ThatMan

Penny Lane / Hello, Goodbye

2010-12-05T04:21:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I had time to update this blog and two songs have been sung since last time. In November we had the marvelous bit of nonsense verse that is Penny Lane and this month we have just started with Hello, Goodbye, which makes a bit more sense, but not much. Both from the eventful year that was 1967.

Penny Lane was written about the sights and sounds to be seen and heard about the eponymous location in the suburbs of Liverpool. Penny Lane is named after James Penny who was an 18th century slave trader and a strong opponent of abolition. McCartney and Lennon grew up in the area and they would meet at Penny Lane junction in the Mossley Hill area to catch a bus into the centre of the city. The street is now an important landmark, sought out by most Beatles fans touring Liverpool. In the past, street signs saying "Penny Lane" were constantly being stolen for souvenirs and had to be continually replaced. Eventually, the Liverpool city officials gave up and simply began painting the street name on the sides of buildings. This practice was stopped in 2007 and more theft-resistant Penny Lane street signs were installed though some are still stolen. In July 2006, a Liverpool Councillor proposed renaming certain streets because their names were linked to the slave trade. Ultimately, city officials decided to forego the name change and re-evaluate the entire renaming process. On 10 July 2006, it was revealed that Liverpool officials said they would modify the proposal to exclude Penny Lane.

The students had a lot of fun singing Penny Lane especially when I explained the slightly naughty nature of some of the lyrics.

Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain...
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen.
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

(Trumpet Solo)

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
Then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain...
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies...
Penny Lane.

About half-way through the month of November, the TOEIC results were announced and it turned out that 95% of the students who had been part of this singing experiment had managed to improve their score. Half a dozen individuals had added 100 points or more. Whether this was really due to the singing is impossible to prove, of course, but it does no harm to be aware that they happened at the same time.

Hello, Goodbye was released in November 1967 as a monophonic 7-inch single. It was not available in stereo until it was included in the 1973 compilation album 1967-70. With the release of the song, McCartney gave an explanation of its meaning in an interview with Disc: “The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That’s the amazing thing about life.”
In the UK Hello, Goodbye spent seven weeks at Number One including Christmas.
The students are having an easier time with this one than they did with Penny Lane, but on the other hand there is less to discuss.

You say yes, I say no -- You say stop and I say go, go, go
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say Hello
Hello, Hello -- I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, Hello --I don't know why you say goodbye
I say Hello

I say high, you say low -- You say why, and I say I don't know
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say Hello
Hello, hello -- I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, Hello -- I don't know why you say goodbye
I say Hello

Why, why, why, why, why, why
Do you say Good bye
Goodbye, bye, bye, bye, bye

Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, Hello --I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, Hello -- I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, Hello --I don't know why you say goodbye I say Hello
Hello

Hela, heba helloa
Hela, heba helloa

The Long and Winding Road

2010-05-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

The Long and Winding Road is a ballad written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) that originally appeared on The Beatles’ final album Let it Be. It became The Beatles’ last number-one song in the United States on 23 May 1970, and was the last single released by the quartet. The Long and Winding Road was listed with For You Blue as a double-sided hit when the single hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.
While the released version of the song was very successful, the post-production modifications to the song by producer Phil Spector angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in court for breaking up the Beatles as a legal entity McCartney cited the treatment of The Long and Winding Road as one of six reasons for doing so.

In 2003, the remaining Beatles and Yoko Ono released Let it Be… Naked, touted as the band's version of Let It Be remixed by independent producers. McCartney claimed that his long-standing dissatisfaction with the released version of The Long and Winding Road (and the entire Let It Be album) was in part the impetus for the new version. The album included a different take, Take 19, of The Long and Winding Road recorded on 31 January. Although a different take, this version is nonetheless closer to McCartney's original intention than the album version, with no strings or other added instrumentation beyond that which was played in the studio at the time. This take is the one seen in the film Let it Be.

Ringo Starr was impressed with the Naked version of the song: “There's nothing wrong with Phil's strings, this is just a different attitude to listening. But it's been 30-odd years since I've heard it without all that and it just blew me away."[3] Spector himself argued that McCartney was being hypocritical in his criticism: “Paul had no problem picking up the Academy Award for the Let it Be movie soundtrack, nor did he have any problem in using my arrangement of the string and horn and choir parts when he performed it during 25 years of touring on his own. If Paul wants to get into a pissing contest about it, he's got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit.”
All of which goes to show what a delightful character is Phil Spector, currently serving a prison sentence of 19 years to life for murder in the second degree.

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to your door.

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day.
Why leave me standing here?
Let me know the way.

Many times I’ve been alone
And many times I’ve cried,
Anyway you’ve always known
The many ways I’ve tried.

And still they lead me back
To the long, winding road
You left me waiting here
A long, long time ago
Don't keep me standing here
Lead me to your door.

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me waiting here
A long, long time ago
Don't leave me standing here
Lead me to your door.

Lennon/McCartney 1970

To my generation The Long and Winding Road marked the end of an era during which we grew up. I was only 15 years old in May 1970, and to be quite honest, didn’t like the Beatles all that much. They were mainly singing about things I was too young to understand. However, at that time I had developed an all-embracing crush on a young lady called Victoria. Unfortunately she was not much interested in me, the gawky, spotty impecunious, callow youth that I was. Victoria lived about three miles away from our house, out of town almost. I would walk those three miles late every Saturday afternoon, knock on her door and ask her out for the evening. And she always turned me down, albeit with a sweet smile, for some reason or other and always with a “Maybe next week…” And I would walk the three miles back to our house every week, feeling that Mr McCartney was singing his song about the Long and Winding Road just for me. This went on for six months, by which time I had turned sixteen, covered about 150 miles and worn out a pair of suede desert boots. Looking at the distressed footwear I eventually came to the conclusion that I was on a hiding to nothing, and gave up. I realize now that this was a kind of ningen kousaten, as the Japanese call it, or human crossroads. If Victoria had consented but once, my whole life might have been very different.

Food for thought, indeed.

Sakura Sakura

2010-04-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

As the cherry blossom season has been upon us recently and with it the attendant viewing parties, I chose the lovely Irish ballad The Jug of Punch for April’s song.

We actually managed two evening viewing parties this year. The first one was a little early and the blossoms were only about 30% open, but it was a pleasant evening and a good time was had by all, with lots of sake put away.

The second one was a week later and the blossoms were in man-kai (fully opened) mode. However, there was a bitterly cold wind and sporadic drizzle, which meant we only lasted an hour or so before abandoning proceedings. So it goes…

I assume the words to this song are traditional, as there seem to be several variations knocking about. The version here is as I remember it was performed by the late Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

One pleasant evenin’ in the month of June
As I was sittin’ with my glass an’ spoon
A small bird sat on an ivy bunch
And the song he sang was The Jug Of Punch
(Chorus)
Tooralooraloo... Tooralooralay…
Tooralooraloo…Tooralooralay
A small bird sat on an ivy bunch
And the song he sang was The Jug Of Punch

What more diversion can a man desire
Than to sit him down by a snug turf fire
Upon his knee there a pretty wench
And on the table a jug of punch?
(Chorus)

Let the doctors come with all their art
They’ll make no impression upon my heart
But if life was gone, within an inch,
What would bring it back but a jug of punch?
(Chorus)

And if I get drunk, well the money’s my own
And them as don’t like me they can leave me alone
I’ll tune my fiddle and I’ll rosin my bow
And I’ll be welcome wherever I go
(Chorus)

And when I'm dead and in my grave
No costly tombstone will I crave
Just lay me down in my native peat
With a jug of punch at my head and feet.
(Chorus)

Traditional

You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me...

2010-03-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

Last month’s practice TOEIC test showed consistent high scores overall, showing that the January results were not a one-off fluke. For March I have chosen the old Aussie favourite Waltzing Matilda. This one is nice and easy to learn and is well represented on YouTube. Of course, part of the fun is found in pre-teaching the unique Australian vocabulary that gives the song its charm.
I was a little surprised that only 2 students (out of the 100 or so in my classes) had ever heard of Waltzing Matilda and that precisely none of them knew what it was about. So, in case you, dear reader, are in the latter category, here goes:

Swagman––a homeless itinerant who wandered the Australian bush looking for work carrying all his possessions (his swag) on his back. The backpack was affectionately known as his ‘Matilda’; as it was his only companion it was as well it had a feminine moniker. ‘Waltzing’ was the walking he did (possibly from the German auf der Walz which means to travel while working as a craftsman and learn new techniques from other masters before returning home after three years and one day, a custom which is apparently still in use today).
Billabong—an oxbow lake left behind by a river changing course during flash flooding, or any kind of deep pool.
Coolibah—a variety of eucalyptus which grows near billabongs.
Billy—short for billy-can, a metal pot for making tea or coffee over a campfire.
Jumbuck—a kind of feral sheep which had roamed from its flock. Sheep were introduced to Australia by the British government in the 19th century.
Tucker bag—a bag for carrying tucker (food).
Squatter—an early farmer in Australia who raised livestock on land he did not legally own, but had permission to use. The farm workers for the most part were prison labourers who had been sentenced to transportation by a British court. They were obliged to work for food and lodging only for 7 years on average, before being released. Having no savings to show for 7 years effort, many then became swagmen. Many squatters became fabulously rich, as a result of the low labour costs of their businesses.
Trooper—a mounted policeman.

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda etc
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong,
"You'll never take me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."
"Oh, You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

Lyrics: Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Patterson 1895
Music: Christina Macpherson

This song is held in great regard by most Australians as it aptly describes the early social conditions of their nation. In fact many would prefer it to be their national anthem, rather than the turgid Advance Australia Fair.

It is worth noting that sheep-stealing in colonial Oz was a capital offence and the ‘swaggie’ obviously considered that drowning himself was a better course than the gallows. Not the happiest of endings, but a great song nevertheless.

Right to Roam

2010-02-07T04:43:00.000-08:00

The singing of songs has continued apace, particularly after the results of a short TOEIC practice listening test at the end of January. Out of about 75 people who took this test, only two scored 5 out of 8. This 62.5%, if averaged across the board in an actual test, would net the test-taker a score in the low 600s--which would easily be 100 points up on most people’s 2009 score. However, 36 people scored 6 out of 8, 28 scored 7 out of 8 and an elite group took full marks. As the realization of what this meant sank in, grins became broader and broader. They are beginning to believe in ‘Yes We Can’, so thank you President Obama for that.

As it is February now, we have a new song to sing. This month I have chosen The Manchester Rambler, which has an easily acquired melody and an interesting history.

I’ve been over Snowdon, I’ve slept up on Crowden,
I’ve camped by The Wainstones as well.
I’ve sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder,
And many more things I can tell.
My rucksack has oft been my pillow,
The heather has oft been my bed.
And sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.

(Chorus)
I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler, from Manchester way,
I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way.
I may be a wage-slave on Monday,
But I am a free man on Sunday.

The day was just ending, and I was descending,
Down Grindsbrook just by Upper Tor.
When a voice cried “Hey you!”
In the way keepers do,
He’d the worst face that ever I saw.
The things that he said were unpleasant,
In the teeth of his fury I said,
Sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.
(Chorus)

He called me a louse and said “Think of the grouse”
Well I thought but I just couldn’t see.
Why old Kinder Scout and the moors round about,
Couldn’t take both the poor grouse and me.
He said “All this land is my master’s”
At that I stood shaking my head.
No man has the right to own mountains,
Any more than the deep ocean bed.
(Chorus)

I once loved a maid, a spot-welder by trade,
She was fair as the rowan in bloom.
And the blue of her eye matched the June moorland sky,
And I wooed her from April till June.
On the day that we should have been married,
I went for a ramble instead.
For sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.
(Chorus)

So I’ll walk where I will, over mountain and hill,
And I’ll lie where the bracken is deep.
I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains,
Where the grey rocks lie rugged and steep.
I’ve seen the white hare in the gullies,
And the curlew fly high overhead.
And sooner than part from the mountains,
I think I would rather be dead.
(Chorus)

Ewan MacColl 1933

The song recalls the heady days of the early ’Thirties and the mass trespass movement.
The first mass trespass was a notable act of willful trespass by ramblers. It was undertaken at Kinder Scout in the Peak District of England, on 24 April 1932, to highlight weaknesses in English law of the time. This denied walkers in England or Wales access to areas of open country, and to public footpaths which, in previous ages (and today), formed public rights of way. Political and conservation activist Benny Rothman was one of the principal leaders.

Kinder Scout from the North

Although the event was originally opposed by the official ramblers’ federations, the vicious sentences which were handed down on five of the young trespassers actually served to unite the ramblers’ cause.
It is now recognized as a major catalyst not only for the Right to Roam, but the creation of the National Parks, of which the Peak District was the first in 1951.
In 2002, Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire (who owns the land), publicly apologized at the 70th anniversary celebration event of the Kinder trespass at Bowden Bridge for his grandfather’s ‘great wrong’ in 1932:
“I am aware that I represent the villain of the piece this afternoon. But over the last 70 years times have changed and it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome walkers to my estate today. The trespass was a great shaming event on my family and the sentences handed down were appalling. But out of great evil can come great good. The trespass was the first event in the whole movement of access to the countryside and the creation of our national parks”

Which all goes to show how much things have changed.

Ewan MaColl has been gone from us since 1989, but the collection of great songs he left with us will last for a lot longer, of that I am sure.

Sailing homeward to Mingulay

2010-01-10T03:35:00.000-08:00

For January I have chosen the haunting ‘Mingulay Boat Song’ which has gone down very well with most classes. This song was not meant to be accompanied by instruments, but chanted in unison with the full breaths that it takes to pull long ropes or oars. In this aspect it is similar to the songs of chain-gangs swinging axes, being work songs to keep physical workers in unison. Therefore it is really sung best if you move your body in time to its rhythm, as if rowing a boat homeward. It was also good to find that ‘The Minch’, ‘bairns’ and ‘’ere’ are entries in my electronic E-J dictionary so there is no feeling of ‘we’re not learning real English here’.

Heel yo ho, boys; let her go, boys;
Bring her head round, into the weather,
Hill you ho, boys, let her go, boys
Sailing homeward to Mingulay

What care we though, white the Minch is?
What care we for wind or weather?
Let her go boys; every inch is
Sailing homeward to Mingulay.

Heel yo ho, boys; let her go, boys;
Bring her head round, and all together,
Hill you ho, boys, let her go, boys
Sailing homeward to Mingulay

Wives are waiting, by the pier head,
Or looking seaward, from the heather;
Pull her round, boys, then we’ll anchor
`Ere the sun sets on Mingulay.

Heel yo ho, boys; let her go, boys;
Bring her head round, into the weather,
Hill you ho, boys, let her go, boys
Sailing homeward to Mingulay

Ships return now, heavy laden
Mothers holdin’ bairns a-cryin’
They’ll return, though, when the sun sets
They’ll return to Mingulay.

Heel yo ho, boys; let her go, boys;
Bring her head round, and all together,
Hill you ho, boys, let her go, boys
Sailing homeward to Mingulay

The original lyrics were written by Sir Hugh S. Roberton in 1938, however the original tune was a pipe tune, "Creag Guanach"; from Lochaber.

What is interesting about this song is that, even though it sounds authentic, it was never sung by the inhabitants of the isle of Mingulay.

Situated at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides, the storm-tossed rocky sanctuary was abandoned in 1912 after almost 2000 years on human habitation. Life presumably became too difficult to continue. The island is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland and is inhabited only by sheep and seabirds.

Having started with America and now on to Scotland, to continue with a song for every month until the next TOEIC venture, we are going to move south to England next.

Slip me some skin...

2009-12-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

Following on from last week’s post, my singing voice has been severely tested this week, as I inflicted Little Boxes on every class from Tuesday to Friday, with generally pleasing results. I think if we do this as a warm-up exercise at the beginning of every class, it will have the desired effect i.e. to get the students more in tune with the cadence of the English language. I have been scouring the WWW for suitable song lyrics and will introduce one every month till the time comes around for the TOEIC torture-chamber again. However, if my notion is correct, I expect it will be less of a torture-chamber in 2010. As we only have a couple of weeks left before the end of this term, and Christmas is coming, Felix Bernard’s 1934 Winter Wonderland will get an airing next before we call it a day for 2009.

Another thing I tried this week was watching a VHS video movie clip, with Japanese subtitles, to see if there was good correlation between what was said on screen and what appeared at the foot of the screen. It turned out that there was, after a fashion, in that the students could understand what was going on on screen but they were generally unable to catch what the English words were, even after several repetitions. This seems to be because of elision, or syllable omission, which native speakers do as a matter of course when speaking naturally.

The clip I chose was from the 1987 movie Good morning Viet Nam, which made Robin Williams into a star. This movie is set in Saigon in 1965 just as the Viet Nam ‘police action’ is about to escalate into a full-blown conflict. At about 1.17 the main character (Adrian Cronauer) first tells an outrageous falsehood, then resorts to bribery in order to persuade the Army EFL teacher to allow him to take over the class, so he can get a chance at dating the Vietnamese girl in white. In Japanese subtitles the soldier’s response is gojiyuu ni, which means ‘feel free’ or something like that. However, what he actually says is “ ’sallyurrs – yuugaddit” (It’s all yours, you’ve got it). The rest of the clip shows how the new ‘teacher’ is then hopelessly out of his depth as he has no idea how to proceed. He eventually has to confess that he is not a real teacher but achieves a measure of success, and popularity with the students by teaching them Harlem street slang. As he says, in the real world this is probably somewhat more useful to them than the hackneyed phrases the ‘real’ teacher was trying to teach, even though they were grammatically perfect.

I think it is unlikely that the TOEIC test is ever going to test for knowledge of phrases like ‘slip me some skin’ or ‘groovy’, but it does use lots of natural spoken English in its listening sections. There are a lot of examples of elision in this short clip, which I was able to exploit and I hope will be useful to my students, especially for TOEIC.

Full marks to those who noticed the subtitles are in Chinese not Japanese, but I’m sure my main assertion holds true.

Ticky-Tacky

2009-11-28T05:07:00.000-08:00

This is the first time I have had the inclination to update this blog in over a year, which is a pretty shambolic state of affairs. No excuses to be made, I have simply been very busy with proofreading/translation work to the extent that the deriving of pleasure from writing became almost impossible.

A possible reason for the return to the blog was that I have recently returned from the annual JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers) conference, which this year was held in the city of Shizuoka in the Tokai district. I went up there by overnight bus in order to be there bright and early and not miss anything on the first day. The JR Dreamliner had reclining seats so I was able to catch a bit of shut-eye this time.

The first thing I noticed on arrival was that Mount Fuji was clearly visible in the distance, so a photo record was obtained. Seeing Japan’s sacred mountain so clearly is a relatively rare occurrence and we were lucky enough to have this happen twice over the weekend.

As always the conference was a very lively and stimulating affair with all kinds of things going on by day and by night. I came away with some good ideas for improving the TOEIC scores that my students get, just by altering the focus of what we do in class. The Test Of English (for) International Communication causes no end of grief every year, first in preparing for it by doing practice tests and (usually) later when the scores are released and little to no improvement has taken place. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Hammer and Humiliation’ method. However, after taking in some thought-provoking presentations during the conference I decided to try a separate tack to see if we can achieve better results. After all, in the relatively rare case that a student does get a better score than the previous year, s/he generally becomes a happier person and is thus easier to teach—so there is instrumental motivation for me there too.

We have been singing in class this week, which met with some consternation at first, but ended up very positively. It has been shown in linguistic research that singing helps learners grasp the cadence of a language in ways that other methods fail to do. The song I chose was the late Malvina Reynolds’ marvellous ‘Little Boxes’ of 1962 which I loved as a child of eight or so, but which gradually took on a deeper meaning over time...

Little boxes on the hillside

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky

Little boxes, little boxes

Little boxes all the same

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky

And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all went to the university

Where they all were put in boxes, little boxes all the same

And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers and business executives

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry

And they all have pretty children and the children go to school

And the children go to summer camp and then to the university

Where they all get put in boxes, and they all come out just the same

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family

In boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same

There's a green one, and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky

And they all look just the same

So now there is a whole new word in circulation around here–‘ticky-tacky’. The OED entry for this word credits Malvina Reynolds as the source of the word which is quite an achievement, to change the language with just a song. Someone once called it ‘the most sactimonious song ever written’ but I don’t think so. It’s a healthy thing to be able to laugh at ourselves as we beaver away in our little boxes at home or at work. It remains to be seen if this singing will improve the students grasp of natural English, but even if we’re going to hell in a bucket at least we’re enjoying the ride.

What I did on my holidays, Summer ’08

2008-11-15T23:00:00.000-08:00

If I don’t get round to this soon, it will be ’09 so no time like the present. I was a bit later in getting across to the UK this year, on account of having to go up to Saitama to support our son competing in the All-Japan Inter-High Track & Field Championships. He ended up taking 6th place in the discus throw and 4th in the javelin, which for him was a little disappointing as he is used to winning things at the regional level. As his parents we were very proud that he had made the best eight, it is easy to forget that he is still only sixteen. Since the summer he has won in a national event, the All-Japan Youth tournament in which he took gold in both discus and javelin, setting a new tournament record in the latter event, and also (on a different occasion) finally exceeding 50 metres in the discus throw. We are full of hope that he will continue onward and upward next season.

When I finally got to Newcastle Airport it was a cool evening, but the next day it began to rain which set the pattern for the next three weeks. Rain, rain rain. There were a few sunny intervals, but there was not a single day without some precipitation. As a result, I spent a lot of time indoors and did not get out and about as much as I normally do. My sister had decided to remodel their kitchen and dining room by removing the partition wall and installing an RSJ to bear the weight of the upper floor, to leave themselves with a kitchen/diner. As a result I spent a large part of the first week performing the services of a builder’s labourer, removing breeze blocks and sundry rubble and generally doing muscle work.

As this work involved disablement of the cooking facilities, I ate my meals with my parents, while my sister and her husband ate out a lot. One morning we had a brunch barbecue but the rain intervened, which gave the opportunity of an ‘Only in Britain’ kind of picture.

The work progressed up to the point where everything was safe but incomplete and then it was a change of venue, down to my old school where my sister’s theatre group were rehearsing for a musical. Time was running short so I volunteered my services as a carpenter, helping to build the set for the show which was called ‘A Slice of Saturday Night’ and takes place in a night club.

I did manage to get to St James’ park on two occasions, the first of these was for an ‘Open Day’ when I also bought two tickets for the first home match of the season. The second was the match itself which was against Bolton Wanderers. I and most of the crowd were in good voice at first, full of expectancy as the team had performed well against Manchester United at Old Trafford on the previous Sunday, coming away with a creditable 1-1 draw. However, Bolton had not read the script and put in a gritty spoiling performance to blunt Newcastle’s cutting edge. The Toon were struggling and the away supporters were beginning to out-shout us. When we conceded a penalty with 25 minutes left on the clock things looked grim indeed. The indomitable Irishman Shay Given was having none of it though. He somehow saved the spot-kick with his legs and we breathed again. This galvanised the crowd and the whole stadium was rocking when Michael Owen scored the winning goal on 71 minutes to send us home happy. Four points from two games is a good start. Things have not continued in that happy vein though, and the club are currently up for sale, with a temporary manager (Joe Kinnear) in charge, sitting in the relegation zone. Today’s home game against Wigan Athletic is a real six-pointer, as they are known.

In the final week, the weather gave the impression that it was going to improve and I gratefully accepted the offer to borrow a motorcycle from a good friend of mine intending to use it to travel south to Newcastle-Under-Lyme for the first part of an annual reunion with four old friends from UCW Aberystwyth. The machine is a Suzuki Bandit, customised in ‘Streetfighter’ fashion with an air/oil cooled 1200 cc engine. A very handsome piece of kit indeed.

