I haven't been doing much fiction recently. Not since my last project died. However, I have started up a new fiction page at
under the radar.
Most of what I do comes from my everyday life, and what a wealth of inspiration I got yesterday. I got a postcard in the post (funnily enough) a few weeks back saying that I had to go back and renew my Japanese drivers license. Though in fact it was more of an upgrade. I moved up from green to blue. This may sound good but it makes little or no real difference, other than serving as a stepping stone up to a gold license and giving employment to a higher number of officious little men.
In I went, in line for the window, payed, accidentally signed up for a charity and was shown into a room with some road-safety videos showing. I can't remember the first one (Nice going guys. Good work - big impact there!) though the second one is still very clear in my mind. This is how it started; a guy drives up in a sports car, parks and walks off. I am with you so far, Mr. Road safety video maker.
Then I started wondering if I was in the wrong room, I started wondering if I had wondered into the cycling proficiency test because someone thought it was a great idea to inform adults about road safety with talking cars. No joke - I was sat there in stunned silence while the sports car told her Grandad, a Rolls I think, that today was scary becuase her owner drove fast. While they spoke, the cars flashed their lights. We are talking ultra low budget kids TV. I got moved on to the next room before I got to hear what the truck had to offer on the matter. I was tempted to start furiously scribbling down notes like, "fuck! you're supposed to put the lights on when it's dark?!" and "Don't forget to look for pedestrians as well as cars."
The next room was a bit of a shock because it said "at the end of your two hours there will be a test." "No-one told me about a test," I thought. If I had known there was going to be a test I would have brought someone to translate for me, as my written japanese is terrible. A glance around the room revealed the following points:
Road safety posters - there is a very special world in which the guys who make these things live. In that world (
shown here) it is OK for old people to drive badly if they put a sticker on the car saying they are bad at driving. That is the orange and yellow one off to the right. In this world, lazy people who email whilst driving are suddely shown the error of their ways by poster 2, in the middle. Finally, in this very special world, people have to be told that two people on one bike is not safe.
The supreme air of absurdity in the building means that the desks have to be screwed down. Otherwise they would float away on a cushion of frivolity. Either that or it was to stop the remedial class from beating the teacher to death with them.
The teacher came in and did a sketchy bow, glared randomly round the room and then introduced himself. One look at his face told me that there was no room for jolity in his life. He had a cloud of anti-humour around him. Put a whoopie cushion on his chair and he would either implode or float above the thing. He switched on a video.
The video was one of the usual collages of cheap drama and real brains splattered round the nations roads. It was based around an everyday nuclear family who all had a bit of a rotten day, as it came out. First the father knocked a woman off her bike because he didn't indicate, then the son wrote his car off getting the news by phone from his mum. "Ho ho ho, isn't dad an idiot for crashing his car!" smash! The comedy made me cringe more than the blood on the roads. By the way, what have the road safety video makeers been doing these last thirty years? I can understand them giving up and doing something else, but no-one seems to have made anything since the seventies and eighties. Maybe they all went off to make porn - the production values are about the same.
At this point my group was split into two - upgrades without accidents and those with. It is like streaming at school. I was in the top group, with roughly five percent of those present. This meant I got to skip the test. Everyone else was in the remedial class, with the joy sink. I was back downstairs with a delightfully sarcastic bloke. He told us that passing was not quite a forgone conclusion, and anyone sleeping or emailing on their mobile phone would be failed and would have to join the next bunch of boy-racers and nervebags upstairs with the basilisk. "Don't get too bored," he said. We all promised solemnly, one of us smirking behind his hand.
He went on to tell us about the number of deaths / injuries in the country and in the prefecture. Direct quote; most of the deaths in this area are caused by people not looking out of the front of the car. OK, then. He went on to say that if you divide the number of casualties by the population of the prefecture, it comes out at 1%
per year. Let's say a mother has quaruplets and they are fifty years old. If probability has it's own way, two of them will have been seriously injured in a car-crash by now. No wonder the guy upstairs was glaring at the biker-dude in front of me.
The lecture was punctuated with lots of comments like, "so you think japan is a safe country, do you?" and "this is the country you live in." and "it is a sign of the times." We saw eye-to-eye on a number of issues, including recent japanese innability to keep rules and the derioration of manners. In the middle of this little speechlet he extended his finger, rotated on the spot until he was pointing at this one girl off to the left. "You!" he said, "which side of the road should you walk if there is no pavement?" You could more or less see her freeze mid-breath. She didn't answer by the way. I was tempted to put my hand up and say, "the top", but I was worried he might fail me so contented myself with a quick smirk.
