All Posts from the Daily life Category
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First week of the hols
It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog and I do apologise… but it’s because we’ve been having altogether Too Much Fun.
Since I last wrote just after Christmas, we’ve had three days of skiing, been to visit friends in Okayama, had our first Japanese multiplex experience, sailed into the New Year, caught some Art down at Hiroshima followed by the New Year sales, and celebrated Eleni’s birthday.
So now let’s go through each of these in turn.
On New Year’s Eve I finally worked up the courage to go on a day trip to test out one of the many ski slopes in the mountains out the back of Hiroshima. The reason why it required courage is that my only accident in Japan was when I slipped on snow in a hire car about 15 years ago, and the thought of driving on snow has haunted me ever since. Not to mention the trouble we had with our Hulking Great Volvo driving on snow in Italy, including one celebrated incident where the car nearly took both our children over a cliff.
As luck would have it, Japan has been having massive snowfalls this year which is great for the ski season but (and here I’m going to sound ungrateful) there’s almost too much of the white stuff around. As we neared the ski field there was snow all over the place and the freeway was down to one lane and I was starting to get that sinking feeling of “uh-oh, maybe I should have fitted the chains back there,” especially when it came to the narrow steep winding local roads where it was all but impossible to see the road surface. I’m happy to report that we reached our destination without incident, though the steering wheel still bears the imprints of the last half-hour of white-knuckled driving. The winter tyres kindly fitted by our friends up at the car yard worked well on the snow without need for annoying chains. And the wonderfully named Megahira Ski Resort turned out to be barely two hours away, putting it well within range for future day trips.
So I consider myself a veteran snow terrain driver now, and consequently the next trip up to the snow was far less terrifying. This time the kids and I (Eleni having retired hurt for the season) stayed overnight and the theory was that we were going to ski for two days, although our trip was tragically cut short when, on the morning of the second day, Ruby was hit on the back of the head by the ski lift and had to be escorted down the mountain by the Ski Patrol dude. Then, just as I was attending to her in the First Aid room, I see the snowmobile roaring past and who should be sitting primly on the back seat? It seems that young Felix had managed to poke himself sharply in the leg after crashing over on a ski jump, having forgotten that he was only a beginner. I suspect it was an unconscious act of one-upmanship, but I have to admit he certainly got his money’s worth from the lift ticket. And with that, our two-day skiing adventure was over.
Next, we headed off to Okayama to visit longstanding friend Yumi and her two daughters. Ruby got to do Print Club stickers with Chisato and we discovered that the machines automatically detect the eyes and then make them wider and darker, because apparently Japanese girls all hanker for big Western eyes. Just have a look at these photos:
Creepy isn’t it? Ruby of course already has big Western eyes, so the automatic eye widener makes her look like a frog, the poor thing. What with the fake eyelashes and a mascara surround, the original face becomes almost unrecognisable. And if you look at Chisato on the left in the last photo, you can see that the machine has “fixed” one of her eyes but not the other, which is doubly creepy.
But it was all in good fun and the tiny little photos were duly cut out and stuck in the regulation album and downloaded to their mobile phones. The entire Okayama visit lasted barely 24 hours, but it’s funny how you get used to short, sharp holiday events in this country. Nobody’s got the time for a leisurely break so you have to be quick about having fun. When in Japan, holiday like the locals do.
We also trooped over to a truly enormous multiplex cinema and amusement complex in Fukuyama to catch the latest Harry Potter movie. It turns out that with the really big movies you can choose between the dubbed version and the subtitles, since many Japanese prefer to hear the original actors rather than the same old dubbed voices in every movie. Which is great for English speakers like us, because we can just ignore the subtitles on the bottom. I chose not to see HP, having reached my limit after about the first two, but in retrospect I wish I had because the only other movie on at the same time was the absurdly silly Robin Hood starring possibly my least favourite actor Russell Crowe.