When I set off, the sun was shining and all was well. I had downloaded a route from the AA which avoided motorways which seemed like a good idea at the time. This led me through the Yorkshire towns of Harrogate and Halifax and the traffic was horrendous. Large-scale roadworks had put a lot of diversions in place and my AA route gradually became worthless. Eventually I headed up over Saddleworth Moor (of Moors Murders notoriety) in thick fog and light drizzle. Life was becoming quite unpleasant, but I pressed on and came down into Oldham where I was able to find a filling station and refuel. I had noticed that filling stations are now much thinner on the ground than they used to be and the Suzuki was running on reserve. Dusk was falling as I headed into the labyrinth that is Tameside and it was here that I totally lost the plot, eventually giving up and seeking help at Hyde police station. Here I was put right by a charming young WPC and was able to resume my journey via a short high speed blast down the M65. It had stopped drizzling by now and I was feeling somewhat happier, though I was seriously behind schedule. I had not seen a public telephone all day, they seem to have become an extinct species due to the rise of the mobile, and I knew my friends would be getting concerned. Then I was informed that the road to Leek was closed and all traffic had to use the Buxton road. As the road wound higher and higher, it soon transpired that this was the infamous Cat & Fiddle pass and I had to negotiate it in thick fog and drizzle. Great, just what the doctor ordered. Thank all that is wonderful for the man who invented the cat’s eye...
I finally arrived at my friend’s house at 22.40, about nine hours after setting out. A hot shower and a few stiff drinks later, I was feeling somewhat better.

We continued our journey to Aberystwyth by car the next day, the motorcycle’s charm had worn a bit thin by then. It was locked up in my friend’s garage and left there. My friends got a lot of mileage out of my odyssey, it will be a long time before I hear the last of it.

On the return journey I used the M6 motorway to Tebay and then across the magnificent expanse of Bowes Moor and so on to Durham via Barnard Castle and Staindrop. A lovely ride. What a contrast... Lessons learned so are rarely forgotten.

On my final day, I visited the local flea-market, known as the ‘Casbah’ and in the evening went to see ‘A Slice of Saturday Night’. This was the final night and was a good show, a kind of Cockney version of ‘Grease’ mixed with ‘American Graffiti’, which did not pull any punches. Afterwards, there was the usual after-show party which meant I did not get to bed on time and rising early for the flight back was a real struggle.

PS Newcastle Utd 2 – 2 Wigan Athletic Hmmm...

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

2008-07-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

As I used the motorcycle the day before to go and watch my son in a Track & Field event, and petroleum spirit prices are the highest I have ever seen them, I decide to use the mountain-bike again for my Sunday outing. ‘You are mad’ declares my wife, shaking her head in pity, ‘It’s over thirty degrees out there.’ My daughter chips in with ‘It’s like Lawrence of Arabia crossing Sinai—and you haven’t even got a camel’.

However, I dismiss their talk as idle female chatter, drink plenty of water and set off, with more water in my backpack. My target is Tsukuhara-ko, a large reservoir up in the mountains, which can be reached by using a special cycle road and is usually a pleasant ride. Today there is little wind and the heat haze off the tarmac is fierce, but I reason to myself that it will be cooler among the rice paddies and the irrigation water.

The descent into the valley of the Akashi river is refreshing, but as soon as the route levels out again the heat returns. After I have covered about 8 kilometres, I realize that the womenfolk were right and this is crazy. So I pull into another of my favourite temples, Cho-fuku-ji, and appreciate the wisdom of the The Buddha who advises me on the right kind of activity for a day like today.

The guardians of the temple, the Ni-Oh sama seem to be admonishing me for my folly in venturing out in such conditions.

On my return journey, I take frequent rests and take some more photos with the mobile. One pine tree with a posture problem reminds me of my favourite comedy duo, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

And the hot weather is good for some things anyway.

And just before the uphill push to where we live, I drop by the temple where we rang in the New Year on a freezing cold December 31st, just half a year ago.

As I approach home, another bit of wisdom enters my consciousness, from Noel Coward.

In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire,
to tear their clothes off and perspire.
It's one of those rules that the biggest fools obey,
Because the sun is much too sultry and one must avoid
its ultry-violet ray --
Papalaka-papalaka-papalaka-boo. (Repeat)
Digariga-digariga-digariga-doo. (Repeat)
The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they're obviously, absolutely nuts --

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines there are lovely screens,
to protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
which the Britishers won't wear,
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see,
That though the British are effete,
they're quite impervious to heat,
When the white man rides, every native hides in glee,
Because the simple creatures hope he will
impale his solar topee on a tree.
Bolyboly-bolyboly-bolyboly-baa. (Repeat)
Habaninny-habaninny-habaninny-haa. (Repeat)
It seems such a shame that when the English claim the earth
That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth -

Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it.
In Rangoon the heat of noon is just what the natives shun.
They put their scotch or rye down, and lie down.
In the jungle town where the sun beats down,
to the rage of man or beast,
The English garb of the English sahib merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit.
In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun.
To reprimand each inmate, who's in late.
In the mangrove swamps where the python romps
there is peace from twelve till two.
Even caribous lie down and snooze, for there's nothing else to do.
In Bengal, to move at all, is seldom if ever done,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Which brings to mind more memories of a certain Yorkshire gas-fitter, who appropriated the title of the ditty for a world tour in 1970. I went to the Newcastle City Hall to see this show. My mother said I was never the same again after that. Not surprising really...

Go West Young Man

2008-05-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

On the very last day of Golden Week, May 6th, I decided to get the mountain-bike out again and go for another ride, along the coast to the west this time, from Akashi, to wherever it feels good to turn back. I have heard that there is a nice cycle path along the coast, well away from any road traffic and it is this that I go in search of.

I first head south, heading down the valley-side through a patchwork of terraced newly-irrigated rice-fields and various other cultivated tracts, past a white-washed Zen-dera and finally emerge on Route 175. This is the main thoroughfare between Akashi on the Pacific coast and Maizuru on the Japan Sea and, as usual, is stiff with traffic. There is no choice now but to stick with it till I reach Route 2 so I put on as much speed as I can on the bumpy pavement, always wary of the unexpected--like old ladies stepping out from behind bus-shelters. They are remarkably good at that kind of thing, unfortunately.

Route 2 is reached without mishap and thankfully crossed at the zebra-crossing which ‘cuck-oo’s at me as the cyclist/pedestrian light illuminates in green. As I head towards Akashi Fishing Port, the world becomes a nicer place, as the hum of traffic gradually recedes in my wake. After crossing the San-Yo railway line at the level crossing, the streets become narrower and even a mountain-bike seems like an excessively large vehicle to be on them. This is the _old_ part of Akashi and probably has not really changed much since the early 19th century, in terms of street layout.

I emerge onto the coast road and am immediately confronted with the evidence of fishing-industrial-man. Old hawsers are piled up at the side of the road, along with fishing nets, trawl cables, octopus pots and sundry tackle. The road is pot-holed and all the buildings have a scruffy look about them. Deja-vu--it is just like Obama, but there are no hordes of jeering urchins to contend with, thankfully. I pull into the harbour to see if the cycling path leads out of it. Lots of moored fishing boats—but no cycling path.

I proceed westwards past a man waving red & white flags to guide traffic past some roadworks, where they appear to be repairing a gas main. Soon the road turns to the right but the cycle track begins dead ahead, by a stand of gnarled pine trees backing on to a beach of white sand. There are families picknicking and barbecuing and groups of young people simply hanging out in the sunshine on this fine but hazy day, with Awaji-shima just visible in the distance.

I have been well-informed—it is a pleasant ride along the beaches. Here and there I come across some kinds of working activity—not everyone is on holiday. There are men waist-deep in water with chest-high waders wielding wicked looking rake-like implements as they harvest the shallows for shellfish of some description. At the point where the river Akane meets the sea, there is a man out in the water driving a power-shovel, heaping up berms of silt and sand. I watch him for a while, but am at a loss to understand why he is out there.

The cycle path continues for another couple of kilometres, until it merges with a normal two-lane blacktop. There are some palm trees here and a small fishing port, but no signs to indicate the name of the place. So, in my best polite Japanese, I make enquiries to three pretty young ladies who are having a beach picnic.
Me: Er, Suminasen ga... Kono tokoro wa doko desu ka? Mich ga mayou desu kedo...
Excuse me, can you tell me the name of this place? I’m a little bit lost...
Them: Hora gaijin da!
Look, it’s a foreigner!
Me: Sigh. (Repeat question)
Them (Giggle) Eigo wa wakaranai kedo
We don’t understand English
Me: Nihongo wo hanashiteimasu! Kiite! (Repeat question)
I’m speaking Japanese! Listen!
Them: Ah so desu ne. Mezurashii desu ne. Gaikokujin to Nishongo wa... Kochira wa Ei ga Shima desu.
Them: It's true! Unusual eh? A foreigner and Japanese... This is Ei ga Shima...
Me: Arigato gozaimasu. So desu ka. Kore wa sanzui hen to Edo no E to ido no i desu ka (draws kanji in air with finger)
Thank you. Is that so! So that’s the water radical with the E of Edo and then the i of ido is it?
Them: So desu yo. Heiiirr-- gaijin wa kanji dekimasu... (giggle)
That’s right. (Sound of disbelief) the foreigner can do kanji...

I thank them again and cycle off up the road to where I know I will meet the Sanyo railway. This place is only 25 miles from Kobe, the oldest international port in Japan, but we might as well be on the dark side of the moon. Hick towns are the same all over the world it seems. I know it well. My home land in perfidious Blighty is full of them. For sure...

I stop to take a look at a nice old Shinto shrine called Sumi-yoshi Jinja (West Ei ga Shima) and decide to thank the gods for keeping me safe.

I rattle the bell rope and say my piece, but am then unable to locate the offertory box to deposit my ¥10 votive offering. I finally give up and leave it on the step beneath the bell.

At the Sanyo railway I turn right and follow it back towards Akashi, but before reaching there I drop in at Choh-koh-ji, a Buddhist temple overlooking the sea.

It has a nice old gateway and inside, a rather splendid statue of Fudo-Myo –O

"Fudo is the Buddhist divinity of wisdom and fire. He is the principal deity of the great kings. Fudo is often called upon for protection during dangerous times. He is said to live in a temple on top of Mount Okiyama. Fudo is often shown to be an ugly old man surrounded in fire. He has a sword in his right hand to sever material connections and a rope in his left hand, that he uses to tie demons with. His sword is also used several times a year at Akakura in a healing ritual. Anyone who goes to see him is said to be punished with blindness. The most famous legend of Fudo claims that a young girl, named O Ai San, prayed to him for 100 days, naked under a waterfall near his shrine at Ohara in the province of Awa. Once she had returned home, her father, whom she had prayed for, was cured of a lingering illness.

He is typically depicted with a sword for subduing demons in his right hand and a rope for catching and binding them in his left hand. He has a fearsome blue visage and is surrounded by flames, representing the purification of the mind. He is often depicted seated or standing on a rock to show his immovability. His hair commonly has seven knots and is draped on his left side, a servant hairstyle in Buddhist iconography. He is frequently depicted with two protruding fangs. One tooth points down, representing his compassion to the world, and one tooth points up, representing his passion for truth."
(Quotation from Wikipedia)

I take a left turn and head toward the township of Nishi-Akashi, thinking to add a little variety to my route back. Some dodging through back lanes brings me out onto the rice-paddies which line the Akashi River, though some of them are being dug up for housing development (if I am reading the signs right).

Last stop before home is the human gas station again.

This time I try the pork & cheese burger, a recent addition to the menu. Nice--but a tad spicy, so I drink plenty of water before setting off on the last lap. Water is free at McDonalds...

Ei ga Shima made is not as much of a challenge as the Suma-Dera run, but it’s a pleasant ride out.

Gets the heart going a bit...

I’ll do it again quite soon.

Anno Domini

2008-05-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday 6 May at 02.03 BST (GMT + 1) an event took place which keenly reminded me of the passage of time. My niece Caroline gave birth to a beautiful baby girl making my sister and brother-in-law grandparents for the first time and me a Great-Uncle. A wonderful happy event for our respective families of course, but one which made me realize that our time here is limited and I still have not achieved all that I wish to during my time on this mortal coil.
Ella Louise weighed at 8.12 lbs and was remarkably good-looking at birth, just as her grandmother was and unlike her great-uncle who was decidedly simian in appearance, by all accounts. Some would argue that nothing much has changed in the interim period...
She arrived here with us 12 months after her mother’s grandfather had passed away, due to a heart attack--almost to the same hour--which strikes me as uncanny...
Behold—Ella Louise.

A Grand Day Out

2008-05-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

In Golden Week, as is our wont, Akira and I went on a long motorcycle day-trip. This time we headed north and east a bit with our destination set as the town of Obama which has been in the news of late.

We set off at 7 am under cloudy skies with a bit of wind. The sun comes out about an hour later and warms things up a bit. Our trip north through the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture is relatively unimpeded, as the typhoon damage of a few years ago has now been repaired and the roads are relatively quiet.

At about 10.30 we pull up by the harbour of Maizuru and enter a coffee shop advertising Moh-ningu Setto which is bacon and eggs, toast, jam and a nice cup of Joe with a refill if okyaku-sama feels like it. Maizuru is the home base of a substantial portion of the Maritime Self-Defence Force and the harbour is full of military boats of all classes. The most impressive vessel is an Atago-class guided missile destroyer, equipped with the Aegis weapons system. These are relative newcomers to the MSDF and are supposed to be able to knock out incoming ballistic missiles, specifically the Taepodong 1 of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. One of these frightful things was lobbed without warning over Northern Japan a few years ago, its third stage landing in the Pacific Ocean, fortunately without hitting anything. The official line from Pyongyang was that they had successfully launched a Sputnik type satellite, which was now broadcasting patriotic music to the world.

Japan’s response was to build two more Aegis-equipped destroyers, the Atago and the Ashigara in addition to the four Kongo-class vessels already deployed. As might be expected, Pyongyang took this as a provocative act, and unleashed a storm of virulent invective, ‘seas of fire’ and all the rest of it. Quite charming chaps are the North Koreans. I take a photo through the shop window, rather than risk arrest for spying if I take one close to the water. The Aegis system is no doubt good at what it is designed to do, but that did not prevent one of these vessels from ramming a fishing boat last month, near Yokosuka, with the loss of two lives. The bodies of the skipper and first mate will probably never be recovered.

After repast we take a short look around the Museum of Bricks which is quite an interesting experience for me. My first paying job after graduation from university was as a muscle-worker in a primitive old-style brickworks and the memories come flooding back to me.

Then we set out on the 35 km final leg along the Japan Sea coast to Obama. It takes us about an hour as the narrow road is clogged with my favourite type of vehicle, farmers in little white pick-up trucks, jabbering away with the mobile in one hand and smoking with the other, presumably steering with the knees. No sooner do we pass one or two than more of the horrid things are ahead. They appear to hunt in packs, so I am very relieved when we turn left into the city of Obama. This place has become quite famous recently, because of its support for the Democrat Presidential candidate-in-waiting, Barack Obama. Normal people would call this place Kohama, but this is Fukui Prefecture, the ‘backside’ of Japan, and they have their own way of doing things.

The road leading to the sea-front is pot-holed and messy with crushed drink cans and fag-packets littering the gutters. Most buildings seem to be in need of a lick of paint but in contrast the beach is wide and white, free of trash with crystal-clear seawater. After all, it is a fishing port and that is what they care about most. As it is May Day, most places are closed, but we do find a fisheries co-operative market open where we partake of some excellent sushi and I buy a bottle of local shochu hooch as a souvenir.

We go for a walk on the beach where I am accosted by a horde of local urchins who treat me like an extra-terrestrial, though they are quite friendly with it. At the car-park I take one photo, just to prove I have been here.

I have seen enough and we return to Kyoto and thence to Hyogo via Route 162, which is an excellent road for motorcycles with fast sweeping curves and fabulous scenery. It was fun going to Obama and fun coming back, but I have mixed feelings about actually being there.

Our last stop before home is in the city of Kameoka, at an Oh-sho restaurant, where we have some of their famous fried chicken, Chinese dumplings and spicy noodles. Just the job on a day like today.

My other bike

2008-04-30T05:02:00.001-07:00

Before I got back into motorcycling, I was already enamoured of the 2-wheel way of going about things. This was with the mountain bike method and the machine you see below has been in my possession for about thirteen years now.

She was on sale at the local bicycle emporium at a hefty discount because something had fallen on her during the Great Hanshin Earthquake (January 17 1995) causing a minor blemish somewhere to her paintwork. I had eyes only for her suspension fork and aluminium alloy handlebar and gladly ponied up the necesssary yen.

The picture was taken yesterday in the forecourt of Koumei-ji, one of the many Buddhist temples to be found in the town of Akashi, due south of us, near the end of a 50-km ride I sometimes do for health and spiritual enhancement. Koumei-ji sustained a severe clattering in said seismic event but I am pleased to note that it has finally been fully restored.

My destination though, was a much older temple, called Suma-dera, said to have been established in 886 by the saint Monkyo, which is the headquarters of the Sumadera School of the Shingon sect of Buddhism. It is almost exactly 25 km from our front door, which makes for a satisfying pedal-powered outing.

To get there I first head south, towards the Akashi Straits and one of the first things I encounter is a long downhill stretch where I can free-wheel for about half a kilometer. When I used to have one fitted, the speedometer once registered 34 mph towards the bottom of this section of the route.

Henry Charles Beeching knew all about it:

WITH lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:--
'O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.

'Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!'

Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss? '
Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
Shall find wings waiting there.

‘Going down Hill on a Bicycle, a Boy’s Song’ was written in joy to celebrate one of life’s simple pleasures. As long as I can appreciate things like that, I feel I will never grow old.

At the end of the incline there is a fairly sharp right-hander and I am pleased that I adjusted the front brake cable prior to departure. The ears ‘pop’ as I enter the Ikawa valley, I am now almost at sea-level having just descended over 200 metres in less than half a minute. From here the track follows the course of the Ikawa river until its confluence with the Akashi river and then into the somewhat scruffy township of Tamatsu. This place used to be a colony of eta or burakumin – the former untouchables of pre-modern Japanese society, who specialised in butchery of cattle and horses and also leather-tanning. As the Buddha forbade the killing of living things, these poor unfortunates were placed at the very lowest rank on the totem-pole and were obliged to make their dwelling places in the least desirable areas.

We are soon pedalling through the leafy entrance to Akashi Park in the lee of the castle wall and I hear the ‘clack’ of shogi pieces where the old men vie with each other to win at Japanese chess. As today, April 29th—Showa Day-- is the official start of Golden Week and is a fine spring day, the park has plenty of visitors, so progress is somewhat slower.

I am soon through the town and on to the sea front, with the heady tang of salt air and the magnificent sight of the Akashi Straits Bridge.

Cycling is more pleasurable now, away from busy roads and I am soon wafting past the artificial beaches of Okura Kaigan and Maiko Azur to the fishing port of Tarumi, where we spent the first five years of our life in Kobe.

Before very much longer I reach Shioya, where Somerset Maugham once lived as a noted foreign celebrity and guest of the Japanese Empire, in the heady days (for some) of the nineteen-thirties. Now I am back beside the coastal highway which is thick with traffic and I try to breathe in as little as possible.

Before the final uphill approach to Suma-Dera I pause for a swig from the water-bottle which is refreshing. Almost all the houses are new-looking, as this place resembled post-war Dresden after the 1995 disaster. I park the bicycle and lock it up, then enter the temple grounds.

There is a lot to see here, but one of my favourite places is the garden with its statues of the samurai horsemen, Taira no Atsumori and Naozane Kumagai at the battle of Ichi-no-Tani.

I also like the two-level pagoda with the five wise monkeys at its base.

During the course of my visit I get through about ¥125 in votive offerings and purchases of candles and incense sticks, set to burn in special places in hope of good favour from Siddartha Gotama, who in the fullness of time became the Buddha.
My final stop before departure is before the statue of the Thousand-armed Kannon, or Guan Yin--the Goddess of Mercy.

“One Buddhist legend presents Guan Yin as vowing to never rest until she had freed all sentient beings from samsara, reincarnation. Despite strenuous effort, she realized that still many unhappy beings were yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, her head split into eleven pieces. Amitabha Buddha, seeing her plight, gave her eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokitesvara attempted to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that her two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitabha came to her aid and appointed her a thousand arms with which to aid the many. Many Himalayan versions of the tale include eight arms with which Avalokitesvara skillfully upholds the Dharma, each possessing its own particular implement, while more Chinese-specific versions give varying accounts of this number. In China, it is said that fishermen used to pray to her to ensure safe voyages. The titles Guan Yin of the Southern Ocean and 'Guan Yin (of/on) the Island' stem from this tradition”

Quotation from Wikipedia.

It is now 15:40 and time to roll. As I reach Tarumi again I begin to feel somewhat fatigued and realise that it has been a long time since brunch. I notice a road sign indicating respite is at hand, only two kilometres ahead, and at the outskirts of Akashi pull into the human gasoline stand.

A Big Mac has never tasted better – good calorific value at ¥290 a time.

I take a slightly different route through Akashi, to avoid pedalling up the incline which gave such pleasure earlier in the day. In days gone by this slope was the final challenge, but at 53 years of age, you know, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

A final snap of some automotive eye-candy....

One of these days, if I can align a certain set of six numbers, an Alfa-Romeo Spider 2.2 will definitely be on the wish-list. Gorgeous bit of Italian kit.

I arrive home, exhausted, to find the house deserted. I make a welcome cup of tea—the staff of life. As I thankfully swill the last tangy remnants, the telephone rings. It is shewhomustbeobeyed aka spousal unit and daughter who want picking up from the station, now, at once, don’t spare the horses.

So I fire up the Toyota without further ado and do my duty, sweat drying on me, which invokes flaring nostrils and comments as the womenfolk get in the car. Well, they did say NOW...

I enjoyed this little jaunt so much I have resolved to try and do it at least once a month from now on. Can’t do me any harm...

Writing that I like

2008-04-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

As I'm a little stuck for something to write about, I thought it might be a good idea to put some of my favourite writing in this blog--my influences if you like. The first of these dates from 1871 or 2 (the precise date is unclear) and is one of those poems that everyone can recite a little bit of:

The Walrus and the Carpenter

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might;
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done—
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky;
No birds were flying overhead—
There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand.
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach;
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said;
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat;
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat—
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more—
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low;
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
And cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need;
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed—
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said,
"Do you admire the view?"

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice.
I wish you were not quite so deaf—
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said;
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

From Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) whose main job was that of mathematician at Christ Church college, Oxford.

The second of these is a lot shorter and contains what I consider to be sage advice for a young person.

Mary's Son

If you stop to find out what your wages will be
And how they will clothe and feed you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Sea.
For the Sea will never need you.

If you ask for the reason of every command,
And argue with people about you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Land,
For the Land will do better without you.

If you stop to consider the work you have done
And to boast what your labour is worth, dear,
Angels may come for you, Willie, my son,
But you'll never be wanted on Earth, dear!

Rudyard Kipling 1911. My copy is in a collection of poetry titled Songs for Youth published by Hodder and Stoughton. It is so old the spine is actually decorated with a Buddhist swastika--published long before the National Socialists demonised the image.

The third piece is one of the most famous poems penned by Dylan Thomas:

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

1946 Dylan Thomas
The last poem in the collection known as Deaths and Entrances, it is probably one of the most fabulous pieces of verse ever written. It inspired a young American boy from Duluth, Minnesota to adopt a new performing name for himself--Bob Dylan.

