The Long Goodbye

Oh-ree eh
Oh-ree daisuki
Yasashite arigatou
Hikari no koto
Wasurenai de ne
Hikari mo wasurenai yo
Hikari yori


To Oh-ree
I like Oh-ree loads
Thanks for being kind
Don't forget me
I won't forget you
From Hikari

The Gotoh Islands, Part I - Fukue Blue

The Gotoh Islands (五島列島) - a chain of islands off the far west coast of Japan. If Japan was Britain, Gotoh would probably be the Channel Islands.

With my time in Japan swiftly running out, I embarked on a final trip before home. I took the moonlit overnight ferry from Hakata (photos here), and after a hazy night spent photographing the moon and failing to sleep on the tatami floor of a boat full of snoring fishermen, I got up to the sight of islands drifting past our bows. We were heading for the main city of the Gotoh archipelago, Fukue. I ate my crummy rice omelette in the faltering company of a 30year old woman, whose shy smile had brought me over to say hello. The usual questions ensued, but the usual answers did not follow. Learning that she lived on the tiny island of Naru, I enthusiastically dug for recommendations, tales of life on the islands and the beauty of its nature. But even before I arrived, I would be shown the downside of island life. She repeatedly referred to her illness, which had trapped her in her family home, and given her a brutally simple daily routine - wake up, get the boat to the main island and its hospital. Come home, sleep. Wake up, get the boat to the main island and its hospital. Come home, sleep. Wake up...

I asked her for her favourite thing in the islands.

"No. I hate the Gotoh islands. There is nature, but I want shopping centres, life, hospitals."

Not what I had been expecting. All the things I was so looking forward to seeing on the islands - the simple lifestyle, countryside, sea, quiet - were exactly the things that made her life so unbearable. Trapped in a beautiful prison.

By 9am, we arrived in the port, and my rather unhappy companion helped me find the information office before rushing to catch her bus to the hospital.

And so I got myself on a bus out across the island, and trundled past the green hills , rusting iron, and blue seas.

Blue. My strongest memory of Fukue is blue. It was everywhere.

Moon Waves

I took a night ferry from Fukuoka to the Gotoh Islands, one day before the full moon.















These were taken on a slow shutter speed at night, turning the ship's wake into hazy brush strokes of light. See previous (and more successful) attempts here.

Butoh by the Sea

With the day off lessons, I went to the seaside to dance with a couple of Japanese friends. We swam in the water, and sat in the sun. We walked by the seafront, and found a suitable boulder for a stage. And we danced.

Dancer - Ikumi

Pity the poor Salaryman

Grey suits and grey jobs. Hierarchical offices run by convention and duty.

It's distinctly bad form to leave the office before your job.

The relationship between salaryman and housewife is notoriously bad.

The Guardian recently reported on the annual competition of Salaryman Senryu (short, sardonic poems on daily life, brief as Haiku but with a comic tone).

The second prize went to this gem (translated into English):

The only warmth in my life is the toilet seat.

Brutal.

Rainy Season

The rainy season has begun.

In line with the rest of the world, it seems the weather is bucking all past trends this year, and is doing as it pleases.

The snow was light, the winter warm, the cherry blossom late.

The rainy season started two weeks late this year.

Late it may be, but nevertheless it rains.

It rains, and is hot.

I don't like the rainy season.

The rainy season doesn't like me.

I went for a run, and nearly drowned from a flood of sweat.

It's so humid that the postcards stuck to my wall have warped with the moisture.

Yatta! ('I did it!')

For the first time, I've managed to get an article printed in a national magazine.

It is in the July/August edition of SONGLINES, Britain's leading world music magazine.

You can see the online version of my guide to the best music in Tokyo by clicking here.

I also took the picture of the Kabuki Theatre (bottom right).

ON SALE NOW!

Hei-ah Cutto (Japanese for 'Haircut')

The Japanese Haircut - far more than mere depillation.

Enter the shop, and, like a smart sushi restaurant, the barbers greet customers with a bright barrage of shouted politesse.

Placed in a chair, and the discussion begins. And soon stutters.

me: "Er, short please."
him: "[unintelligible reply]"
me: "Er. But not too short."
him: "[unintelligible reply]"

Resigned to my fate, I sit back and watch his every snip, eagle-eyed for signs of excessive enthusiasm.

But he keeps his zealotry in check, and even allows my sideys to remain. I ask for a shave as well, the cut-throat razor appealing to my bo-ho tendencies.

A hot towel wrapped around my jowls, I lie back in heated bliss, before my cheeks are lathered with the matronly firmness of a practised hand. Stubble is scraped from my jaw, my cheeks, my neck. As the barber negotiates my adam's apple, I politely ask Sweeney Todd to stop appearing in my mind.

And then he lifts the blade high, too high. Aghast, I realise his intent. He plans to shave my forehead.

My English sensibilities affronted, I shrink from the knife, and squirm out a 'No! No thank you!'

I assumed that such an eccentricity was a recent trend among the fashion-conscious Japanese males - surely people in the past weren't that silly.

Then I found this reference in the Japanese journals of Joseph Campbell, American writer famous for his work in the field of comparative mythology:

"I went for a haircut and since I could not direct my barber in Japanese had to submit to what happened. I found that when a Japanese has a shave the entire face, forehead and all, is shaved. I saved my forehead, but that was all." Tokyo, May 17th, 1955

It's strangely comforting to know that the Japanese male continues to prefer his brow bald, and occidental menfolk continue to fight to preserve that pasture unharvested.

Though one question remains; why do Japanese men want it shaved? Cultural difference, or racial variation. Could there be more fur on the oriental brow?

Thoughts please.

The haircut in question...

Before - the tousled sheep look:

After - shorn like a mewling lamb:


I mourn my lost locks.

Night Waves

These photos were all taken on ferries at night, some on the boat back from Sakurajima (home of Furasato Onsen - see previous post), and some crossing back from Miyajima in the Inland Sea.

AKB 48

Not the new model of the ever-popular Russian rifle, but a Japanese pop band.



48 girls, dancing in short school skirts, and singing catchy pop songs about their misdemeanours.



One classic lyric "お父さん、ごめんなさい" - 'Father, I'm sorry'



This is Kayo Noro.



She's an attractive girl.



I am one month older than her.



But I don't think that would be too much of a problem.






And this is Aika Ohta.



She performs onstage several times a week with Kayo Noro and the other 46 girls of AKB.



She is 12 years old.



In fact the girls of AKB run right up from 12 to 22 - older than that, and you get 'graduated'.



They dance the same moves, wear the same clothes, appear on TV together.



You don't have to be Mary Whitehouse to realise that this is not a good thing.

Fading Light

In the mid to late nineteenth century, as the Meiji Restoration finally allowed foreigners into Japan after centuries of enforced isolation, a new economic influx emerged - tourists. To feed the growing interest of wealthy, curious foreigners, early photography flourished in Japan, seeking to give a taste of the exotic orient to well-paying customers.

The result is, to me, absolutely fascinating.

There are a lot of reasons why I love each of these photographs, all around 150 years old - their perfect stylised poses, lurid yet flat colouring, haughty exoticism - but I don't want to patronise your eyes. Just take the time to look at them all. Click on the image to see a bigger version.



















I think this last one is my favourite.

I found these photos on this Japanese website.

Gaijin vs Nippon

I've decided to change the name of my blog, after finding out a bit more about the word 'gaijin'.

Gaijin is a short-hand term - the proper word is gaikokujin, using the characters 外国人, which means (outside - country - person, which translates very easily as foreigner). But the shorter word of gaijin, it seems, is much less polite.

Times I've heard people use 'Gaijin':

1) Sitting on the train one day, with three empty seats around me. A group of three middle-aged Japanese people get on to the busy train, but in the rush for seats one of them stutters over taking the seats next to me. Her husband pushes her into the seat, and sits down opposite her. He asks her in Japanese why she didn't sit down, and asks if it was because of the 'へんな外人’ (henna gaijin - weird foreigner) sitting beside her. Which I considered a little unjustified, sitting as I was in a suit quietly reading a book. I stared him in the eye. '日本語をわかるの？’ roughly asking me if I understood Japanese. 'うん、わかる,’ - yes I understood. No one said much after that.

2) Walking in the street in central Fukuoka, a crazy old granny shouted at me with a chipboard voice, "外人、外人、背が高いね!" - 'foreigner, foreigner, you're tall aren't you!"

I must stress that these are very isolated incidents, and the people I've met here are on the whole the politest I've ever met. But when the more xenophobic side filters out, it generally gets associated with the term 'gaijin'. I thought of our English equivalents, as when in the past westerners have used shortened terms like 'Japs' or 'Nips' - or at worst 'pakis'. 'Gaijin' is certainly not that extreme, but the connotations aren't great.

So, I've decided to shift this blog to Nippon Lamford. Nippon is the Japanese name for Japan, as is Nihon, the two words being largely interchangeable. But Nippon Lamford sounds better, so that is what it shall be...

Ouragan de Fleurs - Butoh performance

'Ouragan de Fleurs' - 'Hurricane of Flowers' a performance by the Fukuoka Seiryukai, featuring five talented butoh dancers, and me.

It would be performed in Fukuoka at the French Institute, after my teacher and the gang had taken the piece to Paris at the end of March.

They didn't like Paris that much. Too dirty, too rude, too many druggies. Just not Japan.

Actually, disillusionment with Paris is a common problem among Japanese visitors. So much so that the embassy there has opened an emergency helpline for Japanese tourists, suffering deep culture shock at the destruction of their idealised images of the lovers' city. [Original story]

There was a similar sense of culture shock in the making of the piece ('creative differences' - people finding ever move creative ways to differ with each other). But by the time of the performance, all was calm in the Seiryukai camp.

Preparations were rather last minute - rehearsals continued until 15 minutes before the start. The last time we practised the final scene (pictures below), the four of us collapsed in a sprawling heap. Should we fall over, the back-up plan was to make it into 'a falling dance'.

But with the lights set and the audience ready to come in, there was calmness back stage. The Japanese dancers and stage crew called out to each other in chorus "Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu" - the polite Japanese way of asking for a favour. Rather different to the western dark humour of 'break a leg'.

The audience in their seats (well, on their cushions), the lights down, and it began.

























Thanks to Brendan (again) for the photos.

Hana-Mi (花見）

Hana Mi (literally, 'flower viewing') is one of the great cultural traditions of Japan.

Around the end of March, the Cherry trees burst into full bloom. They start in the far south, and move up Japan in a wave of flowers over the following week. So great is the custom of viewing the flowers, the Japanese weather agency publishes official forecasts of the specific blooming dates for each region. When the forecasters realised their prediction was out by a couple of days, they had to go on national TV and make a full apology, bowing and scraping in the way that only the Japanese can.

Sakura, the Japanese Cherry Blossom, is repeatedly fêted throughout Japanese culture, from the most austere of Haiku to the cheesiest of J-pop lyrics.

When those flowers finally emerged, it became perfectly clear what all the fuss is about.

The bloom is radiant and lovely, to a gratuitous degree.

WHY be that pretty?

Well, reason or no, the effect is wonderful, and manna to the soul.


The Japanese being one of the most civilised of peoples, they take the time to sit and watch the flowers, in viewing sessions known as Hana Mi. They have a long history; The Tale of Genji, written in the early eleventh Century, tells of flower viewing sessions much akin to Hana Mi.