After all that excitement, New Year’s Eve itself was something of a letdown. Though I normally avoid NYE celebrations on principle, I’d been looking forward to spending 31 Dec in Japan, with all the cultural trappings such as the late night temple visit and the special once-a-year meal of soba noodles. And I’d been fully expecting one of our new cohort of local friends to invite us to a suitably culturally enriching event. Sadly, we didn’t get any such invitation, and in the end, having been out all day skiing, and seeing as I’ve been feeling pretty apathetic of late, I couldn’t really be bothered. Plus there was a particularly interesting show on the television, which was such a surprise in itself that I found myself rooted to the couch.
Finally, Eleni’s birthday found us down in Hiroshima checking out an exhibition of Polish masterpieces, which I’d been looking forward to for months due to my deep and abiding respect for the Yartz. Of course that’s not true; we’d been given tickets by our eccentric neighbour Mrs. Hara and felt morally obliged to pop our heads in case she asked us pointed questions about the paintings. After a good half an hour or so of Appreciating Art we headed out of the exhibition and straight for the department stores, where Eleni was delighted to discover massive sales in full swing. In the evening we headed back home to test drive a new Italian restaurant that’s just opened here in downtown Mihara. And lo, they served pizza and pasta and it was Good.
So it’s been an action-packed holiday season thus far, and we’re still only half-way through. Next week we are off to snowy Akita prefecture to visit our friend Eku, so stay tuned for further breathless updates.
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Christmas wrap
Well that’s another Christmas out of the way. At least now it’s safe to go back into the department stores again, which is always nice.
First there was the opening of the presents in bed. (This photo was taken with Ruby’s present. You guessed it: a camera.)
There followed a frenzied session of cooking by mummy and daddy while the kids played with their loot. Ruby went and shot video clips of herself singing and dancing, while Felix did his best to destroy his new lego creations.
The end result: a traditional roast Christmas dinner but this time it’s actually cold weather outside for a change. Eleni had cleverly prepared a Christmas pudding weeks earlier so we got to have that too with brandy butter and everything. A friend had thoughtfully mailed us four Christmas crackers from Australia several months back. They’d been waiting all that time on top of the cupboard just for this moment. Oh the fun we had.
Then we all got dressed up in beanies coats scarves and gloves and went for a bracing walk along the beach. Felix wanted to take his ball. Against my better judgement I said yes. Against my better judgement I tried to play kick to kick with him. The result?
Click here to find out.
That afternoon I went out and bought him a new ball.
Despite the ball fiasco Felix declared Christmas 2011 to be “one of the best” while Ruby was well pleased with her haul and Eleni and I thought we did a good job of the Christmas meal.
Meanwhile, 2011 is shaping up as an exciting year for a number of reasons:
• January is officially silly season in the Sushi on a Stick household. First of all, the kids and I are off skiing on 2-3 January at a place near Hiroshima (Eleni tragically is a late scratching due to the broken cheekbone). Then comes Eleni’s birthday. A couple of days later we set off on the big family trip up north to Akita, where a bit more skiing will be taking place. Normal school/work programming resumes for a week in the middle of January, then we’ve got friends coming on the 20th so further shenanigans will undoubtedly ensue, and that takes us through to 26 Jan.
• Ruby’s friend Tess is coming over at the end of March for a couple of weeks and we’re going to drive up to Osaka to pick her up then take the opportunity to check out Universal Studios while we’re there.
• Katy Perry is coming to Japan in May and we’re all going to drive up to Osaka (again!) to check out a pop concert experience. Apparently it’s a fairly small venue (2,000 capacity) so we should be fairly close to the action. Felix is already practicing his shoulder-ride technique on Ruby so he can get a good view. Though he is mightily disgusted that we didn’t get to see Lady GaGa in April this year, when she played at Kobe, a measly three hours up the road, and I share his frustration. That would have been one interesting concert.
