Bully

So another Japanese kid has committed suicide because of issues at school. Like Japanese prime ministerial resignations or American gun massacres, it’s yet another of those events that seem to roll around so regularly that, while on an intellectual level you know you should care to some degree, in actuality it’s hard to summon up more than a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders. Even a real shrug feels like too much effort.

Finger Lickin' Good

The daily commute. It’s a war-zone; a battle-ground where only the fittest survive and the weak, the aged, and the infirm are winnowed from the healthy core of society, dispassionately and mercilessly. You know this.

I assume that by now I don’t need to go to any great lengths describing the particular conditions for foreigners using public transport in Japan. The gaijin zone, the Empty Seat, the amazing invisible force-field we seem to generate, along with the opprobrium we attract for acts which would be disregarded if perpetrated by Japanese people.

Perseverance, or, The Impossibility of Perfection

On my more confident days I tell myself that these posts are all part of one congruous whole. Each one is a single shining facet of an individual diamond – the diamond of a unified world view, the most precious stone of all. 

More Art

On the other days I tell myself to stop spouting fanciful horseshit and overblown metaphors (‘unified diamond of my worldview’. Jesus wept) and accept the less lofty fact that these are merely individual steps on an endless imperfectable journey towards the unattainable goal of better understanding. Then I remind myself of the ‘fanciful horseshit’ thing again and just get on with it. Because it’s the journey, not the destination, y’know? No human endeavour is ever truly perfect, which means the manner in which you achieve imperfection is important. And that, apparently, is an oxymoron.

  

Waveforms

The first thing you do is send a text.

No, that’s not right. The first thing you do is try to send a text. And try again, and again, and again. Send. Contacts. Send. Contacts. Send. Send. Send.

“I’m OK. You?”

NETWORK IS BUSY

RESEND MESSAGE?

Send.

Breaking the Wa

Japanese people hate ambiguity. No, really they do. I know that many people, eminent people, have said otherwise, but they’re wrong. Get me, picking a fight with a Nobel Laureate. This can only end well.

Kicking Puppies

Right in the Kisser

(I was a little cranky when I wrote this. It might be a touch sweary)

The Importance of Context

I know I’ve harped on about this before, but it really is so essential. The prior experiences you bring to any situation inevitably colour your understanding. And as I’ve also said before, that’s good and necessary. That’s sometimes called learning, and it would be nice if more people did it. It would also be nice if more people realized the limitations of their understanding; that their prior experiences aren’t necessarily shared by other people. Take, for example, this oft-quoted trope I regularly hear from otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people –

“Japan is a small country.”

No. No it fucking isn’t.

Leviathan

Call me cynical. Go on, I won’t mind. I’d prefer ‘sceptical’ but it’s all good. Regardless, when I saw a segment on the news the other day it did prompt a couple of less than generous thoughts. The first is that Japanese curry is pretty special, and not the good special either. I'm no foodie purist, insisting that my food must at all times be ‘authentic’; that it ‘just tastes so much better when you’re actually there.’ I love Thai food, but some of the most disappointing I've ever eaten was in Bangkok.

In fact this assumption that “authentic=good and inauthentic=bad” extends across all spheres, and is frequently wrong. There’s a real question as to whether pizzas are better in Italy or America, and I’d happily put Baltis up against almost anything India has to offer. And that’s before we’ve even gotten on to Chicken Tikka Masala.

Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum

The Horror, The Horror

I’ve never really been a huge fan of Horror. I saw one of the Child’s Play movies when I was obviously too young, and I can’t really remember much of it, except Dad stopping it halfway through and taking it back to the video rental shop. I think I’d convinced him that it was a cartoon, based on the picture of Chucky on the box, and in his mind cartoons were inherently childish. An animatronic doll possessed by the soul of a dead serial-killer probably wasn’t what he was expecting for his Sunday evening family viewing. Narnia it was not.

Departures

We went back to the UK this summer. Despite my wife and I being together for over eight years now, we’d never actually flown together before; a result of spending much of that time on different continents, so one of us was always flying to meet the other. We’ve had many tearful goodbyes and many joyous reunions, but we’ve never actually done the full day’s trek together - from our regional city in Japan to my hometown in rural England, or vice-versa. Door-to-door it takes pretty much 24 hours.

Given that the real point of this trip was for our son to meet my side of the family, we had to bring him along as well. This complicated matters, but not all that much, to be honest. I won’t go into all the details, except to say that Vantaa airport in Helsinki is lovely; clean, decent enough food, and compact. This last is an important consideration when you’ve got a tight transfer (‘You should see a doctor about that,’ etc). Charles De Gaulle, by comparison, is awful.

Manchester airport though, Manchester airport…