great choice.
As a centre of power and capital, Kyoto’s history is proud and decorative. Niji represents a large part of this. Kyoto’s temples and shrines (never found out what the difference was) slipped off my itinerary early. Pretty much one the same as the other, and a camera full of indistinguishable curved arch roofs, red and gold, lying,sitting,squatting Buddha’s and big fat ropes with single bell attached to shake and bring blessings wasn’t going to be my fate here.
In timber, from the fifteenth century, the nightingale floor under the wide wide enclosed verandah was meant to squeak as it was traversed to provoke warning of intruders. The sense of the Shogun’s audience rooms and the bra duet of the original paintings adorning the walls forced my reflection on other castle sites and power projections, for example the same period in Europe. The grounds delighted after circumnavigating the castle interior. This castle was lightly defended, a moat sufficing, clearly built in an era of peace. The Shogun’s dominance had been exerted militarily and this building received the vassal lords and supporters in style and elegance to cement the Shogun’s power.
A further ¥700 to enter a small reflective garden with a tea house at it’s head seemed an extravagance. The lady at the booth took my money, I wandered in.
Approaching the tea house the two open rooms faced out with separate views of the garden. The one directly ahead took a view of the low moss laden arched bridge and steam, to the right the path ended around the corner of the room taking in a rock garden with fine trees, possibly for contemplating springs blooms or autumns variegated foliage fall.
This room was large, maybe twenty four tatami, and from the right side a lady appeared, as if from nowhere, beckoning me to the far end of the room.
I wondered if my shoes need to come off.
Seems like no.
I went this way then that, neither direction seems to please her.
I tried for the far end of the verandah but it was blacked by a low bamboo screen. Seeming trapped I smile and bowed, offering
“I am sorry, I do not understand”
She backed away, slid the door silently and was gone.
Years earlier I had been to see a Noh performance, which to my then untrained eyes and ears was bouts of caterwauling interspersed with silence. There was noise here in the garden then less as i left the room.
What was that about?
I left the garden
No tea ceremony. I hadn’ t seen the tea cup and pot on the back of the sign as I entered.

Nippon 17. Kyoto Cafe at the Station

Nippon 17 Kyoto. Cafe at the Station

Beef stew and grapefruit juice ¥2000, no the juice is included, ¥1470. so sophisticated, the fourth floor of the JR Station, Kyoto. The architecture is outstanding, the seven floor escalator, the skyway at the tenth floor. Plans to bicycle around dashed, it’s taken me two hours to leave the station. I have a day bus pass now, two rides and it pays for itself.

Ham and egg sandwiches, no crust, five tender beef pieces in a broth swirled with a dash of cream, light salad of crisp shredded lettuce, tomato over the inevitable cabbage, a side of natural yogurt topped with a single segment of mandarin a dollop of strawberry confit for colour and sweetness to offset yogurt tartness.

There’s an air of sophistication about the ladies lunching, no one talks quietly, animation, coughing, and flip phones at the ready. No fat ladies here. No singing or Muzak. Cigarette smoke fills the air from the gent two tables over, I realize I am not in Oz. I join him for the experience.

Other experiences are noticeably different. Shop assistants take great pride and courtesy in service. Kids of all ages are well behaved, parents are aware of allowing freedom within the unspoken rules. There is no graffiti. Public conveniences are spotless, and do not smell. Trains run on time to the minute, I’ve twice corrected my watch to match the station clocks. No one pushes or shoves. There are exceptions.

“Do you think we should call the police?” the receptionist said to me as she entered Hana Hotel this morning.

Busy putting on my boots I hadn’t notice the bundle outside the sliding glass door was in a man. I figured it was a garbage bag blown about by the ripping wind tearing at the trees.
I looked up, feigning lack of knowledge, as she gave a glance back over her left shoulder at the man. He was now apparently kowtowing to the door, he had appeared to beg of her as she entered. She said nothing to him, and had waited for the automatic door to silently close behind her before dressing me. I suspect that she had done so out of the embarrassment this unkempt gentleman might bring on the house.
“Drunk, too much drink” she muttered without judgement. He had rolled over by now and lay prone in at the foot of the sloping gutter. Then stangered to get up. By the time I have fought the lacing on my boots into a bow, drawing the unwilling laces onto their clasps he was in a warm embrace with a small potted cyprus tree to the left of the door. His face was embedded in it’s foliage as if he was drawing strength from it’s piney prickles, I slid the door open exiting stage right.