• Term 3 (Jan-March) will be only nine weeks long, what with a week off at the start for Akita and a few days off at the end to go up to Osaka, and then it’s the end of year holidays, yay.
• Ruby bravely told her teacher that she’s quitting the brass band so as of next April she’ll be getting home at the very reasonable hour of about four o’clock every day, affording much more time for Skype, email, Facebook, homework, helping with meal preparation (as if) etc etc.
• And, we’ve got a steady succession of visitors arriving at various times during the year and we’re looking forward to showing them around our tiny seaside corner of Japan.So bring on 2011!
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Holiday time
Only three more days of school until the holidays! The last day of school is the 22nd; the 23rd is a public holiday and the education system has very generously decided to give children the 24th to themselves as well and then the kids will be FREE TO HAVE FUN… not really. Avid readers of this blog won’t be surprised to hear that there is a huge wad of homework to complete over the New Year holiday period, which lasts for all of 15 days. It seems that the schools just can’t bear the thought of kids hanging out and enjoying themselves for a couple of weeks.
I should point out that even though the shops don’t let you forget about Christmas Day, or more specifically the importance of Christmas shopping, the 25th is actually a normal day of activity in Japan. Ruby’s soccer team, for instance, has a match on (although she politely declined) and if the 25th falls on a weekday it’s a normal business day, and school would quite possibly be on as well. Luckily for us it’s on a Saturday this year so we don’t have to pretend that our kids are sick.
I have to say I’m becoming increasingly fed up with the school system here; the endless exams, the amount of homework, the lack of holidays… don’t get me started. It’s not so bad at primary school, where they have the luxury of recess and lunch breaks, but the regime at junior high school is just ridiculous. So after nine months of putting up with this rubbish, we’ve decided that in 2011 we’re going to take the kids out of school every now and then to give them some decent holidays. The first installment is our big trip to the far northern prefecture of Akita, home of our friend Eku from the Tokyo days. We’re leaving on 6th Jan (the day before school is due to start) and getting back on Fri 14th, so the kids won’t be going back to school until the 17th. That’s almost approaching a decent holiday break.
Akita is where we were originally going to live, since I’ve always dreamt of living in snow country. However that plan was quashed when Eleni decided that it would be too cold, so the upcoming trip is our compensation. We plan to go skiing a couple of times while up there and make snowmen and throw snowballs and go for walks in the snow etc etc. It’d better bloody snow properly before we get there or it’ll all be a terrible anti-climax. I’ve been watching the national weather bulletins and the weather seems to be doing the right thing so fingers crossed it doesn’t melt in the interim.
The trip takes about eight hours on the bullet train. We could have taken the plane instead but it’s not actually that much quicker when you factor in the change of flights (Hiroshima to Tokyo then Tokyo to Akita) and airport transfers and the rest of it. Plus Felix is obsessed with bullet trains at the moment so it’s a bit of a treat for him. We’re going to stop at Tokyo station on the way through for about an hour just so he can wander about the platforms looking at all the different trains coming and going. And it will give Ruby time to get all that homework out of the way.
I was a bit apprehensive about telling the schools, particularly the junior high school, but they were actually pretty cool about it. (It’ll be interesting to see how they react after we try it on for the third or fourth time though.) In any case Ruby’s been getting excellent marks–well above the class average–so I don’t think they can complain too much. It turns out that she’ll be missing the first lot of exams for 2011, the ones that are specifically based on the holiday homework to see whether you’ve done it or not. They’re going to reschedule her exams for after she gets back. (How about during those stupid English language classes that she is forced to sit through?)
In other holiday related news, Eleni’s broken cheekbone has put paid to skiing plans for this winter, due to the risk of falling over and doing even more damage. We already had a three-day ski trip up in the mountains behind Hiroshima all planned for the new year, before leaving for Akita, but this has now been scaled back to two days with just me and the kids. A great pity.
