Category Archives: People

Forza Júbilo!

Posted on June 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

With rapidly burning arms in the hot Shizuoka sunshine I was beginning to look like the archetypal British tourist abroad. Towel draped over my neck and beginning to turn a medium rare pink on every inch of my body exposed to the midday sun. Just to complete the stereotype of a hooligan Brit abroad I was shouting at the football. Now before you think I’d somehow discovered a Red Lion pub in Eastern Japan and draped myself in a white napkin knotted at the corners I should point out that I was in fact attending my first Japanese football match (Júbilo Iwata v. Kobe Vissel), the towel was the Japanese equivalent of a football scarf and… ok the sunburn I can’t defend.

Last weekend, with an adult student of mine acting as my guide I ventured out to my first, though hopefully not my last, Japanese football match. An eight hour round trip to Iwata in Shizuoka prefecture the cost of getting the fix of live football that has been sadly absent from my life since I left Britain’s shores last year.

Arriving at the tiny stadium on a quiet and beautifully sunny Saturday afternoon around half an hour before kick off I was surprised to see so little a crowd edging their way to the stadium. The reason it turned out was that the place was already more than three quarters full. Some six thousand or so fans already lining the terraces, snacking on yakitori, kebabs, fries, sandwiches, iced drinks, cold beers and as usual in Japan a few edible items of indeterminate origin. Every single fan sporting a scarf/towel hybrid in Júbilo Iwata sky blue or a replica shirt from any number of seasons and sponsors past. The safe standing area in what most British fans would know as the cow shed end of the stadium was already packed (but in an orderly Japanese fashion) and bouncing to a drum beat from a Brazilian fan, cheered on by some huge flags that looked to have poles long enough to jab the goalkeeper with. Of course such mischief would never occur to these fans. Unfortunately. I may or may not have been envisioning a giant foam finger on the end of a flagpole…

As I noted in the Hiroshima Carp post a while back, Japanese fans are crazy and I love them for it. Their enthusiasm is simply boundless. The players arrived for their warm up around twenty minutes before kick off and the fans immediately burst into a full throated round of songs and chants declaring their love for every player and all things Júbilo Iwata.

This is also probably one of the few places in Japan beyond Tokyo and the port cities where internationalism is clearly visible. To begin with Júbilo is Portuguese for, ‘exultation’ while the score board declared, ‘Forza Júbilo !’ A frankly wonderful declaration of support for a Japanese team using a mix of Italian and Portuguese that I guess means, ‘forward exultation’. Frankly I’d march to that, nevermind bounce on the terraces.

Inevitably though, when the goals did come it wasn’t from a Japanese boot. This is a country seemingly socially incapable of producing a striker. The team ethic is so well honed and drilled in children from such a young age that the creativity, individuality and downright selfishness required to be a decent striker doesn’t exist. So like any other nation in the world, they brought in some Brazilians to do it for them. The goals in this game came from the boot of one Gilsinho, his first a sublime effort after cutting in from the left wing and his second a neat finish after some chaos in the box.

You can find the match report here.

As the final whistle blew I waited for the anticipated rush from the stadium that so characterizes the end of English football matches, that mad dash to the car in an often ill-fated attempt to avoid the traffic. Yet it never materialized. No mad rush, but instead half the stadium gathering as close to the pitch as they could get as the players took a long stroll around the pitch to thank the fans. A more appreciative group of fans would be really hard to find.

So, a hint of carnival, kids running around and my twenty five year old student screaming like a demented toddler who thinks he’s just spotted Santa coming down the chimney in an attempt to catch the attention of his favourite player.

It’s no cold day at the Galpharm but it’ll do nicely for now.

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Posted in ESL, Football, Japan, People, Teaching, Teaching Abroad, Travel

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Kyoto Kindness: William Faulkner, Soba and Magic Words

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 5 comments

Despite essentially being a long-term tourist in Japan I hate feeling like one of the shutterbug crowd, endlessly holding up people on the pavement taking photos of anything vaguely unfamiliar, which in Japan could mean pretty much anything.

It’s this desire to feel less foreign in a country where I am quite patently so, that often leads me to look for the quieter and the more local in cities teeming with tourists. Despite my rather limited Japanese these smaller places with significantly less English are often all the more friendly than their tourist centric counterparts.