Despite the traditions of Zen austerity that remain as one strand of Japanese culture, they are also extraordinarily good at enjoying the pleasures of life.

They do not just sit and watch in silence, in raptures of aesthetic wonder.

Instead, they get pissed.

Large groups, whether of friends, work colleagues, communities, sit on spread blue tarpaulins, and drink themselves into a flower covered alcoholic oblivion.

Keen to sample as much of Japanese culture as possible, we were keen to emulate our hosts example.

This was made easier by my discovery of a new, special can size of Asahi Beer.



A can of beer, bigger than an adult's head. God bless the Japanese.

At night, the parks of dense Cherry Blossom are floodlit and packed with revellers. Viewing cherry blossom at night is called 夜桜 (Yozakura); when a culture produces a single word to describe something, it shows that thing is important to those people (You may notice we don't have a single word for 'watching cherry blossom at night' in English.)

[Incidentally, my favourite untranslatable word is 'Uitwaaien' - Dutch for 'to walk in the wind for fun'.]

The week after our own Hana Mi, I was in Kyoto and found this beauty, its boughs heavily laden with blossom, standing strong and still, drawing all eyes to its treasures.
Sakura is not just famous because of its great beauty. It also holds a great emotional draw because of its fleeting lifespan. For a week, the blossoms grow. Then they stand, proud and brilliant in full bloom, for one week more. And after that, it is all downhill.
The blossom flies off in the wind. The ground becomes ankle deep in drifts of discarded cherry blossom.

A couple of weeks, and then it is all gone. Plain green leaves replace the bright blossom. The blossom on the floor shrivels to yellow dust.

In Japanese culture, the blossom is seen as the ultimate example of 物の哀れ ('Mono no aware'). Various translations exist, but it roughly means 'the pathos of the fleeting nature of existence'.

One week it is bright and brilliant, the next week it is gone.

It is a powerful reminder of the brevity of our time here.

So in the mean time, let's have a drink.

The Best Meal I Have Ever Eaten

The great surprise of the Okunoyu Ryokan in Kurokawa Onsen (see previous post), was the wonderful food. It now ranks as the tastiest meal I've ever eaten, and so is worthy of a blog post in its own right. Seizing the luxurious option of having our dinner served to us in our own tatami room, we arrived to find a banquet spread across our table...


It was like a Greatest Hits Compilation of Japanese food. And, as with all Japanese meals, the whole lot was served at once, allowing you to pick and choose whatever took your fancy.

First, light juicy Tofu, fresh, springy mushrooms, sweet pumpkin and sharp pickles.


A Mediterranean creamy salmon, fresh scallop, soft sweet potato, and a plum so sharp it sucked the juices out of your mouth.


Sashimi - raw, fresh fish in soft cuts that melt in your mouth.


Salmon sashimi - with sliced spring onion, grated daikon (Japanese radish), and enough wasabi to blow your nose off.


Light, fluffy Tempura - essentially fried vegetables and seafood, but unlike any frying we know in England. Juicy but not damp, succulent but not chewy, and lightly dusted with seasonings.


Beef sashimi - raw, succulent; simply floated away as you chewed, and you floated with it. The best of the lot.


And then, a light touch of novelty.

Resting on a small, iron stove, a wire basket cups a single portion of Nabe - Japanese vegetable stew. With a click lighter, you set the little paraffin tub burning, and let it heat your stew as you picked your way through the many, many dishes. Just as the paraffin ran out and the stew came to the boil, it was perfect for eating. Of course the vegetables were super fresh and delicious, but the soup was unbelievable. The thick, floating gobbets of pork fat (that us westerners would feel obliged to cut off and throw away) saturated the juice would a beautiful, heady, soft flavour.

And then, the final, gratuitous, course. When you're already so full that you can't even eat the soft, fluffy rice that arrived Chinese-style at the end of the meal, well, you always have space for dessert, right?


Absolutely stuffed.



Two of the simplest, most powerful pleasures in life; beautiful food, and powerfully hot baths.

It made me smile a lot.

My search for The Best Bath in Japan II

Great Baths of Japan - Kurokawa Onsen - Shinmeikan

Far inland, in the mountainous regions around Mount Aso (the largest volcanic caldera in the world), there are a few small villages that take full advantage of the natural geothermal activity. Unlike the neon-trash onsen towns like Beppu on the East coast, all cheap bars and tourist traps, they are quiet, green, and exist for only one purpose - onsen.

And these onsen are special. Travelling with my girlfriend, we splashed out on a night of luxury in a fancy ryokan called 奥の湯 (Okunoyu - roughly, 'the hot water deep inside'). I normally tour on a budget - hostels and cheap hotels etc etc. But this place actually sent a van down to pick us up from the coach stop. And carried our luggage upstairs for us. And served us dinner in our room. Not used to such things...

Well, the star attraction of this ryokan was the steaming rotemburo, built from rough rocks on the edge of a cool, flowing, tree-lined river. We sat and soaked, listened to the running water, looked at the trees. There's actually not a lot you can do in a bath. Which is perhaps their greatest advantage over Outside-Bath Life.

And that is how our lives divided for our 24hours in Kurokawa Onsen. Intense periods of In-Bath Living, followed by recuperative periods of Outside-Bath Existence, necessary to unprune your skin and cool your core body temperature to below 60 Celsius.

But a further novelty bath awaited us. The Shinmeikan Ryokan is extremely popular, but going at lunchtime allowed us to avoid the crowds and have it to ourselves. This place put the normal Rotemburo experience right on its head (not that the Rotemburo experience is ever that normal). Rather than go indoors to get changed, before proceeding naked to the great outdoors, here you got naked outside, before heading inside. Lacking the usual ryokan dressing gowns, the trip to the onsen necessitated a naked scamper along the pathway (this photo was taken from the (extremely public) street, across the river).

Once you walked through the dark, imposing entrance, you find yourself in a steam-filled, ill-lit tunnel. Your clothes are getting damp from standing in a hot cloud, and your skin starts to sweat from the heat. Jeans and T-shirt stuffed into a wicker basket, and you step into the bath and begin to wade, half-blind, hoping not to trend on anyone or anything. Not sure on the etiquette for holding your arms out before you when blind in a bath...

And so we sat, fortunately alone. In a bath. In a cave. By a river. In Japan.

I'd particularly recommend this to mid-bath singers - great acoustics in a cave.

Even I sang. And that really doesn't happen everyday.


N.B. As with previous Best-Bath-Hunt post, I'd always opt for the rubber duck over the camera as a bath-time plaything. And so, appreciations to the internet for its copyright-free bounty (ie not my pictures).

My search for The Best Bath in Japan I

温泉(ONSEN) - (n.) One of Japan's great contributions to human civilisation. Due to its high level of subterranean thermal activity, hot water naturally bubbles up all over the place. Put that hot, mineral-rich water in a bath, and you have an Onsen.

露天風呂(ROTEMBURO) - (n.) The Onsen taken to another level of perfection - outside bathing.

NB. Due to the suicidal nature of mixing digital photography and hot water, I've been forced to turn to the generosity of the internet for these photos...

Great Baths of Japan - Sakurajima - Furusato Onsen


On the far southern tip of what could be called mainland Japan, Sakurajima sits, smoking belligerently. A large and very active volcano, it sporadically sends vast clouds of smoke and ash rolling up into the atmosphere. It used to be an island, but in 1914 a great eruption spilled enough lava to connect it to Kyushu.

As the lumpen black rocks boulder down to the sea, geothermally heated water bubbles up to the surface. And right between this great volcano and the Pacific Ocean, this water feeds a very unusual onsen.

In such a unusual and powerful location, it makes perfect sense that it became the site of a Shinto shrine (the native religion of Japan). From the overhanging cliff, the roots of an ancient tree drop down into mid-air, with heavy black boulders caught awkwardly in its crooked roots hanging over the water. In the crevice underneath this natural mobile, statues stand vigil barely a foot from the water. You can wade right up to them, put your head under the cobwebbed roots and brutal boulders, stand in their shade and hope they don't fall. Certainly one of the strangest temples I've ever been in. Out of respect for the shrine, you have to wear a Yukata (Japanese dressing gown) in the bath.

As I lay back in the steaming hot waters, English places of worship seemed a very long way away. How could I even compare the hard, drafty pews of ascetic Protestantism to this balmy experience. Of course, Japanese religion certainly can do ascetic - think Zen monks up at dawn to meditate, with a Master hitting them with sticks whenever they showed signs of drooping, or a Shugendo Monk (allied to Shinto) meditating for hours under a freezing waterfall. But Shinto seems, on the whole, to be rather more keen on appreciating the good things of life.

With your back to the shrine, the Pacific Ocean spreads out before you. When I was there, the rain was heavy, the wind cold, and the waves strong. They crashed onto rough rocks with a huge weight, rendering the 'no swimming' signs rather unnecessary. I took turns between immersing myself in the hot waters until they proved unbearable, and then standing out on the rocks and feeling the heat drain from my skin in seconds. Then back in the water for another 5minute soak. Repeat until beaten by the elements into a heady state of relaxation, as you watch the seabirds fly overhead and listen to the waves barely 5m away.

Two great black rocks lie between the sea and the bath, and between them is strung a thickly twisted rope, on which is hung heavy paper flashes in a lightning design. It combines all the great Shinto elements - water, rock, wood, paper, rope. Only one thing was missing - and then, in the sinking gloom, they lit the braziers, and we bathed by firelight.

Koen Debut - 公園デッビュー

*If you don't know what Butoh is, read this previous post first*

Koen Debut (公園デッビュー) is a Japanese phrase that refers to the first time that a new-born baby is paraded in the local park (koen). Its meaning has broadened to refer to any first-time presentation or debut, but it still keeps the element of the naive baby, not quite sure what is going on - an element that seems appropriate for my koen debut...

I knew a month or so in advance that my Butoh Koen Debut would be in February. We perform once or twice at every practice in front of other members of the group, but this would be the first time I would dance in front of a real audience.

But my actual first time came a week early.

A local bar, a centre for the Fukuoka art scene, was hosting an exhibition of paintings by a local artist. They were large figures of cut board, all crazed hair and technicolour flamboyance, very girly but full of energy. Liking the pieces, we offered to do a performance in the space, and I was volunteered to take part. My understanding of Japanese being at best partial, I just nodded and said 'of course', not entirely sure what I was letting myself in for.

I turned up on the Friday night, and was quickly pinned down by the artist and her make-up friend, who proceeded to paint my eyelids silver and dust me with stars. I got an ivy headband (weirdly reminiscent of a crown of thorns), and bunches of plastic grapes hung from my belt.

Butoh is usually improvised, which makes for unpredictable (and often exciting) performances. Unfortunately, the preparation also has a tendency to be somewhat improvised, which is rather more problematic. As I had brought my laptop, bulging with mp3s, my teacher asked me to put together some music for the performance - twenty minutes before it was due to start. Not the best pre-performance preparation.

Myself and three girls, decked out to the nines, danced solo in turn, before coming together at the end. While the others performed, we stood as statues, flat to the world like one of the paintings. Dancing last of the three, I stood there for half an hour, focussed on the back wall. When I moved and begun to dance, at last I managed to see the crowd - 30 faces, staring up at me from bodies hunched on the floor, watching my every move. The first time I've performed since I was about 9, this was definitely one of those 'how did I get here moments'. The end of the dance saw me dance with Maiko, a Japanese dancer bedecked with flowers. Stuck for ideas, I resorted to crass plagiarism, stealing an idea from a dance performance my father made a long time ago, in which he offered a woman a flower, which she took from him, and devoured whole. - Dad, apologies m(^-^)m

Here, I stole Maiko's flower from her head, and ate it cruelly. She pushed her fingers between my teeth, and took the sodden, half-chewed plastic flower from my jaws. She put it in her own mouth, chewed sourly, and spat it out violently into the audience.