Meanwhile the kids have recently discovered the ancient traditional cultural Japanese practice known as otoshidama, where parents/grandparents give their kids gifts of money at New Year. They were trying to tell me that it runs to several hundred bucks, which I immediately discounted for exaggeration, but this site backs them up with a claim of around ¥40,000. Naturally the kids think otoshidama is a wonderful tradition, unlike the many other facets of Japanese life at which they cheerfully thumb their noses. They were disgusted to learn that their non-Japanese parents don’t embrace it in quite the same way.
Also Ruby has somehow convinced herself that the family (read: Ruby) is buying an iPad for Christmas, despite having no use for one (other than Facebook/Skype/Youtube for Ruby), so there is bound to be lots of disappointment this festive season. Just like any other Christmas then.
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Japan Fail
Last year, when I was in the throes of planning this trip to Japan, I had a massive long list of personal goals for the two-year cultural odyssey.
I was going to engage a writing teacher and practice my characters and learn how to write Japanese properly at last. Over the last 15 years I’ve forgotten almost all my kanji characters and my writing looks like that of a kindergarten student. Kind of embarrassing.
I was going to expand my vocabulary with lots of new and interesting words and phrases, mainly in order to boost my professional standing as a translator but also in order to achieve my longstanding ambition of being able to enjoy Japanese novels, films and television shows without always thinking “what was that word again?”
I was going to master Japanese cooking and learn a stack of new recipes, including variations on Japanese breakfast as well as culturally authentic bits and pieces to put in bento lunchboxes for the kids. I was even going to wean myself off Earl Grey and learn to drink good healthy Japanese tea instead.
I was going to actively search out new avenues of work to make my professional life more interesting. Like on-site interpreting, which I haven’t done much in recent years, and copywriting for Japanese ad agencies, which I thought sounded like fun. Some days, I imagined, I would travel on the bullet train into Hiroshima in a suit and tie for high-powered assignments just like a Real Worker.
I was going to check out lots of crazy and interesting Japanese websites that my friends would tell me about, learn to appreciate manga, track down some decent Japanese pop music (now there’s a challenge) AND I was going to be a good citizen and participate fully in local community life.
Alas, very little of this has actually happened.
I haven’t found a writing teacher — for the simple reason that I haven’t bothered to look for one. Consequently my writing remains as embarrassing as ever. These days if there’s a form to fill out I’ll get one of the kids to do it instead.
My vocabulary hasn’t really expanded, other than a few choice words in the local dialect of the Hiroshima region, which I’m not sure would be particularly useful in a professional sense. I’ve pretty much given up trying to read Japanese for pleasure, and as for the telly, I find it harder than ever to keep up with those zany quiz shows where they have ten people talking at the same time. (Mind you, this might be more to do with the generation gap than language skills.)
Cooking? It’s getting on to 11 months and I’ve barely expanded my repertoire at all. Unless something drastic happens I’ll be back in Australia with nothing culinary to show for it, which would be a massive shame because I was starting to get rather sick of fried rice and risotto. (Though Eleni has done much better on the Japanese cooking front; perhaps she might pass on some of her tips if I ask her nicely.) And I’m still firmly wedded to Earl Grey tea; not just any old Earl Grey tea, mind, it has to be from my favourite shop in Carlisle St, Australia, dutifully mailed over at regular intervals by long-suffering family members. (Talk about being set in your ways.)
Meanwhile, nobody’s given me any insider info on interesting Japanese websites, the films and mangas remain as inscrutable as ever, and as for contributing to the local community, I don’t think I’ve been to a single one of the local clean-up days that are always being announced. There was one for the school I remember, during the peak of the summer heatwave, when it was just too hot to contemplate doing anything. At other times there’s always been soccer or something on, but if I’m being totally honest I’d have to admit that the thought of getting out of bed at seven on a Sunday morning to sweep leaves into plastic bags never excited me in the first place. That doesn’t make me feel any less guilty though when I spot our neighbors (including some very elderly ones) sweeping and shovelling diligently as I sail past in the car off to soccer practice.