At the end he said in a stern and commanding voice, "you absolutely must not have any accidents!" I wrote it down.
That was the end of my japanese driving license adventure. It is up for renewal in another thousand days or so, and I will be long gone by then.
Just a quickie
For those of you who don't know what a batting centre is, it is a place with a machine tht fires balls at you so you can hit them with a baseball bat. A good place to go on a Monday night when you have already had a full week of hassle. They come in varying dgrees of quality and newness. The one I went to yesterday was really new - it had a digital picture of a guy throwing the ball - and much better all round - I could hit more of the balls.
The mai nproblem for me with these is that there are often tons of guys better than me and they usually watch while I swing the bat where the ball will be or was. Or often where bat and ball share no destiny, alas. Anyway, yesterday was looking good because it was all school kids who were generally pretty pants.
In goes the money - select speed - select height - Sart butt...
"NICK SNESEI!!"
This is an occupational hazard for Elementary English teachers. If the kids see you outside school they want to come and talk to you. After we had all said hello and asked each other how we were - another occupational hazard - I set-to withthe bat.
Ball one - whoosh!
Kids - Strike!
Nick (internally) - fuck off!
Ball two - whoosh!
Kids - swing and miss!
Me - cockbags!
Ball three - whoosh / ting / thump
Kids - Foul!
Me - My position at school is on the line. This will go round the school in seconds.
Ball four - crack!
Kids - ooooooh!
Me - My standing in the community is safe!
Now I am off to Osaka to look at basses. Having done my homework I have found that my plans for the bass will need modifying. It is possible, nay even likely that the cheap chinese import basses will slap itself to pieces in the year that I plan to use it. Also a factor is thatthere is nowhere I could concieveably put the thing without we take it to bed with us at night so here are my options:
Buy a smaller bass and spend a bit more money.
Get a guitar style bass and amp setup. I can get a decent setup second hand well withing budget.
Buy an electric upright bass and learn to play on that. this one come with headphones but without irate neighbours so this could be a winner. It is a bit more pricey but that's ok because this could be easily transported back to the Uk in about 390 days. The one I am edging towoards is the
Aria SWB, which you can see
here. Any opinions wlecome. I am concerned that it looks a bit pants.
The furious rate of posting continues...
..but will soon slow down. I am into the spring break proper, and wallowing in my freedom to do little every day.
Yesterday got eaten up helping Rob escape from his apartment. To my certain knowlege he never cleaned the place in the two years he was there, so a whole two years of dust and garbage needed disposing of in just under three days. By the time we arrived Rob and his girlfriend Mio were outside the front door looking bleary-eyed.
"What time did you get up?"
"We've been cleaning since five AM."
It was three o'clock at the time, so they had been at it for ten hours. Aparently, the inside was now clear of detritus. Very clearly, though, most of what had been inside was now outside on the pavement. During the previous week we had recieved a whole bunch of random items including English teaching detritus (dice, magnetic letters), drinking detritus (the cork-screw had been given away before all the wine bit the dust), cooking detritus (mixer, bread-knife) and household leftovers such as six boxes of washing powder. Most of this is useful stuff as I have moved house many, many times and I know that stuff recieved because "it might come in useful" will be a pain in the neck later on,
viz all the stuff on the floor in front of Robs house.
By four-thrity we had distributed a bunch of stuff around the neighbourhood. My mate C, up the road, lost the moral high-ground early on in the process and so had to put a brave face on a wider selection of goods than she might have been expecting. That'll teach her to oversleep. Having made some kind of vague promise to help / see him off, she was unnable to resist much of the stuff we had turned down. Plant pots, more washing powder, cushions and a tako-yaki-making-device were amongst the high-lights. For those of you who don't know, tako yaki is an octopus ball coated in stuff like pancake batter with thick sweet sauce and flakes of dry fish on top. The item itself is a cast iron tray half an inch thick with hemi-spherical indentations in it. She recieved it exactly like a guy recieving a present of a candle set. She is a creative lass so I assume she will find something to do with it.
The final amount of luggage amounted to a trifling fifteen bags or so. You can see Rob above staggering under their weight for the three meters to the back of the car. The plan was that all of this was going to be carried on the train, changing trains three times on the way, to Mios flat in Osaka. We took ten minutes to admire the masterful planning involved.
After this there just remained a quick jaunt to the railway station. Thing went downhill after Rob said, "good-bye house." We had "good-bye" to houses, trees, roads, mountains, restaurants, the cementworks, etc., etc. Luckily it is only a ten minute drive to the station. After a brief interlude at the local Baskin Robins, the ice-cream shop, it was manly handshakes, promises to keep in touch and a brief tragi-comic moment as two people got 80 kg of bags up the flight of steps to the ticket counter. Now Rob is off to India after a brief stoppover snowboarding in Hokkaido.