Nippon 16. Hiroshima Zoom Zoom

Nippon 16 Hiroshima. ZoomZoom

Toyota City is somewhere else, out of Nagoya I think. The guide book said that Mazda’s Hiroshima plant has free tours, but must be booked. I down my noodles and ask the receptionist how far.
“Oh two stations away, I will call them for you.”
I have just enough time to make the trip and rush headlong up the lane way which hides the station from the main road, and there it is, Mazda’s head office, opposite Mazda hospital on my side of the street.
The showroom is all glitz, the receptionists all smiles, the tour guide too. Spotless white uniforms, impeccable English and I am the only person for the English 90 minute tour. She conducts the tour as if there were forty people.
Showrooms of Mazda history, proud moments in it’s corporate development. It’s clear that a devotion to heavy engineering and doing things really well is what this manufacturer is all about. The plant extends for seven kilometers down the bank of a river, and where it crosses close to the river mouth there’s a large freeway type bright to carry the private road over to the power plant, and assembly line. Several models are made at once on the same line, a testament to kanban, JIT, and all those catchy buzz words rarely understood in the west, and worse mostly poorly applied. Watching the workers on the line there’s no FM 10 something blaring, no talking apart from when needed to do work. For a car to be completed in fourteen hours from go to whoa takes a monumental effort of organization. Four thousand cars a day made, four fire stations on site, fourth thousand workers, and cars stored in car arks that resemble shopping centers before shipping from Mazda’s own port to regional Japan and overseas. The workers are part of the machine producing the cars. We see video but not the actual robot welding. There’s a distinct green focus.
I leave the line two hours later, grateful for the opportunity.

Nippon 15. Miyajima the Sacred Island

Nippon 15 Hiroshima Miyajima. A Sacred Island

The JR ferry scoots across the bay turning to port and slowing three hundred meters from the Shinto water gateway, O-toni.
Deers lazily stroll the concourse leading away from the station. Shops are opening, food heats, buns steam. I buy two. Itsukushima Shrine sits in the mud flats shoreside of the O-Toni gate, I’ll see it later.
The walkway rises to the base of the ropeway. The cable car rises in two sections, the first steeply over a primal pine forest, world heritage protected. Behind recedes the little village or the O- toni shrine, the temperature drops to zero. Down in the village a Morris estate wagon hides, in the land of Toyota and Mazda, up on blocks. The mountain has so many worshipping places, the fire that’s been burning since 12?? Is enshrined. I say a prayer there, there’s no fire brigade close by. It’s freezing higher up, chill wind to -10 at least, too cold to take pictures, too cold to appreciate the view.
It’s very quiet, few folk venture here where high heels won’t tread easily, the pathway down is lonesome, two kilometres straight down, frozen waterfalls, way below the O-toni beckons. It sits waiting for the high tide to float on the water, snow drives from the west where the sun below the darkened ranges as night falls.
I alight at Nishi Hiroshima and find that does not mean near enough to Hiroshima. Shit! I wait fifteen minutes and get off where there are the brighter lights I take for Hiroshima. Wrong, its Yokogawa, I find as I trudge several freezing k’s into town. It’s miserable but striding fast I feel comforted by the road signs saying Hiroshima Sta, hoping it’s the station and not a sta-dium.
When I see the lights of where I ate the night before my stride slackens, I find food and collapse in bed.