So why the massive Japan Fail?
I’ve officially run out of puff. Although I suspect I didn’t have much puff to begin with. Back in the Tokyo days, with my life stretching out ahead of me, I was full of missionary zeal and the joy of discovery and the love of language and the excitement of a foreign land and all the rest of it. I was a Culture Chaser, whereas now, at the ripe old age of 45, I think I’d rather just sit back and let the Culture come to me. I’ll not be bothered going out and chasing it down any more, I’ll leave that to the kids. (Sounding more and more like a 70-year-old.)
So what if I miss out on a few festivals here or there, so what if my writing is forever atrocious, so what if I never read a Japanese novel after all. In hindsight, it was ridiculously optimistic to expect that I could achieve all of those goals, even with two years at my disposal. Clearly, my days of taking on exciting new challenges are over.
My goals for the coming year are fairly simple: go skiing as much as possible, eat Okonomiyaki as often as possible, work hard, stay out of trouble, go for a walk every day. Sit here and let the culture come to me. And usher in my old age in style.
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More attention-seeking behaviour
Last Friday night, Eleni got to ride in an ambulance for the second time in Japan — except this time she was the one strapped into the little bed.
Friday was the last night of training in the school gym before the big beach volleyball tournament on Sunday. Eleni has been very diligent at attending the twice-weekly training sessions, even walking up the hill to school in the freezing cold rather than taking the car. She’d been working hard on her volleyball skills and was looking forward to doing her bit for the team at the tournament, until…
Literally five minutes before training was due to end, she crashed into a team-mate going for the ball and fell heavily to the ground, cracking her cheekbone in three places and also giving her jaw a knock for good measure. Before she knew what was happening the ambulance had come and whisked her off to the shiny new hospital in town (I wish Ruby had been sent here too but they don’t take kids which is why she ended up at the decrepit old hospital down at Onomichi).
I got there about half an hour later and it was like deja vu, another time, all over again, except that this time she didn’t need to stay overnight; they literally sent her home with some aspirin and told her to come back in the morning.
Anyway there doesn’t seem to have been any lasting damage, other than some rather excellent bruising around the eye that looks for all the world as if we’ve had a nasty domestic. I’m not sure whether I should be seen alongside her in public right at the moment…
On Sunday we went down to cheer the school team on and get lots of sympathy from the rest of the team. The tournament was a major event, held in a huge public facility with gymnasium, swimming pool, concert hall etc. There were hundreds of people there and it all looked like great fun. So near and yet so far… ah well, another thing to pencil in for next year.
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Be careful what you wish for
Seems like only yesterday that I was cursing the heat and humidity, and now we’re in the midst of a good old-fashioned cold snap. The other night when I took the kids to soccer training I was wearing three layers plus jacket and beanie and still shivering like mad.
This has given us a chance to test out our shiny new air-conditioner in heater mode (which I’m happy to report works beautifully) and fish out all the winter clothes from the suitcases. And I have to say I’m loving it all.
But the sudden contrast in weather once again throws the spotlight on the issue of Japanese Toughness. We couldn’t wait to turn the heaters on, but the locals are made of hardier stuff. Felix reports that the teacher did a quick survey of his class and few if any other families had reached the stage of bringing out the kotatsu (those fabulous heated low tables), much less dusting off the portable heaters (Japan Fact: central heating is rare). The schools themselves have a policy of not bringing out the oil heaters from the storeroom until December, and even then they’ll only fire them up when the forecast is below 12° C. No matter that the huge concrete buildings are virtually frozen solid after an overnight low of 4° C, that’s the rule. In fact I remember a guy in Tokyo once telling me that at his son’s kindergarten all the kids were made to wear shorts to school during the depths of winter just to toughen them up.
Which all goes to make us seem all pathetic and soft in the West. But why put up with being cold and uncomfortable if you don’t have to?