And I have 362 days left to work, 398 days left before I too am off somewhere new, or at least different.
Sunday photobloging - 1 What's it like?
One question I often get asked is, "what's Japan like?" I often get a bit depressed by this question. Say what you mean! Tell me what you want to know! I suppose what people mean is, "what is it like near where you live?" I can begin to answer this one.
The place where I live is arranged in three rings: In the middle is the lake. Next is the farming bit where I live. Round the outside are the mountains, like the one in the picture. The one in the picture is Ibuki, the nearest place for snowboarding / skiing. Though it might look quite rural we are on the main routes from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto so the bumpkin quotient is relatively low. Head two hours due North and it is like being trapped in the 1950s. The only solace to be found is in the form of a vending machine that sells bottles of whiskey. I shit you not.
The brown stubbly stuff at the bottom of the picture is brown stubble. In a few weeks this will be a paddy-field that will go through the following colour changes - Brown, Muddy brown, Wet muddy brown with green shoots, Green, Golden brown and finally Stubbly brown in the autumn. It will probably be white in the winter a couple of times, too.
You will notice that the snow is almost gone from the top. There is still snow in the northern parts of the country but I have been promising myself to save some money this year and the possible purchase of a bass has precluded that the snow season is over for me. My board is still propped in the entrance hall, twinkling it's bindings at me. I haven't quite managed to put it back in it's bag to hibernate over the summer. I assume theree will be tears, recriminations, frosty silences. Especially in the light of certain instrument purchases.
So unlike the british scenery, which is more or less green, the view from any particular point varies rapidly given the time of year. I have been promising myself I would get it on paper for about two years now, so this is the start of it. Further down the line there will be pictures of old women driving tractors and old men sitting around drinking cans of coffee. I kind of have a moral duty to do something with the new digital camera I bought last summer.
OK, so I had my little bitch about work, but today is "eat out" day, where there is no school lunch offering but freedom to choose what I would. In this case, a slice of pizza, a cup of instant corn soup, a piece of plaited french bread with ham in it and three lots of deep-fried-chicken on a stick.
I asked the number three teacher what time I had to be back. He said " - " and shrugged his shoulders. "Take your time," he said, after he had. As the full significane of this took hold of my soul and gonads I felt my soul soar like an improperly held balloon at a fair. I could, concieveably, get away with an extended lunch, maybe even a dinch (you know, like "brunch"). I could spin things out a bit and maybe take a nap. Then maybe aim to arrive back at school at quarter to five, just in time to finish my chapter and pack my stuff away.
Clearly something must have shown in my face, as the guy broke my reverie with the words, "two thirty meeting." Luckily the whole thing had been an unlooked-for wonder. Plans A and B were still on the table. Plan A: leave something at my other school. It would be odd if I couldn't make that last an hour or so. I should be back just in time for plan B - play with the kids in the glorious sunshine.
And it is no less than 16 degrees C outside. And to think last weekend I was
going over the jumps on my plank in the arctic minus two of an Indian Winter.
Question: Where will it all end?
Answer: Rain all the way through my holiday. You makr my words (but not for spelling).
I am doing my job nicely
which means that i am occupying my desk. no lessons or work to do, no internet, which leaves me mailing by thumb and abusing my capitals out of frustration.
we had the closing ceremony earlier this morning. a deathly experience it was too. at the end the headmaster drained the spirit out of everyone by talking for fifteen minutes, saying he was finished and then talking about something else for a further ten. i should have painted eyes on my eyelids and gone to sleep. the guy is a kind of inverse pied piper. couldnt lead even one kid.
the real bitch is the fact that i have to be here until five to meet some arcane rule of precedence or chivalry or falconry or something. thank the lord for project guttenberg, and an end to the matter
In Japan there is no notion of Easter. Mention of Easter brings cries of wonder that big chocolate eggs are involved, possibly containing other kinds of sugary treats. The couple of bright kids start asking what the significance of it all is, but the majority just let it slide past in a haze of multiculturalism. It is like a car journey through the world, whoosh! Christmas tree - bullfight - chocolate eggs - people throwing tomatoes - cricket - curry. I'm really not sure how much of it they pick up.
I work at a couple of junior schools teaching English and Foreign culture. I am sitting on the brink of the spring break. Let me just forestall everyone by saying that no, it isn't the same as the Easter break because they don't have Easter and the school year starts and ends around it. Which vis why it is a time of change for me, too. It is one of the rare times I have free. The holida itself is about two weeks, though for me it extends a bit either side because I don't have any lessons. Hence my recent online productivity.