In Kyoto especially, a beautiful city but always bursting with tourists both domestic and foreign, I found joy in escaping the bustle in such places. Not far from Kyoto train station, an enormous and impressive piece of architecture that climbs fifteen stories high (the tenth story being a floor of Ramen restaurants) and as much of a sight to see as the rest of the city, I found refuge and dinner in a small family place. A real hole in the wall in a part of town more populated with Starbucks and McDonald’s than mom and pop places. Finding only one customer but an entire family of chefs inside I perched myself at the bar. My seat was essentially the viewing area of the kitchen. Having worked in a kitchen in my teens as a lowly pot washer, I know that any kitchen willing to be open to the customer’s scrutiny is infinitely more professional as the usual temper tantrums and wannabe rock star egos tend to be reined in. However, whether such a culinary temperament exists in Japan I could not say, I only know that they put many of my former colleagues to shame on every level.

I ordered a bowl of steaming hot soba (buckwheat noodles) and a plate of tempura (deep fried vegetables and sea food). However, I had not counted on the immense generosity of their portions and I soon found myself attempting to eat equal amounts of each so as not to display favouritism to the creation of either chef, who were eyeing my greedy effort from inside the kitchen.

The matriarch of this clan of chefs pottered over towards me almost immediately upon my arrival, intent on a little natter. The usual questions were asked and as usual I answered as best I could. When asked where my hometown is I gave them the name and then so that they were not completely baffled I explained that it was near Manchester. The fate of most northerners abroad is to be from a village or town called NearLeeds or NearManchester.

This leads inevitably towards the question of Soccer (a word that makes my heart break a little every time I hear it) and Manchester Utd. So I explain that Man Utd are in the Premier League., to which they give strong nods to display their appreciation and avid devotion to, ‘English Premier League’, a slightly confused look at mentions of the Championship, and then complete shock that the third tier that is League One even exists; worse still that my team should reside within it. All is redeemed though when I reveal that my team’s mascot is a Yorkshire Terrier. Cuteness and little dogs, this is firm, sure ground in Japanese conversation.

I once revealed that little fact to a class and elicited a sharp gasp of surprise and perhaps terror as one student looked at me and asked, ‘My dog is English?!’

So having dispensed with all the usual questions and complimented their cooking as often as possible I was beginning to run out of Japanese and asked the question I hate to have to ask, ‘do you understand a little English?’ I feel dirty when I ask it because it is essentially an admission that you must rely on their greater understanding of a foreign language, in their own country no less. It feels rude on every level to me, but alas after half an hour of small talk I’m pretty much stuffed and so if they want to ask anything beyond the simple and polite I must rely on their high school English along with my little ipod Japanese dictionary going back and forth each time one of us forgets or doesn’t know a word. So having asked the question but not expecting an affirmative answer I was surprised when she gestured towards her son, the chef who had prepared my delicious tempura. He walked over and in flawless English said, ‘I speak a little English as I used to study English and American Literature in America, I’m particularly fond of William Faulkner.’ At that point, had I not already finished my bowl of soba my jaw would have dropped straight into it.

As much as it surprised me at the time (not that he understood a lot of English, that is quite common) that he spoke with such incredible fluency I can understand why he kept it to himself. In Kyoto I rarely heard a foreign tourist make any attempt at using even a little Japanese, not even something from a phrase book at the very least. No Konnichiwa (hello), no arigatou(thanks), no onegaishimas or o kudasai (please/may I have). I even met a perfectly nice American man who was intent on moving to Japan permanently, who had resided in Kyoto for three months already and had not learned a single word of Japanese. So when a tourist makes even a small attempt to speak Japanese they’ll engage more, talk more and generally be even friendlier than they already are. Yet, should a Japanese person reveal immediately that they understand every tourist perfectly, well that’s just an invitation for tourists to be more demanding and lazy. Not something I’d be keen to encourage either.

Aside from the fact it is simple politeness to do so, there are of course major benefits to speaking at least a little bit of the language, even if you only visit for a little while. Perched at the end of the bar at my hostel in Kyoto I noticed two Australian guys frantically gesturing for ten minutes trying to get one of the bar staff to notice them so they could order a beer. I took my time to finish my beer and then shouted, ‘sumimasen’ the bartender over in a flash, my drink immediately replaced and two stunned Aussies left asking, ‘what was that magic word you used?’

‘Excuse me.’