I’ve discovered that there is something deeply ingrained in the Japanese ethos about suffering, and collective suffering, and in particular the need to inflict collective suffering on children, presumably to make sure they don’t go soft. Thus, for instance, the primary school kids are required to carry all of their textbooks home in the evening and bring them all to school the following day, whether they need them or not. Plus a full water bottle to last the day, since the school doesn’t “officially” supply drinking water. Plus anything extra they need such as sports shoes or craft tools, plus an umbrella if it’s raining. All this is hauled over the mountain for an hour each way, if you live as far away as we do. If I’d known it was going to be like this I think I would have looked for a place closer to school. At least it would have saved me having to wake up before 6:30 in the morning.
But then I guess I’d be missing out on the collective suffering of the early morning routine.
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How to make a maiko
First of all, what’s a maiko? Ruby’s recent dress-up experience in Kyoto was called “maiko” rather than “geisha” as we might expect.
That’s because in Kyoto they don’t use the term geisha; the correct word is “geiko”. And an apprentice geiko is called a maiko, so there you go.
Anyway I thought it might be fun to document the hour-long process of creating a maiko out of a normal person.
First of all, you have to get rid of all that pesky hair by stuffing it into a net.
Then start painting on the White Stuff. Start at the back, making this little pattern at the base of the neck rather than going all the way up. (Is that like in Goldfinger to let the skin breath so the maiko doesn’t die?)
Then do the front:
Instant goth! Or was that emo.
Now for the eyes.
And of course those lips!
Avril Lavigne, eat your heart out. (In her earlier incarnation, that is. Before she sold out and went all girly.)
The wig makes all the difference. But it’s still Ruby in there.
The finishing touches, including spray-painting any stray tell-tale brown hairs.
Now it’s time for the kimono fit-out. It took ages to choose a kimono and matching band, but then… that’s the fun of dressing up, isn’t it?
Wig decorations go in…
…and it’s off to the studio for a rock star photoshoot!
Here’s the finished product:
And one with the family for good measure:
It takes another hour to get all the make-up off again, and while I was waiting it was funny to see all these people emerging again after their maiko experiences, back in their normal clothes and normal lives once more. The whole dressing up and being a rock star for an hour thing is literally a transforming experience, with interesting parallels to those people who dress up in masks at Carnevale time in Venice.
And I have to say that I quite enjoyed playing the role of rock star minder for an hour too. If only I’d been a bit more enterprising I could have put out a hat and started charging for photo opportunities to cover costs. Never mind, there’s always next time.
Incidentally, if you’re ever in Kyoto and feel like dressing up as a maiko, the place we went to was called Aya and their website is here.
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We love Hiroshima
Eleni and I had to go into Hiroshima City the other day to get our Japanese drivers licences, since our international driver’s licences are about to run out. It takes about an hour and a half to get in to the centre of Hiroshima and at first this seemed like an annoying imposition, but then we decided to make a day out of it. And I’m glad we did, because for country folk like us it’s great to spend a day in the big smoke every now and then.
The main attraction of Hiroshima is the shops, from the big department stores to the interesting little stores to the coffee chains where we always pop in for our once-a-month cafe latte fix. I love going shopping in Japan. For a start, it’s so cheap. Funnily enough, when we first got here in 1991 everything seemed really expensive; but 20 years of stagnation and deflation in Japan coupled with a booming economy in Australia have turned the tables, and now Australia is overpriced while Japan has the bargains.
Clothes and shoes in particular are really reasonably priced and well made too — even though they’re all made in China, the Japanese manufacturers seem to set higher quality standards. So whereas I was never that interested in clothes shopping in Australia, here in Japan I can’t get enough of it. There’s so much great stuff that I’m almost in danger of overdoing it. I justify it on the grounds that I’m assembling a large wardrobe to take home, but at this rate it’ll probably last me through the next decade.