Nippon 14 Hiroshima the Art Gallery

Nippon 14 – Hiroshima the Art gallery

The cold forces me to stop, and after asking where to park my bike the stoic attendant standing outside the entrance, muffled up against the cold, bows me into the lobby. It’s warm, inviting and ultra modern. An escalator whisks me to the second floor, the modernity of the exhibits astounding. I am spell bound before the Picasso triptych. I examine it closely, noting the ants crawling up the melted clock face at the ten and three positions. My mantle piece kitsch back home lacks these details. I carefully note the direction of the ants to draw onto my replica. The attendant eyes me warily, I nod and bow to indicate I mean no harm.
The wood bowls, lacquer ware, glass, metal wares, are superb, spaciously displayed and stunning. On the floor above traditional handicrafts, the most spectacular of which a pavilion of kimonos, each deserving rapt individual attention. They are arrayed vertically on supports, sleeves outstretched to maximize the drama of the fabrics. Some silks, some so delicate they are sheer, with dying and patterning in every hue in the rainbow. Tapestry, hairpieces and other feminine ornamentation lie in open display in an extensive tableaux in the centre of the room, protected only by a waist high glass surround. Wow.

Nippon 13. The Castle – Hiroshima mon?

I cycle into the castle compound after reading on the stainless steel plaque this is a total reconstruction after THAT terrible day. Two sides, the main portal and south arm. The south gallery exhibits are of castle fortification and historical development. From the severely defensible position on ridges in the warring years to the flatter lowland structures in the Edo period of peace. In spite of no English explanation it’s clear how the forms followed function.
I cycle through the grounds of the most interior walled section of the castle. These grounds surrounded by the inner moat and containing buildings of significance. A second defensive wall is subsumed by the city, the outer defensive perimeter being the river which bisects itself around the island.
At about 2 kilometers from the atomic blast hypo-centre there are two trees which continue to live, a holly bearing red berries in bloom, and, and a eucalyptus.
“Well I’ll be” I think to myself, wondering at the same time who am I going to tell this too.
“Bugger, this is amazing” I repeat over and over to myself,”What to do?”

At the reconstructed castle tower there’s another fee to be paid. Walking in it’s a mite disappointing. But the floor above and above, but not the fourth (it’s closed for a new exhibition) are simply amazing. The floor above is an observation deck, a coffee with trinket souvenirs, a chance to see the city, rimmed by mountains, nature providing eons ago the natural bowl into which nuclear devastation could be stirred.

The answer to “what to do,”comes to me as I descend
“Souvenir” thats it.

On the lowest floor theres an opportunity to dress as a samurai. The helmet, the armour jacket and the armour. Setting up the camera for timer shots I try the helmet, then add the jacket, then the armour. Full metal jacket? Walking past folk are bemused, the sign clearly says photos ok, and the table on which the garments are laid out on clearly says “Free “
As I walk away movie themes echo, I smirk to myself, there’s no one else to smirk to.
The movie ” the Seven Samurai” comes to mind, but the pic review in my camera tells me I just haven’t achieved that fearsome look. What about “Hiroshima mon armour” ( what an awful play on words! )

Back on my bike i ride to the holly tree and slide in behind it. Two sweepers are racking leaves between the concrete footings of the the Imperial Army Headquarters during the Sino Japanese wars of the nineteenth century. Above these foundations an emperor once resided. In this town at that time rebellion broke out in anger at the emperor taking his capital from Hiroshima to Tokyo. The sweepers seem to know this, they sweep with reverence.

When they sweep away from the breeze their backs are turned to me. Reaching up I snap a twig four or five leaves and a bunch of berries. This tree has been nucleated. I look at it’s bark. Is it still radioactive? Will it have an effect on me? Another tree did. A tree in similar quiet surrounds, had an affect on me. The tree at Choeung Ek, in the killing fields. Against this tree trunk babies heads were smashed.

The eucalyptus is very different, gnarled in the way hardy mountain gums are, but here unexpected. We identify them as an Ozzie icon but they are native elsewhere. But Japan? This will be harder, I shuffle around under it’s canopy, before deciding a single dried leaf will suffice. Already I have quarantine in mind and how to ensure there most precious objects find their way home with me. This will require some thought.

Nippon 12. The Bomb

Bicycling quickly in the mid morning cold, I arrive at the midway point of the island on which the peace memorials sit. Though slightly disoriented, it’s clear this is the place intended. It’s a park in which I can sense the crowds of more favourable weather, tourists thronging, reflections on war and THAT day. I see none of these, in ninety minutes maybe three identifiably tourists, me making the fourth.