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The Tuna Taboo: Who ate all the tuna?

Posted on May 24, 2010 | 2 comments

Sushi. Sashimi. Both delicious, both abundantly available in supermarkets and restaurants across Japan and of such a quality and price as to ensure that the next time I take a seat at a Yo!Sushi in Britain I know I will be left poverty stricken and disappointed. Prepared perfectly, there are few things that compare in my mind to maguro sashimi (raw tuna).

It elicits a similar response in all my students. Tuna seems to be universally adored in Japan. Indeed so loved, that there appears to be something of a disconnect between the brain and the taste buds.

After months of reading about the rapidly declining tuna population and the failed attempt to prohibit international trade of bluefin tuna from the Atlantic and Mediterranean I decided, perhaps a tad foolishly to inquire what my students thought of the suggested reductions in both catch sizes and trade. Presented to them in a lesson on ‘giving opinions’ as, ‘I think that Japan should fish less tuna.’ Then prompted to agree or disagree. Intended as a sly way of provoking some heated discussion it merely revealed how conflicted they felt about the issue as the clear answer I received was conveyed through a shuffling in their seats and an evident squirm.

Every bloody one of them. Some with a knowing laugh, some with a smile, some with a little look of shame and some with downright defiance. Even when they acknowledged that stocks were rapidly declining they simple could not stand the thought of going without it. To put it in context, it’s equivalent to asking a British person to reduce their intake of bacon sandwiches. Even if a heart attack were imminent and a single two pigs left to breed, they’d still think long and hard about their options; before thinking, sod it I won’t be around to miss them anyway.

A BBC article last month noted that the Japanese consume around 80% of the bluefin tuna caught in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. In addition to this, the Japanese Times noted that the Japanese account for around 70% of Pacific tuna caught. More alarming than that figure however is that the average size of the catch is decreasing as over fishing is leading to a younger and younger catch. The danger of this is that if caught before age three the tuna will not have produced any eggs and so the population decline will only accelerate. In fact, the Japan Times article also noted that the average weight of the tuna caught had declined from around 100 to 150kg in the eighties, to around 50kg now.

Obviously this is an unsustainable level of individual indulgence, which all modern diets that contain a daily intake of meat are. Yet, what my students tended to focus on was not that this was not caused by Japanese consumption but rather by Chinese consumption. My students suggested that the increasing popularity of sushi in China means that they consume almost as much raw fish as the Japanese do. Evidently not tuna if the latter statistics are anything to go by and even if China did consume as much, a nation of 1.3billion people consuming as much fish as a country of 120million is more of a damning stat against the Japanese.

One of my students suggested that just as Inuits in Alaska receive special dispensation to hunt whales for food as a particular allowance to their culture, so should the Japanese receive such an allowance for tuna. The problem is Japan is not a small community hunting a sustainable number of an animal. Indeed on a side note they flaunt such bans on hunting regularly with ‘scientific’ catches of whales that inevitably end up on people’s plates. Yet, such a cultural argument isn’t even applicable in this case. Masayuki Komatsu, formerly a researcher at Japan’s Fisheries Agency, referenced in a great article in the Financial Times, noted that the year round consumption of tuna is in reality far from the traditional diet of the Japanese and that eating fish as they come into season and as such are found in greater abundance is, ‘the true dietary culture of the Japanese people’.

Yet, for all the damning figures any change in the approach to tuna fishing and consumption in Japan will have to come from Japan and not international rapprochement. The thing is, we’re simply not seen as ‘getting’ how the Japanese feel about tuna. If the regular closing of the Tokyo ,Tsukiji fish market auction room, due to foreigners touching the incredibly expensive fish, is anything to go by, they might be right.

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Quality Rail Service? No Thank You, I’m English.

Posted on May 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

It’s too efficient. It’s too clean. It’s too stable, too fast, too damn everything. It’s just too bloody sanitized. Where’s the romance of it? The grit, the grime and the inevitable screw-ups. The human element if you will.

When you think of technology, aside from the inevitable coveting of a new Apple toy (the latest being the iDalek), you think quite classically about the whole thing. Computers, mobile phones, great, big, enormous televisions that replace the supporting wall in your house. But ask someone to think about technology in Japan and they think of, in all likelihood, one of two things. If like me, you’re just an oversized child, robots. However, if you’re an individual who has delusions of being a ‘grown up’ then the Shinkansen aka the Bullet Train, is probably what you’ll envisage. Gleaming white and gliding effortlessly into a station at the very second it was due to arrive and leaving mere moments later. Traversing incredible distances in a few hours. Passing through cities with enough stealth and speed to rival the pink panther on his most mischievous of days. Moving so fast as to inspire musicals on roller-skates. Yes I just referenced Starlight Express and yes I’m regretting it already.