A Hard rain's gonna fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Columbia Records

This is a 7-minute anti nuclear war anthem. It was one of 3 social protest songs Dylan recorded on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The others were "Blowin' In The Wind" and "Masters of War."
Ten years after Dylan recorded his version, Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry recorded a dark, claustrophobic cover as his first ever solo single. In the UK it climbed to #10 in the charts.

Bob Dylan once introduced this song by saying hard rain meant something big was about to happen.

In the liner notes to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Dylan said: "Hard Rain is a desperate kind of song. Every line in it, is actually the start of a whole song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one."

Amazing.

First Ride of Spring

2008-03-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

The winter this year was/has been (not clear yet as to which tense is appropriate) surprisingly stubborn, with night-time temperatures touching freezing as late as a week-and-a-half ago. This was among such indicators of Spring as the first kafun (cedar pollen) counts on the weather report and the first onslaught of kosa (aeolian dust) borne on the prevailing winds from China. The former does not affect me as much as it does many other people, red-eyed and sneezing their way to work on the train or bus, but the latter fine yellow sand settles everywhere including the back of the throat where it tends to impart a gravelly edge to the voice. In my occupation, EFL teaching, the voice gets used a lot--generally in exhortations to the students to use theirs, even just a little. As a result I have sucked, slurped and inhaled my way through several packs of Lotte throat lozenges in the past couple of weeks. Heap Good Medicine. The northern suburb of Akashi, known as Tamatsu, through which I travel by bus on a Tuesday & Thursday, is home to hundreds of used car dealers, and I have felt really sorry for their junior employees scurrying about with hosepipes, buckets, sponges and wash-leathers, trying to keep their automotive wares looking presentable. Last week saw some spring rains which had the effect of washing the muck out of the air for the time being. I keep an eye on the web at
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/kosafcst/
where I can be forewarned, if not forearmed. There is no defence agains the blasted stuff.

Today, though, it is a beautiful Spring day and with no pressing chores to perform, I give Black Mariah her first outing of the season. She had a 4000-km oil-change and general service on the previous day, where I picked up brownie points from the mechanic who did the job. ‘Exceptional condition’ for a 5 1/2 year-old machine was his verdict. The drive-chain received only its second adjustment in 27,000 km which speaks well of my non-lunatic riding habits. I know of people who get only about 1000 km of use out of a drive-chain due to their penchant for drag-racing, wheelies and sundry daftness. NB* Such meatheads can be termed ‘bikers’ whereas I am a motorcyclist. There is a distinct difference in attitude.

The countryside to the north-west is smelling fresh and verdant and I feel a little sad that I am not with my regular riding partner who is incapacitated today with a hangover obtained in service of the company, ‘entertaining’ some new business associates on Saturday night. In the 1970s and 80s before the decade-long recession bit, it was a common revelation among Japanalysts in business rags that the yearly spend on corporate entertainment exceeded the National military budget. I’m not sure if that is still the case, but I’m sure it can’t be far off the mark. I still miss taxi-tickets though...

I was not exactly in perfect condition myself after enduring yet another football match via Internet text commentary, where Newcastle United were on the wrong end of another clattering. Not a small amount of Milk of Amnesia was imbibed, so as to make the pain more bearable. This match was at Anfield, home of Liverpool FC, and was not wholly unexpected as they are quite a handy side this season, while we are NOT. Far from it. Kevin Keegan returned in mid-January (aka The Second Coming of the Messiah) to manage the team, but has had a very lean time of it so far--mainly against far superior opposition, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. After yesterday’s results the team sit in 15th position in the Premier League—just three points away from the dreaded relegation zone and one above the deadly rivals Sunderland AFC. To be fair, in the last couple of matches, Lady Luck has deserted Newcastle, but the bottom line remains. ‘We’re Sh*T and we’re SICK OF IT!’ -- a recent terrace chant.

It is not unlike the season of 1966 – 67 when (for sins committed in a previous life) I first began to follow the fortunes of the black-and-whites at St James’s Park. The team was very fortunate to avoid relegation to the old Division 2 that season, and those of us who can remember it generally agree that it was due to the signing of a man-mountain centre-half from Hibernian (John McNamee) and an elegant midfielder from Sunderland (Dave Elliot) which tipped the balance in our favour.
It is McNamee whom I remember most fondly. A veritable giant of a man who seemed like he was hewn from granite, McNamee was a stopper, just like the man who signed him--Joe Harvey--had been a decade previously in a very successful NUFC side. As most of the action was usually in Newcastle’s half of the field during that desperate battle to avoid the drop, we saw a lot of Big John--as he is fondly remembered today. Subtle he was not, effective he was and most opposing centre-forwards were simply terrified of him. Some doggerel to illustrate my point...

‘John McNamee never wore gloves
Hi-lites in his hair
Or diamonds in his lugs
They used to feed him on raw meat
My old man used to say
Ah wish he was still wor centre half today.
John McNamee is in his Sixties now
Stooped, and walks with a limp
But ah would still pick him instead of Titus Bramble.’
John Oliver

We fans were somewhat less eloquent at the time...

“E’s ’ere, ’e’s there, e’s every f*kkin’-where, McNamee-ee--McNamee!”

we would bellow at every successful body-check or slide-tackle. He was generally a clean player though, unlike the infamous Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris who played for Chelsea in the same era.

I only ever remember him scoring one goal, an equalizer against Sunderland, in the following season which, of course, was very important at the time. He put an end to United’s defensive frailties in no uncertain fashion, so any goals we managed to score were doubly important, many of them fashioned by Elliot. Would that a man of McNamee’s calibre were with us today...

HOWEVER.... The other day, the news from Barrack Road was that Kevin Keegan had managed to sign his first player since resuming his role as manager back in January. Here he is:

‘Lamine Diatta (born July 2, 1975 in Dakar) is a Senegalese footballer who currently plays for Newcastle United. Diatta moved to France when he was only 1 year old. He is the holding force in the centre of Senegal's defence, and is also tough in the air, which provides a threat in attacking set-pieces.’
(Quotation from Wikipedia.)

I sincerely hope that it is a case of ‘cometh the hour cometh the man’ as we are potentially in dire straits. He is certainly cut from the same type of physical cloth as McNamee was, but appears to have been hewn from obsidian in his imposing negritude. The remaining fixtures in the season include a home derby against Sunderland, but that is not till mid-April. We really need to be out of the relegation woods by then, so as not to be suffering from the jitters when taking the field versus the ‘auld enemy’. It could easily end up with one team sending the other one down...

HOWAY THE LADS

The observant among you will notice a new link at the top right – to the blog of Stef the Engineer. Stef recently contacted me via this blog after not being in touch for nearly a decade. He used to work for the same Japanese company as me and one of the first things that happened to him and his new bride was the Great Hanshin Earthquake on Jan 17th 1995, when they lost almost everything they had. I’ll leave you to read about it yourself. Welcome aboard Stef!
* He needs to learn some manners though ;-)

What I did on my _winter_ holidays, 2007--2008

2008-01-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

Usually, our year-end break of seven to ten days is spent in Saga, Kyushu, this being my wife’s home town. However, this time we stayed put, in Kobe, due to the tight training schedule applying to my youngest son. It was nice not having to drive half the length of the country for a change.

The holidays really began on Dec 27th, all my chores were done and I left the office mid-afternoon to go home and get cleaned up/changed/shaved and the rest of it, before attending a bounenkai (忘年会）or ‘Forget the Year’ party with some friends of mine at a Chinese restaurant in Rokko in the eastern part of Kobe. The ‘Milk of Amnesia’ used to forget the year is the same as is used the world over, so it was a somewhat groggy author who checked in at work late on Friday morning for the final time in 2007. Again I left early, wishing yoi otoshi o to the security guards and went down to the Head Office in Kobe to attend the final meeting of the year, known as a noukai (納会). This was just the same as the bounenkai, but held in the office, so there was no fee to pay. Arriving home somewhat tired and emotional, I resolved to spend the remaining days of 2007 in a somewhat quieter fashion.

Saturday was spent writing my New Year’s cards -- nengajou (年賀状) and Sunday out in the cold air on the motorcycle, to Suma-dera getting a new sandalwood Buddhist bracelet-- nenjuu (念珠）to replace the old one that had been broken in the boisterous process of forgetting the year, to get a haircut and to visit the office to fetch something I’d forgotten on Friday. Monday 31st was spent rushing around doing last-minute things in increasingly crowded places, especially the post office, where the nengajou were finally despatched on time. At last, I settled down to begin a traditional Japanese New Year -- O-Sho-Gatsu (お正月).

This is the first in the Buddhist (or Taoist) 12-year cycle, the Year of the Rat. The story behind this cycle is rather interesting, it is said that the Buddha (or The Jade Emperor) was dying and summoned the animals to come and see him for a final meeting, and to do that they had to cross a wide river. The Rat was supposed to pass the message to them all, but he forgot to tell the Cat who kept on sleeping. In the event only 12 animals answered the summons and were given the status of a year for their trouble. The Rat hitched a ride between the horns of the Ox who was the best swimmer and so got across first, but the Rat jumped down and ran in the door first and so got pole position in the cycle. The Cat missed out altogether and never forgave the Rat and swore to hate him for evermore. The year just ended has been the Wild Pig, who stopped for a feed along the way and so arrived last. Pigs have been greedy ever since. So now you know! I can’t remember why the order of the other creatures is just so, but never mind.

It all began at about 23:15 on New Year’s Eve when I joined my son and his rowdy mates at the local Buddhist temple to take part in the joya-no-kane (除夜の鐘）ceremony of tolling the temple bell 108 times, starting out at about 23.30 and going on through midnight, ringing out the old and ringing in the new. Except it is not really ringing, the Buddhist kane bell has no clapper and is struck from the outside by a length of timber suspended on ropes, producing a truly sonorous BOONNGGG...

The purpose behind all this, apart from keeping all the neighbours awake, is for purification. It is a belief peculiar to Japanese Buddhism that mankind is beset by one-hundred-and-eight worldly desires which really have no value, and one really must be rid of these temporal distractions before the true Buddha-nature can be revealed. Each strike of the bell removes one more, ready for the New Year. It was very enjoyable and each participant was rewarded with a bar of chocolate for his or her BOOONNNGGG...

Presumably it was spiritual chocolate, but was still very tasty on that cold early morning.

The next day I was woken at 6.00 by my wife and after a hearty breakfast we ascended the hill next to our house to observe the first sunrise of the year -- hatsu hi no de (初日の出). For the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun, this is obviously an important event, and about a hundred people had gathered to witness it. We were lucky to have a fairly clear sky with just a few clouds on the distant Eastern horizon and we enjoyed a small cup of sacred sake as we waited in the cold.

I have done this just once before, but this time it was truly spectacular and the delight was obvious on the faces of the onlookers.

After that, we made our way down the hill, got in the car and set off on our final votive activity, visiting three Shinto shrines in succession, the sanja mairi (三社参り). The first was our local shrine, Kasuga Jinja , not even important enough to warrant an office or souvenir shop, but bottles of sake and sakazuki cups were available for any who wanted to toast the gods. Here I reached into my pocket and withdrew a handful of low-denomination coins, a mixture of one-yen and five-yen pieces, and cast them into the offertory box or the Shinto version of it. Someone told me once that if the gods see you flinging a lot of money into their box, they will consider you as generous and reward you accordingly, even though the actual amount may be minuscule. For this reason, I collect these small coins in a small piggy-bank all year and try to con the gods -- all part of the fun.

The next stop was just up the valley of the Akashi river, at Sumiyoshi Jinja, the shrine of the local farmers. They had temporary wardens on duty to direct us to the car park and make sure we didn’t burn ourselves when dumping the previous year’s talismans onto an enormous bonfire. I deposited my second load of coins, made my wish and went to seek my fortune for a fee of ¥200 at the souvenir stall. I drew Great Fortune -- Dai Kichi (大吉), the top of the line fortune, so maybe 2008 is going to be a banner year after all. I also bought a new sacred arrow -- hamaya (破魔矢）to drive away evil spirits from our house in the Year of the Rat.

The final stop was on top of our nearest mountain Mekko-san at Kande Jinja, which affords a spectacular vista of the eastern countryside.

The final coins were deposited and prayers said and it was off home to arrive at 09.15--just in time to call England and wish them Happy New Year.

The rest of the day (and the next 2 days) were spent doing very little and eating a great deal. Not a small amount of alcoholic beverage was imbibed too. I did go out and fly a kite on the afternoon of Jan 1st, to get some fresh air but only one other person was doing so. This traditional children's activity seems to have been supplanted by playing with radio-control cars and model battle-tanks, to judge by our neighbourhood...

This was the first time I have done _all_ of these traditional things at New Year. I have made a resolution to try and do them all every year from now on.

May the Year of the Rat bring health, wealth and happiness to you all.
I have borrowed a JPeg nengajou from a friend of mine to greet you with.

The Ways of Men and their Masters...

2007-12-02T03:35:00.000-08:00

December 2nd
I have recently returned from Tokyo’s Yoyogi Koen where I attended the 2007 Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT) annual conference. This is usually in some location far-flung from Kobe, which adds to the novelty, travelling in the fine autumn weather. However, as a result, I usually spend the first morning on the road/railway which means I miss the early sessions despite having paid full-whack for the conference fees. So this year I decided to travel up to the Eastern Capital (Tou-Kyou 東京）by overnight coach, so as to arrive bright and early and register at 9:00 on Friday, Nov 23rd when it all kicked off. This did not seem like an unreasonable plan, having done a similar thing some seven years ago when a friend of mine from the UK was taking part in an international folk culture event as part of a Morris Dancing team. That time though, the coach was equipped with full-recliner seats, not unlike those in First Class on a 747 Jumbo.

The best-laid schemes of mice and men, gan aft-a-gley...

I was somewhat dismayed to find that the Sannomiya–Tokyo Station Dream-Liner was just a common-or-garden long distance coach and there were nine hours of travel ahead of us. I did snatch a morsel of REM sleep sometime after a 3 am service station stop, evinced by the fact that I dreamed a dream. It was a rather strange dream, involving me down a lead mine in Weardale, County Durham, with someone long since deceased, searching for semi-precious stones and the like for his lapidary collection and finding nothing but old, broken clay pipes left behind by the miners of long ago. An old memory no doubt, I _have_ been there and done that, many times. The dream came to a rather abrupt end when an earthquake started and the roof began to cave in, a seismic phenomenon which Weardale is not noted for.
I awoke in terror, to find that the bus was rumbling over an uneven surface left by construction work which was the source of the shaking. The rosy-fingered dawn was breaking and I spent the remainder of the journey watching heavier and heavier traffic heading out of Tokyo for the 3-day weekend, while our progress was relatively unimpeded.

I grumpily alighted from the Dream-Liner at Tokyo Station exactly on time at 07:15, something the Japanese are uncommonly good at. I then had to travel approximately half-way round their version of London’s Circle Line, known as the Yamanote-Sen. There is a quicker way across the intervening distance, but it involves going down into the bowels of the earth to a subway line, whereas the Yamanote always remains on the surface and is hence more civilized, in my humble opinion. At Shinjuku I alighted again and went in search of breakfast, which was soon found at a 24-hour diner who served me with a bacon-cheese-tomato toastie and a nice cup of blended Joe. Now the day was truly beginning, I felt replenished and ready for anything.

However, the relatively short journey from Shinjuku to the conference site involved a lot of seemingly unnecessary clumping up and down stairs amid throngs of people so I was grumpy again by the time I had arrived and completed the registration procedure. More coffee was needed and in the process of getting this, scanning the conference handbook Friday schedule and bumping into people not-seen-for-ages, it was 11 am before I was in any state for going to a presentation of any kind. I could have had a decent night’s sleep, taken an early Shinkansen (or even a flight) and achieved the same result. These kinds of lessons learned are the best remembered.

One very common topic of conversation was the Ministry of Justice’s recently introduced anti-terrorism immigration policy affecting all non-Japanese (with a limited number of exceptions). As of November 20th all such persons must be fingerprinted (index fingers of each hand) and have a digital photograph taken for the records. When I first heard about this, in late August, I was not unduly bothered. After all, the MoJ already had the print of my right-hand index finger on record and a photo (updated every five years for the ID card) and I have had the status of eijuu-ken
(永住権)
for more than fifteen years. Surely they didn’t want to do this to me?

Think again laddie. The MoJ claim they destroyed all fingerprinting records (apart from those of convicted felons) in 2000 when the practice of fingerprinting for a visa of more than 90 days duration was abolished in the face of mounting protests about discrimination at home and abroad. It has only taken them seven years to reinstate the practice and now on entry and re-entry for ever and ever. It was suggested that they introduce a special gate for permanent residents like me who could pre-register their biometric details, so as to avoid interminable queues. They have only agreed to provide one such gate, at Narita in the Kanto region serving Tokyo. People using other points of ingress like KiX in the Kansai or Chubu International in the Tokai can go and whistle Dixie for all they care.

I can understand that a case can be made for collecting such biometric data—once. There are a lot of unpleasant people around in this world, and if it means they can be apprehended more easily I have no problem in meeting the letter of the law—once. Doing the same thing repeatedly is a nonsense, as is the refusal to provide a pre-registered gate anywhere else but Narita. It is a kick in the teeth for those of us who have lived here peaceably for decades, paid our taxes and generally tried to fit in to a different culture.
I did not meet one person who was in favour of this new policy. Some have gone to some interesting lengths to illustrate their opposition to it.

If anyone would like to buy one of these T-shirts, point your browser to:
http://samuraicanuck.tripod.com
where they can be purchased in Adult sizes XXL down to XS. I was informed by the designer that the print on the shirt is actually of his big toe, not his index finger.
As I do not plan to travel outside of Japan for another 12 months or so, I hope common sense will prevail and some amendments will be made to this policy in the meantime.

On the morning of Saturday 24th November, a friend of mine and I decided to take some time out of academia and do a bit of sightseeing. We decided to go to Yasukuni Jinja (靖国神社）which translates literally as ‘Pacifying the Nation Shrine’. This place was originally constructed in 1869 by order of the Meiji Emperor, as a war memorial to commemorate those who had died in the Boshin War, fighting on the side of the Restoration. Since then it has become a general war memorial using Shinto rites to deify the spirits of all those who have given their lives fighting for Japan and the Emperor up till 1951. This includes former colonial subjects from Taiwan and Korea, not only Japanese. However,

“One of the criteria for enshrinement at Yasukuni is that a person be listed as having died while on duty (including death from illness or disease) in the war dead registry of the Japanese government. According to documents released on 28 March 2007 by the National Diet Library of Japan, Health and Welfare Ministry officials and Yasukuni representatives agreed during a meeting, on 31 January 1969, that Class-A war criminals judged at the Tokyo Trial were "able to be honored" and decided not to make public the idea that Yasukuni would enshrine those criminals.[2] On October 17, 1978, 14 Class A war criminals (convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East), including Hideki Tojo, were quietly enshrined as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者 Shōwa junnansha), ostensibly on the technicality that they were on the war dead registry. They are listed below, according to their sentences:

* Death by hanging:

Hideki Tojo, Itagaki Seishiro, Heitaro Kimura, Kenji Doihara, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto, Koki Hirota

* Lifetime imprisonment:

Yoshijiro Umezu, Kuniaki Koiso, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Toshio Shiratori

* 20-year imprisonment:

Shigenori Togo

* Died before a judicial decision was reached (due to illness or disease):

Osami Nagano, Yosuke Matsuoka

The enshrinement was revealed to the media on April 19, 1979, and a controversy started in 1985 which continues to this day. For China, North and South Korea, and other nations that suffered from Japanese invasion and imperial rule, the shrine is a symbol of Japanese fascism and extreme aggression. Liberal, socialist and communist groups in Japan also take issue with the shrine for similar reasons.”
Quotation from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Jinja

The entrance to the shrine is marked by one of the largest torii gateways I have ever seen, built of iron and quietly rusting away in the November sunlight.

As we approached the main shrine we heard the twanging sound of a jamisen being played by one of two elderly Okinawan gentlemen who were making a protest against recent government denials that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit suicide rather than surrender in the ‘Typhoon of Steel’ that marked the last major battle of the Pacific War.

The main shrine itself is unremarkable, but the Yuu-shuu Kan museum of history is something else again. A fully restored Zero-Sen fighter plane and a couple of sizable field artillery pieces are preserved there along with numerous revisionist pieces of writing regarding the role of Japan in the years 1937–45.

“A documentary-style video shown to museum visitors portrays Japan's conquest of East Asia during the pre-World War II period as an effort to save the region from the imperial advances of Western powers. Displays portray Japan as a victim of foreign influence, especially Western pressure. The museum fails to portray atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army such as the Rape of Nanking.

A pamphlet published by the shrine says: "War is a really tragic thing to happen, but it was necessary in order for us to protect the independence of Japan and to prosper together with our Asian neighbors." It also says that Japanese POWs executed for war crimes were "cruelly and unjustly tried" by a "sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces."[2] Their position is based on the WWII-era argument from the Japanese government that the country had never signed the Geneva Convention, and was not a signatory of any enforceable international war crimes agreement. Therefore, in their opinion, the convictions were labels placed upon them by an organization to which they did not belong.

The shrine's English-language website defends Japanese activities prior to and during World War II, by stating: "War is truly sorrowful. Yet to maintain the independence and peace of the nation and for the prosperity of all of Asia, Japan was forced into conflict." (Quotation from Wikipedia, as above).

As we left the shrine to make our way back to the conference we noticed a man had set up a display with photos and video screens to show that the 1937 Rape of Nanking never took place and that it is all a fabrication of the evil Chinese Communist party. Take a look...

http://www.history.gr.jp/~nanking/index2.html

You will notice that the main gist of these people’s arguments is dissent regarding absolute numbers of people who were killed. In this sense they are similar to the neo-Nazi holocaust denial people. They also forcibly point out that the Chinese Communist Party has been guilty of far worse massacres since 1947 and that they have no business in criticizing the defunct Imperial Japanese Army for human rights violations.

My own take on this controversy is — a plague on both your houses. The past cannot be undone and while we should not simply forget about it, continually digging it up in order to heave motes and beams about serves no purpose. Up until recently, the Prime Minister of Japan would make official visits to Yasukuni Jinja, mainly in order to placate the right-wing financial backers of his party. However, the last leader Mr Abe notably did _not_ make a visit during his short tenure, and so far the current incumbent, Mr Fukuda has indicated no intention of doing so. As a result relations between Japan and the PRC have become more cordial and a Chinese warship made a courtesy call to the port of Tokyo last week, the first such visit since 1934. May common sense prevail...

All of this got me thinking about my own religious upbringing at the Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

http://www.maryandcuthbert.org.uk/index.htm

This church was originally established in 883 by a band of monks in flight from the ravishing Danes who had driven them from their priory at Lindisfarne. Use of the land was granted by King Alfred ‘the Great’ and this is signified by the striking red colour of the cassocks still worn by the choir. It is claimed that the Bible was first translated into English there, but this is uncertain. Certainly, the Lindisfarne Gospels had their first resting place here after removal from Holy Island, but the form of Old English used in them is now unintelligible to the modern reader.
Anyway, it was here that the writer got his first taste of Christianity, first at Sunday School and later as a soprano chorister.
The vicar at the time was the Reverend Spurr, a gentle soft-spoken man who had been a missionary to China in the 1930s and had undergone torture at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. I can still remember some of his sermons from the early days of my choir career, before I became bored with it all. He had a knack of utilizing less well-known Bible stories, such as that of Nicodemus, to illustrate his lesson for the week. Remembrance Sundays were always a bit of a squeeze, as a member of the Boy Scout band I would play snare drum in the Church Parade marching up the Front Street from the Scout Hut, arrive there full of hell and anti-German/Japanese sentiment then dash round the back of the church to don red cassock and snow-white surplice and ruff, emerging all angelic and sweet-singing with slicked-down hair to listen to the Good Reverend tell us about the God of Love after singing Onward Christian Soldiers...
We were paid for this stuff of course, one old penny (1d) for each choir practice (Tuesday & Friday) and the princely sum of two shillings and sixpence (2s/6d) for a Saturday wedding, plus the chance to participate in the ‘scramble’ when the bridegroom would, following tradition, empty his pockets of loose change into the street for urchins to fight over.