The piece was supposed to end with the three girls surrounding me to form a final tableau. But this being improvised, Maiko preferred to walk straight out into the crowd to her new boyfriend, watching her dance for the first time, and seemingly not best pleased at the random English boy stealing his girl's flower.

I dare say we looked pretty good, much helped by the vibrant pictures. However, somewhat predictably, the tech side was a bit of a mare. More than a mare; actually disastrous. That side is best forgotten - it just makes me feel queasy...

The week after, a second performance, this time in my teacher's house, deep in the countryside in a rickety fishing village called Nakashima.

Wooden houses, mouldering fishing nets, gumbooted men smoking by the docks. It's a wonderful old place, though the whole lot will be demolished en masse to build a highway.

My teacher's house has a side building with a large performance space upstairs. With one whole wall of windows, it is light and airy, and has slick wooden and tatami floors. Two women, one Australian and one French, live in the building and study with Harada-san. Drop toilets and no central heating make for a basic lifestyle, but one with a suitably wabi/sabi aesthetic.











The performance space is walled on three sides, and backed by large window, over which is hung reams of thick white crepe paper that glows in the sun and billows in the breeze.

On the day of the performance, the house was full and busy from the morning. But the preparations were not physical or mental, culinary. Dish after dish was rustled up - pasta, stew, rice, oden, meat, fish - a veritable banquet.

As this performance would be entirely improvised, and each member of the group would be performing solo, there was nothing in the way of rehearsal to be done. An order was decided, music collated, lighting requested, and then back to the kitchen.

I was on third, and danced to two pieces by the Kronos Quartet - whirling, wild violin pieces; raw, modern, but finely crafted.

I'd had a lot of back pain, and had noticed a few weeks previous that my right shoulder is higher than my left (the legacy of an unnecessarily dramatic bike accident on my last day in Oxford, and when I fell in the Takachiho Gorge - not so funny now...)

Going for a 'can't beat them, join them' idea, I decided to make the most of how my body felt - hence the lopsided outfit, pulling my body further out of position.

I stood there, on the same stage where we practise a few times a month. It's a low ceiling, a small space, not designed for a body as long as mine; fortunately, it means I can't not fill the stage, which is all for the good.










All the other members of the group performed in turn, though I only have photos of a couple:

Ikumi















Shin-san, with her recently born sprog - the youngest dancer of the evening (I was the second youngest).

She brings her little baby to practice every Sunday, and he has a fine pair of lungs on him. Left to his own devices for more than a minute, he will bawl to the rooftops for his mummy. She either dances with him, or suckles him comatose before she can dance in peace.



Maiko, who I danced with the week before.

With a white dress and white face, she could easily have passed for a ghost. She has a very unusual character, normally sweet and kind, but when she dances she becomes something else - wild, intense, broken.

She carried a pair of white feathered wings in her hands, and took three minutes to walk from the edge to the centre of the stage, her faces knotted in total concentration. When she ran out of time and the music stopped, she pounded around the stage, repeating "mada, mada" ['not yet, not yet'].

With the performances over, the party began. The feast was a wonder to behold, and even better to eat. The beer and sake flowed, and the real dancing began. If I learnt anything that night, it was that dancers make good parties. Party Butoh is quite a different affair, closer to burlesque than what had come before.

What is it that the rugby boys say?

'What goes on on tour, stays on tour.'


N.B. Thanks to Brendan for the photos.

Daizenji Fire Festival

It all began on Sunday afternoon when I took the train to Daizenji with my friend Dave. We knew we were meeting a woman called Norika there, that she would take us somewhere, and there we would take most of our clothes off, get drunk, and do something with fire outside. I didn't know any more than that though.

Norika turned out to be a lovely middle aged woman with good English and leather trousers. Immensely kind and helpful, she took us to a house where we were immediately invited in and sat down at a table with 8 or so guys eating a real banquet of sushi, lobster, stew, and a lot of alcohol. Our host, a compact and very self assured man, handed me a cup, and poured sake into it. I thanked him and took a sip, and every one looked at me. Big pause. I took another sip. Another pause. 'Do you like Sake?' they asked, concerned. Finally I caught on, and downed the rest in one large gulp. Everyone looked relieved. Clearly I had been too polite. The cup went to Dave, and he swallowed it all. The conversation moved on, and we ate a fine meal. They even gave us a cup of shochu, from a bottle that cost 30,000yen. That's about £150. It was really very nice. 'Drink it slowly' they said. They were really nice people, but unfortunately, as we've only been learning Japanese for 3months, we can't actually 'chat' much yet. We weigh heavy and damp on any conversation, like wet bread.

Then I went off and had a dip in the communal bath, before our host dressed me. I stood fully naked, with my back to him, as he passed a white cloth under my legs, and I held it in place as he twisted it to go between my bum cheeks, and wrapped it round my waist many times. I spun around as he coiled it around my tummy, occasionally stopping to place a knee against my hip and pull it very tight. My stomach was held very close like a corset, and I had a long loincloth stretching from my waist down to my calves.

I returned to the table, by which time most of the guys had got pretty legless. Lots of photos were taken, especially of us two: the two gaijin alone; the gaijin holding sake bottles; the gaijin with each guy in turn; the gaijin holding someone up high to make him look taller; the gaijin with the host's daughters; etc ,etc, etc. Here's one of the whole group:

The host is on my left; from what I could tell he was a rich and powerful man, though what he did I do not know. Dave is to his left, and then a very drunk old guy who decided he was our Japanese father.

We all donned neat black slipper socks and old straw sandals, attached by rough strings that wrapped around our feet, collected our 8foot long wooden torches, and ran into the dark cold night...

Which didn't actually feel that cold. I guess that's why we drank so much sake.

So we all stood outside the train station and posed with our unlit torches and shouted something at the people coming out of the station, before marching off to meet larger groups. We joined them to form a group of 50 or so, and gathered around a small fire, as more sake was passed round. Then we lit our torches and marched off to the temple. As we marched the leaders would shout 'OS-SAA!' and we would call back 'OS-SAA!'. It passed back and forth in time with our feet, pounding along at walking pace. Occasionally we would stop, and thrust our torches into the air as we shouted in unison 'SEYYYYYYY!'. It was like being in a local militia of spearmen in 16th century Japan, shouting to feel stronger and braver in the cold dark air. We saw other columns of men marching in the same direction in other streets; a mood of growing tension and excitement at the sight of competition. Eventually we reached the temple, and found huge bonfires to warm our cold bodies:

More sake went around. Got talking to a couple of guys who turned out to be journalists. Despite being in the middle of a fire festival, this was still Japan, so one of them gave me his business card. Rather short of pockets, I stuffed it down my cotton body wrap. Then we paraded around the temple with our torches, chanting and thrusting our flames into the air, before returning for more warmth and sake.

There was a lot of sake...


Then off we went to the main event. There was a brief ritual where our torch bearer said some kind of greeting to the mayor of the nearby city (we met him earlier, and bowed lots, cos that's what everyone else was doing). They threw water on themselves from little cups, and then lit the torch and we all shouted lots (this bit was fun - see pic below). That's my host in the middle with one arm up, wearing a red bandana to show that he is in charge. The torch bearer had two guys to support his arms, because he had to hold it up in the air for about 2hours.

We marched into the main area through all the crowds, and surrounded a huge wooden column, angled up like a cannon. Just one in a row of 5 or 6 of these monsters. It was about 1.5m across, made of thick bamboo, and sprouting a mass of dry of leaves and branches. Men walked up the column to pour fire lighter on the leaves. After a peculiar slow dance with two masked men (all slow walking and briefly waved hands - but with none of the grace of Noh), they lit our cannon. (It's not really a cannon, but I like the word, so I shall use it). Huge flames came out. We weren't cold anymore:

Then one by one the cannons began to move. Yes, MOVE. When it came to our turn, I saw how. We all took hold of a long wooden stick, and stuck it into the bamboo. With a loud 'SEYYY!' we lifted it up. So that's why we kept practising shouting and thrusting into the air...

Then we began to march off, parading what was essentially an immensely heavy burning tree around the temple. Occasionally we would stop and rest it on a huge bamboo cross carried by two hefty guys underneath the cannon. Other men waved leafy green branches, trying to stop the sparks landing on us. Not that it made much difference; everyone got a lot of tiny burns and singes on their skin. Again, so THAT'S why everyone drinks so much sake. One old guy told me that it was good for your health if the sparks fell on you. I am dubious.

This is basically what I saw:


And here's a picture of my favourite character of the night:
He had a neat little moustache, shaven/bald head, and a strong build for a man who must have been in his late 50s. He was like an old samurai general. At one point, he suddenly appeared and shouted at everyone. Immediately they stopped dead, and sheepishly blinked at the floor as he proceeded to harangue a large group of 50 drunk and testosterone-fuelled men. I think we were doing something wrong, but no idea what. He had absolute authority over them all; intensely practical and in his element, leading such a large group of men. An awesome individual.

All this time, men were beating drums and ringing bells without rest. A really charged atmosphere. Two guys started shouting and fighting, and had to be pulled apart. The man next to me got his stick in the wrong place, and it slipped forward and smacked me on the eyebrow. Again, the sake helped.






I really wanted to walk up the cannons, but though I mentioned it to a few people they just laughed at me. It looked so exciting up there!


When we had finally made a circuit of the temple, our cannon had burned down about half way. We took it on our shoulders, and our torchbearer sprinted through under the fire and beneath the length of the cannon. Then we put it down and he ran over the top. It was doused in water, and the festival was over. Suddenly, it was cold and dark...

Luckily, my friends Heather and Brendan were around to take these pictures of the event. We stayed in our host's house over night, which was actually pretty excruciating. I hate being a burden on people, especially when out of pure social obligation, but Japanese hospitality demands the guest do absolutely nothing and the host provide their every need. They were hugely kind, but I actually WANTED to help out, wash up or whatever. They would have none of it. As we talked late at night, they asked us what we liked to eat at breakfast, and stupidly we started eulogising about the virutes of the English fry up. The next morning, we were presented with a piece of toast, and a fried egg. And jam. And chopsticks. They watched us expectantly. Deal with that one on a hangover.

Koya San (高野山)

Leaving Nara behind me, I took the train up to Osaka, the pulsing heart of central Japan. It's a busy place, full of life, but somewhere to live, not a place for travelling. I passed straight through and picked up a fast train out of the city, heading for Koya San - the mountain-top home of Shingon Buddhism, and an absolute world away from urban Osaka.

In half an hour or so I was out of the tower blocks and highways, and another half hour and I was surrounded by rolling valleys and stepped paddy fields. The landscape grew increasingly precipitous, and the hills rose and valleys dropped, until I found myself in mountain country. The last ten stops were all tiny village stations on sloping mountain sides, a single, smartly dressed station chief saluting the train with his gloved hand. Finally it pulled in around 3pm to the station at the base of Koya San, from where I queued with a few tourists, twice as many townsfolk, and a couple of smartly dressed commuters, to board the cable car.