Herein lies my problem with the Shinkansen. After that, ‘holy crap this thing is fast’ moment I kind of fall out of love with the thing. A lifetime of shoddy British rail travel and crumbling buses means that I expect a certain amount of wastefulness, cock-ups and poor planning as part of the reality of any journey. In fact if I can’t complain about a journey once it’s over I hardly feel like I’ve traveled at all.

Yet, British rail for all its faults can’t compare to the sheer madness of traveling the US by Amtrak. Which is probably why, two years after I crossed the US by train with a friend, I find myself still telling stories from the journey, mostly about Jeanette.

Now Jeanette was crazy. Caring, scarily devoted to her job, but most of all crazy. With a stereotype, pitch perfect southern drawl she announced her presence to the whole train over the tannoy, ‘This is Jeanette in the lounge car, I’m here to take care of y’all.’ The lounge car was where the poverty stricken of us gathered to buy microwave foods, sweets and beer to eat in our seats as we watched those with more money and sense making their way to the restaurant car. However, we hadn’t reckoned on Jeanette’s uncanny ability to swindle some real food from that very car to dispense to us poor, sugar high, vitamin deprived proles in the non-sleeper cars on this epic three day (note: it should have taken a little over two days but there were flood waters and break downs to contend with) cross country jaunt. She announced with cheery glee, ‘Good news y’all, I have managed to acquire four-tee-two chi-ken din-ners, that’s four-tee-two chi-ken din-ners. If you would like to reserve one of these chi-ken din-ners please come down to the lounge car to sign your name. My name is Jeanette, I’m down in the Lounge car, come on down, I will take care of you.’ What a delightful woman, if somewhat mad, we thought.

Then it happened, in some cruel twist those chicken dinners became a continual reminder of the hell of traveling by Amtrak, who it seems have a rather lax policy in regards to who gets access to the tannoy system. Twenty minutes after the initial announcement she returned to brighten our day, ‘This is Jeanette in the lounge car, I now have thir-tee-nine chi-ken din-ners, I repeat, thir-tee-nine chi-ken din-ners, my name is Jeanette, come on down to the lounge car to sign your name, this is Jeanette I will take care of you.’ It continued much the same for hours, as every twenty minutes or so elapsed Jeanette would return with her rolling commentary on the number of chicken dinners in her possession.

To our and clearly Jeanette’s horror the initial flurry of signatures would not last. The number had declined all the way down to fourteen but demand had ebbed away. We were nearly there, the home stretch in sight and the chicken blocking our path rapidly being placed in the soon to be eaten pile. While the fowl remaining were not disappearing as quickly as wished, we had hope and a determination to survive this variation on water torture. Evidently Jeanette was possessed of similar reserves.

After a brief stop at one of the many little stations we would pause at for smoking breaks and quick fix repairs to the crumbling engine she made another announcement, ‘This is Jeanette in the lounge car. Good News y’all, I have managed to acquire an extra four- teeeeeen chi-ken din-ners, I now have twen-tee-eight chi-ken din-ners. If you would like to reserve one of these chi-ken din-ners for this eve-nin, please come on down to the lounge car and sign your name. This is Jeanette in the lounge car, come on down, we will take care of you.’

Soon after, a young man by the name of Randy, who we had met earlier in our long journey, ambled over to where my friend and I sat and leaned over to whisper his question. His eyes suggested a sense of guilt, an understanding that what he was about to ask us was outside of what society deems acceptable, beyond the pale indeed. He looked at us and muttered his opening salvo, ‘I was just wondering, when was the last time you guys ate some real food?’ Looking at the net pouch on the back of the seats in front of us, at the remains of skittle wrappers and crisp packets, we were forced to admit that real food was perhaps a distant memory now. Leaning ever closer he asked us in the whispered tones of a man looking to get his fix, ‘I was thinking about maybe goin’ to get one of those chi-ken din-ners, you wanna get some too?’