I’m also particularly taken with the kitchen sections of department stores. There are just so many great kitchen things on offer in Japan, especially when it comes to weird and wonderful plates and bowls. I’d like to take a whole lot of this stuff home too but crockery poses more of a logistical problem so I suspect it will have to remain on the shelves.
Then there are the legendary ¥100 shops, some of them more like warehouses, which have such an enormous range of stuff that you could just about stock your entire home: kitchen, bathroom, laundry, gardening, tools, clothes, jewellery, stationery, electrical, party goods, you name it. When we were living in Australia, every time I came to Tokyo to visit clients I’d make time to fit in a session at the ¥100 shop, but inevitably came away feeling slightly unfulfilled since you never knew when you’ll be able to stock up again. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be living here now, with the freedom to go to the ¥100 shop WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT.
But the problem is that we’ve been here for 10 months and the house is pretty well set up, so there’s less impetus to wander the aisles searching for cute handy Japanese things to make our lives richer. Just the other day I was in Daiki, a massive hardware barn that’s the local equivalent of Bunnings, to buy a tube of glue, and once I’d located it I came to the abrupt realisation that there was nothing else to search for. I’m so used to spending hours wandering around Daiki looking for stuff, that to just turn around and leave with nothing more than a tube of glue seemed like a terrible disappointment.
So the shopping focus has switched to clothes and last Friday in Hiroshima was a great success. I bought five pairs of socks and I think I can honestly say I’ve never been so excited about a sock purchase before. Although we didn’t buy anything particularly interesting as such, it was lovely to be able to wander around unburdened by the kids, who’d been given keys and instructed to let themselves in after school. (Poor things, we do love them really.) We spent the first half of the day lamenting that we didn’t live closer to Hiroshima, but by the time we went home we’d decided that it was probably just as well or we might be in serious debt by now. Still, the 2012-2020 wardrobe is coming together nicely.
Incidentally another reason why we love Hiroshima is that it has trams, just like Melbourne. So nostalgic!
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It’s started…
That noise again. Endlessly repeated, like nails on blackboard, over and over again, until you think you might just go mad. It sets your teeth on edge, it makes you want to run screaming for the exits but you can’t, you’re trapped inside, you have to stay, you have to get the shopping over and done with before you can finally make good your escape into the relative sanity of the outside world.
Yes, I’m talking about Christmas carols.
How well I remember the horrors of the Christmas shopping period from my Tokyo days. I mean, I don’t object to carols as such; they’re nice and Christmassy and everything, it’s just that Japan seems to have a predilection with two in particular: Santa Claus is Coming to Town and I’m Dreaming of White Christmas. Actually “carols” is the wrong word; they’re more into Christmas songs, generally the more schmaltzy ones, which might be bearable or even enjoyable once in a while but not day in day out for months on end. Especially since the versions that they play in the shopping centres are inevitably of the horribly saccharine variety.
Purists may wonder why Christmas is celebrated in a country with minimal Christian background, where the main religions are nominally Buddhism and Shinto, and where 25 December is a normal working day. Well, the Japanese retail industry has no interest in the already tenuous connection between Christmas and Christianity; they just want to shift units. They know a good marketing opportunity when they see one, and they’ve latched onto Christmas with a vengeance.
So here we are in the first week of November and the dreaded Christmas music is already coming out the loudspeakers and the trees and baubles are starting to appear in the stores.I mean, I thought late November was a bit early in Australia but this is ridiculous. It looks like we’re going to be tortured by this stuff for the next two months.
I doubt that the locals share my frustrations, because the Japanese have a wonderful ability to filter out background noise. Japan is the land of background noise, whether it be endless announcements on the trains, piped music at the beach, crowd controllers with megaphones, or even the good old Community Loudspeakers installed in every corner of every town and village across the land (this morning — Sunday morning — our local Big Brother speakers sprang into life at 7:15 a.m to remind us of some important announcement or other. Because nobody sleeps in, do they?). There’s a shop in the local shopping centre in town which has been playing a Best of the Beatles compilation for about ten months now, non-stop. Every time I walk past it’s either the Ballad of John and Yoko or Paperback Writer or the Long and Winding Road. If I worked there it would drive me around the bend in a week, but the shop staff just block it out. Amazing.