The ride took us up the mountain slope at a 45degree angle, the mechanics creaking loudly as it pulled us uphill. My ears popped as I watched a black man in a white jacket sit on the front seat, looking up excitedly like a child queueing for sweets, and talking in broken Japanese to a friendly granny.

At the top we boarded waiting buses, which took us into the main town. I sat behind the white jacket, listening to their conversation. Seeing his Japanese stutter and fail, I joined the chat. It turned out he was a Londoner, who had just completed the Shikoku Pilgrimage, a mammoth 88-shrine marathon that took him a very fast 38 days, on which he wore out 9 pairs of sandals (apparently single-thong Japanese flip-flops create the Lucifer of blisters). He was chummy, and appreciated the help - he'd been in Japan as long as I had, but the time I'd been spending learning Japanese he had spent walking. His white jacket was covered in assorted decorative stamps from each of the shrines he had visited, and to collect his final stamp he had to return to Koya San, the start and end point of the epic trek. With a plane to catch back to England the same day, he took the cable car up rather than walk. Fair cop really.

I got off the bus on the central street (one of four in the town), and as I was still early for my accommodation, I took a walk around. The town is almost entirely made up of Monasteries, of which there are around 120 (though at its peak in the C17th there were over a thousand). They are adorned with delicately sculpted wood and beautiful deep-brown thatch, on that day laced with thin patches of snow. It was much colder than Osaka, but the air fresher, the sky clearer.

At the heart of the town is the central sacrosanct area known as the Garan, comprised of the the great halls of the buddhist sect, and a grand, central red pagoda.

Recently rebuilt and shining with red lacquer, it almost looked TOO new - with a bright sheen and bold colour contrasts. Inside, a 3D mandala of statues; 16 pillars of the different emotions, and four great figures representing Wealth, Health, Intelligence, and the Path to Heaven - the four attributes of a good life for Shingon disciples, hardly the ascetic Buddhism that we know in the west from Zen. In the centre of them all sat a great Buddha, serene on a lily pad. Their gold leaf bodies shone brilliantly with their indigo blue hair, their faces bright and stylised in a way that reminded me of Bollywood posters. But then, Buddhism came through the silk road form India, and the roots stay close.


With the short winter day drawing to a close early, I made my way up to my accommodation, staying in a Monastery lodging recommended by the Rough Guide (these temple lodges are called Shukubo). I picked Haryoin (巴陵院) for the simple reason that it was cheap (by Koya San standards at least - about £35 p n). If you're going, not bother staying there; there's much nicer places to go. It's on the edge of town, and from my first entrance it was clear this was not an ordinary place. I walked in through the gate, and went up and took my boots off and placed them on the rack. I knocked on the closed shutters, and no reply. I stood in the cold waiting, until I heard a rattling coming my way. Then the shutters burst open, and a monkey-like, inquisitive face shot through the gap in the door, followed by a sloped body in work clothes and green wellies. I bowed and said 'Konnichi wa'. Unimpressed, he told me to come in, and shuffled off, dragging one useless leg along behind.

Signing in didn't go so well. He wouldn't let me give a Japanese address for my permanent residency. I was a foreigner, and so I had to give a foreign address. I tried to explain in Japanese, but he would only accept English from me. Not worth arguing about, but rather un-monkish. Carrying my bags upstairs, I saw some more dubious signs - large, framed photographs of Japanese battleships, and draped Rising Sun flags (the ones with red and white stripes, that went out of fashion around the second of September 1945). Not very Buddhist, some might say...

The room was quick-fit tatami, small and with a view of a leafy hillside (rather close to the window, about 2m away). Clearly that's why this place was cheaper than the rest. you pay for what you get. Tired from my travels, I rested up and drank green tea in my little room, waiting for the dinner gong. Hearing it bang on schedule, I went down to the prescribed room. It was large, with a spotless tatami floor, a single heater, and a single floor cushion, for me. So I would be dining alone then.

As soon as I'd sat down, the paper door slid open again, and another monk brought me tray of food. It was delicious. Shukubo are famous for their cuisine, serving a special vegetarian diet called Shojin Ryori (庶人料理). There were sweet lentil pastes, fresh vegetables, mushrooms, a delicate miso soup and a wonderful local speciality - light, clean-tasting, Koya Tofu (高野豆腐). The kind of food that makes you smile.

I polished off the whole lot, and felt pleasingly full despite the slight appearance of each individual portion. Feeling much better about the world, I went back to my room, and played with the heater to get some of the chill out of the room. I don't think the full glass wall helped. Soon, I could see my breath.

Retreating from the cold, I went down for a hot bath. Shivering in the freezing air, I stripped off and entered the onsen room. It was a sparse tiled room, with a steamed window, a couple of plastic squat pots and a large, steaming bath. I got down on the pot and lathered up, before scooping up a large bowl of very hot water and dowsing my entire body. Blissful heat on a shivering body. I got clean as quick as possible, swept the soap off and prepared for the plunge. Three steps and I was in, lost in the overwhelming heat. Pure joy. I leaned back with a sigh, and looked up the ceiling, where thousands of bobbling droplets hung like bats. Occasionally they dropped down onto me, like ice on my lobster pink body. Before long I was so hot I felt sick, and I had to make my escape (the best things never last). Wrapping up my deeply warmed body, I went upstairs to my futon and hid from the world, with just a whirring heater for company.

I was woken at 5:55 by my alarm, and lay, stunned by the world. At 6am the insistent, muted temple bell rung began to toll, repeatedly. I dithered and dressed, putting on EVERY jumper I owned, before going down to see the dawn prayer service. I went down 5mins early, and found an empty, dark corridor. Still night outside, I could see my breath, almost solid before my face, and the thermometer read -2 Celsius, indoors.

I'd been expecting a troupe of chanting monks to parade into the room, but they failed to appear. Instead, the first monk rattled up, this time dressed in full ceremonial regalia. He wore a purple robe over his lopsided shoulders, with large brown pom-poms hung all over his body. He seemed much happier in this outfit, more confident and so more friendly. We entered a large, darkened room with a dividing wall - I sat alone on the large tatami space, while he walked through the doorway into the barely visible room behind. He bustled around, lighting candles, gradually revealing the hidden statues, glinting in the gloom. Then he set himself up on a high cushion, and all I could see was his bent back, as I sat on the tatami, attempting to hug the heater without burning my skin. Glimpses of ritual movements could be seen over his shoulders. At one point, he flourished a short sword, and swept it in arcs to the sides and in front, stabbing and shouting with all the force he could muster. He chanted in a deep and ragged voice, monotonous and growling, and then rather ineptly blew a conch, teetering on the brink of tonality. Later, he lit a fire, sending two-foot flames and smoke up into the air. Steam rose from before him, as from boiling water. But then, I realised, it was just so cold that his breath was visible from the other side of the dark room.

One monk, observing the same, essential rituals each morning, alone in the depths of winter, high on a mountain-top and praying for the souls of the world.

The ceremony ended abruptly, and the priest unfolded his knees with an audible creak. He went around extinguishing the candles one by one, drawing a curtain of darkness back over the statues. He then pulled back the sliding doors, and the night finished suddenly as the harsh light of dawn filled the room. Blinking with exhaustion, I strained to understand the priests opening gambit in Japanese. Seeing my incomprehension, he shifted to English, and spoke with the air of an over-rehearsed, ill-remembered speech.

His story was not what I expected. He had an brain aneurism nine years ago, and had to be taken off the mountain and send to various hospitals. "You'll never walk again," the Doctors told him. But another Doctor told him he would recover the use of his legs. His present ability to hobble around, carrying his useless left side around with him like heavy sack, was for him proof of Buddha's divine grace and mercy, for which he was truly thankful.

He then told me that he had prayed for me in the service, and for peace in our world. However, Buddha had told him that he did not perform the ritual well enough, and he would have to perform it three more times. My aching knees were relieved to hear that during the repeat ceremonies, I should go ahead and eat my excellent breakfast in the dining room.

Up at such an early hour, I decided to make the best of the early start and head out to see one of the most keenly anticipated places on my travels. The 奥ノ院 (Okuno-in - 'the hall deep inside'), the most holy shrine in Shingon Buddhism, reached by a 2km walk through an ancient cemetery, hosting literally hundreds of thousands of graves.


You approach from the road and quickly find yourself immersed in a forest of towering cedar trees, moss-covered gravestones, and a heavy silence. At 7:30am, the visitors were few, and the morning light brilliant between the trees.

The air was fresh and clear, and smiling workmen calmly swept leaves on the path.




















There was nothing sinister or pessimistic about this beautiful place.



The cold night had turned the puddles into hard ice.



Bunches of flowers, stuck fast in the solid crystals.



The biggest surprise of the place had a rather less religious air. With Shingon representing around 10% of Japan's population, many of the larger companies keep their own mausoleums in the cemetery. Yakult is there, Toyota, and many others. Some have a mail box for you to post your business card to mark your visit.

The designs are also pretty special - a coffee company have a coffee shop, Sharp have a giant TV set.



And best of all, I came across this in one corner of the cemetery.



Have you ever seen a spaceship mausoleum before?












Dotted around the cemetery, hundreds of tiny statues, wrapped in red bibs and woolly hats, protected from the cold.










They are statues of Jizo Bosatsu, the Buddhist guardian of Children and Travellers.

Travelling as I was, I felt rather fond of these little guardians watching over the paths.

Deep inside the cemetery, a river cuts across the path. On the other side, the inner sanctum, the Okuno-in.

And standing in ranks in the middle of the river, rows of wooden stakes, their reflections rippling in the water.




They are the graves of unborn children.

Across the river, the atmosphere was very different.

The tallest trees stood alone, without the density of graves found elsewhere in Okuno-in. Their trunks were immense, ridges soaring into the air to the high canopy above.

Inside the actual shrine of Okuno-in, stacked ranks of lanterns hung glimmering in rows, their dull light barely illuminating the faintly glowing room. The atmosphere was serious, holy. A single man knelt on the red carpet, deep in prayer. A priest knelt on one side at an altar, performing the same burning ceremony I had seen a few hours earlier.

This ceremony has a particular elegance. Believers write their pleas and prayers to Buddha in black ink on wooden slats. These are blessed by the priest, arranged in a neat stack, and amid droning chants are ritually engulfed in flame. As the wood crackles, heat and smoke floats up into the air, and carries with it the hopes of the petitioner. It’s both prayer and metaphor in one, as are all the best rituals.

Shingon Buddhism was hugely popular among the elite of Japan in the C9th and C10th, partly because of its aesthetic approach – quite unlike the sparse austerity of Zen. For its founder Kobo Daishi, all beauty was a sign of Buddha, so he encouraged art as an expression of divinity.

The other reason for its great popularity is its exclusivity. It's known as esoteric Buddhism; not everyone can understand it, and even those who do must be taught it. The truth cannot be written, but must be shared from a teacher to a student, and in Shingon this largely occurs through ceremony and ritual.

Around the back of the Temple stands the Mausoleum of Kobo Daishi, the founder of Shingon Buddhism who died in the mountain temple he set up. An extraordinary man, not only did he found this strand of Buddhism, along the way he invented Hiragana, one of the two syllabaries of Japanese. No spaceship or TV set or other grand folly to mark his passing here, just a simple wooden hut, unpainted and peaceful, his body entombed inside. Pilgrims stood before it, in twos or threes, calmly chanting their prayers before the smoking incense cauldrons. No hysterics, no commercialism, no jostling crowds or hordes of tourists. This was a religion at peace with itself and the world.