Unfortunately, if such character exists on Japanese trains I’ve yet to experience it. Much of Japanese life may seem a little mad at times, but alas they retain their sanity while traveling. Well, so long as you ignore the old guy admiring the centerfold in his porno mag.

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Coping with Old Age

Posted on May 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Crammed in, squashed, crushed and suffocating from a heady mix of ineffective deodorant and sweat, rattling along in the bus towards the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. I had made the fatal mistake of getting on the bus just before the end of the school day. My punishment for such foolish timing would be to spend the journey getting repeatedly jabbed in the ribs by errant school bags, while simultaneously playing catch with a pensioner. By which I mean I was repeatedly catching a little old pensioner before he fell over and rolled down to the back of the bus to become a sprawling mess of broken and shattered limbs. It seems he had decided that holding onto one of the many hand holds dangling above was simply too much of an effort, especially when he could position himself just ahead of me and fractionally to the left so that with every lurching motion the bus made as it departed from each successive stop he would fly back into my quickly outstretched arm. Safe from the floor and a sea of shuffling feet he would nonchalantly rebalance himself, adjust his footing and prepare for the next sharp jerk as the bus jolted back to life. He seemed quite content and rather amused with the arrangement.

Flying pensioners are not a usual feature of Japan, but the amusement and total lack of anxiety in regard to life and its various predicaments is.  Older people in Japan are simply far more confident and relaxed than their western counterparts. It’s a peculiar reversal of the West where confidence is deemed to be predominantly a trait of the young. Yet here in Japan, the combination of a deep held reverence for seniority and a school system quite devoid of opportunities for individual creativity often means that the spontaneity and imagination usually associated with a young mind at play are more evident in the older generation. While my teenage students sometime struggle to come up with a daft answer to a question my older ones are never short of self-deprecating and lightening fast witticisms.

That confidence can however, have a more dangerous side. Little old people behind the wheel of an enormous car are a continual fear of mine. You see, Japan’s roads are quite often remarkably narrow and in my part of Japan also have open drainage along the sides. These open drains are about 60cm deep so if a single tyre slips into one of these you’re going to come to a rather abrupt and dangerous halt. I have been dreading accidently tumbling into one these from the moment I first got in a car here. However, what I hadn’t initially feared, though now I do, is the total disregard for safety exhibited by little old men in enormous cars. Often careening onto my side of the road and then skimming past me while I hug the edge of the road, a minor precipice to my left and an oblivious geriatric to my right. All the while, the other old folks in cheap mini trucks, perfectly narrow and nippy for Japan’s tiny roads are king. They fly around corners, bends and down hills secure in the knowledge that they can dart through any gap no matter how small. A little more manic in their approach to driving than the former, but at least they can see over the steering wheel and are unlikely to send me flying into a ditch at the side of the road. I hope.

There is a passion for living and learning that doesn’t seem to fade in old age in Japan, if anything it is rejuvenated in retirement, once free of the crushing grind of standard Japanese working hours. I teach many people over the age of sixty, some even edging closer to eighty these days and all of them are in possession of a keen desire to learn, to travel, to discover new things and to ask me endless questions covering the mundane, the peculiar and the downright personal.

This week they’ve been engaging with British politics and the unusual turn it has taken of late. Questions have often focused on the age of the candidates (our young Tory PM elicited a great deal of surprise, perhaps more surprisingly they felt Japanese politics could use a similar injection of youth), their backgrounds and what will change in Britain as a result. Considering the political upheaval and general distrust of all politicians in Japan they have found British politics to be an interesting comparison. They also discussed the seemingly little known influence on and relationship that Britain has had with Japan for just short of four hundred years now.

I am all the more impressed with the older generation of Japan as it has lived through changes that have occurred at an almost impossible rate. Japan never does things by half. In April 1895 one Lord Charles Beresford, who was quoted in the Times of London, perhaps summed up best just how rapid modernization has been and continues to be in Japan,

‘Japan has within 40 years gone through the various administrative phases that occupied England about 800 years and Rome about 600, and I am loath to say that anything is impossible with her.’

The people here are able to come to grips with new technology and a changing world with seeming ease. Yet, there is one thing that they will always struggle with, which seems petty to mention, but to be honest, they often have difficulty with their pronunciation of ‘R’ and ‘L’ the result being that the two are often transposed. Not that big a deal really, unless of course they want to discuss the British Election.

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