My main reason for being a chorister was not to sing in the choir but to play football for its team, something I pursued more with passion than any skill. In later years, when the good Reverend’s sermons began to cloy, I would play with Matchbox cars or toy soldiers on the choir stalls, under the baleful glare of the choirmaster, Mr Caldwell, who was always threatening to confiscate them but never remembered to do do. Other people would imagine the vicar was a cricket umpire and estimate the score by the positioning of his hands during the sermon. It recently occurred to me that we would sing the lyrics to hymns and anthems most angelically without the slightest notion of what they meant;

‘Cherubim and Seraphim,
All the Saints adore thee--
Casting down their golden crowns
Around the glassy sea...’

doesn’t make a lot of sense even now

In the final year of my choir career a new rector, the Reverend Ottoson, appeared and took over the Sunday sermons. He was a real wild-fire compared with his staid predecessor and introduced all manner of new ideas to C of E services. I first heard the modern hymn Lord of the Dance from him.

In the fullness of time, my soprano voice broke and was 'like nowt nor summat’ for a year or two (to quote my grandmother) and so I was dismissed from the choir. I became a campanologist for a time, as the church has an impressive eight-bell peal, but became disinterested due to factional politics within the group.

To finish with I should make comment on something which is making headlines in Britain right now, particularly in the tabloid press. A good-hearted English teacher from Liverpool, about my age, name of Gillian Gibbons, decided to work in Sudan so as to use her teaching skills to benefit the children of that strife-torn land in some way. One day, she obtained a teddy bear from somewhere and decided to adopt it as the class mascot. She held a class competition to decide on a name for the soft toy as part of a study of animals and their habitats. The name that was decided on by democratic vote was Muhammad, which is a very popular name for baby boys. It is also the name of the Prophet of Islam and this has caused her to be imprisoned for blasphemy for 15 days and subsequently deported. There have been reports of vengeful mobs burning her in effigy and demanding that she face a firing squad for her heinous crime.

I cannot imagine what kind of deity would become vexed at having a soft toy named after him or her or one that would order someone’s execution for doing something like that. However, making decisions on behalf of one’s chosen Spiritual Being has been a human failing since time immemorial, only most civilised nations have grown out of it. For the sake of the Sudanese majority, I hope common sense prevails, as this kind of thing cannot sit well with the people who are in charge of allocating humanitarian aid.

That's all folks! Till next time.

What I did on my holidays (2008) and after...

2007-10-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

October 27th

Since the clocks are about to go back in Britain, announcing the end of the so-called BST (British Summer Time), it is high time I got around to updating this blog. Apologies to anyone who has been awaiting an up date, no excuses really, just a dearth of round tuit availability.

My holidays began in Saga this year, in the last week in July when we travelled down to Kyushu to support our youngest son, Roderick Genki, as he represented his school in the discus and shot-put events of the National Inter-High Track & Field competition. He finished 18th in the shot but managed seventh place in the discus, with a throw of 47.62 metres, just missing the cut for the final. A very creditable achievement for the youngest lad on the field.

The very next day I was on a KLM jumbo bound for the UK, glad to finally escape the sweltering heat. The weather was fair for the first week, but then turned colder, getting down as low as 11° C in mid August. I was obliged to borrow a fleece to keep warm and scrounge an extra blanket for the bed, while my sister turned on the central heating.

During this period I paid my customary visit to St. James’s Park to see the lads turn out against the Villans of Aston Villa. We were in row Y of the Leazes End which made me suffer bouts of vertigo as I gazed down from the dizzy heights. This was the best I could do, queueing up to buy the tickets a few days before, my usual sources having proved barren. We were in good heart on the way to the ground, the Toon had won 1-3 away from home at Bolton on the 11th of August, which we took as a good omen for the new regime of Mike Ashley and Sam Allardyce. The reprehensible Freddie Shepherd was deposed as chairman of the club in a bloodless coup in the close season, bringing forth rejoicing and merriment among most Newcastle supporters.

In the event, the match was dreadful, a dour midfield 0-0 grind with about 3 shots on goal all told. The Villa could have won it had they put themselves about a little better. Newcastle were clueless. I was reduced to scanning the South Tyneside horizon for landmarks, clearly visible from our lofty eyrie, up aheight.

Apart from Wrekenton church, I noticed that the abominable brutalist architecture of Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park in Gateshead was still standing. Built in 1969, this crumbling concrete monstrosity featured in the 1971 British gangster movie Get Carter, starring Michael Caine. Poor construction using raw concrete meant that by the end of the decade the building had deteriorated considerably and was listed for demolition, which was why I was surprised to see it still standing. Apparently certain people, including Sylvester Stallone of all people, felt it should be preserved as a cultural icon on account of its cinematic history and had launched an appeal to save it. Thankfully, such misguided sentimental nonsense has now been thrown out and the latest news is that this wretched symbol of urban decay is scheduled to be gone by the spring of 2008. Not a moment too soon, in the opinion of many on Tyneside and beyond.

On the way back, to compound our despondency, we noticed a pair of drenched and miserable Bactrian camels stood in the pouring rain in a field opposite the pub where we sought post-match sustenance. Part of a travelling circus, as cloven-footed beasts, these unfortunate creatures had been grounded by the governmental response to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease far to the south in Surrey. There is always someone or something feeling worse than yourself, I suppose. Since that first dreadful home game, the Toon’s fortunes have improved somewhat, and they currently sit in 8th place in the Premier League, played nine, won five, drawn two, lost two. This is the club’s best start to a season in over a decade, so Big Sam must be doing something right.

After that, the weather improved somewhat and I was able to enjoy a day out in Durham where the cathedral cloisters provided some photo-ops.

On the final day, my parents took me down to Hartlepool where a fully restored nineteenth-century sailing frigate can be seen in an open-air reconstructed replica of a Napoleonic seaport. HMS Trincomalee is a Royal Navy Leda-class vessel, built in Bombay in 1817. She was constructed from teak, on account of oak shortages in Britain caused by the demand for naval shipping during the Napoleonic wars. Apparently she is the oldest warship afloat in Britain and is well worth a visit, in all her copper-bottomed glory. Down on the cramped gun deck, among the twenty-eight 18-pounder cannon, you can really get a feel for those days of ‘rum, sodomy and the lash’, as Churchill described it.

http://www.hms-trincomalee.co.uk/

Back in Japan, the heat had not gone away and persisted till early October. During this time I noticed a report that the North-West Passage was ice-free. Global warming is a reality and no mistake. It is nearly November, and still the daytime is warm enough to discourage heavy clothing.

Our son’s sporting prowess has continued with him taking gold medals in discus and hammer-throw at the Kinki Youth tournament, first place in the discus at the Kokutai National Sports Meeting and silver medal in the discus last weekend in the All-Japan Youth tournament. Thus was in the city of Oita, in Kyushu at the ‘Big Eye’ stadium, one of the venues of the 2002 World Cup.

We took the motorcycle down to Kyushu on the ferry and enjoyed a little bit of a 2nd honeymoon as this year marked our silver wedding anniversary. Our first honeymoon was in the same area, again by motorcycle. Kitted out with saddle panniers, Black Mariah served us very well over the four day weekend.

The big news recently in Japan was the announcement yesterday that Nova, the largest chain of English language schools, has filed for bankruptcy and suspended operations indefinitely. Around four thousand foreign instructors and two thousand Japanese staff are currently without income. While this is an unfortunate event (especially for the employees), the writing on the wall has been there since June when the company were forbidden by law from recruiting any more students for a period of six months. The courts ruled that their business practice, of only offering partial refunds if a contract was cancelled, was illegal. Personally, I have never heard _anyone_ say _anything_ good about Nova in all the time they have been in operation.
For some years now they have advertised themselves as offering eki-mae ryugaku (overseas study by the train station) and promised that students could have classes at any time of the day or night, 24-7. In practice, the most popular time for an English class is 7 pm on a weekday evening and it soon became obvious that the company’s claim was hollow, leading to widespread dissatisfaction and attempts to cancel contracts for which hundreds of thousands of yen had been paid up front. The June court ruling had the effect of adding to the student exodus.
They also treated their staff very shabbily, having a rule that no social contact could take place between teacher and students outside of class. This was so they could charge extra for ‘free conversation’ in a special non-teaching room in each school and the students would get no language practice without paying for it.

Though I feel sorry for the newly unemployed people I feel a certain satisfaction that justice has been done. I have had disagreements with certain people in the company I work for regarding the timing of classes. ‘If Nova can do it--why can’t you?’ was usually the gist of their argument. Now it has been proven that Nova are a disingenuous outfit (to put it mildly), I feel confident there will be no more such talk.

Now the autumn weather has truly arrived, and the heat exhaustion now history, I will attempt to update this blog more regularly from now on.

The Motorcycle Diaries Part IV -- Hill and Mountain

2007-05-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

May 12th 2007.

We have been invited to go on a weekend tour of Okayama prefecture with some members of the Kansai BMW owner’s club. This will involve an overnight stay at a traditional Japanese lodge near the town of Mimasaka, with a barbecue and lots of beer so it is not an unwelcome prospect.

Akira arrives at about 9 o’clock, riding an immense Harley-Davidson FXDP 'Defender' instead of his usual Yamaha SRX café-racer. The final P on the serial type stands for ‘Police’ -- this is no ordinary ‘hog’ but a full-blown California Highway Patrol specification 88-cubic inch machine, equipped with siren and full red/blue front-end lights for flashing at people. It is built for high speed pursuit of villains and has solid rubber tyres which cannot be punctured by gunfire. To comply with the law, the siren has been disconnected and the lights cannot be flashed, otherwise it is petty much the pukka item. Akira promises me that I can have a go on it at some point over the weekend, but not just now as we have to meet the other members of our tour group, which involves a bit of heavy traffic.

At 10 o’clock we are having a coffee at Akashi Service Area and talking to the owner of the H-D, one Mr Fujita. He has owned this remarkable machine for a couple of years but never gets time to ride it, so he has decided to sell it. This tour is a good way of showing it off to potential buyers. Today Mr Fujita is riding an ancient machine which must be about 50 years old, a 250 cc single-cylinder Meguro, which was the cash-strapped company that Kawasaki Heavy Industries purchased for its know-how when they decided to enter the motorcycle industry, at the beginning of the sixties.

He casts admiring glances at my machine, which is a modern version of the first ‘big bike’ that Kawasaki produced. Three of the other four riders are on various BMW models, two of them traditional ‘boxer’ twins and one old K-series which has an in-line 3 cylinder car-like motor. The final rider sits astride a Honda CB 1300—a very serious piece of kit with a custom titanum exhaust system.

We depart at quarter past ten down the Kakogawa by-pass, which must be one of the most dangerous roads in the world, and try to stick together in staggered formation. After about forty unpleasant minutes we are pleased to be off this road and head on down the valley of the Ibo river towards the Harima seaside road. The Meguro begins to slow down and we all pass it, finally pulling up about half a kilometer later when we realise it has stopped. Akira and the ride captain go back to see what has happened and the rest of us dismount and I get to know them all a little better. I suppose the best way to describe us all is as middle-aged hooligans, who had motorcycles when younger because they were cheaper to run than cars, but have now gone back to them because they really are the only way to really travel and make ‘good’ time, in the best tradition of Robert M. Pirsig.

“...Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. Secondary roads are preferred. Paved country roads are the best, state highways are next, Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on ‘good’ rather than ‘time’ and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask for directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding...”

We hear the throaty rumble of the Harley V-twin and the three riders approach, thumbs up indicating problem over. Our next stop is at a promontory called Man-Yo Misaki overlooking the Inland Sea.

Akira explains that the Meguro was suffering from a loose electrical connection, which was easily sorted out. As there is little traffic on the Harima Seaside Road, he suggests that the next stage, as far as the town of Hinase, will be a good time for me to try out the Harley. He warns me to be careful of its bulk as it weighs nearly twice as much as my Kawasaki.

I seat myself in the wide tractor-like single saddle, heave it upright and flick back the side-stand. It is very heavy and I struggle to get it in a position to start the engine. I take a minute to check out the unfamiliar control layout as the rest of the group depart. The left hand filler cap of the famous ‘twin’ tank is in fact a dummy, doubling as a gas gauge. There are separate left-right direction indicators on each end of the high-set bars, separate light switches for the headlight and pursuit lamps, a horn and a kill-switch and a starter button. I switch on the ignition and press the starter--but nothing happens which is somewhat disconcerting. I check everything and try it again and again, trying to remember what Akira said, feeling more and more foolish as the minutes tick by, until Akira and Mr Fujita appear. ‘Clutch!’ he yells, glaring at me through his full-face Shoei.

Ah--that was it. Silly boy, the devil is all in the details…

I depress the clutch lever, push the starter and the huge mill rumbles into life. Getting it down the winding track back to the main road is somewhat entertaining as my left boot is not used to the strange toe-heel action of the gear lever, and the weight of the thing is fearsome, just as Akira warned.

Once on the open road, it does not appear to need gears at all with the immense torque that the Milwaukee V-twin mill has. We pick up speed and the whole feeling changes. The bike is very well-balanced and is particularly nimble through the curves, which is surprising. I keep up with the ride captain with very little effort, a relief after the initial feelings of terror. A most amazing motorcycle.

I recall a conversation I had some time back, on the Akashi ferry with three very tidy leather-clad young ladies who all owned Harley-Davidson Sportster machines.
‘Why do you choose the Harley over Japanese bikes? They are very expensive...’
They thought for a moment and came back with the reply -- ‘Harley has soul...’.
At the time I thought it was just a cute bit of marketing by the H-D corporation, but now I am beginning to understand what they were on about. Yowza, what a rush. My mind begins to entertain improbable and immoral fantasies about buying this particular machine.

At the town of Hinase we stop for lunch, which is a welcome break. I have anago teishoku which is a local delicacy based on conger eel. I mention that the Japanese anago is of a size not much bigger than the normal river eel, but in British coastal waters the things grow to a formidable size, the world record being a female specimen caught off the West Country which weighed in at 62 kilograms and then some. One of the reasons is the large number of wrecks which litter the sea bed due to two bouts of submarine warfare in the 20th century, which provide welcome habitat for them. My banter is regarded as a fisherman’s tall tale at first, but Akira assures them that I am telling the truth. He has seen the evidence…

After lunch, Mr Fujita asks me what I think of the Harley and recommends that I stay on it to enjoy the high speeds of the Okayama ‘Blue Line’ which is a scenic route like the Ban-Tan. I accept his offer, partly out of the desire not to appear wimpish. It is a bit of a handful…

However, before getting to the Blue Line we have to get out of Hinase, which involves a lot of low-speed traffic and the Harley is not good at this kind of thing, nor at the narrow country roads which follow. Once we are on the Blue Line the Milwaukee iron comes into its own again, but at the Ippon-Matsu service area I almost beg Akira to take charge of it again. It is just too much work most of the time and there are not enough roads in Japan where it can be enjoyed at its best. I tell Mr Fujita ‘Thanks--but No Thanks’ and he gives me a wry grin of understanding.

After this we leave the coast and head into the heartland of Okayama, which is aptly named as Hill-Mountain with its spectacular scenery. Before arrival at our destination we stop for a break at a roadhouse. After a while we attempt to set off again, but Mr Fujita finds that the kick-start lever has jammed on the Meguro, necessitating a push and bump-start. I begin to wonder at the risks involved in bringing such an ancient machine on a tour like this. Later on, the Meguro is repaired again, by Akira, with onlooker's commentary and unhelpful hints. Some things are the same the world over…

The lodge we are staying at is in a gorgeous bucolic location encircled by greenery, and has plenty of customers this day with about thirty members of the Kansai BMW owner’s club in attendance, as well as our group. The evening sees a sumptuous meaty barbecue of Yagyu beef and simply loads of bottled Asahi beer which gets everyone in a good mood, lots of good craic going on. I am well pleased that I came on this trip, having made lots of new friends.

The next day starts early with a traditional breakfast of rice, fish, miso and pickles. I take a post-prandial stroll outside and check out some of the views.

At 10 o’clock two members of the Mimasaka Fire Brigade show up and give some of us a lecture/demonstration of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation and also the use of the Artificial External Defibrillator device, in case we ever come across an emergency situation at the roadside. I hope I never have to use the knowledge I have gained, but it is another reason to be pleased I came along.

After lunch Akira and I set off along Route 429 which crosses the spectacular Shibiki Toge pass back into Hyogo Prefecture. It is simply some of the best motorcycling I have ever done, in fabulous scenery and I resolve to come back and do it again some time. Unforgettable…

We stop for a break at Ichinomiya Onsen while we wait for Mr Fujita and the others, who set off earlier in the day to tour southern Tottori. They experienced the emergency treatment lecture last year. The hot-spring water is soothing to tired muscles and minds and we have a good soak and chew of the fat in the outdoor rotenburo bath, putting the world to rights. The water is salty, not as harsh as sea-water but definitely saline. We are miles from the ocean; there must be halite in the rock strata that the spring water percolates through.

When our companions finally turn up, somewhat later than expected, Mr Fujita is riding pillion with the ride captain. The Meguro has finally given up the ghost with a clogged carburettor and has had to be abandoned back up the road, for later retrieval and repair. Mr Fujita tells me his next move is to buy a Kawasaki W650 like mine. He has fallen in love with Black Mariah. Been there and done that mate...

We finish the day in our traditional manner, over ramen noodles and kara-age chicken, plus some gyoza dumplings which are the speciality of the road-house chain.

We have done over a thousand kilometers in less than a month, which means that Black Mariah is presently off the road, waiting for a new Dunlop TT 100 to be fitted to her rear end. This will be the third time for this exercise, at just over 24,000 km on the clock.

Many more happy trails lie ahead, I am sure. She has adequately filled the hole left in my life left by having to give up kendo. I'll be back…

The Motorcycle Diaries part III

2007-05-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

-- Over To the Fourth Country --

Golden Week is here again and our dromomaniac motorcycling tendency along with it. This year we have decided to have a crack at Muroto Misaki in Kochi prefecture on the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands in the Japanese archipelago. The ‘fourth country’ is a liberal translation of the name Shikoku. I spent the first two and a half years of my married life on Shikoku, but that was in Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture at the western end of the island. Kochi Prefecture straddles the southern portion with its gorgeous sweep of Tosa Wan and the capes at each end of it, Ashizuri Misaki to the west and Muroto Misaki to the east. When we lived there, Shikoku was not connected by bridge to the main island of Honshu and there were no expressways so a 360 cc twin-cylinder two-stroke van with a top-end of 65 kph was quite adequate transport.

How times change. In the short space of a quarter-century three bridge systems have been built linking Honshu and Shikoku and once over there, a choice of three expressways awaits the intrepid road user.
Our journey begins at 8:15 on April 29th, a national holiday celebrating the late Showa Emperor’s birthday. It used to be known as ‘Green Day’ for some reason and the plans to resurrect the former name were a topic of bitter debate for some time in the National Diet. Something about reference to the Pacific War, it seems.…
This year it is a Sunday so ‘Showa Day’ is actually the following day, given as a holiday in lieu to make up the ‘Golden Week’.
The weather is warm and bright and we are swiftly down to Tarumi Junction and its masses of grey concrete which make up the approach routes to the Akashi Straits Bridge. With its centre span of 1991 meters this is currently the world’s largest suspension bridge and it certainly feels like it as we accelerate up the ramp and feel a fairly stiff crosswind blowing up out of the Inland Sea.

Due to the high toll fee, I don’t normally use the bridge unless it is to show it off to someone who has never seen it, and then only to the first service station/exit at Iwaya. However, we have our sights further afield this year and go straight on past, down the two-lane blacktop at a steady hundred and ten kph. Black Mariah is turning over at about 4000 rpm at this speed and she feels relaxed, with plenty of poke in reserve if necessary. We have spectacular views of Osaka Wan on our left and then as the highway cuts across to the west of Awaji island, equally spectacular views of the azure Seito Naikai, dotted with little fishing vessels. As we approach the mountainous southern end of Awaji, I notice four or five large wind turbines in rotation, making use of the almost constant airstream.

Before we know it we are off Awaji and crossing the Naruto Bridge onto Shikoku and Tokushima Prefecture and before very much longer we have paid our tolls at Naruto Interchange and have pulled up at a Lawsons combini for some caffeine nourishment. I feel a twinge of pain in my back and shoulders and realize that sustained high-speed riding on an un-faired ‘naked’ motorcycle involves considerable physical input. The canned coffee goes down well and we go outside to check the machines. Readers of this blog will recall that last year, our first stop came along with the realization that Akira’s Yamaha had an intermittent fuel leak which was not a welcome development at that stage. No such trouble this year as since that time, the machine has undergone major overhaul work, involving a rebore and head skim/valve grind, carburettor purge and fitting of an industrial-strength oil-cooler in engineer’s blue. The two bikes draw admiring glances from jealous car-drivers. They are _cool_ I must admit...

Then it is off into fairly heavy traffic on a four-lane road leading into and through the city of Tokushima. There is no margin for error as buses, trucks taxis and private cars jockey for position, switching lanes at will. Fortunately, our way to the south on Route 55 is well sign-posted and requires no right or left turns as it proceeds directly through the heart of the city. We are soon across the Katsuura River and the traffic thins considerably as the landscape changes, from commercial outlets and fast-food joints to flooded rice paddies with sparse green shoots of transplanted rice poking through the muddy water like whiskers on a teenage chin. Sometimes we pass a farmer hard at work on his rice transplanter machine, a most weird-looking tractor-like device with high ground clearance and skinny cast wheels, laden with trays of rice shoots. Also, flying proudly from many farmhouse buildings are the gorgeous koi-nobori, the carp streamers which indicate that there are children in the household. Always good to see, these bits of eye-candy form an essential part of the Japanese springtime experience.

As we approach the town of A-Nan I notice three immense, towering, tripod smokestacks and wonder what kind of facility they serve. The road takes a sharp detour to go around the industrial estate and it turns out that they are part of a power generation plant, all battleship-grey steel and dark brown ceramic insulators. There is no smoke emanating today, but the whole place has a sinister cast to it and I am pleased to be away from it as the land begins to rise.

We have picked up a travelling companion clad in natty leathers, riding a very smart Honda CB400 tricked out in streetfighter style. We have fun dicing it with each other through a series of ascending curves and then down the other side through the small town of Mi-Nami to follow a single-track railway to the town of Mu-Gi. The lad on the Honda takes his leave of us here with a cheery wave and we do not see him again.
Now I can smell the sea, or rather the Pacific Ocean, and we soon catch sight of it as the road hugs the coast winding past a series of spectacular inlets, with basaltic grey sandy beaches. It is a lovely road for motorcycles and I begin to feel a deep sense of relaxation and oneness with the universe.

I am rather harshly reminded that relaxing on two wheels is never a good idea, when one of my bêtes noires -- a farmer in a small white pick-up, suddenly pulls out in front of me, gabbling into a mobile and puffing on a gasper, true to form. He gets a sustained blast on the klaxon and rude signs with the fingers as I overtake, but continues on his way oblivious as we enter Kochi Prefecture, tossing the fag-end out in the slipstream for good measure. What a prat...