Underneath the temple, 50,000 Buddha statues, each the size of a fist, stood on shelves. Every one had a name inscribed below it, and a reference number, I presume so that a visitor can trace their own statue. The room was hushed, but strangely industrial, feeling new and a rather plastic.

Nearby stood an ancient, wooden hall, its shutters closed to the world. Only one was open, and through the slats I saw row upon row of hanging lanterns. On passing through the entrance, I found the hall full to two storeys of these lamps, each with electric wires feeding power from the mains. I’ve always been fascinated by humanity’s desire to fight the lack of light in the world by burning candles and lamps, and so I found this closed room, burning with hundreds of lamps that no one could see, particularly alluring. It’s like the closed monasteries of monks sworn to silence, but praying for peace and happiness in our world; it can have no tangible impact on the outside world, but I find its existence very comforting.

The Okuno-in sits in a perfect location. It is nestled in a valley between three peaks, and the dense forest is sheltered from the elements, making it a calm and peaceful place. I set off to find the path that circles round these peaks, and trudged up the path from the cemetery. Called the 高野三山道 (Koya san zan dou – ‘path of the three Koya peaks’), it is a traditional pilgrimage route that traces the boundaries that surround this holy plateau. Well maintained and well used, the path was occasionally marked by gaudy pieces of rubbish tied to the trees – red pet bottles, blue plastic ribbons, green bags. The path is far older than the trees that line it, and so they rank up neatly along its edges, never encroaching on its well-trodden earth.

The path climbed up to each peak, where there stood a tiny shrine surrounded by half-melted snow, before swooping down and up again for the next one.

I saw three kinds of people on this path – robed monks, tooled-up hiking tourists, and teenage baseball players from the high school on their training runs over the hills, dressed in 1920’s knickerbockers and matching shirts. Everyone wore fancy dress on this mountain.

Reaching the last peak, I began my final descent, and ended up right back in the holy inner core of the Okuno-in. The pilgrims looked a little surprised to see the sweaty foreigner crossing the stepping stones over the river and popping up in their temple, but nevertheless they smiled benevolently.

I walked back through the town, and up to the traditional main entrance to the town, before the cable car took over. Marking the entrance stood a vast red gate 大門 (Daimon – ‘great gate’), holding the 二王 (Ni-O – ‘two kings’). The Ni-O are the traditional Buddhist guardians against evil, and are often found on temple entrances. They are serious, powerful, scary monsters, and they really hold the eye. They looked out over the hills towards Osaka, the modern world invisible in the distance.


I then followed the ancient path up the hill from the gate, another pilgrimage route. This was called the 女人道 (Nyonindou – Women’s path); as women were banned from the mountain until barely a century ago, female pilgrims had to march the boundaries to pay their respects, catching only fleeting glimpses of the treasures that lay within.

Though it was no substitute for the town itself, the view was stunning, and must have been some consolation for the barred pilgrims.


The one disadvantage of travelling alone is there’s no one to take your photo. However, an obliging tree stump agreed to hold my camera, and a rather untimely timer took this photo.


Nearly back at my lodging, and the sun slowly sinking behind the hills, I looked back and caught this last glimpse of the central pagoda.

Finally it made sense to me. The pagoda, holding inside its mandala of Buddha, the four attributes and the sixteen emotions, was the core of a far larger mandala. The pagoda sat in the middle of the mountain peaks, which cupped it like the curved leaves of the lotus flower on which Buddha sits.

The next morning, after taking the long train ride down the mountain and out over the plains towards Osaka, I took out my water bottle. It had been squashed flat by the change in air pressure, as I dropped down into the modern world.

Somehow, I knew how it felt.

Nara

I'd been planning my Christmas travels for weeks - a big deal, my first extended trip that I'd ever done alone, travelling for three weeks across Japan, after only learning the language for two and a half months.

A virulent stomach bug kept me in bed for a week before my travels began, and I was still pretty shaky when I got up for my first morning's travel. I had a three-week rail pass, valid across the country; but, of course, I still missed my first bullet train of the day.

Spending most of the day on trains, I arrived in Nara around 3:30. I'd left Fukuoka in the far west, and was now close to the middle of Japan - to simplify horribly, I was in the bit of Japan that the history comes from. Nara was the capital of Japan from 710-784AD, after which it moved to Nara's more famous big-brother, Kyoto, about an hour away on the train.

It's a very small city, centred on a pedestrianised high-street which leads onto into a large, green park, full of mangy deer that flock to the tourist like pigeons in Trafalgar Square. But I guess the better comparison would be to Oxford - it had the same venerable air of peaceful dust - almost nowhere to go out at night, but steeped in ancient buildings and great treasures. It would be a great place to retire to, if anyone's looking to give up on work anytime soon.

But by the time I arrived there, the temples were shutting, the light dissipating to dusk, and tiredness was setting in. I stomped grumpily around the parks, and got a bit lost in the wooded pathways to the east. Wandering in the deepening gloom, listening to the sporadic deer shrieks, feeling a little unimpressed with the world. And then I saw a sign saying 'Pathway' (in English). It didn't say what to or where from, just 'pathway'. But it seemed like a good omen, and take it I did.

I found myself in the quiet back streets, a fair way from where I wanted to be. But then I came across a couple of wonderful instances of unusual light. Whipping my camera out, I began to feel a lot happier...


Warped, bare trees in neon street light.


A cat hunched on a flood light for warmth, by the historic Sarusawano Ike (but then everything in Nara is historic - it's basically just a nice pond).


The great wooden pagoda of Kofukuji, rebuilt after fire in 1426.


The next day, I went to see 東大寺 (Todaiji - 'Great East Temple') - the biggest wooden building in the world. And it really is BIG...


Photos always shrink things, but click on the pic to make it big, and look at the people on the steps for scale. There's something about its sheer bulk, a shape so familiar from a hundred temple roofs but stretched far beyond the scale of anywhere else. But it doesn't feel humbling, more uplifting to see something man-made and so monumental.


Inside sits the 大仏 (Daibutsu - Great Buddha), a vast bronze statue of Buddha that stands (or rather sits) over 50ft high, completed in 751. The next year, a ceremony was held to bring the statue to life, ceremonially painting in its pupils to see the world. It took so much bronze to cast the statue that it left the fledgling kingdom on the verge of bankruptcy.

The result really is wonderful, and it and the surrounding artwork has a clear, strong aesthetic. The shapes are bold and clearly defined, but abstracted into stylised forms. The pastel red wooden walls are as faded as the green wooden ornaments and dull bronze statues - it felt dry, but warm and accessible.

I timed my visit to Nara in order to see the On Matsuri, one of Nara's biggest festivals. It is a Shinto festival, in which the resident gods are invoked in a midnight ceremony, and housed within a single, portable shrine that is carried down from the hills and set up in state in a temporary temple in the woods for the 24hours of the festival.

During the day, hours of festivities see all manner of traditional costumes and outfits parade through the town; little kids stuttering along in wooden sandals, and rather tubby would-be samurai seemed to make up the largest part of the participants. It was fun, but didn't really set me on fire.


Around 4:30, as the light began to fade, the event began that I really wanted to see. In front of the portable shrine, a large covered stage had been set up, brightly lit and surrounded by braziers, flames billowing in the wind.

The wind picked up, and blew flocks of crows overhead.

A series of extraordinary figures appeared. One robed man walked elegantly on half-foot tall platform sandals, and carried a 3ft diameter headdress with a 2ft high diorama balanced on top, featuring seven dolls in full traditional dress.

An entire Gagaku ensemble was ranked up on the right, playing the ancient music of the Japanese Court (a very rare treat) - its history goes back over a thousand years, though it has changed much over that time. The music has an extraordinary, ethereal quality, with clangs, booms, whistling flutes, and harmonic voices. Underneath it all is the rasping Sho, sounding like an opening accordion, and looking like hands pressed together in prayer.





And to that unearthly music, dancers emerged dressed in fabulous, bright costumes, and wearing large, elaborate headdresses. I've seen them elsewhere, sitting dull and lifeless in museums, but here they were, in part of a real performance.



Four orange dancers walked slowly onto the stage, and spread out into a wide pattern. They danced slowly and gracefully, making curved, sweeping movements with one limb at a time. A circle with the arms, slow spin on the heel, step forward, sweep with both hands. They moved with glacial slowness, and an intensity that demanded attention.

The weather tried to steal our gaze, with scattered rain and a strong wind that blew away priest hats and music papers, shaking the marquees as the musicians tried to pipe over the blustering elements.

A later dance saw a proud dragon skip through the sparks of the fires fanned by the wind, flicking its arms and and legs in the air; a loose jaw hanging free beneath its face, its shining green eyes bulging large.

Another dance featured an orange insect with a long white beard, flicking its heels then sweeping into a protracted, slow turn, drawing its long orange train behind it.


These dancers were serious, powerful, and possessed a real gravity. I spent a lot of time staring at their moving backs, because they danced facing away from the audience. Instead, they danced to the shrine, making their purpose clear - this was a ritual, not a performance. As was partly true of the Yokagura, the point of these dances are that they are performed as well as possible, NOT that the audience enjoys them. But by performing them with such intensity, they drew the eye and had a powerful effect on the emotions.

That's a lesson artists in the west could certainly do with learning - we're too obsessed with the audience's view, their experience, whether its in the judgement of academic theory or arts funding. If the artist keeps looking at they're audience, they'll fumble the ball and stop listening to what's inside. It takes a real arrogance (or confidence) to just concentrate on your own work - maybe you need centuries of tradition to give you that confidence, and so we've lost it in much of our contemporary art.

That power derived from a performance of total, absorbed conviction sent shivers down my body.

Or maybe that was just the wind, rain, and biting cold.

Miscellaneous Eccentricity 2 [Muzak]

Muzak 1
The powers that be pipe music into my dormitory canteen. It’s always changing: one day its the New World Symphony; the next, Britney. But yesterday the music sounded like a ten year old on a Xylophone. In fact, I think it probably was a ten year old on a Xylophone. And then I recognized the song. Tinkling along in well spaced notes was the tune from

Hitler, has only got one ball,
The other, is in the Albert Hall...

Muzak 2
I’ve been in several bars that, at the end of each night, play Auld Lang Syne over the P.A system.

Muzak 3
The major pedestrian crossings in the city play loud music when the lights turn green. North/South intersections play a jaunty little tune - apparently it's from a Scottish folk song. It's a very electronic noise, but even that cannot deaden the irritatingly upbeat jingle. In stark contrast is the music of the East/West intersections - a maudlin death march played on a Wurlitzer. I much prefer moving with the sun.

Miscellaneous Eccentricity 1

It being Autumn, there is a lot of leaf sweeping to be done. There are often university workers to be seen clearing up the heaped drifts, in a suit with broom in hand.

At times, they get a little over eager. Last week I saw a smartly dressed man standing five metres up a tree, using his broom to sweep leaves straight from the branch.

Christmas Tree 2006

A funny Christmas it was.

Sumo

Every November, Fukuoka plays host to the last Grand Sumo Tournament of the year. The sumo circus starts in Tokyo, and holds contests in cities all over Japan, before it finally comes into town here. For weeks, Very Big Men in equally big kimonos stroll around town, turn up in bars, spread over two seats on the subway. Then, they fight one bout a day for the two week tournament, their ranking changing with every win and loss.