At the peace bell I spend sometime trying to figure why my video won’t record my resounding chime for world peace. While inspecting the thrusting beam I see that the striking anvil is flat and slightly raised from the bell curvature. On it’s face is a representation of the uranium atom nucleus orbited by its electrons. The striker peels out it’s message while smashes the atom.

The guys asleep on the benches along the central pathway must be sick to death of the calls for peace, especially at this time of the morning. They are huddled up in everything they can find, newspapers, cardboard, and plastic. I guess in summer and in the autumn time on THAT day anniversary the prefecture officials make sure they aren’t there. They are now though. My host of a few days ago, Buru the dog’s master, had told me about a large hospital like building we had passed.
“It’s an old people’s hospital” he had replied to my query.
I looked surprised, it was six stories high and as large as a metropolitan hospital back home.
“We have several of these here” he continued, “There are many old people to be looked after”
“Is this a government or privately run place?” I asked, my mind guessing government.
“Its private” he replied, and though I had seen some old folk being helped by their relatives into cars or supporting them while walking, for the most part old folk walk alone, and for these park people sleep alone and cold.

I cycle fast past them towards the memorial to those who died. I mimic the folk who shape their hands in prayer, then bow, and bow in front of this hallowed place. I chose not to see the museum, the descriptions in the guide books and pamphlets are enough for me. Avoiding the central avenue, the dome is on the right bank of the river as I ride away.

The atomic dome is shrouded in scaffolding. I take pics from as many angles as will exclude the background skyscrapers, then later discard most. Why is a ruin is being repaired, well at least being brought back to it’s state immediately following those deathly seconds?

Nippon Halfway point observations

No smiling

There’s a distinct lack of smiling. Without language I try smiling to be understood, but there’s an appreciable smiling deficit here. I have looked all around the faces, all different and Japanese, though some must be Korean for there’s much written korean here. One in ten who died at Hiroshima on THAT day were slave Korean labourers.
Then again folk speak Japanese at me as if I am a local, d’oh!

No Lycra and the dismount

Lots and lots of bicycles, I hired one, and it was in those special moments of the dismount that I realized that things were different. Yes the footpaths are wide enough to ride on and that’s encouraged. No sane person rides on the narrow roads.
I have dismounted in many spots, parks sidewalks, station entries, bike parking racks, in snow and gusty winds. But when I have looked around no man gets his leg over, they are all step throughers. After nearly a week here I have conformed, it’s the way here, no one wants to stand out.
But it took longer to notice the loss of Lycra. This was not a Greecian Battle. Whereas the humble bicycle has become as expensive as a small car back home, all bicycles here are just about the same, wide handle barred, sensible commuter models. No carbon fibre, light weight zoomy machines designed to show off Gluteus Maximus in Lycra. ( reminds me of the Roman General played by Russell Crowe I think)
No no, there is no Lycra and for that matter mountain bikes,although with such rugged terrain they could use them here,
Nevertheless I think the country is so much the better for it.

No appreciation

I see the atomic dome. It’s scaffolded. Scaffolded? Why repair a ruin, I am not appreciating something, though I offer a prayer at the monument where the names of all the victims, about 200000 are recorded in a sarcophagus.

Nagoya. Shopping

Emails are sent, pancakes downed, that pack so heavy.
Wandering back to the ryokan in the milky morning low angled sunshine, last night’s corner flower shop looks renewed. It’s $7 mandarins look tempting, especially to bowels which haven’t seen a fruit in a week. Last fruits I recall was a kilo of cherries for $5.99 from good old Fresco. Here, when in season, ¥490 for six cherries (AUD 6) might be the price, and each individually wrapped, so far I can’t recall seeing a naked anything, well maybe not quite everything, those ladies and gentlemen in the mags at the entrance to the Internet cafe were all smiling, I was shocked!