From here down to the cape the road is blissfully quiet with very little traffic, apart from the odd bus or like-minded motorcyclist. I begin to see signs written in katakana phonetic script advertising something called hoe-ru uotchingu and wonder what on earth it can be. Then I see a water spout a few hundred yards offshore followed by a grey-black humped shape and finally the tail fluke of a surfacing whale. Whale-watching for tourists has now replaced killing them for food and profit in this area. Kochi was at the centre of the Japan whaling industry until the IWC moratorium a quarter-century ago. There have recently been calls from some sources to re-establish commercial whaling as there is evidence that some species like the minke have recovered their numbers sufficiently to sustain it. These calls are countered by shrill opposition which to my mind is more based on emotion than logic. The reality is that when whale meat was seen as a cheap and invaluable source of protein in the post-war decade, Japan was a country impoverished by its reckless charge into the Pacific War and its aftermath. Times have changed and no mistake. A whole generation has grown up never knowing the taste of whale meat. Japan can afford to import anything it wants nowadays. I have tried whale meat just once and was not impressed with its oily texture. I am pretty sure that any attempt to re-establish commercial whaling as a going concern will be doomed to failure, on the grounds that there is no market for the meat, apart from as dog-food which would be disgraceful. No-one in their right mind would choose oily whale over juicy Australian or US beef.
I am tempted to stop and watch the whale myself but the cetacean is moving away from the coast and is soon lost from view.

We round the final bend and a sign announces our arrival at destination. I insist on a photo as proof.

There is but one place to eat, so we go in there and enjoy spaghetti bolognese which is not bad. After repast we take a walk on the rocky shore. Akira comments that the scenery is exactly the same as on the other side of the Pacific in California. I decide to estimate where old Hernando must have sat in Panama to inspire the words of John Keats.

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Afterwards, we remount and set off on the return journey. We have been studying the map and it looks like Route 193 will provide an interesting detour on the way back to Tokushima. This involves retracing our path as far as Awakainan, where the farmer nearly got me, and then turning left up the valley of the Umibe river.

At first this seems like a great idea, for about half an hour we are haring along a deserted winding country road with a great surface and gorgeous mountain and mixed-deciduous forest views. However this soon comes to an end and the road narrows to almost a single track with passing places. It also begins to wend up wards through dense cedars and the available light is cut down sharply. We keep going,onward and upward with a short 10 km detour to take a look at a famous waterfall, the Todoroki Taki. Unfortunately there is hardly any water in it, making the experience feel a bit like the pub with no beer. By the time we get down from the mountain my shoulders and biceps are aching from the effort of controlling the Kawasaki at low speeds along narrow roads strewn with fallen rocks and my nerves are shot through with the terror of wobbling past sheer drops with no guard rail. We have been at it for about 105 minutes but have only covered about 50 km as the crow flies. Madness...

At the first hint of civilisation I locate a vending machine and quench my raging thirst. Akira says he’d like to do it again sometime...

If I wasn’t so tired I’d have a good mind to laughingly fell him with a right cross...

The next leg of the journey is considerably easier, along the winding course of the Naka River in valleys of deep green. There is not much water in it though, and a considerable amount of silt deposits. In a few places hydraulic excavators made by the company that employs us both are at work in attempts to dig out the watercourse. Maybe they are going to dump the silt in the sea, where it really belongs. We soon see the reason for all this -- a dam. This is a problem which is becoming more and more evident each passing year. There is only one river in all of Japan which does not have a single dam along its course, which is a real shame. That fortunate water course is the Shimanto-gawa in southern Kochi Prefecture. I’d like to see it some day but there has been no time this trip. The state of the other rivers is no dam good at all...

At dusk we pull off the road in the township of Uragawa, to have dinner at a roadhouse. This comes in the form of miso-ramen and deep-fried kara-age chicken and has never been so welcome. Hunger is definitely the best seasoning of all, and no mistake.

After retracing our course through the neon-bright city of Tokushima and back over the bridges along the expressway to ‘our’ island, I bid goodbye to Akira. As I pull up outside our house at 21:15, I check the odometer. 13 hours and 570 kilometers is a new single day record for me--and it feels like it. It surely does...

Epilogue:
Newcastle United are slouching to a miserable mediocre mid-table position in the Premier League, looking likely to finish with a record low points total for the club. The end of the season 2006 – 7 can’t come quickly enough for me. At least there will be derby games with the Mackems next season as Sunderland are guaranteed promotion either as Championship champions or runners-up. All I can do is pray for more scoreboards like this...

Sakura, Sakura...

2007-04-04T05:39:00.000-07:00

Cherry blossom is everywhere now, at least in Western Japan. Always a welcome sight, letting us know that Spring has truly arrived. We had a slight cold snap after my last blog entry on March 4th, reminding me that the old saying of ‘Ne’er cast a clout, till May be out’ should be modified to ‘… till March is out’ to suit the climate of Japan. This does show us that the world was indeed a colder place in 1732 , when the saying was coined. There is some dispute as to whether May refers to the 5th month or to the May tree or hawthorn, which blooms in late April, but in either case if you leave your winter woolies on that long you are going to be somewhat sweaty. Another, less welcome harbinger of Spring is the phenomenon of kohsa, or fine yellow sand loess borne on the prevailing wind from the Yellow River region of mainland China. It makes formerly clear views very hazy and settles everywhere, making freshly washed cars look dirty. Perhaps the Three Gorges dam will make a difference by irrigating desert areas, but I doubt it. For those who suffer from it, this is also the season of kafunshoh, or pollen allergy, a condition similar to hay fever. The main culprit is the cedar tree, which is found everywhere in Japan in vast monoculture forests. These were planted as part of a post-war government scheme to become self-sufficient in timber for construction purposes, displacing the natural mixed-deciduous forests to a large extent. As millions of households had been destroyed by American bombing during the Pacific war, this would seem to have been a sensible policy. However, no-one foresaw the vast boom in Japan’s GDP and the gradual appreciation of the yen vs the dollar that was coming. As a result, it is cheaper to import lumber from North America and the domestic industry can hardly be described as a going concern. Most of the labour force are close to retirement age and lumber is not an attractive proposition for the young techie generation, along with agriculture in general. So the cedar trees stand uncut on the hills and mountains in serried ranks, giving off pollen by the bucketful in Spring to irritate the eyes and noses of sufferers. It even affected me to a certain extent last year, bringing on sneezing fits two or three times a day. So far in 2007, I have been OK but there is a way to go yet. I did hear that some enterprising botanical researcher had developed a kind of vaccine for the cedar tree which will suppress its pollen-producing tendency, but the size of the task in inoculating each individual tree must beggar belief.

Last time I blogged I was hopeful that Newcastle United were going to bring some joy to their long-suffering supporters and get into the last eight of the UEFA Cup. They started off well enough on March 8th, beating the Dutch side AZ Alkmaar by four goals to two at SJP in the first leg. Surely, we all thought, surely they can defend a two-goal lead next Thursday. Well, they could not, going down 2-0 to allow AZ the passage on the away goals rule. Since then, they have lost twice in the League, 2-0 away at Charlton Athletic and 0-1 to Manchester City at home last Saturday. This latest reversal has seen the fans turn against the manager and chairman in great numbers. One man marched onto the pitch and tore the remainder of his season ticket to shreds in front of the dug-out. Another did the same thing with his replica team shirt, not a cheap item. Some people take the fortunes of their team very seriously indeed. To make matters worse, the rival team Sunderland have been sweeping all before them and are now being given odds of 1-2 for promotion to the Premier League. It is not the best of times to be a Toon supporter, but (according to The Sporting Life) the club have just announced plans to increase the capacity of SJP to more than 60,000 along with some very posh housing development as part of a £300-million development scheme, at almost the same time as announcing an operating loss of £6.9 million, mainly due to inept player trading and amortisation. All of this will be done by ‘external financing’ and is still subject to official approval. They are obviously looking into a rosy-pink crystal ball or they are on some wondrous kind of hallucinogenic.

‘... But who has won? … At last the Dodo said “Everybody has won and all must have prizes...’

The Six Nations Championship turned out to be a kind of Lewis Carrollian caucus race in the end, with the Frenchies nicking it at the death by 3 points but every team ended up with something to shout about, even the wooden spoon men, Scotland. All good stuff and a good advert for the noble ‘game for hooligans played by gentlemen’.

England are in the Super Eight stage of the Cricket World Cup, being contested in the West Indies. Having won one and lost one match, they are being given odds of 14-1 to win outright. On the other hand Australia are at 11-10. I think the bookies know what they are doing... However, the series has been overshadowed by the murder of the Pakistan coach, Bob Woolmer, after they were eliminated from the competition by Ireland, not normally thought of as a cricketing powerhouse. There is heavy suspicion that a gambling syndicate were involved, possibly because the dead man was about to blow the whistle on a vast global match-fixing syndicate. A very dirty business, however you look at it.

Here in Japan, we have all been horrified by the grisly murder of a young English teacher, Lindsay Ann Hawker, in Ichikawa, near Tokyo. She was found naked and battered in a bathtub filled with sand on the balcony of an apartment inhabited by one Tatsuya Ichihashi, who is now the chief suspect. According to the reports he fled barefoot when the police came to the apartment, acting on a tip-off. Quite how he managed to evade capture is anyone’s guess, but he is still at large. Ichihashi is the one pictured left below. If you see him, please inform the police as to where and when. They really need to talk to him.

The most recent news is that the suspect Ichihashi was involved in the stalking of another female English teacher last year, whose complaints to the police fell on deaf ears. The young woman was sufficiently traumatized to quit both her job and the country. Unbelievable incompetence by Chiba’s finest. Sitting on their hands while a genuine threat was reported and allowing a barefoot suspect to get clean away. Shinjirarenai!
The unfortunate Lindsay appears to have been under the impression that Japan is a perfectly ‘safe’ country and there was no risk in going to the apartment of a total stranger to give him a private English lesson. Foolhardy, to say the least. Japan is quite ‘safe’ on the surface but there are dark undercurrents to the society which manifest themselves from time to time. Some five or six years ago, a British night-club hostess, one Lucie Blackman was murdered in similar fashion and then dismembered and dumped in a seaside cave, crudely encased in concrete. The trial of her alleged killer, one Joji Obara is still going on, though an official ruling is expected soon. Unfortunately, this latest terrible event has given the lower-end English tabloids (like The Sun) an excuse to print all sorts of garbage about how Japan is a nation packed with sadistic male perverts whose main jollies are got by humiliation and torture of women. I’m not saying that people like that don’t exist here but really, this is pretty rich stuff from a country which produced Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) and Dr Harold Shipman (Doctor Death)...

The words ‘glass houses’ and ‘throw stones’ spring readily to mind. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story...

I should try and finish on a cheerful note so it is with a glad heart that I note the ‘Prods’ and ‘Taigs’ of Ulster (Norn ’Iron) are finally in sight of a lasting agreement. Former bitter enemies, the DUP's ‘Reverend’ Ian Paisley and his Sinn Feinn counterpart, Gerry Adams have finally agreed on a devolution deal and will sit together in Stormont Castle starting May 8th.
To quote the good Reverend:

‘We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future.

In looking to that future we must never forget those who have suffered during the dark period from which we are, please God, emerging.

We owe it to them to craft and build the best future possible and ensure there is genuine support for those who are still suffering.’

Now that’s more like it lads! The Lion can lie down with the Lamb after all...
For some strange reason, I think it is really going to work this time. We shall see.

Early Spring

2007-03-05T04:02:00.000-08:00

March the Fourth it is and about time I put something up on this blog. After all it’s supposed to be an abbreviation of web-log, implying something updated pretty regularly if not daily. A good excuse might be that this 17-inch G4 PowerBook was out of action from Dec 31st until last weekend--a period of about eight weeks. I was able to keep computing due to the generosity of my daughter, Aya, who sportingly allowed me to set up an account on her iBook and use it in the evenings and weekends--so it isn’t really a good excuse. No the real reason is simply that I’ve been overwhelmed with part-time work and have been kept busy up till about 22:00 every night since we came back from our New Year break in Kyushu. Just why I behave like this became apparent when my partner in this translation/proofreading/rewriting work came around with a chit for the taxman which showed that the PowerBook has paid for itself four times over with the work I’ve done on it since assuming ownership about a year ago. Mustn’t grumble then...
The reason why the machine was out of action so long came down to my fault in mis-diagnosing the problem. Once it was correctly diagnosed, the good folks at the Apple Store, Shinsaibashi, Osaka took it in for a week and restored it to health, simultaneously relieving me of the ¥en equivalent of about sixty-five quid for parts and labour. A learning experience--the nature of machines. They break sometimes and then it costs money to fix them.
The last time I blogged, just before Christmas, I was expressing hope that the England cricket team were going to turn themselves around and at least win one Test Match in the Ashes series. Well, enough said about that, though they did set a dubious kind of record in the least number of days a team has ever retained the hallowed trophy. To their credit, once the Ashes debacle was over they did record one victory over the Oz in a one-day international.
Then it was the turn of the England rugby team to set hearts a-flutter as they comprehensively demolished Scotland by forty-two points to twenty in the Calcutta Cup with the great Jonny Wilkinson scoring a record twenty-seven points in the course of the game. One try, two conversions, five penalties and a drop goal has a nice spread to it. That was on February 3rd at Twickenham and they were looking good for the Six Nations championship. Since then they have laboured to an unconvincing win over Italy and been well and truly turned over (43-13) by the Irish by at Croke Park. It was fitting in a way that the Irish should have won the fixture since the last time an English ‘team’ was at the venue in 1920, it was the Black-and-Tans (and the RIC and Auxiliaries) firing on the crowd and players at a Gaelic football match, killing fourteen unarmed civilians. This was in reprisal for the activities of Michael Collins and his ‘Twelve Apostles’ who had successfully assassinated fourteen English secret-servicemen and military intelligence officers (known as the Cairo Gang) earlier the same day.

I do hope that both nations can now move on from such frightful events, after eighty-seven years amd let bygones be bygones.

Whatever the poetic nature of the victory for the Irish, the scale of the loss for England has been devastating, particularly as our main weapon, the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, was kept very quiet all match. The latest news is that he has a hamstring injury, which is a bit unsettling as we take on France at Twickenham on March 11th. It will be a do-or die affair, particularly as Ireland will probably have clinched the Triple Crown the day before by beating Scotland.
Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, my main squeeze Newcastle United FC were quietly lifting themselves out of the relegation mire with a series of gritty performances, probably the best of which was against Liverpool at St James’ Park on February 10th, when Martins and Solano scored a goal each to win the game two-one. It was especially good after they had gone behind in the sixth minute to a soft goal gobbled up by Craig Bellamy (aka the Gob of Glamorgan) who was obliged to leave the Toon under a cloud a couple of seasons back. A frightful bounder, by all accounts, but a handy goal-poacher nevertheless.

As it stands Newcastle are in tenth place in the Premier League, exactly mid-table with a record of:

P 29 (Home) W7, D5, L3 F 23 A 17 (Away) W3, D2, L9 F 11 A 20 Pts 37 Goal diff -3

To be sure, I have seen a lot worse but it’s hardly the kind of stuff which inspires blind faith. All Geordie expectations are now on the UEFA Round of 16 which sees The Toon take on the Dutch side AZ Alkmaar at SJP on Thursday March 8th. The away fixture in The Netherlands is on the following Thursday. It is our only hope of any tinware this season and hopes are high, particularly as the injury list is showing signs of improvement. Even Michael Owen has been kicking a ball again. More to the point is the fact that the great rivals Sunderland AFC have hit a purple patch under Roy Keane and have taken 26 points from the last thirty to look very likely candidates for an early return to the Premiership. Bragging rights are at stake all across the North-East of England. In the unlikely event that we do win the thing it will be the first major trophy brought back since the halcyon days of 1969, when the competition was known as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.

Howay the Lads.

As for the family, my eldest son made us all proud by graduating from Nishinomiya Kofu High School last Saturday, while his younger brother made sure of his place at Amagasaki High School in late February. For some reason known only to himself, the cho-nan decided an appropriate way to celebrate graduation would be to dye his hair the colour of straw, which did not amuse his father very much. His appearance reminded me of Heinrich Hoffman’s character Struwwelpeter (Straw-headed Peter).

Ah well, boys will be boys, one more year of teens for him.

The weather is warming up fast and some of the first midges of the season met their untimely end on the face-shield of my Arai helmet on Sunday. Usually they don’t make an appearance till about April. It doesn’t bode well for the summer, be prepared for a scorcher...

God rest ye merry gentlemen...

2006-12-23T05:56:00.000-08:00

Saturday, December 23rd 2006
Two days till Christmas and might as well end up the year’s blogging on a cheerful note. Not that I ever celebrate Christmas very much any more. I only ever have December 25th off when it’s a Sunday; something which always comes as a surprise to the each year’s generation of students who always seem a little disappointed when I don’t go on about how I celebrate. Where I come from, the North of England, it always seemed to me that the New Year was a more important celebration--and that is the way it is in Japan.
In theory anyway. A walk down the road for the casual observer would see garish American-style outdoor illuminated decorations bedecking houses with reindeer, Santas, angels and holly, each household trying to outdo the other in how much power they can waste. It is an annual source of amazement to me, when less than 1% of the population are Christian. Of those, I think the majority are sober types like Methodists or Baptists for whom showy Christmas is not really part of the deal.
Since mid-November, the shopping malls have been similarly done out, with schmaltzy Yuletide tunes assaulting the ear at every turn. It’s nothing to do with Christ, but everything to do with Roman Saturnalia and the other pagan festivals which the early Christian missionaries felt it was convenient to adopt. The Yule log and decorated fir-tree from the Vikings, the mistletoe from the Druids, turkey from the Native Americans and so on. Very eclectic.
One part of it all that I’ve got no problem with is the notion of ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men’. Would that it were true! There seems to be more strife now across the face of the globe than I can ever remember, but that’s maybe because I have access to more information now than I ever did before--thanks to broadband Internet access.
On Dec 28th, we will be on the road to Saga for about a week’s worth of doing very little. Sitting in the kotatsu and eating mikan oranges, I hope to catch up on some reading and to not go near a computer for the duration. We were going to leave on the 27th but my youngest son has to attend a special ceremony where he will be presented with the Kobe City 最優秀選手 (sai-yuu-shuu-sen-shu) award for 2006 aka the Blue Riband or MVP of sports, on account of his performances this year. It’s dog-with-two-tails time again...
In the New Year, I’ll be looking into the world of web-cams so we can see more of the family back home rather than just Skype-talking to them. I’ve been messing with a discarded Sony Digital Handycam to see if I could make that do the job of a web-cam, but alas, it has only a lowly USB connector and FireWire is what is needed.
In the meantime--all the best for ’07 to those who read this blog.
I’ll be back…

Birds of a feather...

2006-12-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

One of the first things I remember about entering the University College of Wales in September 1973 was that people were getting very agitated about events in Chile. With good reason, as it turned out. At first reports were very unclear, sounding more like rumour and counter-rumour, but it soon became very clear that a disgraceful event had taken place. The democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende had been overthrown in a bloody coup d’etat, with the full complicity of the USA, merely because he was a socialist. It was led by Augusto Pinochet, who previously had been a trusted presidential aide, in charge of the military. Allende did not survive the coup, allegedly taking his own life. For the next 17 years Pinochet ruled Chile with an iron hand, establishing one of the longest lasting dictatorships in Latin America.
Who’s your Daddy?

He and his thuggish entourage soon revealed that they had little use for democracy, viciously crushing any opposition to their rule. This resulted in approximately 3000 people dead or were simply not there anymore. The verb ‘disappear’ was given a new transitive format. The 1977 ‘Operation Condor’ and the infamous ‘Caravan of Death’ were among the devices used to further his program of obliterating resistance. By 1990 he had been forced from office and spent the rest of his time among us deftly avoiding trial for his crimes against humanity, at the same time allegedly building up a hoard of ill-gotten gains in murky overseas accounts. He was incarcerated in Britain for about 18 months in the late 1990’s awaiting trial for human rights abuses, but finally managed to wriggle off the hook on the grounds his state of health had made him unfit to stand trial. One of his strongest defenders was the former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, who argued that he was ‘a true friend’ to Britain thanks to his support during the Falklands War. It is my considered opinion that Thatcher showed her true colours at this time, and that we saw in Pinochet’s actions what she would have done to her opponents during her time in power, had she not been constrained by a parliamentary democracy.
Britain needs ‘true friends’ of Pinochet’s ilk like a collective hole in the head.

The evil old monster has now gone to his grave, without ever having to answer for his crimes. For some people, Pinochet was and remains a hero, on the grounds that he was strongly influenced by the Chicago School of Economics, using its tenets to ‘transform’ Chile into South America’s strongest economy.
Oh, I see, so that’s all right then...

What I did on my holidays and other ramblings...

2006-12-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

Well, the last time The Cap'n blogged was just before the World Cup started in Germany and it was mainly ranting on about the enforced Budweiser sponsorship of the event. When the tournament got started I watched a lot of the action and lost a lot of sleep as a result. On the other hand, England never really got going and with hindsight were a major disappointment, from the final lachrymose crocked Beckham exit, to the hideous belligerence of Rooney, which almost certainly lost us the best shot we’ve had at the trophy in a long time. Penalty kicks are an awful way to go out and an even worse way to win the thing, which Italy finally managed to do after setting new standards of precipitously low gamesmanship and downright cheating when claiming fouls had been committed to garner free-kicks/penalties. From a Newcastle United supporter’s viewpoint, the worst sight was that of Michael Owen being carted off the pitch on a stretcher after playing less than 2 minutes of the Portugal match. It’s still not clear what happened, but I heard he was thinking of suing the German FA, on the grounds that the playing surface was uneven and not fit for a top-level match. Severe cruciate ligament damage means he is not expected to make a first-team appearance this season, in a squad decimated by injuries. I’ve certainly known better days as a Toon supporter and no mistake. However, as I write the reports are all of a 3-2 win over Reading last night, in a pulsating encounter at St. James’s Park which has eased the relegation worries, for a while anyway. The lads are unbeaten in 7 games and are a lowly 15th in the Premiership as they travel to Ewood Park, Blackburn to try and get a result.
The World Cup was no sooner over than we were off to dear old Blighty for our annual summer vacation. It is always a relief to escape from the stifling heat of Japan’s summer season and this year was no different. However, it marked the first time that my wife and I have travelled by air without the offspring, which felt a little odd at first. It is something we will have to get used to though, as they gain years and wisdom. My wife was only there for a week, being worried about leaving our daughter in charge of the boys for any longer than that. I was there for nineteen days and had a fine old time, even though the weather did not play its part all the time.
I did manage to get to St. James’s Park to see the black & whites take the field, treating my old friend Keith to his first view of the interior of the magnificent stadium.