Sumo has its origins in ritual wrestling bouts, performed at shinto festivals and ceremonial gatherings since at least the eighth century. Sumo rings are not uncommon at bigger shrines, though they tend to be small, dusty affairs - few things can look as forlorn as an unused stage. The arena in Fukuoka is more like a western boxing stadium, huge banks of seats, ranks of faces all staring intently at the brave men who stand up in the middle.But there are some very real differences - no ropes around the ring, so when the loser is hurled off the stage they land on the front row (no laughing matter, these guys average over 300pounds); the more expensive ticket buyers sit cross-legged and shoeless on cushions in their own little box; a stylised shrine roof hangs from the ceiling over the ring.



Underneath the seating, a neon-lit warren of waiting giants and busy henchman is there for all to see. Silverware is stacked up for the winner (and it ALL goes to the winner), while not so far away a chilling sign of the dangerous side of the sport - a huge wheelchair, the seat at least 3feet wide and back even longer, in wipe-clean tanned leather.

The wrestlers line up before the bouts, faces blanked in concentration, with a chaperone wrestler in charge to look after them. Understandably, just before a fight, they're far from friendly, and strongly resent having their concentration broken by fans. One middle-aged woman tried to take a photo, and a mere glare from the chaperone was enough to send her away.

That look. It seems to be key to sumo, the ability to hold and out stare their opponent. It's a lonely place up there. The integrity and strength of personality it requires is immense. Sure, 300pounds of fat and muscle help, but there is so much more to it.



The arrogance it takes for a smaller man to take on one of the lumbering giants is immense, but they often come out with a win. Some of those giants are real ogres - patchy body hair, jowls creasing into squashed faces, no grace, no style. They would crush you if you let them. The smaller man spin and trip with great agility, trying desperately to stop the vast hands from pinning them down and flinging them out. Other bouts are less subtle - I saw one fight where the winner leapt forwards, thrust his opponent once in the chest, and then one further push saw him out of the ring; the whole thing took mere seconds of overbearing force.

But then, sometimes wrestlers emerge who step out of the big-fast divide, and simply have everything - power, size, arrogance, strength, both in body and mind.

The current Yokozuna - world champion - has all of those. He fights under the name Asashoryu (all foreigners must assume a Japanese name to take part), but he was born in Mongolia as Dolgorsuren Dagvadorj. He's won 70 of his last 78 bouts (and bear in mind that as champion he has to fight the second-ranked wrestler every day of every tournament). When he fought on the last day of the Fukuoka tournament, I saw a clear demonstration of why he has remained champion for so long.

In the final bout of the last day of the tournament, Asashoryu squared faced the second-ranked wrestler, Chiyotaikai. The Mongolian champion had won every fight of the last 14 days with ease. One more victory, and another championship would be his. As in every bout, they entered from opposite sides, bowed, and retreated to their respective sides for a brief purification ritual, rinsing their mouth out with water, and toss handfuls of salt across the ring in great arcs. Slapping their bodies, swinging their arms, they prepare for the impact. Then, they are called over by the ornately dressed judge, and square up before each other. They squat low, lift a single leg high over their head (and some of these guys are seriously flexible), and lock their eyes into a brutally intimidating gaze.

And they hold that gaze. For five seconds, they stared into each others eyes, bristling with aggression.

With thousands of pairs of eyes watching you, five seconds is a very long time.

And Chiyotaikai looked away first.

They returned to their corners, stamped and salted, and back they came for another stare.

Everyone leaned forward, watching them intently. The vast hall was completely silent. You could see the power in the air between them.

And again, Chiyotaikai turned away. Asashoryu straightened up standing open-chested and strong, watching Chiyotaikai walk away from him.

And again, they squared up to each other. Paused. And with a bang of fists on the ground they dived forward and Chiyotaikai shocked Asashoryu with a brutal forearm thrust to the neck. An upset seemed possible as he drived the stunned champion backwards. But then the onslaught slowed, Asashoryu steadied himself, and everyone felt the tide turn. A pause, arms locked together, and the result was obvious. With sheer brute power, the Mongolian picked his opponent up bodily and, with tree-trunk legs dangling in the air, placed him outside the ring.

The crowd erupted, first throwing shouts into the air, and then tossing purple seating cushions in spinning arcs over the crowd. Hundreds of soft shuriken buzzed around the stadium, flopping onto the ring and hasilty cleared by attendants.










The winner, Asashoryu, stood there, and received his victory tributes, gifts from all over the world. A long prize-giving saw him presented with huge gold and silver cups, giant framed photos, urns, a year's supply of petrol (not actually handed over on the stage). The prizes were all sumo sized, and these Very Big Prizes were presented by Rather Small Men - some could barely even lift their tributes as they were transferred to the vast, steady hands of the champion. It was like Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, receiving tributes from the world's kings, gracious but clearly a master warrior in control.

The last gift was a slender, 7ft long bow, which he proceeded to turn and swing around his body, swooping behind his back and twirling over his head, cutting steep arcs through the air.



As an aside, I should mention that the fate of one of these prizes now looks rather uncertain. Jacques Chirac has long been both fan and connoisseur of sumo, and instigated the Very Big Chirac Cup. In a jibe at his former mentor, in 2004 Sarkozy slated Chirac's favoured sport, asking "How can anyone be fascinated by these battles between fat guys with slicked-down ponytails? Sumo wrestling is really not a sport for intellectuals."

While I'd like to applaud anyone who can use the word 'intellectual' without pejorative connotations, that single statement seems to have made half of Japan hate the man, and caused genuine fears for the future ties of the two countries, given his recent accession to the Elysee. Rather short and wiry he may be, but I'd love to see him g-stringed and squatting, attempting to stare down some of these other Very Big Men.

Takachiho Yokagura

In October, I read a short piece in a magazine about the traditional folk dances of the town of Takachiho, nestled up in the mountain ranges in the centre of Kyushu. The 33 different dances have been performed for centuries in the area, and a couple are danced each night in the town for an hour for the benefit of tourists. However, every dancing group (of which there are 19 in the town) also performs all 33 dances overnight, once each winter. The first of these dusk till dawn performances was on November 18th, so I got myself on a bus and headed out there. I left in the morning, and went to see the famous Takachiho Gorge in the afternoon (see previous post).

Feeling rather grumpy from the rain and banged knee, I waded through the rain back into town around 4:30. I stopped in an empty coffee shop to dry out and pass the time, peeling off layers of rain gear and feeling very pleased to be wearing my boots. It was run by a very friendly woman who I just about managed to chat to in my broken Japanese. I asked her about a local delicacy I'd read about called 生妾湯 (shougayu), but she warned me that it was a powerful drink, best reserved for those with a sore throat or similar dire need. I insisted, and she promptly produced a knob of ginger, grated it, and poured in hot water. Slightly disappointed, I sipped my ginger tea, and explained that we drank it England too. She seemed similarly disappointed at the news.

After acquiring supplies (enough chocolate, rice balls, and coca cola to keep me awake for days - I had enough late-night essay sessions at Oxford to know how to eat my way through a long night), and dinner (fried noodles in a basic eatery where the cat was more talkative than its old-granny owner), I got myself a taxi. I had considered walking (only an hour in the rain...), and wisely decided against it, much to my relief as the cab wound through pitch-dark, steep, mountain roads. As we negotiated the forests, I talked to the driver. Obviously he asked where I was from, and it transpired that I was the first Englishman he had ever met. Given that Takachiho was supposed to be a tourist destination, and taxi drivers are about the most likely person of anyone in a town to meet foreigners, this said something about how isolated the town was - right up in the mountains, far from the cities, the Shinkansens, the airports.

Suddenly, we pulled up to a bright, neon lit room, open to the night on two sides, and bustling with people. I got out and the driver helped me get under cover with his umbrella. He seemed to ask the shrine people to look after me, at which they appeared rather non-plussed, before saying goodbye and driving back off into the dark forest. At around 8pm, the dances had already started, performed in a central square marked by hanging paper patterns and fresh green-leafed branches. The paper was cut doily-style; known as Erimono they represent each of the traditional elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Gold, and Water. Sheets bearing the names of donors to the shrine were stuck up on the walls over the course of the night. The lighting was harsh, with bare neon tubes flooding the room with cold light. Outside, the rain poured onto one tarpaulin wall, but the large tatami room was clean, dry, and full with a seated crowd. Stage left a musical ensemble was set up; the instruments changed from dance to dance, but most used a Japanese flute (Yokobue), with a sweet whistling quite unlike the broken sound of the Shakuhachi, and the ubiquitous Taiko drum, hit with two sticks on the rim and the skin, using simple, sharp rhythms - bomBOMMM dadadat, dadadat, dadadat; bomBOMMM dadadat, dadadat, dadadat; bomBOMMM dadadat, dadadat, dadadat...

So to start, I got myself a little patch on the tatami, and settled down to watch, trying to ignore the staring eyes of several people in the crowd, after a brief nod/bow of acknowledgement (I hadn’t seen another foreigner all day, and I guess I presented something of a novelty). Here at last was the Yokagura (folk dances) I'd come to see. The men danced before a small shrine, lined with masks for the performance, a range of fresh vegetables, sake, and a single candle; all offerings to the gods in hope of a good harvest. They wore blonde wigs, rough as straw, over their black hair. The men were a range of ages, from early twenties up to the late forties. They wore white robes, with very wide sleeves stretching a foot and a half down from the wrist. A variety of garments were placed over the top, sometimes broad sackcloth, other times a twisted scarf around the shoulders to keep the sleeves out of the way. Some dancers held an ornate fan, or a sword, or often a Suzu - a gold, jangling ritual implement with no obvious use other than shaking and ringing like little bells.

I have to admit to being a little disappointed at the quality of the dancing. Though they did not suffer that immense sense of social embarrassment that (nearly) every English Morris Dance group displays, and which makes them so painful to watch, these dancers did seem a bit shy, a little uncertain. Occasional mistakes, downward-looking eyes, half-hearted movements, took a lot of the shine off the performances.

But when they wore masks, there was a very different feel to their movement. They were prouder, stronger, less shy. In the interval between dances, a man would approach the shrine, bow, take a particular mask from the ranks and place it on a tray, and with great respect and care carry it backstage. Some masks gurned, some showed a winsome smile or fanged grimace. They ranged from fierce monster and great hero to young maid and grimy old granny. One particularly impressive mask was battered and peeled, the red lacquer broken off in great flakes like a leper's lost nose. It's wearer suddenly ran into the crowd, gibbering and waving, and sent his 6year old son screaming for his mother. Afterwards the dancer crept round unmasked and reassured his child that he really was no devil.

One dance saw a strong but slightly gawky young man in a gurning, think-lipped mask, sporting a top-knot like a straw onion.


He drew his arms back and forth, swaying rather awkwardly, gearing up for a roll and balance on his shoulders. He rocked and rolled around the stage, before pausing on his knees. The other men scuttled a large Taiko drum onto the stage, and knelt around it as support.

Like a wild imp, he jumped on the drum, seized the sticks and sitting in a feral squat pounded out his rhythm.



















Then, in an impressive feat of strength and balance, he tilted his weight forwards onto his arms, dropped his shoulder to the drum, and raised his legs into the air. He kicked and danced his legs spasmodically in time with the drum.

Another dance climaxed with a god unleashing a terrible storm, and suddenly a Heath Robinson rope contraption shook and rocked the roof frame and paper hangings as with a wild wind.