The chill air of the morning had brightened me right up. A waxed lidded Florida Paramount oranges box to the left of the flower shop entrance caught my eye. Sliding round the corner I eyed it off, it was clean though holed for orange breathing,
“Why not just nick it?” I thought.
But I picked it up and entered through the spotless centre opening glass doors.
“Arri..something or other, saga…more words not understood, hosaku … Less understood said faster, namen Sakai …. And so on with a bow to finish”
I offer the box forward, point at me, then make the “speed bonny boats like a bird on the wing over the sea to Skye” motions I’d learnt in primary school. It’s a wavy motion so that the box appears to float whilst rocking on waves towards the door, I smile all the while.
An amazing mime performance, for which I am awarded a smile from the owner and a grin from his toothy assistant, more likely his wife, his open hands pointing to four and eight with slight upward lifts to indicate.
“Please take with our gratitude, thank you”
I back out, soft smiling my way into the street, and take my prize to the ryokan.
Earlier I’d tried the shoe man. Eying off stacks of empty cardboard boxes outside his corner shop I asked with the same gestures as at the florist later for a box, please
“Nameste”
He said this with his back half turning from me, Addidas written on his jersey.
Using more words like
“Excuse, me may I have an empty boxo?”
He turned to me repeating for my benefit
“namaste”,
this time with facial expression. I finally got it, and learnt my first japanese word
“No”
He has risen from his squat and makes the five and seven hand semaphore signal, with the push away motion.
“Arriegato” I say not wanting the police called.
Though this means thank you or so I thought, he then uses the well known two ten signal with arms opening forward combined with multiple finger flicks.
I take take this to mean,
“Go! Leave! Piss off!
I do, shooed by the shoeman.

4.4 kg of things fit in nicely into the Florida box, so a quick trip to the Family Centre convenience finds tape and a marking pen.
At the PO the service is a delight tho not in English, the box is despatched simply, after many forms, the counter lady chases me down the street to give me a small cellophane bag of nuts, for what I take to be an award for the first person to send a box of personal effects to Australia from her post office.

Down town I wander towards the spiral tower, the shape reminiscent of the top peak of a soft serve ice cream. Food who mentioned food! I descend into the bowels of the subway where Nagoyians live, acres of food, the shops would shame the most upmarket in Oz. I’m marvelling, a new level of sensation multiplied by something. Can’t work out the multiplier for senses taken to another level is yet. But it’s all too much , everything is so perfect and still the buyers prod poke and inspect, when any of whatever is stacked before them is perfect. Heading for the underground exit into the subway, I thought I knew how to get a day pass for the subway trains. No matter how many times I pushed the English explanation button I was no clearer than had I read poor instructions to make a video recorder work. Maybe I go see someone, the stationmaster? There’s no information booths and all the literature and machine signage is kanji. I go back to the machine and stand watching but all that happens is folk getting regular thickets or adding value to their cards .
I try to ask a man and two women, but they are rushing, and I am ticket less. I slip aside the silver metal disc cover of what looks like an alarm switch and press the enclosed button. All hell breaks loose, the screen shows a very very red sign flashing and some sort of alarm starts to ring from the back of the machine. I think I have set off the fire alarm. Shit! From the office behind a ticket inspector appears , pushes his head around to see the problem on the screen face, then indicates
“What fare type”
A minute later I possess the prized day ticket, savings after two trips for the day. Simply not having to buy another for the day is worth a few bucks!
I ride the lines to Komehyo, then get totally lost walking 90 degrees and a kilometre from where I was meant to go. And this with a compass, or thank god for it.
The streets are so different, a rag trade area and street after street of department stores. In an up market store the sixth floor is given over to sale by weight. ¥1 or 2 or 3 or 4 per gram. What a way to go. 1.4 kg heavier I have managed to net my pack by three kilograms at about AUD 30, the likes of which would have been AUD 150+, though the irony isn’t lost.