As he is a Sunderland supporter (aka a Mackem) he had difficulty in saying anything at all positive about the home ground of his deadly rivals, but he did mutter some monosyllabic grunts to that effect. The opponents in a friendly game were Villareal of Spain and the ground was less than half-full, but I was determined to enjoy myself. Newcastle, though, did not seem to be up for the affair and went behind in the 13th minute to one of the softest goals I’ve ever seem them concede, gifted to Josico. Keith was most amused, of course, and began to pay close attention to the field of play. I was somewhat relieved when Ameobi powered a quite exquisite header into the top-right corner of the Leazes net on twenty-two minutes to level the score, but this feeling did not last long. Villareal were not to be denied and went in at the half leading two-one after more defensive dithering allowed Pires to net. The half-time pie was most excellent, far better they ever used to be, which almost put me in a better mood. Surely Glenn Roeder had something up his sleeve to turn the tide?
If he had, he kept it up there because we were floundering again just after the hour when Rodriguez rose unmarked in the Leazes penalty area to plant an unstoppable header past the helpless Shay Given. I began to question my sanity in forking over hard-earned specie to be ‘entertained’ in this manner but Keith was having the time of his life, chuckling away in a manner not seen for years. It all looked black for us until 15 minutes from the end when Roeder made an inspired substitution, bringing on Nicky Butt for the lacklustre Babayaro. Somehow Butty snatched respectability from a rout, by scoring twice in 2 minutes in front of the ecstatic Gallowgate crowd. The last ten minutes were almost worth the price of admission as both teams went for the kill, bringing fine saves at both ends of the pitch, but all-square was how it ended after the ninety minutes were up. Even Keith had good words to say, even though he had been denied the ammunition to bait me with for years to come. Funny old game is football...
One good thing about being at home on holiday without my immediate family was that I got to spend more time with my own mother and father than is usually possible. We had a couple of really good days out, even though the weather didn’t really play its part. One of these days was a trip across the Tees borderline into North Yorkshire, with the aim of catching a glimpse of the restored A4 Pacific class locomotive Sir Nigel Gresley in its new role pulling passenger trains on the scenic 18-mile route between Grosmont and Pickering. The A4 Pacific class with its streamlined bodywork is generally reckoned to be one of the most beautiful steam locomotives ever built, whether you are interested in them or not. One of my earliest memories is waking up with a sore throat after a tonsillectomy in Durham General Hospital. As the nurse threw back the curtains, one of these locomotives came hissing into Durham station across the viaduct, all billowing steam, polished brass and gorgeous green livery. Fantastic it was. I think it was the Mallard but I’m not sure. In 1937, the hundredth such locomotive to be built was named after its designer, honouring him before his death in 1941.

This gorgeous piece of kit was rescued from the knackers yard in 1966 and underwent extensive restoration work over many years, at great expense. When the website of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway informed me where Sir Nigel could be observed in 2006 my interest was fired up and we duly set off on the pilgrimage. The weather was fine as we left but it rapidly deteriorated and as we crossed the Tees into Yorkshire the whole countryside was thoroughly shrouded in grey gloom and drizzle. It was very nostalgic for me to be honest, Yorkshire is really like that most of the time which is why it is such a green county. We had decided to try and view the locomotive from the hamlet of Beck Hole in the valley of the River Murk Esk. Beck Hole was a popular spot with Victorian and Edwardian visitors and is halfway up one of the the steepest inclines on the rail network. The one in forty-nine gradient means the locomotives are really labouring at low revs, providing the deep, satisfying CHUFF - CHUFF- CHUFF sound so beloved of live steam enthusiasts.
As it happened we had some time to kill before the next scheduled Pickering - Grosmont run of Sir Nigel so we went for refreshment in one of the smallest pubs I have ever been in.

The bar was full of smokers so we went in the lounge, my mother, father and I, meaning that it was really crowded. The man in charge entertained us with some ancient photographs of Beck Hole and the pub in days gone by. A nice pint of Theakston’s for me and a pot of tea for Mam & Dad had us suitably fortified and about half an hour later we drove the car up to the arch bridge to wait for our rendezvous.
When Sir Nigel arrived (late--some things never change) I was a little dismayed to find the tender was leading with the loco pulling the train in reverse, so the shot I had been anticipating did not quite materialize.

What I had been hoping for was something like this:

The best-laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft a-gley, as I’ve noted before. Never mind. The NYMR do put on a Sunday lunch service on the trains which sounds like a good idea for our 2007 excursion, though we would need better weather to make it worthwhile.
On return to Japan, I was almost immediately whisked off to the island of Shikoku, to the city of Marugame in Kagawa Prefecture. The reason for this was that my youngest son, Genki, was representing Hyogo Prefecture in the All-Japan Track & Field Championships, taking part in the shot-put event. In the end he managed a very creditable 4th place, but there was a considerable distance between the top 3 and his best effort. Shot-put involves body-weight above all and he simply does not have the bulky frame to excel at it. Nevertheless we were very pleased and very proud of his efforts, all the while hoping he would heed the advice of his coach and concentrate on discus. Two months later all dreams came true when on October 27th he took the gold medal in the discus event of the so-called ‘Junior Olympics’ at Yokohama International Stadium.

Wow. Dat’s ma boy! Numero Uno! At first he looked a bit wobbly as his first practice throw nearly hit the line-judge, while the second almost landed on the running track. Fortunately, there was no race in progress at the time. When time came for his first throw proper it flew far and straight in a perfect spinning arc, to touch down at 54.70 metres, fully 2 metres further than his previous best and bettering his great rival from Kyoto by a metre and a half. I swear I could feel the latter’s ego deflating as he contemplated the mountain he had to climb. At close of play, no-one had bettered 54.70 and so he stood proud on the podium like a dog with two tails, his previous rival taking the bronze.

One of the first entries in this blog was a report on the 2005 Ashes Test series victory by England, which was most gratifying to write. 14 months later, the series is taking place in Australia and England trail by 2 matches to nil, after a second innings batting collapse in the 2nd Test deflated our hopes of a come-back. We were beaten out of sight in the 1st Test, no mistake about it. It doesn’t bode well for a retention of the odd little urn that is the trophy, which allegedly contains the ashes of the cremated bats, balls and stumps from the first time Australia beat England at cricket, in the late 19th century. However, all is not over till the Fat Lady sings and the Third Test begins on December 14th in Perth at 02.30 GMT. I’m hoping the Three Lions on a shirt can prevail, otherwise it’ll be a pretty gloomy end to 2006.
I hope 2007 will see me blogging a bit more regularly. All the best for the season!

The World's Worst Beer?

2006-06-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

In the run-up to the World Cup in Germany this week, I noticed something in the news about the official beer for the event being Budweiser. Moreover, it’s not even the original Budweiser from what was Czechoslovakia, but that insipid, watery excuse for a beer made by Anheuser-Busch of St Louis. Apparently, this American mega-corporation have ponied up $47 million as one of the official sponsors, giving them the right to make Bud the only beer on sale within a 500 metre radius surrounding the official stadiums. As a sap to the Czech brewery of Budweiser Budvar, Anheuser-Busch are only allowed to advertise their product as ‘Bud’.

The German reaction has been predictable.

‘I wouldn't wash my car with it,’ said Bavarian Beer Club member Ottmar Riesing.
‘We have a duty to public welfare and must not poison visitors to World Cup venues,’ said Franz Maget, leader of the Bavarian Social Democratic Party, commenting on what some Germans have called ‘beer censorship’.
The same man called Bud ‘the world's worst beer’ and he could be right, even though by his country’s standards it is _not_ beer at all, but something else.
Advertising Bud as ‘beer’ contravenes the German version of the Trade Descriptions Act. The German purity law only considers a drink to be beer if it is brewed from malt, hops and water and Bud is looked down upon by those familiar with Germany's storied tradition of beer because it is produced with rice included in its ingredients.
However, FIFA are standing firm, which gives the verity to what Bob Dylan penned all those years ago--‘Money doesn’t talk--it swears’.

All this reminds me of a dispute in Britain over thirty years ago concerning ‘Real Ale’ versus ‘keg beer’. A consumer association called CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale’ was set up in 1971 in protest at the brewing industry producing pasteurised beer served chilled from kegs pressurised with CO2 or nitrogen. Aggressive merger and acquisition tactics meant that many small breweries producing traditional cask ales were disappearing. I prefer cask over keg anyday and I was and am generally in favour of the activities of CAMRA

It must be said though, that keg beers have improved immeasurably over the years. Moreover, there is nothing worse than having your ear bent by an over-enthusiastic CAMRA auto-didact, while you are just trying to enjoy a quiet pint.
In the sixties one of the bete noirs of CAMRA was an abominable beer called Watney’s Red Barrel, which is no longer in production. Its demise was surely helped by a Monty Python sketch broadcast in November 1972 featuring a dialogue between Mr Bounder of Adventure Travel (Michael Palin) and a tourist called Mr Smoke-Too-Much (Eric Idle). It was enough to put anyone off for life!

… Bounder: Anyway about the holiday

Tourist: Well I saw your adverts in the paper and I've been on package tours several times you see, and I decided that this was for me

Bounder: Ah good

Tourist: Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. What's the pointof going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

Bounder: (agreeing patiently) Yes absolutely, yes I quite agree...

Tourist: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.

Bounder: (beginning to get fed up) Yes, yes now......

Tourist: And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Pow ell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres.

Bounder: Will you be quiet please

Tourist: And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'.

Bounder: Shut up

Tourist: Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets

Bounder: Shut up!

Tourist: where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion.......

Bounder: Shut up your bloody gob....

Tourist: crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagues by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...

A game of two halves, innit?

2006-06-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

“Put me in a football shirt and it was tin hats and fixed bayonets, death or glory.” Terry Butcher, former captain of England.
“Some people think that football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it’s much more important than that.” The late Bill Shankly, 1913--1981, probably the greatest manager Liverpool Football Club ever had.
It’s that time again. The four-year recurring disease as my wife calls it. The greatest sporting spectacle known to man, unless you are American. Yes, the World Cup is upon us again and in little over a week it will begin, in Germany this time. It differs from the American baseball World Series in that other countries are actually invited to take part, until 32 of them have managed to qualify for the final tournament. About one billion people, over fifteen per cent of mankind are expected to watch the drama unfold, all the way to the final tie on July 9 at the Berlin Olympiastadion, the venue where Jesse Owens humiliated Hitler’s Aryan athletes in 1936. Apparently, T-shirts bearing the words ‘Don’t mention the War’ have been top sellers among England fans bound for Germany, so it would be good form for me not to. Stop here.
Strange though it may seem to those who know me, but I was not _always_ a rabid football supporter. The game held little charm for me up to the age of eleven. I preferred reading, especially poetry and verse. The ‘Walrus and the Carpenter’ was a particular favourite, as was ‘Jabberwocky’, just about anything by Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Caroll.
However, in 1966 the then Jules Rimet trophy, forerunner of the present World Cup was contested in England and it became increasingly difficult to ignore what was going on. Somehow, Alf Ramsey and his ‘wingless wonders’ captained by Bobby Moore fought their way to the final tie at Wembley where they defeated West Germany (as it was then) 4-2 after extra time, to send the nation into raptures. The victory was achieved after one of the most controversial goals ever scored in a World Cup final to get England’s noses in front and surely one of the most spectacular, to put the tie beyond doubt, both by Geoff Hurst. All Englishmen can recite the words of the commentator, the late Kenneth Wolstenholme, “Some people are on the pitch--they think it’s all over--IT IS NOW!” as the ball screamed into the top corner of the net. Geoff Hurst later said he had been trying to put the ball into the stand, to use up some precious time and that the goal was a complete fluke. His earlier goal probably should never have stood since the ball ricocheted off the bar down onto the line and probably did not totally cross it before being hooked away. Referee’s decision is final, though...
Great stuff. And since the closest England have come to duplicating the feat was a 1990 semi-final loss (on penalties to West Germany, as they _still_ were then), we cling to the memories. It has been forty years of hurt. However, if you ask me for my memories of the match I have to confess I don’t have any. It being ‘shipyard fortnight’ I was on holiday in Cornwall with my parents and sister and we listened to the match on a battery-powered transistor radio while driving about in our old Austin A40 Somerset somewhere near Newquay. I remember being pleased at the outcome, as were my parents, but it was not until we got home that I realised that history had been made. Flickering, grainy monochrome highlights of the famous victory were often on TV, though I don’t recall ever seeing the full match. It was enough to spark my curiosity.
The following year, on January 21st 1967, I attended my first ever football match, at St James’s Park to see Newcastle United versus Nottingham Forest. I remember a feeling of exhilaration on seeing the famed black-and-white shirts appear, to a thunderous roar from the crowd. However, as sometimes happens, the match was a dreadful affair, dull and tedious, ending in a goal-less draw. The crowd seemed quite happy though, in that the team had secured a vital point in the battle to stave off relegation. There was a lot of grumbling about ‘The Board’ and I kept looking about to see where this piece of wood was, thinking perhaps it was blocking someone’s view of the pitch. It was a typical raw-and-damp January day and I was glad to get home to some of my mother’s home cooking, wondering how eleven men versus eleven men could differ so much from the halcyon spectacle of the World Cup. It was not until later in the season, on April 1, that I ventured back again, under peer-pressure from half of my schoolmates, the half who were Newcastle crazy. The other half were Sunderland crazy and the two camps existed in a more or less perpetual war of verbal attrition. The town where I grew up, Chester-le-Street, is more or less equi-distant from these two meccas of football and I had decided early on where my allegiance lay, even though I wasn’t really interested at the time. It was just something you had to do, so as not to appear stand-offish. Why I chose Newcastle remains a mystery to this day... It just seemed natural.
My second football match, Newcastle United versus Leicester City was infinitely more entertaining, with some spectacular goal-keeping from the great Gordon Banks--one of England’s World Cup heroes--and equally good work from Gordon Marshall between the sticks for Newcastle. Just when it looked like another 0-0 was on the cards, our man Dave Hilley intercepted a back pass and beat Banks from 20 yards, with seemingly consummate ease.
Newcastle United one Leicester City nil.
I will never forget the roar of euphoria then and at the final whistle, for it meant that the two points secured (as it was then) had virtually guaranteed First Division status for the ‘Magpies’ for another season. God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. We didn’t care that Sunderland had beaten us 3-0 at home and 0-3 away that season, our team was _still_ in the big time. At that point in time I _understood_ what it was all about I and have been hooked ever since.
It is a terrible disease to suffer from and in moments of reflection I have advised my offspring not to support Newcastle United, on the grounds that it is detrimental to one’s mental health. It is too late for me but...

Note the glazed expression and vacant look about one who is once more at his personal Wailing Wall.
Since those early days I have been to what must be hundreds of football matches involving Newcastle United and listened to more on the radio. There are certain stand-outs in that time span, most notably the last time the team was successful in a major competition--in season 1968-1969--when we lifted the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, now better known as the UEFA Cup. At the start of the campaign none of the sporting pundits gave Newcastle a snowball’s chance in hell, but as the big names of Europe became scalps on our belts one by one, people began to sit up and take notice. Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, Real Zaragoza, Vitoria Setubal were dispatched and then came the mighty Glasgow Rangers in the semi-final. The second leg of this tie was played at St James’s Park after a goal-less draw at Ibrox on May 14th involving a penalty save by our keeper, Willie McFaul. I rose at 04.30 on Sunday May 18th when the tickets went on sale for the 2nd leg, to catch the first bus through to Newcastle, packed with like-minded devotees. The length of the queue outside the ground was a daunting sight but by 10 a.m. I had the precious slip of paper in my grasp, along with more than 60,000 others in the same frame of mind, and simply couldn’t wait for Wednesday night. For me and probably many others, the match was probably the most memorable of the whole campaign, but not for the football. It was a very tough, physical affair with no quarter given or expected but Newcastle managed to grab two goals in the 2nd half to win the game and put themselves into the final tie. The first goal came after 53 minutes--a high angled drive by Jim Scott in front of the home fans beating Neef all ends-up, after a killer through ball from Tommy Gibb. The second came 24 minutes later after an Ollie Burton free-kick to the head of Wyn Davies. A typical flick-on found Jackie Sinclair who cracked the ball into the roof of the net. Oh Joy O Bliss O Transport of Delight! A sea of black & white scarves hailed their conquering heroes and the din was unbelievable. We were in seventh heaven and loving it. However, the Rangers fans were not amused, to say the least. Maybe it was the fact that Scott and Sinclair were both Scots and had committed apostasy in their eyes or maybe it was the fact that they were to a man awash to the gunwales in drink, but they simply went berserk. From our position opposite in the Leazes, the Gallowgate resembled a rumbling volcano, erupting with blue-shirted two-legged lava hurling bottles and bricks and invading the pitch in an attempt to get the game abandoned. The referee stopped the match and took the players off for 17 minutes while the police fought back with horses and dogs to try and restore order. I was not yet 15 years old and it was and is the most fearful I have ever been at a football match. After the final whistle was blown, we had to get back to the bus stop while running battles were fought in the streets of Newcastle. After taking all the back routes we knew, I and half-a-dozen mates reached the haven (we thought) of the Pilgrim Street bus station. There was a double-decker in the sloping bay next to ours, with chocks under the front wheels and a few passengers on the top deck awaiting the driver and bus-conductor. It was going our way, but via Wrekenton, and we decided to wait for the next Middlesbrough bus as it would not be long, surely, and would get us home quicker. As we began to feel a little more secure, nervous chatter broke out, discussing the highlights of the game and wondering aloud who our final-tie opponents would be. And then we saw them, two brawny Jocks stripped to the waist, with blue scarves wrapped round both wrists, swaying as they passed a bottle of White Horse between them, swigging straight from the open neck. Raw fear began to overtake us again and we wondered which way to run. The bigger of the two Jocks finished the bottle and hurled it through a fire-station window and then hoisted himself up to the driver’s cab of the double-decker and released the hand-brake while his mate removed the wheel chocks. The bus rolled straight backwards and smashed into the back wall of the bus station, showering the screaming people inside with broken glass. The Jocks then wandered off, no doubt to try and get more drink from somewhere, totally ignoring we cowering, tim’rous beasties.
When I _finally_ got home that night somewhere around twelve, after my one and only experience of a genuine riot, one of the most terrifying nights of my life, my mother was furious. She had been watching the events on live TV. I was immediately forbidden to ever attend a football match again, it was simply too dangerous.
Well...
Two weeks later, I saw Newcastle beat the mighty Ujpesti Dosza of Budapest at St James’s park by three clear goals in the final tie first leg. After a further two weeks they triumphed in Hungary, after a few hiccups, to win the tie six-two on aggregate. Victory in Europe at the first attempt, surely we were going places now. Even the monumental landing on the moon by Apollo 11 a few weeks later, was small beer to a Newcastle fan. This was just the start.

Oh well...
Sometimes, going to a match is actually more enjoyable than being at the match. The putting on of the colours, the waiting for your transport to the ‘toon’, the pre-match banter over pies and pints of cask ale, the entrance to the ground and gasping at the first glimpse of the lush green sward, especially at the first match of the season are all part and parcel of the experience.

Nowadays, being resident in Japan most of the time, I only get to go to early season Newcastle games if at all, but I do enjoy following the matches live via Internet radio, for a small fee. I’m sure the day is not far off when a live video feed will be available, and that will be true progress.
Starting next Friday, June 9th, a different kind of madness ensues. Die-hard fans of deadly rival teams (even Newcastle/Sunderland, Spurs/Arsenal, Liverpool/Everton etc) put away their differences to follow the common cause--ENGLAND!
The wunderkind Wayne Rooney is unlikely to take part, but no matter. With this team, England have the best chance of the last forty years to win the World Cup.

Don’t let us down boys. England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty!

The Motorcycle Diaries, Part II

2006-05-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

Foreword:
There is a welcome late-Spring holiday period in Japan known as ‘Golden Week’ when four national holidays fall close to each other and most companies allow their staff to take the intervening periods as paid vacation. This period is usually marked by a national collective surge of dromomania when everyone seems to be on the move somewhere. Airline and train reservations are made months in advance for travel to foreign climes or other exotic destinations which means the experience is usually horrendously jam-packed. I once experienced this ‘Golden Weakness’ at first-hand on an Inland Sea ferry from Matsuyama to Kobe. There were so many people on board that conditions resembled those on an 18th century slaver en route from Guinea to New Orleans, and I had the distinct feeling that the vessel would capsize at any moment. To make matters worse it rained in Kobe for 72 hours straight and the return journey was just as bad, if not worse. Once bitten--twice shy, and nowadays I usually stay at home in Golden Week and leave the rest of the madding crowd to do as it will. It’s a good time to get jobs done around the house as the round tuits miraculously become available at this time, and a good time to simply relax...
However, since I took up motorcycling again, I have usually taken an extended day-trip in Golden Week to some far-flung domestic place of interest. In 2005 I journeyed north to Amanohashidate,the ‘Standing Bridge of Heaven’ on the north coast of Kyoto prefecture together with my riding partner, Akira. This year we went in a similar direction but then headed westward to Tottori to see the famous coastal sand dune there. This journey was attempted In September 2005, but had to be abandoned half-way due to torrential rain. Bearing this in mind, we studied the weather charts most assiduously prior to our trip and postponed it once due to an outside chance of rain in central Hyogo. However, the forecast for the following day was fine and clear and so it was we set out at 07.45, in bright sunshine.

The Log: Wednesday May 3rd...
We head due west towards the town of Inami and cross the Kako river before heading north towards Kasai and then west again to the town of Kodera. At this place, ‘Fragrant Temple’, we are to join the Ban Tan highway which is a toll-route from Himeji to Wadayama and roughly bisects the prefecture south-north. It is a great time-saver, though somewhat expensive, and we have decided on it so as to make our journey feasible in one day.
Before joining the Ban Tan and its sustained high speeds, we stop at a Seven-Eleven 24-hour convenience store to fortify ourselves with caffeine. I check my fob-watch in the manner of Phileas Fogg--08.40. A timely break in the journey.
Canned coffee imbibed, we emerge from the store and go through the painstaking sequence of getting ready for riding. Stow wallet in marsupial pouch, fasten waist belt. Knot silk scarf, zip up jacket. Unzip jacket, retrieve ear plugs. Insert ear plugs, re-zip jacket. Take off sunglasses, place on seat. Fit leather face-mask, put on helmet. Open visor, put on sunglasses. Zip up jacket sleeves, put on gloves. Take off one glove, find keys in jacket side-pocket. Put glove back on, get on bike. Ease off main-stand, insert key & start engine. Elapsed time--about one minute.
It is a right faff getting ready for riding, but if I don’t do it just so I have to stop, sooner or later, and fiddle with something.
For some reason, Akira is always much faster than me at getting ready and is invariably waiting patiently, with his single-cylinder Yamaha thumping away rhythmically. I normally hear it burst into life after a single kick, with a harsh bellow from its megaphone exhaust cone at about the same time as I can’t find my keys. Today though, something is not quite right. The engine has not started and Akira is working up a bit of sweat as he belabours the kickstart lever. I notice a thin dribble from a drain-pipe forming a puddle below the engine and smell the sickly-sweet odour of fresh gasoline. The carburettor is flooding and he has to switch off to let the excess evaporate. This is a little disconcerting, but Akira, sanguine as ever, is not unduly troubled. As he is an engineer and knows more about such things than me, I put the worries away. About five minutes later, the Yamaha fires up first kick and we are away.
The clouds are huge and white between wide stretches of vivid blue sky and the morning is warming up fast. I begin to regret donning the face mask, but am glad I brought it along as the evening air will be cool. There is a fair amount of traffic on the Ban Tan but it is all moving at a fair clip. It mainly consists of large, spacious saloon cars, usually with a family ensconced. May 3rd is a national holiday, Constitution Day, and is followed by two more so most people are no doubt going to make a long weekend of it. There are no farmers in small white pick-up trucks, which I am thankful for. Abominable drivers to a man, these characters are invariably smoking a fag with the right hand while jabbering into a mobile phone in the left and specialise in sudden manoeuvres with zero use of the indicators. I generally avoid them like the plague and am gratified to note that that when I see one it is always on one of the country roads which run alongside the Ban Tan. The highway itself is a little unusual, in that it consists of a single lane in each direction which means overtaking is a risky business for a motorcycle and mostly impossible for a car. In days gone by the road was a turnpike, with toll gates at frequent intervals staffed by grey men with mournful expressions and hacking coughs. You seemed to be forever slowing down or pulling away. Nowadays the system is smoother, you pick up a card at the entry point and present it at the exit whereupon the required toll is flashed up on an illuminated display. The staff seem healthier too, maybe they smoke less or maybe the exhaust gas is cleaner than it once was.
Before very much longer we are at the northern limit of the Ban Tan, near the town of Wadayama. While we are paying the toll, Akira’s engine cuts out and I smell the gas again. The carburetion problem has not gone away, but it appears that it only manifests itself at idle as the engine has been performing happily at high rpm. Akira looks a little more worried now and decides to find a filling station in order to assess the extent of fuel loss. We do this in the town of Izushi after an unbelievable ride over a switchback mountain road. Akira has taken this diversion in order to avoid traffic in larger towns en route. Follower rather than leader now, I am pleased that to note that the Yamaha does not appear to be losing any more fuel, except at a standstill. In the broad valley of the Maruyama river, at a rural filling station we confirm that the leak is evident but not substantial and should not be a reason to abandon the trip. We are almost at the Sea of Japan, as far north as we got last time and we move on, hoping it is the best move. Gasoline prices are very high at present and it should really all go into the cylinder, not onto the road.
I have stopped checking my fob-watch every time we stop, and estimate time by the position of the sun in the sky. We have decided to visit the site of Genbudoh which is on our way, near the village of Akaseki in the district of Toyooka. The name literally means ‘Basalt Cavern’ and is a most spectacular sight with its hexagonal columnar jointing and contorted strata of igneous rock. It was formed about a million and a half years ago by an outpouring of lava which formed hexagonal crystals as it cooled.