Then, with serious faces and long sleeves tied back, they brought out the swords.

First the local priest took the time to bless them, and then the six men held out their swords and grasped their neighbour's by the tip. They danced around in a circle, rotating in skips, aiming their swords with care away from each other. Their faces pinched; this wasn't the time to screw up.

One awkward moment saw a guy turn at the wrong moment, and his friend pushed the sword blade away from his oncoming guts at the last moment. They caught each other's eye for a moment - do not do that again.

One by one the men dropped out until it was just the three youngest men on stage.


They turned and worked the rotations.


Suddenly, they threw themselves into a salsa whirl, spinning on the sword grips like a writhing knot.


They tied, and then untied, their bodies.


Until suddenly they were back where they started, breathing heavily and looking very relieved.

One of the three bowed out, and the remaining two were blessed again by the priest.



















Again they turned slowly, skipping and rotating, before spinning wildly, swords over there heads bending and curving.

And then one more dropped out, and the youngest of the lot knelt alone before the priest, and received his blessing. He held his two swords against his body, and rocked and skipped around the stage, before gearing up for a whirling torrent of sword strokes.



The whole dance took ages to work through all the permutations, maybe as much as 45minutes, and by the time you've seen a man rock, sway, and lash out at one point of the compass, the next three are pretty predictable. He had to swing the swords by the handle, then holding them by the sharp tip, and finally in the middle - and then work back through them all one more time. But then that's where you see the difference between dance and religious ritual. These dances are offerings to the gods, hoping for a rich harvest - you can't skimp on offerings, you can't cut corners. If you dance one way, you must dance four; if one man dances away, they must all dance away in turn, until no one is left on the stage. This is being, not doing.

Each dance had a name and myth behind it. The great myth underlying all the dances is that of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess who ran off in a huff at her brother's offensive behaviour, and hid in a cave just near Takachiho. The disappearance of Sun goddesses is rather problematic (try looking for a hidden torch in a dark room), so all the gods set out to bring her back to her position in the skies. Nothing worked, not prayers, entreaties, or chants. Finally, an enticing dance brought Amaterasu out of the cave; it just looked to good to miss out on, and she wanted to join in herself. But before she could, the gods pounced on her, and forced her back up into the ether.

I've no desire to compare myself to a sun goddess, but I can certainly understand her feelings of envy at the dancing divinity outside her cave. Whenever I watch dance, I get restless and want to join in. The most upsetting thing about the dance was the dense rank of photographers around the stage. When a masked performer made wide movements, or did something novel, they would click and clatter away. But when the performer was unmasked, or the dance was slow or subtle, the photographers just stared at the floor, or checked their cameras, ignoring him completely. They had no sense of this as performance, just as series of opportunities to take 'a good photo'. Like leeches, they sucked the blood of the atmosphere. So, I didn't take many photos in the end. I didn't want to document it, I wanted to be a part of it!

And, to my great surprise, I eventually did become a part of it.

Over the course of the evening, about a third of the audience taxied off in the rain, tourists returning to warm hotel beds. As the crowd thinned the atmosphere became warmer, more communal. Cups of Ocha (green tea), misu soup, warm mochi (rice cakes), were handed around to all with great warmth (Japanese hospitality is beyond measure). Then, around 11pm, the proceedings all stopped, and the dancers sat around a large table on the stage, and were served a fine meal of sushi, rice, fish, meat, sake. I looked up over the cross-legged crowd, and saw a man talking to one of the dancers, and pointing and looking at me. They all beckoned me over, wanting to speak to the foreigner. Having only been here for two and a half months, my Japanese was very poor, but I managed to squeeze out the requisite info re origins, purpose, home etc. And yes, of course I enjoyed the dancing, it looked great. Then an intelligent-looking man (perhaps just because he wore spectacles), asked me a question...

'Would you like to try?"

"Hai!"

Yes, yes I really did want to try it.

He smiled knowingly, and no more was said. I sipped my sake, tried to follow the chat (and failed), and returned to my spot on the tatami to see the next dances.

But my new bespectacled friend crept round the back, and whispered to me in Japanese:

"you really want to try?"

'YES!"

"Then come this way..."

We snuck out the back, as the dance began, and he led me round the back into the dressing room. I entered a bright, neon-lit room, with costumes hung and draped over every flat space, and swords, gold implements, fans stacked and scattered everywhere. Standing around a warm brazier, a large box of tangerines, and a stack of caffeine drinks, was a group of nine men in white robes, staring at me. I bowed and said hello, and they laughed and smiled at me. Basic chat followed, and they seemed pretty pleased to have a novelty foreigner in their midst. Then a man handed me a spare set of white robes, and helped me change. A long white jacket, with flowing trousers somewhat like pantaloons. But they didn't have a spare set of white boot-socks - what to do? Luckily I was wearing white socks, and those would have to do they decided. I stood admiring myself, dressed head to toe in authentic shinto garb - that is, apart from the red nike ticks on my socks...

They wrapped a red band around my head, and handed me a red mask - a silly, grinning man. And then it clicked - they were setting me up for a fall, getting the foreigner on stage so everyone could laugh at me as I tried to follow the moves, clueless and dithering. My heart beat a little faster as they pressed the wooden mask over my face, making breathing more difficult and reducing my vision to two small holes about one and a half cm across, before wrapping my head in a red cloth bonnet - a foolish rice farmer, the butt of all the jokes. I turned my tiny eyes to the man who had placed it on my face, and asked in Japanese a very simple question - what do I do?

He laughed as he handed me a fan - "furee dansu," he said, using the Japanese version of 'free dance'

i.e: you're on your own kid.

Next he handed me a 3ft bamboo stick with bright green, red and white paper tassles on each end. A magic wand!

The dance had already begun, with the first man in a monster's mask dancing with a 6ft staff to a fast rhythm - much hitting the tatami and aggressive posturing. I fiddled with the mask as I watched the next man go out. The first monster stood on a box, watching the intruder enter the stage, and tolerating his dance for a few minutes before driving him off with his staff, and forcing him to sit on his knees on the edge of the audience.

I was to be the fourth man out of six, and breathed heavily as I waited my turn. Then one gave me a friendly nudge, and sent me out. Clearly my debut was no secret, and as I picked my way through to the stage the crowd had already started laughing. Ducking under the paper webbing, I took my turn around the stage. The flicking, sharp rhythm was so compulsive that I couldn't help but dance, and really got into my own version of what I'd seen the other men do. I held the wand over my left wrist, and spun round to the right, jolting on my heel, before repeating it on the other side. Soon enough the monster's staff appeared before me, and I was ushered off his territory. I knelt, sweating in my mask, flushed with relief, trying to watch the next man's dance, this one a silly young maiden with a tiny face and tight lips. Small hands to her chin, petite movements; you could almost see her flutter her eyelashes.

As he was swept down next to me, I caught his gaze through the tiny holes. He pointed to my hand, and showed me how to open my fan and hold it correctly, and the helpful gesture really put me at ease. Once the last man had appeared and been pushed off, we went through the reverse pattern, each man getting up, dancing and being sent back stage by the masked giant. As my turn arrived, I jumped up, confident now and ready to make the most of my final 2minutes as a participant of a genuine Shinto ritual.

It was clear that I only had one option, and so played up to my mask's role for all I was worth. My dance was silly, flouncy, and I twirled my stick like the proud, priggish fool that I had become. Then I turned to a clown's stomping, bottom-waggling clowns dance, and the grannies, mums, villagers and children of the crowd fell about laughing. Finally, the monster swept me off, and I got a round of applause from the good people of Takachiho. I think they must have seen the Nike ticks on my socks.

I found out later the dance was called 七貴人 (the seven nobles) - with one chief god (the monster) followed by six child gods, one of which was me.

Back in the dressing room, I got my mask off, and the men nodded their approval of my dancing. I returned my fan and magic wand, and settled down to a well earned tangerine.

I then got a chance to actually talk to these guys, as they rested in the dressing room between dances, eating tangerines and rice cakes, drinking green tea and brutal caffeine drinks with the occasional shot of sake. The man who had invited me to join was the only one who could really speak English, and he was very polite, quietly reserved but very kind. I asked another man of a similar middle age why he did these dances, and his answer was simple - because he enjoyed it. He worked in a bank, played the Yokobue, and danced the Yokagura.

The younger guys were much more forthcoming: a proper country guy, working to support the kids he'd fathered at 21 (my current age - natch), calm natured with a burly body and rough hands big as shovels, that he wrapped round the flute and danced lightly over its wholes. Then the two mates, a sharp, streetwise guy who wanted to be in London more than he wanted to be in Takachiho. His mate was a simpler and happier man - he was the masked one who scared his kids, the swordsman who swung them alone. They were a close pair, and looked after me. Here they are, dancing at 6am with ribbons over their ears.

As the hours worked by, the men from the local Miyazaki TV station interviewed me on camera (I don't think my halting attempts at Japanese made it to air - I'm hardly the best in front of cameras at the best of times). A later dance saw a rampant love affair between the petite girl (who had helped me open my fan), and a man in his 50s wearing the fool's mask I had worn when I danced. It was pure slapstick, filthy and funny in equal measure. They drank and wooed, before rushing off and trying to seduce (or just to hump) members of the audience. To cool their raging lust, they finally made love, rolling on the tatami, feigning oral and then swinging their hips in full banging fashion. The crowd was in hysterics, and completely cracked as the maiden wanked off her lover, her fist a blur in the air.

The man behind the mask was a real joker, his face wrinkled from years of laughter. When the two young guys danced together in dragon costume, going through the audience and biting all our heads with their magic jaws (a sure sign of good luck for the coming year), he was the guy who took a real shotgun outside, and fired off the bang that killed them (and nearly killed me from shock - those things are LOUD).

Completely different to him were the two oldest men. The group's teacher, who they all treated with great respect, was a rangy man in his 70s, brittle from arthritis and quiet as a stone. He watched it all happen before him, no advice and no applause, occasionally shifting his long bones. He only applauded once, at one of the last dances of the night. Around 7am, a man in his late 50s danced alone and without a mask, and for once he really MEANT it. (He's the one on the right of the large drum - he had an incredible calmness in his manner, shifting from smiles to concentration with ease). His movements were precise and tight, his face locked in a concentration that showed effortless power, not powerless effort. It really was an extraordinary dance, to which the rest of the group seemed largely oblivious. That was the real split between them - the joker's entertainment (of which I was a part), and the sincere prayer of solemn commitment. I would dearly have loved to have talked to that teacher, but he was taciturn, and I suspect resented my presence a little.

And presiding over them all was the priest of the shrine, a jowly man (right) who sat presiding over affairs from the side of the stage. He chain smoked throughout the night, and slumped over his belly asleep through the dead of the night. I formed a pretty bad impression of him, until I spoke to him as the dawn light seeped in through the tarpaulin wall. He was courteous and friendly (anyone would need to be to get through my Japanese at this point).

Best of all he presented me with a gift - the magic wand that I had waved and twirled over the stage. I still have it now in my room, though how I will get it back to England I don't know.

The young guys had called me a taxi back to town so that I would be able to catch my bus home, and as I got into the taxi they were still dancing on the now day-lit stage. The villagers milling around waved to me as we drove off, and I wanted to shrink into my seat, stunned by their open friendliness and hospitality.

As we drove into town, I saw the last thing that Takachiho is famous for. In Japanese it is called 雲海 (unkai), or Cloud Sea, and it stretched for miles of low, white, puffy clouds, clean and calm below the hill road that we took back into town.