For everyone else, the term ends tomorow. I mentioned before it is the goodbye season and the guy from up the road, Rob, is off back England via India on route to teach again in China. There are going to be goobye drinks for him on Friday, at the local sports bar. If I get my **** together I might even post some photos. Everyone knows; God loves a photoblog. It might bring across some of the bizzarrity of the place. A sports bar in a village, for all love. Though he didn't know it at the time, the guy opened it at the end of my road. It stands a sore temptation, though it will be a Godsend during the world cup.
Anyhow, there was mention of me buying a double bass, at the urging of my esteemed colleague C up the road in Echigawa. She plays the harmonica (which is Old English for saliva collector) and is wooing me with the thought of playing for money. First I have to learn to play the thing. Which brings me back to the spring break, circuitously, as I am going to need a while on my own before people are allowed to hear me practice.
"But," say the wiseacres, as they always do, "why not forestall all those comments we ourselves will surely make about rather playingb the piccolo, by playing the piccolo?" Fuck off, wiseacres! I had a friend who lost hearing in her left ear due to piccolo induced trauma. I played the flute and will retuen to it one day. In the mean time, I intend to play something that matches my inner beast. Let me tell you, my inner beast is booming quite satisfactorily at the moment. No mouselike tootling, nor yet jarring crash of electric guitar, either.
The wiseacres chime in again, "Is this going to be the next in a long line of abandonned instruments, tossed aside to have their cost lamented by all and sundry?" Quite possibly, though surely it makes no odds to anyone. I might, just, surprise everyone by picking up these scattered remnants of hobbies as I cover old ground. Let's not forget, the bouble bass is the close relative of the 'cello, my first instrument.
Lo! All that money wasted is suddenly pouring back dividends. Though it does require a further layout of about 200 squid and, more dauntingly, a telephone conversation in Japanese. Luckily the guy selling lives in the same prefecture as me. It is the link above. I have no plans to buy it online, though. There is a phone number and it would be strange if I couldn't induce the seller to skip the auction charges and show me the item in person, before recieving crisp new notes on the spot. I also, metaphorically, want his balls in my hand while I view the item. A slight squeeze to signify what will happen if it turns out to be a lemon. Not that I expect a Stradivarius for the money but it must be functional.
So there you have it: A spring break full of music, badly played but without none of violinic banshee wails. Also to look forward to: A couple of weeks of long posts as I won't have a great deal else to do.
Off you toddle
It is that time of year again - actually one of those two - where half the people I know move on to other things. The school year ends on Friday and many of my colleages are heading off into the blue yonder. It works that way for the company teachers. The Government English teachers change over in the summer, for some odd reason.
Anyway, as usual I am a bit down on seeing my mates disappear. I am also a bit down on the ammount of beer and rich food on the menu at the moment. Having fought my body weight under control now it is the party season with no time for exercise and a party every night. Tonight is even worse. Yes to the party but no to the drinking. Nominated driver - if only I had taken the train the other night.
The upside of all these people leaving is the incoming batch. New people and I hope to god that the new person up the road is not one of these stay at home in the dark types. Thinking on it, as I am buying a double bass, a musician might be good.
Anyway, time's up. The net at work seems to be having irrevocable problems with the server / router / colour scheme / chi at work. Not only will they not speak to each other but the one won't even admit the existence of the other. Requests to work at home will be met with grins, chuckles, refusals. My kingdom for a mobile internet card.
400 days - what's it all about?
For the first time in weeks I find myself with a whole full day to myself, less a few hours for my deserved lie-in. I was wracked with guilt immediately, as I knew I should have been mailing since dawn, phoning people and filling-in some of the gaps that I have left as an absentee friend / brother / son / grandson, etc.
It has been more or less four years to the day since I left the UK to come to Japan and my contact with everyone since has been, er, eratic to say the least. I'm going back in about four hundred days or so, so there is a mystery cleared-up.
The new blog ties in nicely with some other things and there is a "oneness" ringing through my day and if I can only get everyhting done before the party tonight I will be happy that things are moving on as I could wish. Once this is online I can slowly start telling everyone that I have changed my phone number and email address, either by email or by new business card. If anything is going to stop me it will be the business card - I need card, ink and cooperation from the printer.
So there it is - 400 days is a way for me to keep in contact with friends and family and do away with my ultraspam emails (four hundred emails in the "to" box). Anyone who isn't a
de-facto friend can become one by leaving comments and being friendly. Anyone who wants to be a member of my family, er, we'll see what we can do.