According to the posted information, its three chambers run to an extent of seventy metres, though entry is forbidden. A million and a half years is a mere twinkling in geological time, but Japan is still a young country in those terms. Its most famous symbol, Mount Fuji, is merely a dormant volcano and is widely expected to erupt again this century. The last time was a little over over two-hundred and six years ago. Frequent earthquakes, especially in Tokyo, remind us of the power beneath our feet. As I write, a slight tremor has rattled the windows and caused our Yorkshire Terriers to bark out a warning. In Japan, it is never far away...
Before we head on towards our next stop, we take a look at the small Genbudoh museum and gift shop. There is a most impressive selection of lapidary and fossils, but the thing that catches my eye is a marker up near the ceiling, higher than I can reach. It indicates the floodwater level reached after the archipelago was ravaged by typhoons in 2004. Fully ten of them made landfall on mainland Honshu that year, but this area took a particular clattering. It is a sobering thought, on such a fine and sunny day...
Akira gets the Yamaha going first kick, which is reassuring. His machine must be all of twenty years old now, a single-cylinder SRX 600, described by the motoring correspondent in the Daily Telegraph as ‘the best British bike that the Japanese ever made’. Akira has owned it for about 18 months now and I have never seen him happier.

The last machine he owned, according to him, some fifteen years prior to this one, was a Kawasaki Z1300, an immense liquid-cooled behemoth with its six cylinder engine transverse across the frame. He tells me that it weighed around 350 kg dry and near half a ton when stocked with its vital fluids. It must feel a bit like swapping a bull elephant for a quarter-horse. The superior power-to-weight ratio of the Yamaha makes it quicker off the mark than my twin-cylinder Kawasaki W650, and it is usually not until we are past 60-70 kph that the extra horsepower shows itself and I can get past him, should I be so inclined. Today he leads the way and we move on down the picturesque wooded estuary of the Maruyama River on its approach to the town of Kinosaki, famous for its hot-springs and rugged coastline. Here there is a slight delay as there is a line of cars and buses awaiting admittance to ‘Marine Land’, a somewhat cheesy amusement park with performing dolphins, penguins and other non-native marine creatures for tourists to ooh and aah over. I remember that my two eldest children enjoyed themselves there about fifteen years ago.
Today we have our sights set further afield, and we are relieved to be clear of Kinosaki and on the coast road to Takeno, our next port of call. The road clings to rugged cliffs of dark igneous rock which the pounding sea has carved into fantastic shapes. I catch a whiff of the ocean’s salty tang and feel a sense of exhilaration. This is more like it. This is why we came this far.
We round a final curve with a precipitous overhang and catch sight of Nekosaki, a long promontory which is reckoned to resemble the profile of a crouching cat. This is the fishing port of Takeno with its wonderful bay and curving beach of gleaming white sand, which seems like an opportune location to stop for lunch. The sea front is quite crowded and we are quite fortunate to find a single parking space which will accommodate the motorcycles. There is some kind of festival procession in progress which explains the crowds.
Over lunch we discuss the Yamaha and its carburetion problem. I venture the possibility that it might be caused by the float chamber sticking due to accumulated gasoline residues and advise Akira to try and find some Redex petrol treatment. He has never heard of this product and I realise that it is a very long time since I have seen any. My old Morris Minor used to like it anyway, two shots in the filler neck once a month before filling the tank seemed to keep it quite happy and rolling around the streets of London. Maybe there is an ersatz Japanese equivalent available.
We go outside and record our visit on digital memory stick. It is very warm now and I am anxious to get back in the wind before the sweat begins to pour down my cheeks.

An urchin wants to know my name so I tell him it is ‘Terminator’ which seems to make him happy. We head west on Route 11, which later turns into Route 178, sometimes hugging the coast and little bays and at other times dodging behind headlands, all the time sharing the direction with a single track railway line, except when it dives into tunnels. It is an excellent road for motorcycles and what little traffic there is obligingly maintains a decent momentum. Eventually the San’in railway disappears from sight and we don’t see it again till we reach the town of Amarube. Here it crosses the road, far above us on an imposing trestle bridge built from iron. I recognize the structure and recall that it was the site of a horrendous train wreck in the late 1980s when a powerful gust of wind literally blew a 2-car train right off the bridge, to crash down on a small factory below killing several people. What an awful way to go...
The bridge was built in 1912 when the Taisho Emperor was on the Chrysanthemum Throne and Japan was on the up and up. It is a famous landmark and piece of industrial heritage, much beloved of train-spotters the world over.

However, the news is that the structure is due to be demolished and replaced by a modern pre-stressed concrete bridge, starting in August 2006 and to be completed by the end of the year. Maintenance of such a venerable structure is becoming too expensive and the new bridge will allow schedules to be maintained. There is little room for sentiment in today’s hard-nosed business world. The train service is sometimes suspended due to high winds (for obvious reasons) and this is inconvenient, as well as being a drain on revenue. The wind is light today, but I still have a nervous glance upwards as we pass under the bridge and continue on our way. Maybe it will be my last sight of the old Amarube bridge. Nothing is permanent but change...
Some time later on we cross the prefectural border into Tottori and I raise my fist in triumph. Finally made it here.
There is a bit of a hold-up as we wait to join Route 9, the main road from Wadayama, the Yamaha’s carburettor floods and the engine cuts out again. I can see from Akira’s body language that the novelty is beginning to wear off this little trait. However, it starts up again after a little while and we are soon gazing down at a vast expanse of sand--the Tottori Sakyuu.

It is easy to imagine one’s self in the Sahara Desert, especially with the camels for hire. Both the Arabian Dromedary and the Asian Bactrian type are available--at a steep asking price for a short ride. They even want 500 yen for a photograph of you beside the abominable creatures. At a distance of 20 metres I can still catch a whiff of their fetid breath and general stink and decide to pass on that one. My admiration for Lawrence of Arabia does not extend that far, thank you very much...
There are hordes of people here on this fine Bank holiday and we have a distinct advantage with 2-wheeled transport in that we can jump traffic queues and park where we like. A nice cup of Joe goes down well and then it’s time to look for souvenirs of the trip, light enough to carry on the pillion beneath the elastic mesh net. I am surprised to find pears on sale, thinking that they are out of season, but then I realize that nothing is ever out of season anymore, with modern vinyl hot-house farming. This is what I buy as these are the ‘expected’ souvenir from Tottori Sand Dune. Three of them for ¥1100, each about the same size as a 5kg shot, they just fit under the carrying net.
It is 15.30 and we have seen what we came to see so it’s on the road again. A short interlude at a self-service filling station while I work out how to operate the thing. The sun is shining directly behind me, making it tricky to decipher the digitized instructions. Eventually the gas tank swallows up ten litres of regular, for ¥1320. Not very much cheaper than a normal station with attendant service. I poke the otsuri button and my change appears in the form of a pre-paid card. The filling station is part of a nationwide chain, so it is a reasonable presumption that I can use the card at my local branch. We move on out on Highway 29, heading due south with the lowering sun on our right-hand.
As we head into the mountains, the glow of the sun and lengthening shadows give the landscape a surreal appearance. We are heading towards the To-kura Pass which will be another ‘first’ for me. The road winds ever higher up the valley and we see signs advertising ski-runs, which are out of season--thankfully. On two wheels in snow, this road would be a nightmare. The summit of the To-kura Pass is a neat double hairpin, reminiscent of the old Devil’s Elbow in Scotland, though considerably wider. It is somewhat cooler up here and I am glad of the face mask & silk scarf. Down the other side, just inside our home prefecture, we stop at a roadhouse near the mountain town of Haga. Fried chicken set goes down a treat, all the fresh air today has given us an appetite.
The sunglasses are put away for the final time today and we set off on the final stage of our journey. We have decided to avoid the city of Himeji and so the very last stage of the trip is the same as the first. We cross the Ban Tan highway at the town of Kodera and finally arrive home at 20.30. It has been thirteen hours and 440 kilometres--certainly the furthest I have ridden in a single day.

Afterword
Ecclesiastes 3.1 ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven’
We have discovered that the carburetion problem on the Yamaha can be alleviated temporarily by tapping on the float chamber. At first Akira was using a long crescent wrench for this, but now he uses a short rubber/nylon dual-faced hammer which I presented him with. This does not carry the risk of damaging the carburettor. I bought this tool about a year ago in a Daiso 100-yen shop, thinking ‘There must be something I can use this for’. Its purpose in the grand order of things has now been revealed...
The pre-paid card representing my change of ¥680 turned out to be usable only at that single filling station in Tottori. A neat little scam they have going there. Shame on you ENEOS Corporation...

TBC

Coming-of-Age Day Jan 9th 2006

2006-01-14T05:29:00.000-08:00

Known as Seijin-no-hi in Japan, this national holiday is especially for the young people who attain the age of majority in that year. A special ceremony, Seijin Shiki, is held in towns and cities across the nation, giving the boys a chance to sport new suits and the girls to turn out in beautiful kimono. It will be the turn of my daughter, Aya-Louise, to become 20 on January 16th, so exactly one week before we trooped down to the Wing Stadium in Kobe to join the horde of new seijin who were assembled there...

As for the ceremony--I've seen better organised riots--but the young 'uns were having a whale of a time, despite the bitter cold and a specially organised right-wing Japan National Front uyoku rally blaring out barbarous dissonance outside. Eee aa doan't knoaa...

A man and his passion

2005-11-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

“A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocations, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.”
Excerpt from “The Road,” by T.E. Lawrence

T.E. Lawrence is one of those larger-than-life characters that have always fascinated me. He became famous after the First World War because of the remarkable role he had played while serving as a British liaison officer during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 against the Ottoman Empire. When the war ended, an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, toured Britain and the Empire giving an outstandingly successful slide-show about Lawrence’s achievements. The romantic story of Lawrence's campaigns in Arabia and Allenby's in the Holy Land appealed strongly to a British public sated with horrific accounts of trench warfare on the Western Front. From this beginning grew the legend of 'Lawrence of Arabia'.
No country was more in need of a hero at that time. However, Lawrence shunned the limelight and joined the RAF, taking a number of assumed names to keep a low profile. His one passion were his motorcycles, all Brough Superiors, which befitting its mantle of ‘the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles’ cost about as much as a small house at the time. The 1937 SS 100 model had a sticker price of £155.

Lawrence gave all his Brough Superiors the name of Boa--short for Boanerges, the sons of thunder. They were all numbered, from George I through George VII. George VIII was awaiting delivery, having already had the stainless steel petrol tank and other special parts from its predecessor fitted, when Lawrence was severely injured in a tragic motorcycle crash, on May 13th 1935, near Clouds Hill, Dorset. I presume one of the Georges was wrecked in the crash, which apparently happened when he lost control of the machine whilst trying to avoid two errand boys mounted on bicycles. He died five days later, never having regained consciousness.
For many people, T.E. Lawrence and the character portrayal of him by Peter O’Toole in the 1962 David Lean motion picture ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ are one and the same. I myself was rather late in seeing this film, I was only eight years old in 1962 and I seem to remember it had been given an ‘A’ rating by Lord Harlech and the British Board of Film Censors. This meant that one had to be 14 years old to see it and then only in the company of an adult of 18 years or more. I missed out and it would not be until many years later that I first saw it. This was in 1991, not long after we’d purchased our first VCR, on an NHK BS2 satellite broadcast. After the initial sequence portraying the fatal crash and a brief interlude at a memorial service to the great man at St Paul’s Cathedral the film must have one of the most spectacular sequences in cinematic history. Dawn breaking over the desert followed by a panoramic view with towering ziggurats, two stick-like travellers and shimmering heat haze is absolutely unforgettable, as is the haunting score composed by Maurice Jarre. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a bold, mad act of genius to make ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, or even think that it could be made. Omar Sharif, who played Sherif Ali in the film, said 27 years later: “If you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story, and not much action either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert, what would you say?” Nevertheless, it is superb cinema, and it was no wonder that it took seven Academy Awards the following year. I now have the complete restored 228-minute Director’s Cut on VHS videotape (though I rarely have time for such a viewing marathon) and it will be one of my first DVD purchases, when I finally acquire the necessary hardware. I did hear that T.E. Lawrence’s family were not very happy on viewing the movie for the first time saying that he was not at all like the character portrayed by O’Toole. The film is not totally accurate, the viewer is led to believe that Lowell Thomas was really called Jackson Bentley who told Lawrence’s tale through syndicated journalism while the war was still in progress. If one is really interested in him, his book ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ telling the tale of the desert campaign with the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire, is a must-read. However, it is not of the great T.E. Lawrence that this post is all about, but of his all-consuming peacetime passion, the one which eventually brought about his untimely end--motorcycles. Another quotation from the great man, before we continue:
"When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour. My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life..."
T.E. Lawrence, April, 1923

Yes indeed, that is what a skittish motor-bike will do for you and no mistake, prick your nerves into life. Especially in the best season of the year, the autumn of Western Japan. There is something intensely relaxing about concentrating one-hundred per cent on controlling your automotive mount. You will think nothing of haring over the same stretch of road again and again in successive weeks just to see if you can’t lean her a little further, exit each corner a little faster and always be in control. Balls-out speed is not the ultimate objective, you can get that on any common or garden motorway. A winding road with a good surface is preferable to ‘unfit roads’ and one without too much negative camber is also a plus. Manhole covers with their slick iron surfaces can present a major problem if there’s a bit of moisture about, most especially when they’re sited in the apex of a bend. I sometimes get the feeling that highway engineers are sadistic bastards when they site the things the way they do, especially if they aren’t quite flush with the road surface. Riding the same roads repeatedly gives you fore-warning of such hazards and an unfamiliar road is always approached with caution. Common sense tells you that.
It is also the fact that you are really part of the action on a motorcycle and not insulated from it, as you are in an automobile, that gives the things such appeal. The first book that I bought after graduating from the University College of Wales was Robert M. Pirsig’s little classic ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. Though the reader soon finds out that the book actually has precious little to do with motorcycle maintenance or Zen for that matter, Pirsig did know what they were all about, as this quotation shows:

“… Cold mornings long ago when the marsh grass had turned brown and cattails were waving in the northwest wind. The pungent smell then was from muck stirred up by hip boots while we were getting in position for the sun to come up and the duck season to open. Or winters when the sloughs were frozen over and dead and I could walk across the ice and snow between the dead cattails and see nothing but grey skies and dead things and cold. The blackbirds were gone then. But now in July they're back and everything is at its alivest and every foot of these sloughs is humming and cricking and buzzing and chirping, a whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.”

Right on the money...

My own machine is only the third one I have owned so I hardly count as a grizzled veteran. I first fell in love with them just over twenty-three years ago when I was just starting on my first teaching job in the city of Matsuyama at the Western end of Shikoku. I needed some form of cheap transport that didn’t require a parking permit and a second-hand Yamaha XJ 400 was just the ticket.
Not only did it get me about from workplace to workplace in places where no train went to, it also took me and my new wife on honeymoon in Eastern Kyushu. Kitted out with panniers, top-box and tank-bag it carried us and all the tackle two people in love could ever need. Unfortunately, the relationship (with the bike, not the missus) lasted only a single year. It was reluctantly sold and the proceeds added to a war-chest in preparation for a one-year MA course at the University of Durham. I had a different job by then, which could be accessed by bus, so its utility was not really a necessity any more. As the new owner took it away, I promised myself that one day, one day, I would get another one.
That day did not come till eighteen years later when in September 2000, I was able to purchase a handsome used model of a wine-red and chrome 400 cc Honda VRX Roadster. (The picture shows a blue one--use your imagination) Two years before, duff cartilage in my knees had obliged me to give up the other great passion in my life--kendo-- and there was a hole in my life that needed filling.

The Honda was a very pleasant motorcycle, its engine put out only about thirty-five horsepower which was adequate for someone getting back into the life and the V-twin configuration not only looked good, but sounded nice too. The best part about it was its disc brakes. These had been the worst feature of the Yamaha, especially in the wet. The Honda’s discs would pull you up smartly in any conditions short of snow and ice and generally inspired confidence. Its worst feature was a hint of fussiness in cornering, if you attempted to change lines to avoid something, it would shake its steering head with a hint of petulance as if to say “don’t go there boy...”. I put this down to the fact that the bike was a bit of a hybrid, with an engine designed for a chopper-type cruiser (the Steed) shoehorned into a sporty double-cradle frame. It had not been designed from the ground up. We had a time, a good time together for a couple of years, but it was only a station on the road.
The Honda had been purchased with one purpose in mind--to get me enough riding experience to have a crack at the Japanese oh-gata (large-size) motorcycle test. To ride anything over 400 cc it is mandatory to pass this test and to say it is difficult is a major understatement. I finally succeeded in satisfying the examiners at the Seishin Car School in Western Kobe in January 2001 after a half year of drilling and practice on their lumpy, grumpy, nasty old Honda CB 750s. I can safely say that it is the most difficult thing I have succeeded in doing in almost a quarter-century of expatriate living in this country.
With that out of the way, I could concentrate on the next hurdle, which was raising the necessary coin to trade in the Honda for my dream machine.

It is pretty obvious to anyone who knows motorcycles that the designer of the Kawasaki W650 had a mate with a 1968 Triumph Bonneville, but in fact the machine owes its heritage to the Birmingham Small Arms Company, usually known as BSA (or Bloody Sore Arse according to my father). At the end of the 1950s the Akashi-based Kawasaki Aircraft company acquired a controlling interest in a cash-strapped motorcycle maker known as Meguro who had been making a licensed copy of the 500 cc A7 BSA. The Meguro Senior had gained a reputation as a solid, reliable machine and was particularly popular with police patrolmen. The new Kawasaki Motorcycle Corporation kept up the licensing agreement with BSA and eventually produced a licensed replica of the 650 cc A10 model which was sold under the moniker of W1. BSA were the biggest motorcycle company in the world at the time. The machine was in production for about ten years and went through two upgrades (W2 and W3) until it was finally dropped in 1973. By that time multi-cylinder OHC rocketships like the 900 cc Z-1 were the industry standard and the antiquated vertical-twin design just could not keep up. Originally designed by Edward Turner in 1937, the Achilles heel of this configuration is VIBRATION. Lots and lots of it, enough to shake your tooth-fillings loose, which eventually takes its toll on machine and rider alike.
In 1999, having seen success with its ‘retro’ styled Zephyr series, Kawasaki decided to pay tribute to the old W series with the W650 and that’s when I first got my eye on it. However, the resemblance to those old bone-shakers is merely cosmetic. The vibes have been (almost) removed by a clever internal balance-shaft, the dodgy Lucas electrics have been replaced by a modern system with no contact-breakers, the old push-rod OHV engine is now an OHC, driven by a handsome bevel-gear shaft. And most important of all--it doesn’t leak oil all over the place. You could keep it in the bedroom if you wanted and it wouldn’t disgrace itself.
Black Mariah and I have been an item since 2002. I took delivery of her on September 4th, which also happened to be the 20th anniversary of my marriage to the lady whom I went on honeymoon with on the Yamaha. One of these days we will take a 2nd honeymoon--probably along the Pacific coast of Tosa Wan, one of my favourite parts of Japan. I will probably keep Black Mariah until I can no longer ride and then bequest her to my son. Selling her is out of the question...
To finish up I’ll leave a final quotation from T.E. Lawrence, in a letter to George Brough about his ‘Superior’ motorcycles.
27.9.26
Dear Mr. Brough,
Yesterday I completed 100000 miles, since 1922, on five successive Brough Superiors, and I'm going abroad very soon, so that I think I must make an end, and thank you for the road-pleasure I have got out of them. In 1922, I found George I (your old Mark I) the best thing I'd ridden, but George V (the 1922 SS100) is incomparably better. In 1925 and 1926 (George IV & V) I have not had an involuntary stop, & so have not been able to test your spares service, on which I drew so heavily in 1922 and 1923. Your present machines are as fast and reliable as express trains, and the greatest fun in the world to drive: - and I say this after twenty years experience of cycles and cars.
They are very expensive to buy, but light in upkeep (50-65 m.p.g. of petrol, 4000 m.p.g. oil, 5000-6000 miles per outer cover, in my case) and in the four years I have made only one insurance claim (for less than £5) which is a testimony to the safety of your controls & designs. The S.S.100 holds the road extraordinarily. It's my great game on a really pot-holed road to open up to 70 m.p.h. or so and feel the machine gallop: and though only a touring machine it will do 90 m.p.h at full throttle.
I'm not a speed merchant, but ride fairly far in the day (occasionally 700 miles, often 500) and at a fair average, for the machine's speed in the open lets one crawl through the towns, & still average 40-42 miles in the hour. The riding position & the slow powerful turn-over of the engine at speeds of 50 odd give one a very restful feeling.
There, it is no good telling you all you knew before I did: they are the jolliest things on wheels. Yours very sincerely
T E LAWRENCE

The ‘jolliest things on wheels’ -- now there’s an expression. I couldn’t agree more. Last year, the Yamaha corporation released its concept of what riders really want. Torque Sports is the notion behind the MT-01 which I had the good fortune to road-test this summer. My God...

If anything is the successor to the Brough Superior this is. Only available in Europe, you won’t get much change out of ten thousand pounds sterling. Now, where’s that Lottery ticket?