Nagoya remembered

Nagoya remembered

Into the night I find a ramen noodle place I think it’s the one in the lonely planet guide its up enough lanes and it seems to be a block beyond the Design Centre which was where it’s should have been when I located it.
The noodles look sumptuous, swimming in a hearty broth young green spring onions drifting between pork strips and a little tofu. The reality in the store is better when the aroma floats out to meet me as I open the door.
The menu is extensive, yum! I look and look. Wow what a choice and point at a picture, but my finger slipped and I got a bowl of rice and meat.
The darkness envelopes me I walk north and turn onto a busy main road striking out into the chill for the Oasis 21, the futuristic landmark bus station. When I get there it’s beyond belief. Sitting over the forecourt of the terminal is an ovoid glass pool floating the air
I walk up and onto the periphery of the pool, on a glass walk way. There’s a fine breeze slicing into my face, rouging my cheeks and stinging the bare legged beauties here with their beaus. We promenade left from the entry, the allemande right to the view. My fingers freeze setting up for the shots, but having taken the time, I have some memories digitized to bring the moment back to life, maybe even a video of the ripples across the water.
Walking back to the subway I realize that the salary men who allegedly work all these hours, have spent probably six or seven till after eleven carousing. I see some of the giddy lurching of inebriation on the trip back to the ryokan. Wonder how they are doing to arise at five am to go again?

Heimiji Castle

The homeless man I saw yesterday isn’t in fact homeless. He has an address. It’s Exit one, Kuramasui, S01, Suko-dori line, Nagoya. I know that, cos he kinda welcomes me to his place in the morning half light where he is lurking at the base of the stairway in exit one. We look at each other furtively, he has spotted me and we know that we know each other.

Made of sterner stuff I try to get a pic with him in the side background but settle for a shot of the subway exit maps so that I will have his address. Almost as good as an email address which I suspect he doesn’t have.

Shinkasen, speeds south west, most are sleeping and those who aren’t are playing with themselves, on their iWhatevers. Might be commuting or maybe a day or two at a regional office, or travelling sales folk, much like the suited folk who inhabit the Melbourne Sydney air corridor.

The castle city railway station for Himeji slides into view. Soon I am jamming the pack into a coin locker, and then walk right past the information information office. It’s worth finding though cos there are free bikes to ride all day, and the cutest six inch wide rubberised conveyor belt escalator running up the side of the stairway into the underground parking station. By applying the bike brake on the upward journey the bike is carried up the rubber path. So so damn smart, make it easy folk will use it. Starting to sound like one of those clowns on Top Gear here.

Heimiji castle is a real. Not bombed in the war in which apparently there was no protagonist some seventy years ago, the rest of the place was sent to smithereens. There’s a surprising lack of much to do with that time, especially when considering that the majority of the built environment I am seeing is barely seventy years old. Maybe that’s why there are only japanese tourists and I could safely say that in five days to date I have seen maybe three gajin ( foreigners ) of the non Asian type. There have been more ladies in traditional kimono, five.

Hemiji castle main tower is cloaked in an enclosed scaffolding, a masterpiece in it’s own right, echoing the camouflage netting draped over it to make it less visible to night bombers. They say it was miraculously saved. I guess more prosaically it wasn’t worth wasting bombs on when Gemini was a major industrial fabrication centre for the war effort. It’s a miracle wrapped around the bleeding obvious.
As I can’t go inside the castle, it’s exterior suffices, this world heritage site is very different to the forests and stuff which are listed in Oz. Something to think on I suspect, later.

Hemiji castle, the long corridor 300 meters long, home for a time of a princess, with a cosmetic and vanity tower, a projecting corner turret facing the low green hill on which her child and husband were buried some five kilometres distant.

Inside also proof of the Japanese contribution to the early history of cricket. There are some highly decorated bats on display. Being shorter than the British these are smaller in size, about the size of a rounders bat, but clearly cricket bats. I had sensed a clue to this historical fact when in the subways I had seen central, east and west wickets. A shelfful use of the word to indicate a barrier to in or egress. With so many wickets I figured there must be a bat, clearly balls and now for the search for bails.

Nevertheless, the convex outer roof of the corridor shows close up the finished result of of the skilful application of three layers of differently formulated plaster. Thirty years making plaster, leaves me in awe of how little I know. Up close the effect on the dark concave roof tiles is to make them look like a chocolate log cut ready to eat. From afar, it’s different. This could easily be winter snow laid heavily in regular stripes, it’s devastatingly beautiful.

The hobartchinaman goes Nippon (4-8)

Nippon 5

Buru and Breakfast
Swirling away from the wake of the speeding truck soft snow billows in drifts across the intersection. Buru sniffs the air, cold in our nostrils, the chill has squeezed the life from the grass and trees. Yoshiro and I walk the route we walked before and tomorrow he and Buru will walk again. By then I will be somewhere else, where I am not sure, but Buru and I know that at seven he will be facing the cold and padding through the snow again.