But as for me and the supermarket shopping, I think I might have to invest in some earplugs or start taking tranquilisers or something in case I’m seized by a violent urge to take out a few of those loudspeakers over the next two months.
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Mid-weekend wrap
Well I mean I know it’s against the rules to write a weekend wrap half-way through the weekend but here I am on a Saturday night with a bit of free time and the computer on my lap and so much to report, so I hope you’ll forgive this breach of protocol.
This week Eleni has been in Tokyo doing a spot of work (and a lot of shopping), which came about when, quite out of the blue, she was asked to help correct some exam papers or something that required actually being in Tokyo, and it was just the excuse she’d been looking for to go up and visit friends and get rid of a bit of cash. (And I’m pleased to report that the cash all went on nice sensible things such as a new pair of walking shoes and some much-needed parmesan cheese for the Sushi on a Stick household.)
So anyway on Friday we all trooped off to pick her up from Hiroshima Airport and then we headed straight over to Fukuyama to catch a concert by the Austrian brass band known as Mnozil Brass. This was a spur-of-the-moment thing; a month or so back I came across a flyer at the local Community Centre in Sunami where Eleni teaches English on a Saturday, and seeing as Ruby and Felix and I now have a professional interest in brass bands it was decided that we should go and check out a real live one at close range.
And what an excellent spur-of-the-moment decision that was, because Mnozil Brass turn out to be not only highly talented musicians but great entertainers with a crazy wacky bent. They incorporate all sorts of routines into their music, such as a Western medley complete with slow-motion shoot-out scene, and a piece performed by one guy operating a pair of trombones with his feet and a pair of trumpets with his hands (the blowing is done by four guys positioned around him). Here’s a sample of their performance that I found on YouTube, although it doesn’t really do them justice:
Some of the routines were so funny I had tears in my eyes from laughing so much, and even Felix managed to stay engaged right to the very end. We were pretty pleased with ourselves for managing to get out to a proper grown-up concert as a family, and it inspired us to seek out a few more interesting shows during our remaining year and a bit in Japan, not least because the ticket prices are so very reasonable.
Then today was Felix’s birthday. He likes to get a trail of clues to his birthday presents so we obliged him with a series of cunning riddles that wound up at a hidden stash concealed in — where else? — the toilet:
All those birthday decorations around the photo are because Ruby discovered the border option on the camera and this one was taken before I could get hold of it to turn the decorations off.
This year we lashed out and got Felix a Nintendo DS, thus fulfilling his life’s ambition and bringing him up to speed with his friends, all of whom have been battling Pokemon and ruining their eyesight for years now. He wanted to have a DS party where everybody would bring theirs along and presumably the idea was just to sit there jabbing at tiny plastic buttons for three hours. Thankfully most of his friends forgot to bring them, so instead they spent the time on more healthy pursuits such as playing trains upstairs:
kicking the soccer ball around the garden:
and woofing down the endless supply of home-made pizza churned out in the kitchen:
Ten pizzas in about two hours; not a bad effort if I do say so myself.
We even went so far as to organise the doughnut-on-a-string game:
(And what a pleasure it was to visit Mr. Donuts for the first time in a long while to pick up the necessary supplies.)
Finally there was an ice-cream cake with candles and lolly bags at home time, just in case the kids hadn’t had enough sweet muck.
For some reason I had been under the impression that Japanese people don’t really celebrate birthdays, but the boys all seemed perfectly at home with the concept and it all went swimmingly. Birthday Boy pronounced himself to be well pleased with the day’s proceedings which was a relief, because I always tend to feel a bit nervous in the lead-up to a birthday party — so much expectation, so much responsibility. Another one of the way, phew!
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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