Three Anniversaries in 2005

2005-11-19T04:33:00.000-08:00

The UK has seen two important anniversaries in 2005. The most recent one, and probably the most important from my viewpoint, was the 200th anniversary of Admiral Lord Nelson’s stunning victory at Cape Trafalgar. All EFL teachers should bless his name and the date 21st October, 1805, for had he lost, the dominant world language would probably now be French and we’d not have work. More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar
The other anniversary was of an altogether more sinister event, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which was discovered on November 5th, before it could be executed. In the event it was the plotters who were executed, after excruciating interrogation and unspeakable torture. British people commemorate the event by terrifying their pet animals on November 5th with outdoor pyrotechnical detonations and large bonfires upon which a human effigy is burnt, sometimes of The Pope. It is the only time of the year that public fireworks displays are permitted, except on the occasion of a Royal Wedding. More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot
From a personal point of view, 2005 also marked another anniversary, one which many people would rather forget. This was the final failure of the Miners’ Strike on March 3rd 1985 when the NUM (National Union of Miners) delegates voted by 98 to 91 to call it off, before it collapsed entirely. The strike had begun a full 12 months earlier, at Cortonwood near Barnsley, Yorkshire in response to an NCB (National Coal Board) announcement that the pit was to be closed. This was to be only the start of a programme of closures across the industry which would involve the loss of 20,000 jobs. Would that was all that eventually came to pass.
Just over a decade before a Miners’ Strike had been credited with bringing down the Conservative Heath administration. This was nonsense of course, there had been a Miners’ Strike and the Government had handled it badly but it was the voting population of the UK which had decided the fate of the government. Margaret Thatcher, into the 5th year of her leadership and having won a 2nd successive General Election coming off the back of a military victory in The Falkland Islands was in no mood to have such a fate befall her administration. She appointed a tough American mine manager, Ian MacGregor, as Chairman of the NCB and began to stockpile coal at power stations in preparation for a showdown with the leader of the NUM, one Arthur Scargill.
Arthur Scargill was a complex character with a deep conviction that his cause was just and true. He was also a most appalling egotist, on a scale to match his rival, Thatcher. Before gaining the presidency of the NUM in 1981 he had rarely been out of the news as ‘King Arthur’ the fiery leader of the Yorkshire coalfield. Under the guileful leadership of the previous president, Joe Gormley, the miners remuneration had gradually increased, to rank among the highest of the country’s industrial workers. Scargill was in no mood to let this slip and when he got wind of a ‘leaked’ document outlining the government’s plans for the coal industry there was always going to be a showdown.
In the end the Miners lost, of course. Scargill’s refusal to call a strike ballot had given it a less than sturdy start and unprecedented levels of violence between pickets and police outside colliery gates soon eroded public support. The public of course, are dependent on the media to give them a fair and balanced account of what is going on in the country. From what I experienced and heard about, it is my belief to this day that standards of reportage during the 1984-85 strike plumbed new depths. Margaret Thatcher prided herself on being a champion of ‘freedom’, but the methods she put into play to break the strike were straight out of the manual of Josef Stalin. The following is an excerpt from a novel I wrote about some of my experiences of the time. The main character has just sat down in a bar beside his friend, a NUM convener. He has been out of the country for a while and is somewhat bewildered. The events described are based on an incident which took place in late 1984 at Easington (which also featured in the movie ‘Billy Elliot’). I make no apologies for the local dialect.

So how’s it gannin’?”
Jacky sighed, a deep, careworn exhalation.
“Not ower grand I’m afraid. The bugger has gone on far ower lang noo. We’re startin’ to loss people. The’ just cannat afford it man. There’s others that’ll hang oot for ivver like. It’s startin’ ter get nasty noo Christmas is cummin’. Specially if yer’ve got bairns tha’ knaas.”
He drained his pint and stood up.
“Shall aah get yers one in?”
Jamie finished his off and nodded. Bloodaxe blinked and looked uncertain. Jamie made his mind up for him.
“Just a half for him Jack, he’s a bit slow wi’ isself the day. Howay, I’ll gi’ yer a hand to carry.”
They walked over to the milling bar, where some of the familiar faces had a saturnine cast to them. Others, not members of the NUM, were somewhat less jovial than usual. It was affecting everyone. The miners, champions of the labour movement a decade before, were losing, riven by internal factionalism and browbeaten by a government with no-one’s best interest at heart save the plutocrat. It was sickening. He saw his darts teacher, Geordie, sitting on a corner stool, brooding blackly. He made a move to approach him, but Jacky laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Divven’t bother Jamie lad. He’s one o’ the walkin’ wounded. If you’re not in the miners union you’re agen us, in his book. He’s gone reet queer these past few weeks. I wouldn’t like to see him stot yer one.”
Jamie glanced at Geordie’s brawny forearms and massive ham-like fists. Too bloody true he wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of him. He shook his head in disbelief. How could this happen? Jacky spoke quickly to him as they stood waiting at the bar.
“There’s families divided, fathers agen sons, women winnat cook for their men, people months ahind on their mortgages & hire-porchase. The’re startin’ to blame us, the union men, for causin’ this. The’ canna see past the end of the’ noses man. If the bliddy Tories win this, the’ll dae what the’ like for the next ten yor. Just watch an’ see. The’ll be a whole generation that’ll nivver work.”
Jamie felt helpless. What the hell could he, an impecunious mature student, do?
The beer arrived and was borne back to their seats where Bloodaxe was sitting, a little flushed. Jamie opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. At length he managed to get it out.
“The police stopped me on the way to college this morning Jacky. It was about six-thirty on the Durham road--I was going to the early morning kendo practice. I wasn’t speeding or anything so I wondered why it was. Half a dozen of the bastards in two cars. They asked me which mine I worked at. I told them I wasn’t a miner but a student. They said ‘You don’t sound like a student’!”
Bloodaxe snickered. Jamie had already related the story to him.
“They were after flying pickets, Jacky. They didn’t believe me and wanted a look in the back of the car. ‘Course it looks great--full of armour and wooden weapons. Fortunately, I had my student’s union card and me MAC/BKA licence on me. But surely, they can’t stop people from travelling where they want? Are the Tories re-defining civil rights now?”
His friend nodded sadly, deep brown eyes sunk in ravines of wrinkles.
“Aye, Aah knaa. One or two people ‘ve said the syem thing tiv us. The’ve had a mandate from Thatcher man, dae what yer like, but brek the strike.”
He paused a moment then added,
“D’yer want ter see for yersel’ what aah mean?”
Jamie put his beer down. He looked at Jacky strangely. What could he mean?
“Aye, that’s reet yung ‘un,” Jacky went on. “Cum an’ stand on a picket line wi’ the lads and see what gans on. See how much them lyin’ bastards in the papers are mekkin’ up and the bliddy telly!”
Jamie closed his eyes and began to think rapidly. This could be dodgy. Was Jacky serious?
Earlier that year, before he had returned from Japan, there had been mass picketing at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire. It had turned very ugly, with lumps of brick hurled at police, who charged down the rioting miners with horses. At least that was the way the TV news showed it. It had even got on the NHK news in Japan for about thirty seconds. Jamie still had a clipping from the Guardian in the breast pocket of his jacket from September which accused the TV media barons of reversing the footage shot by their cameras. As a result, the watching world had seen rioting miners attacking mounted police, who subsequently regrouped and charged down their assailants--when in fact the reverse had been the actual order of events. The ITN had denied doing this, in fact they had screened edited BBC footage. The BBC had made ‘no comment’. Since that time, violent incidents involving pickets and police had appeared in the media with increasing regularity, especially in the tabloids. Control the media—control peoples’ minds. Nineteen Eighty Four. He made his mind up.
“All right, yer’ on. When?”
“Monday morning OK—six o’ clock?”
Sod it. College was finished. He’d be back early enough to get down the dole and sign on.
“Righto.”

And so it was he found himself standing in the freezing fog of a dark December morning, waiting for a car on a hill. It was deathly silent, not even a bird was calling. He shivered and hunched his shoulders, trying vainly to garner some warmth from the stub of a roll-up in his fingers. Dim headlights stabbed through the gloom and the silver-grey bulk of Jacky’s old Ford Granada loomed into sight. It pulled up alongside, rust bubbles decorating the tops of the wing panels. Way past its best. He got in and felt the warmth from the heater hit him. Jacky grunted a ‘Good morning’ and pulled away carefully. Metro Radio chirped away quietly in the background as the big car moved slowly through the misty landscape. Jacky remarked how the fog would work to their advantage in that they could avoid the picket patrols more easily. There was no actual law against secondary picketing, which was what Jamie was about to do, but neither was there any law against the custodians of the law detaining you for a while if they felt like it.
After about forty minutes they were at their destination. Jacky parked his car in a side street and got out. He went to the rear of the big car and opened the boot, retrieving from it two white safety helmets and a Nikon camera. He gave one of the helmets to Jamie saying,
“Purrit on laddie, might save you a cracked skull if the Owld Bill get stroppy wi’ them truncheons.”
Jamie did as bidden, tightening the chin-strap above his Adam’s apple, wondering if Jacky was jesting. They went out onto the main road and up to the pit gates, where a sullen group of about twenty pickets had gathered. They all wore similar garb, donkey-jackets or parkas with fluorescent ‘Support the Miners’ badges and wellies or heavy steel-toed boots. A thick-set bearded man nodded to Jacky as they reached the group, giving Jamie a suspicious glance.
“Whe’s thi’ marra Jacky? Norra reporter aah hope…”
Jacky laughed sarcastically.
“Nor, not one of them bastads. This is Jamie Duggan from the University of Durham--cum ter see what really gans on these early mornin’s.”
With the odd raised eyebrow the group acknowledged his presence. Then a shout rang out from down the road.
‘“Here the buggers cum!”
Jamie hopped up on a low wall in front of a house and looked over the heads of the pickets. In the distance he could see a white Ford Transit with POLICE emblazoned across its front end. It also had substantial wire mesh shields over the windscreen and heavy black ‘roo bars on the front end. Its roof light flashed ominously, a searing electric blue. Beside it were serried ranks of police officers with heavy helmets and face covers, riot-shields and batons. Jamie watched, his stomach stiff with sudden fear. It was very real and up-front all of a sudden. At first glance he had thought the pickets were unarmed, but then he noticed a small heap of half-bricks and other missiles beside the wall. He looked at Jacky who was standing a few feet away. Jacky glanced back at him.
“Looks like the bastards means business the day. If any aggro starts, get thisel’ away ahind that waal.”
“But…”
“Nae buts! It’s not thy fight yung ‘un. Just watch oot for thi’ sel’.”
Jamie nodded and looked up the road. About twenty metres short of the pickets the Transit van stopped. Behind it was a large cream-coloured coach, flanked by mounted police. The riders wore padded riot jackets and helmets not unlike those of Cromwellian New Model Army cavalry. Even the horses were armoured, with thick plexi-glass head shields. The doors of the van opened wide, like bat-wings and the police arranged themselves in ranks alongside it, totally covering the road. Riot shields turned forward, they began to advance, slowly at first, beating a tom-tom rhythm with the batons. At about ten metres they broke into a charge, howling like banshees, batons flailing. The pickets fell back under the onslaught, some trying to reach the pile of missiles in a desperate attempt to fight back. Jacky leaped up on the wall and pulled Jamie down behind it, who was riveted with fear where he stood. Then he stood up and calmly started taking pictures with his camera, his mouth set in a thin, hard line. Jamie peeped over the wall to take in the scene. It was not an even contest. The forces of law and order definitely had the upper hand. Two miners lay in the road, bleeding from head wounds while a third tried to staunch the flow. Two police were struggling desperately with the bearded man, riot shields and batons discarded behind them. He dispatched one of them with a knee to the groin then ripped off the helmet of the other and decked him with a vicious head-butt between the eyes. Behind them the coach swept through the pit gates unopposed, the pale, frightened faces of the blacklegs peering out through misted up windows. The cause was lost.
“Watch thi’sel’ Jamie!” came Jacky’s urgent shout.
Jamie looked round and dodged. The baton whizzed past his ear and cracked off the bricks on top of the wall. He staggered back in shock as the armoured figure stumbled, trying to regain his balance. He heard the click and whirr of the motor-drive camera behind him, catching it all, freeze-drying the edifying spectacle for posterity. The policeman mounted the wall and came at them. But he did not use the baton. Instead, he snatched the camera from Jack’s grasp and tore it open. Then he pulled out the film, exposing it to the early light, and ground it underfoot. Jacky stared back at the man, eyes narrowed with hate. A whistle sounded and the police began to withdraw, their work done for the day. Their assailant laughed mockingly and vaulted back over the wall, swaggering back to join his triumphant mates, leaving bruised and broken bodies behind them. No arrests were made or attempted. It was purely an exercise in bloodying the enemy on behalf of the Iron Lady and HM Government.
“Aye,” murmured Jacky. “The fuckers are really gannin’ theor ends noo.”
Jamie swallowed hard. He could scarcely believe what he had just witnessed with his own eyes. It was like something out of a nightmare—but it was real. He felt a lump in his throat and tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. Jacky grinned wryly at him and picked up his camera where it had been dropped.
“Aye,” he said. “That’s worrit’s like up the sharp end these days.”
A woman in a quilted dressing gown came out of the house. She had curlers in her hair and puffed hastily on a cigarette.
“Are ye aal reet Jacky? Ee yer knaa—it’s gettin’ bliddy serious this. Ivvery bliddy mornin’, bliddy World Waar Three ootside thi’ front door…”
“Aye, Doris, aa’m aal reet. Divven’t knaa aboot some o’ the lads like. Mebbe’s we’ll ha’ ter gan doon the Informary…”

Jacky dropped him off outside their apartment at about half-eight. Hiroko was picking the milk bottles off the step when he walked up the path. She looked relieved.
“Where have you been? I thought the kendo was over for the term.”
“No pet, I haven’t been to kendo. Different kind of battling.”
He gave her the story over breakfast. She listened, tight-lipped, as he went through his experience, leaving out no details. Then she gave him a long lecture on how he should mind his own business and keep out of other people’s fights. It would do them no good at all if he got himself arrested.
“You can’t spit against heaven Jamie!”
He took it all, nodding agreement. She was dead right of course. But. But…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bad feelings from the strike exist to this day in the former mining communities, which are all but non-existent today. There is an estimated 300 year’s worth of coal resources remaining underground which will never be mined. What a waste...
If anyone is interested in this book, further details can be had at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738899186/qid%3D1131797371/026-3630151-7303646
or here :
http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=11648

Thatcher at 80--what's her legacy?

2005-11-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me the other day--‘Can you tell me specifically what Thatcher did to change the UK for the worse’.
Hummm... If ever there was a ‘don’t get me started’—there’s one. I suppose a bit of history is in order to put things in perspective. In 1971, the then Conservative administration led by Edward Heath implemented the first major change to the monetary system since the demise of the sovereign and guinea. They replaced the old system of 240 pence to the pound with a decimal system of 100 new pence to the pound, ostensibly to prepare the way for European monetary integration. So one new penny (1p) was equivalent to 2.4 old pence (2.4d). Opportunistic price gouging by cavalier retailers (e,g. where something had been 3d before it became 3p) took place. This led to the greatest post-war increase in the retail price index and soon the land was awash with cost-of-living-index-related strikes as the trade unions fought to maintain the purchasing power of their memberships. No sooner had they won an increase than the cost would be passed on as a price increase. In late spring of 1979 after the infamous ‘winter of discontent’, Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister and took office claiming she would cure inflation ‘at a stroke’ and quoting St Francis of Assisi to ‘bring harmony where there is discord’ amongst other platitudes.
She and her cabinet set about this in the following way; a series of interest rate increases had the cost of capital at 15% by late 1980 which had the effect of discouraging borrowing and the inflation rate duly ceased its upward spiral. Corporate bankruptcies hit record levels and the unemployment rate began an inexorable climb, towards nearly 4 million by the mid-eighties. At the same time they abandoned the system of fixed exchange rates and allowed the pound sterling to float on the international markets. The high interest rate brought capital flocking to the City and the exchange rate rocketed--making exports unsellable and causing more layoffs and corporate misery. Speculators and arbitrageurs had a marvellous time, but in terms of making anything useful and adding value, the economy was no more.
Bringing ‘harmony where there is discord’ was a euphemism for taming the trade unions. However, they started by taking on the easy meat-- dismantling wages councils and the like in industries not represented by mainstream union power. Without any ‘voice’ the people in these industries soon slipped to the very bottom of the pile and a new underclass came in to being of people earning one pound-fifty (about two dollars US) or even less per hour--if they had work at all. This underclass numbered about 5-6 million at the height of her Reign of Terror and was an essential part of the plan, because the propaganda machine made it clear that it was their own fecklessness which had brought on their plight. It was not till 1997 when one of New Labour’s first acts was to introduce a minimum wage of three pounds seventy-five an hour that anything was done about this exploitation. A lot of people committed suicide out of despair before then.
The major unions were brought to heel by dismantling and closing down major state-owned industries like coal, ship-building and steel. This had the effect of turning large swathes of the North and Scotland into virtual ghost towns, where whole generations have never known productive employment since. Her answer to this became known as TINA (There is No Alternative) and produced the infamous comment from her deputy Norman Tebbit -- ‘Get on your bike and look for work’. The people who were able to do this flocked to the South where conditions were not nearly so serious and in doing so increased the demand for housing (and its cost) to still higher levels.
To allow people to become ‘little capitalists’ she introduced the system of selling off public housing at knock-down prices to tenants of two years or more. No more public housing was built under her. This made a lot of people a one-off quick buck, but the upshot has been a major housing shortage 20 years later and the highest real estate prices in Europe. Fine if you work on percentages as estate agents do, but not much fun if you are a first-time buyer unable to afford even the deposit on a shed. New Labour have not done anything about this at all.
Other state-owned industries were sold off at knock-down prices--most notably the railways (though she only laid the foundations for this by starving the industry of investment to make it a more appetizing prospect). She refused to travel by rail herself, praising the ‘Great Car Economy’ at every opportunity. Many a quick buck was made and invested offshore in tax havens. Public Bad--Private Good was the motto.
The privatized railways were run with shareholder interests foremost. To reduce costs and augment profit maintenance schedules were cut to the bone with the result that there have been a number of major train wrecks since the late 90’s, with numerous fatalities. The train service is the worst in Europe and a major laughing stock. It is now in limbo--its ‘owners’ prevented from operating it and New Labour seemingly at a loss what to do. Trains still run, after a fashion.

This is getting too long so I’ll switch tack. With her uncaring attitude, Thatcher unwittingly created a culture of ‘me first--sod everyone else’. The most noble pursuit became self-enrichment and the accumulation of material goods. The only criterion which justified any activity was if it made money. If it didn’t it was closed down--which is why many major towns don’t have a sports centre/swimming pool any more and acres of school playing fields were sold off to property developers.

To sum up:
Whilst implementing overdue union reform, she threw the poor in the country to the wolves, unleashed an era of greed epitomised by former ministers ending up on the boards of utilities they helped privatise, broke records for unemployment, doubled VAT, destroyed the coal-mining towns and brought in the poll tax. The only time she cried in public was the day she finally left number 10 Downing Street. Her true legacy is the Tories are still unelectable today. But it doesn’t make much difference--New Labour stole all her best ideas.

This is still incomplete--but I hope you get my general drift. Some things she did needed doing--sure--but it was the need to do them ‘at a stroke’ and the callous disregard for the consequences which make her a bete noir for millions (and a heroine for many others). Go figure...

Images from JALT 2005, Shizuoka

2005-10-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

Ferkin nakkurred

2005-10-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most egregious of all in-law gaffes. An acquaintance of mine told me a story about a friend of his, from Barnsley, Yorkshire, who for his sins ended up marrying a Swiss-German girl. He had been working as an EFL teacher there, you see, and eventually responded to parental pressure to bring his new wife home to Barnsley to meet them. On arrival, the proud mam-in-law asked her new relative "You must be tired love--'ave you 'ad a long journey?"

To which the young ingenue replied (copying her husband) "Yes--I am ferkin nakkurred..."

I don't know what happened after that, but one can imagine relations were a bit fractious for a while.

When the Ashes Came Home...

2005-10-10T04:31:00.000-07:00

"The fellows were practising long shies and bowling lobs and slow
twisters. In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the
balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound
of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a
fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl."

This quotation, the last two sentences of Chapter One of A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, is one of the most vivid pieces of
imagery in the whole canon of English Literature. Stephen Dedalus'
recollection of the scene summons up to the mind that most
quintessential of English summer activities--cricket. Never mind that
James Joyce was Irish--it misses the point.

The sound of a 'corky' leather ball on willow, pick, pack, pock,
puck, JJ captured it all in that little inspired flash of
onomatopoeia. The game is played on a pitch of 22 yards, or one
chain, which itself is a tenth of a furlong (a furrow-long). The
furlong came into being when the pre-1066 Saxon farmers optimised the
length of one ploughed field as 220 yards, this being as far as a
team of oxen could reasonably be driven before turning and ploughing
back in the opposite direction. History does not relate why the width
of a Saxon field came to be the length of a cricket pitch. Nor is it
very clear why we have 3 sharpened sticks (the stumps) stuck in the
ground with two round pieces of wood balanced on top (the bails) at
each end of the pitch and the whole unit called a 'wicket'. There
must always be two batsmen on the field at one time, which is why No.
11 never gets to bat very much and the bowler must deliver his balls in
sequences of six at a time, called an 'over'. The two teams play all
day for five days stopping only for lunch and mid-afternoon tea
(except when the umpire calls for drinks) and it can still end all up
in a draw. If one team is batting very successfully, the captain will
usually 'declare' and take his team off to give the other side a
sporting chance. One of the most damning utterances an Englishman can
make is "Dash it all sir! It's just not cricket!", meaning that the
spirit of fair play is not being or has not been followed.

(A good example of this is the way G.W. Bush gained the presidency of
the USA in 2000 -- What a cad. He'd never be accepted at the MCC.)

Growing up in England, one never questions any of this--it's just
cricket and has always been cricket and always will be bloody
cricket, so you don't argue if you know what's good for you.

The major cricketing nations in the modern world are the previous
colonies of the old British Empire, which as we all know, the sun
never set on. Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, The West Indies
regularly play England in international matches (Tests) and usually
beat the pants off them. My take on this is that the former colonies
get better weather than we do and so 'rain stopped play' is heard
infrequently, they get more practice and so on. So why don't we play
the game indoors in a Tokyo Dome-like edifice? Indoors?!?! "Dash it
all sir! It's just not cricket!"

One of the most famous series is 'The Ashes', played bi-ennially
between England and Australia. Take a look here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashes

for a full
history.

Prior to commencement of play, one of the Aussie pace bowlers,
McGrath, predicted that Australia would sweep the series 5-0 and
retain the Ashes yet again. In the British mind-set such arrogance is
just not cricket, even though it was probably warranted--no Aussie
teenager can remember a time when the Ashes were not in Australia's
possession.

But--the best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft a-gley as Rabbie
Burns noted and England prevailed in 2005 after one of the most
competitive and hard-fought series in Test history. In the final
match, England only needed to draw to take the series as the results
stood at England 2 Australia 1 one match drawn. On the penultimate
day inclement weather and bad light halted play several times,
allowing only about 3 hours play all day. This was to the great
delight of the English fans as the early innings performance of both
teams meant that the more time was lost, the greater was England's
advantage. So we had the bizarre sight of supporters, who had paid
£50 each and more for their seats, cheering and clapping every time
the players trooped off. Bizarre? No--it's just cricket...

On the final day the Aussie pace bowlers McGrath and Warne were in
sparkling form and England were wobbling. Our much-vaunted batsman
Flintoff had been clean-bowled for only 8 runs. Then our new man
Kevin Pietersen (born in South Africa) stepped up for a magnificent
'knock' of 158 before he was finally bowled out by McGrath, taking
the leg-stump clean out of the ground. His 5 1/2 hour stand included
seven 'sixes' (like a home run) and fifteen 'fours' (like a 2-base
hit) -- a new Test record. By the time England were all out it was
too late--there was time for only four balls before the umpires
called 'stumps', Australia had lost and the whole of Britain went
collectively barmy. I myself was like a dead man having listened to
the BBC on Internet radio till 2 am for each of the five days. But I
was a happy dead man!

The Oz captain Clive Ponting and the rest of his team were gracious
in defeat. They had also played magnificent cricket and there should
be no shame in losing such a tremendous series. It matters not to win
or lose--but how you play the game. That's what I always thought anyway.

Just one sour note was the reaction of the Aussie public when their
brave lads got home. Similar to when they lost the Rugby World Cup
final (to England) a couple of years back. Time for them to grow up
and become men I reckon--and part of being a man is knowing how to
take a beating. It's only a bloody game.

To close--some words from Rudyard Kipling:

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!"