Breakfast teaches me how to eat and egg. Lightly fried the white not all set, chopsticks separate white from the yolk piece by tasty morsel. When the yolk is exposed scoop it onto the chopsticks and eat whole, I’d never noticed that a yolk, free range or caged is a simple mouthful.

For liquids, the slurp. Taught to not do so, years of training are sacrificed culturally and I get into the swing. I will only feel comfortable when I don’t feel conscious about doing it. The slurp slurp echoes in my cup, I draw more air over the top of the tea, rewarded by the slurp swish which allows the over inhalation of air which signifies the gratitude. Modesty prevents me raising my eyes to check if I am doing this correctly and embarrassment prevents me from checking to see how it’s really done.

Nippon 6
Nippon 6 – I’m so glad to be here.

Everything went so well. The connection in the city to shin Kobe, the shikasen to Nagoya. Wow, arrived by noon having left at 10am. Walked the streets all seemingly empty until later I discover folk are mostly under ground out of the cold in subways. Car parking in vertical towers, old buildings juxtaposed with new and very modern architecture. Making the bus is an intrigue, no terminal 7 after 1,2,3,4,5,6 just a street corner on the end. Drats, the information lady had been most helpful, so what had I misheard. 10 minutes later I find the missing terminal hidden away on the far side of the apron.
Ishawakbi is where I am going, the driver seems to know, I try to help him understand to put me off there. The 20 minutes I have been told the journey might take passes rapidly. I can’t sit properly cos I’m trying to get off all the time. Then I see the next stop showing on an indicator in kanji then in English, thank god, for I have the luxury of getting ready before the stop and brace myself for the cold, it’s 2.
She said to ring, but without a mobile a public phone is all I can hope for. Trying the chemist opposite I am given a good approximation of where the address I offer is. I try to memorize the number of streets west and cross streets, heading off boldly. There are no street signs and those there are written in kanji, no house numbers, lots of Lexuses, and high range vehicles in the street I determine to be the one the chemist showed me.
I round the block heading back to the main road. There on the corner is an ad in English for Changmai’s English school. I wonder. A glassed in shed cum garage at the front is full of toys and bric a brac. To the left of the garage is a traditional gate, with a low door to it’s right side. Though the garage is carless I reckon it’s worth a try, how lucky is this to find the lady’s name on a sign.
Knock knock on the door, tho a very traditional house the door is western. Much toing and froing indoors gives way to a twenty something guy opening the door, his gran standing well back. I present my sheet, then realize whilst I can read the Japanese romanised words, he can’t make head or tail of it. Much as we try neither of us can help each other understand, though when I show him changmai on the outside worn he recognizes it in the paper. Pointing at what I think is the school building abutting the road, he is adamant that it’s not them. I gesture at the surrounding houses supposing the teacher doesn’t live here but nearby, to no avail.
We part, I realize that I am close but not close enough.
At the phone box, I call with then without what I think is the country prefix code then it strikes me it’s probably a mobile. Over the next two hours I sit in the phone box out of the cold, watching lamhorgines, BMWs, and porsches tear up the road, I am in the right part of town. Plan b needed here as my boots chill from the air sweeping through the bottom of the glass phone box I make a last call to tell my lost host that I am heading for the bus stop, back to the station then the train to down town.
I take the subway, under the avenue I walked earlier in the afternoon. There had seemed to be few people on the street, of the few seen I most noticed the homeless, shoeless, unshaven, unkempt, uneverything man sitting in front of a closed gaudily adorned lottery booth with posters of every hue, at subway exit 1.The subway exit I rise from this time is one, there is no man, there’s no sun , there’s street lighting, I wonder where he has found to sleep.
I walk along the near deserted road, it’s wide four lanes each way with an expressway overhead carrying unseen unheard traffic quickly to somewhere. I peer into each doorway hoping for the english sign there’s supposed to be out front. There is and I knock.
” Do you have room for one please” I ask.
The host beckons me in through a narrow bar/ restaurant, just closed.
At the door to the back area shoes off, then carried and into a narrow passageway, my pack banging the walls.
He moves two steps ahead then beckons me past cupboard doors to the left. He motions that I should open the door behind me I just passed. He has already opened the one ahead off me.
Half expecting to be shoved into some Japanese cupboard dungeon in which the futon torture is administered I stumble headlong and shoeless into a deep passageway the width of a broom closet. To the right are closed cupboard like doors, and to the left I can see through two open sliding doors the flurry of futon and blankets being stacked on the tatami. It’s a double room, twelve mats size, a big tv, and a low metallic gas/electric heater. Much bowing and welcome, before a withdrawal, and I’m alone, shoes in hand and so glad to be here.

Nippon 7

Nagoya diner, night diner, wet wet wet.

A little restaurant down a street all closed to traffic, theres a few bars open, gingerly I open the door. The food samples in the window look like battered prawns and beef ¥720, I point to the ¥720 and the lady points to 210, 160, 130 I guess it’s the serving size, I go for 210 hope it’s large and wonder what I am going to get that’s large. Gotta eat somehow, I am famished. It’s freezing outside and warm in here. A cup of green tea settles me, and then more folk arrive. Though it seems deserted on the street peering through some of the doorways there are carousing couples and groups eating laughing, out for a sunday dinner.
A prawn, two battered fried golden egg like objects, all sit atop shredded cabbage but the prawn is mounted on several macaroni pieces with a side of mayo, not bad for the price, the 210 being for a large plate of rice. It tastes delicious, I scoff it fast, can’t understand the samurai film on the tv which has everyone else entranced. Their dishes cool as the watch, while I eat mine to the last grain before they take even several mouthfuls. It’s gone twenty minutes, time to write about what I have seen, and try a bar down the road for a sappora beer or something. Feels like I have passed a barrier and taken the plunge, intending not to eat anything western while I am here, let’s see how this goes!
The streets here are bare, the convenience stores are open neon blazing onto the darkened streets. I wander through the back streets not scared a little wary, find a post office, could be useful, but not much else. The night impression is important for orientation. Freed of extraneous influences sighs that can’t be read all that imbeds is the shape an size, and openings between buildings where the sky, though inky dark is visible.
On the main drag there are some restaurants, which all seem to be open to the wee small hours. Why wee small hours? Is that a bladder reference from a night’s drinking? One tho has a wonderful wee sign wee fi available here, and the place is open 24 hours and serves pancakes! That’s breakfast then decided as I trudge back.
I tip out the tatami, doing bows to the doors as I slide them open then shut to get in practice in case a host comes.
The shower room is communal, and when I arrived I was told I could use it anytime, anytime. I read somewhere where showering to be clean then int the hot tub, and there’s the hot tub with silver facing down on a blue backing flaring on the water, the bath deep enough to drown three people, it’s a monster, and the room steams.
I shower and soap and shower again incase I am not clean enough then for good measure soap and shower again. The bath is so so relaxing and I’d boil a lobster in it if I had one, but failing a lobster I broil myself till my finger tips go all baby wrinkled after the old man wrinkles puff up then ease into softness.
No one communes in the bath room area, a slight disappointment if the truth be known, so I sleep like a top without the need for that sappora beer.

Nippon 8

Nagoya, such a beautiful whoosh.

Its a little later than I intended but I get the pancakes, quite fluffy, but ne’er as good as made by an american woman. Internet is free and so is wifi, did I think that was wee fi last night? Damn!
I boot up iPad but have to wait for connection, there is no password, it’s straight on, the emails fly in, shame they are from someone else’s account and i am sending from her account too, seems I’ve been spammed. Shit!
So I send a few apologies, a few attempts at sending out jottings to folk, but as one comments such an impersonal way it do. Such an impersonal way to remark about it too, “But as one comments”. So I reckon outpourings of the theHobartChinaman should launch again after the little guy has had a yuletide rest.
Pressing the send button, the iPad warms up sending one, sending two, sending three, then whoosh …whoosh …whoosh the audio hisses as they are launched, what a wondrous sound.