Takachiho Gorge

Japan is a beautiful place, but its countryside is scarred with concrete. Flat land is built on, or farmed. Steep land is useless, so allowed to grow free. But even there, the cloud soaked hills bear the weight of large red and white pylons, rivers are strictly channelled, and bridges abound. There seems to be little concept of wilderness here, as all is tamed, directed, sanitised.

Bridges seem to come in threes, stacked above each other.

Fact: No river in Japan remains undammed.

The cause is well documented. The civil engineers make the decisions, not environmentalists. Politicians pump in money for public work schemes that reduce unemployment and shift benefits to the democratically-stronger countryside constituencies. Murkier dealings come to light from time to time; there is a lot of money to be made in construction, legally or not.

But there seems to be more going on in the underlying attitude to nature here. The Japanese have a strong sense that nature is out to get them, whether by Tsunami, Earthquake, Typhoon, Jellyfish [see entry for 10/21/06]. There is some truth in it, but the resulting paranoia is both restrictive and damaging.



I went to see the great gorge in Takachiho, central Kyushu; a wonderful place, with scuplted rock, corrugated cliffs, and cool green water.


The gorge is lined with concrete paths and fences. At least, it keeps the hordes of tourists in one place.



But the most beautiful part of the gorge has become a boating pond, for tourists to row around in. Or rather, for tourists to photograph each other rowing around in. While in fact going in circles. Is there a word to describe something that is at once comic and depressing?

As the gorge opens up at the end of the tourist trail, the path continues, but signs tell you not to carry on: “Dangerous! Stop!” Knowing by now the civil authority’s attitude to danger (ie paranoia), I carried on walking. As it turned out, by ‘danger’, it meant you would not have been able to get along it in a wheelchair. Probably not recommended for the infirm or very elderly. The path was wide and concrete, the river mellow, the single boulder easy to cross.





I should point out that these excessive warnings are not like those in the U.K. or America. Japan does not share our highly litigious culture. These signs are not the ‘Get out of Jail’ cards that our companies and organisations sprinkle so liberally to prevent damaging court cases. Rather, I think these are a sign of the very strong sense of public duty and culpability in Japanese society. If someone hurt themselves, that would be YOUR fault, as municipal worker.

As I walked, I grumbled to myself about all this paranoia and environmental damage. I clambered around on the rocks, and sat in the drizzle on a boulder, twisting around to try to find a direction that would allow me to avoid seeing any concrete. As I stepped from one stone to the next, it gave way beneath me, and I sprawled into the river, banging my knee and drenching my leg.



I limped back into town, tail between my legs. I think something heard me muttering about paranoia.

When in Rome...

I have a cold.

This is what Japanese people do when they have a cold.

It's kind of like a nose burqa.

It's not very fun.

Karatsu Kunchi

362 days a year, Karatsu is an unexceptional fishing town. It is next to a beautiful pine forest (with a big road through the middle of it), and a lovely beach (facing an industrial plant), and has a large C17th castle (built in 1966). But for the three days of the Karatsu Kunchi, the town shakes off the dust, swaps its work clothes for ceremonial garb, and holds its head up high.













Fourteen floats, each three stories high and several tonnes in weight, are dragged in grand style through the town by hundreds of people. The floats are between 150 and 200 years old, but remain immaculately decorated and in pristine condition.









Given that they are clearly such treasures, it is heartening to see two men perched atop every float, urging the straining crowds onto greater efforts. The two men on top throw a repetitive chant back and forth with each tug of the rope:

"Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye! Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye! Aye-yar aye-yar aye-yar aye!"

They keep that up for three days, waving sticks and lanterns above their heads, trying to keep up the energy of the group. Even at a standstill, they maintain the chant; a matter of pride to be seen to be having more fun than the other groups. For three days, the Sake flows, and the voices grow hoarse, but the shouting doesn't stop.







These are no mere museum exhibits; these are living parts of the town, at once both symbol and participant in the life of the place. Each float represents a different part of town, and is pulled only by people from that area.









Every group wears a distinct, vividly coloured outfit. They range in age from the toddlers placed in the float and kids who lead the procession, through the burly men who manhandle it around the corners, right up to the greying old geezers who follow behind, grumbling about turning circles.









It is essentially quite a simple festival (after all, they are only pushing carts around). But they make sure they squeeze every last drop of interest out of it; pulled at night, pulled during the day; pulled through sand; pulled as fast as possible.

















This is no tourist event; it's a festival with a future. All ages take part, and those kids will be in charge of the floats in decades to come. Its strength comes from the competitive pride it creates between people from different parts of the town, striving to better each other.



Just as with the correfoc and castellers of Barcelona, petty local rivalries are transformed into a positive creative force. No one could create a festival like this from scratch, top down; it needed to grow from its roots to become strong.

Gawping at Gaijin

As a gaijin, you possess definite novelty value. In a country where the racial majority makes up 99% of the population, a westerner's height and face immediately marks them out as an outsider. Children wave, strangers say hello, or occasionally just stare. It's almost always extremely friendly, but takes some getting used to.

Admittedly, I took this photo on the Saturday before Halloween, in the main station in Fukuoka, as we stood in full fancy dress waiting for some friends. In England, we might have turned a few eyes, though heads would barely have tilted in our direction. Here, people stopped in their tracks and stared. No, gawped. Gasped. Whipped out their camera phones. Came up and posed with us for photos. It was like being Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.

But this is by no means that strange an occurrence, even in a (relatively) cosmopolitan city like Fukuoka. A week ago, we were waiting at the same station, talking in a circle, and this time no fake blood, green fur, or foil carving knives were in sight. A short man, rotund in body and face, sidled up and joined the circle, not saying anything. He was probably pissed, or possibly a little unhinged. He peered at us with round, curious eyes, neither greeting us nor acknowledging his presence in our space. We were something to be looked at, a novelty. Then, after taking a good long look, off he shuffled.

He was in no way aggressive or unfriendly, but such an oblique gaze is very intrusive, and certainly the rudest I've experienced here. The people that I have met here have been almost uniformly polite, but such outstanding courtesy cannot hide Japanese society's colossal fascination with the west.

In Japan, a gaijin always wears fancy dress.

Pumping Iron

I've been doing some work at a magazine called Fukuoka Now, which seems to be something of a hub for the gaijin community here. A lot of random things seem to happen due to being associated with it. Like for example, last week, I was in their office doing some proof-reading for them, and they asked me to stand in for a model who had just cancelled on them. Of course, I obliged, and duly found myself face to face, arm-wrestling, with a huge, gurning, muscle-bound American called Tyler. I pointed out my relative lack of arm meat, but they were not bothered (the photo deadline being that afternoon). So I tensed for all I was worth, and stared into his eyes with all the hate I could muster, trying desperately not to laugh at his immense cocked eyebrow and rictus scowl.

The resulting ad can be seen here. They appear to have inflated my bicep to the size of my head. Yes, yours truly, advertising a competition to find the most masculine, muscular, manly of men.

Life's a Beach

Beach life, in late October. Life IS good.

We went up the coast to a tiny fishing village called Keya, and managed to find a beach that the civil authorities had managed NOT to ruin. The mile long concrete sea wall next to the beach was a tad excessive, but the beach itself was clean sand stretching into distance. A gorgeous sunny day, a slight chill in the wind, but the sea was easily warm enough to swim in. It seems local people rarely swim in the sea, especially at this time of year; any suggestion of the activity is met by shock and discouragement - "Too cold! Too dangerous!" Dangerous; surely not. But then, maybe so - there was rather more life in the sea than I am used to back home. First time we swam we were greeted by foot-long silver fish leaping a yard out of the water. At their closest, they were barely 5m away, throwing themselves into the air. They weren't actually Flying Fish, but 'fish that like to jump'. Anyone know why they do this? Answers on a postcard please...

They weren't the only sea inhabitants we found. After an impromptu skinny dip late at night, I had warmed up by the fire, and wandered down to see the stars and listen to the surf. At the foot of the beach, something bulked largely in the darkness. An absolute beast of a jellyfish...

It was about 3ft in diameter, and half a foot high at the peak of its dome. I tried to lift it with a couple of sticks, but it was far to heavy. As can be seen from this photo, it was about the size of a Dave. I'm rather glad I didn't swim into it while naked. Really very glad indeed.

Shudder.

There's a huge amount of light pollution in Japan, so I was relieved to find that the beach provided a rare chance to see the night sky. The Milky Way was out in force. The constellations are largely the same as in Britain, but as I'm a bit further south, Orion and co have all moved further up the sky than I'm used to.

We drove back on the Urban Expressway, an incredible motorway that flies over the dense centre of Fukuoka. It must have taken real chutzpah to build such a big road so high up in the sky, especially in an earthquake zone. It is lit by a mesmerising cacophony of neon, with blinkng multi-coloured cat's eyes, arrows with running red lights, flashing signs and policemen waving crimson light sticks. Best of all was the section side lit with evenly spaced, piercingly yellow lamps, which a high speed created a strobe effect sufficient to induce epilepsy in just about anyone. You cannot see road, car, or sign; all you see is light. Absolute chaos.

Butoh - 舞踏

Butoh emerged in Japan in the 1960s, a performance art that sought to delve into humanity, and bring out the bitter news from the inside.

There is no universal technique, form, or training system in Butoh, just a variety of approaches following up on the blackened trail blazed by its founding fathers, Ohno and Hijikata.

It began with a brutal performance in 1959 by Hijikata and Ohno's son, in which a live chicken was killed and brutally smothered, still flapping vainly, between a man's legs. What was originally known as Ankoku Butoh (暗黒舞踏 - 'dance of utter darkness') was born.

The most consistent element of Butoh is the aesthetic - dark, bitter, broken, dirty. Curled wrists, staggering steps, wild eyes, gasping maws.




It is the direct opposite of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Sado (茶道 - 'the way of Tea') is concise, defined, delicate, simple, the height of civilisation; Butoh is wild, improvised, extravagant, and deeply primitive.

Butoh is a reaction against the neat beauty of western contemporary dance, and at the same time a violent disregard for the heavy weight of expectation and decorum in the rigidity of traditional Japanese society.

Though it has gain some notoriety and interest around the world as a shocking performance art, it is largely unheard of in Japan. After I arrived, I asked every likely person I met if they knew of it, but no one had. Eventually, a friend of a friend of a friend put me in touch with someone in a Butoh group, and I went to see the next performance by their teacher, Harada Nobuo.

Dressed in an Aikido outfit as white as his painted face, a middle-aged man lay sleeping on a row of boxes against the wall of a one room art gallery crammed full of 30 people. On the wall behind him, sparkling dots of white light swirled in free patterns, like dancing rain on the sea. The music was quiet but anarchic electro, as disordered as the light show. His body awoke slowly, drifting upwards, eyes closed. His face remained largely serene as his body began to move, swaying and shifting as if blown by an inner breeze. His movements were precise but random, without system or logic. The energy built up and the intensity bloomed, his eyes now open and flashing in the dim light. His thick, hard hands flailed at the air, and then down onto his body. Kneeling before us, his face ran wild as he raked his bare chest with his nails, raising red welts in long trails over his skin. And with that final explosion of violence, his energy subsided and he drifted back to his awkward bed, closing his eyes, and returning to sleep.

Deeply impressed and keen to try it, I made my way to practice the following week. The only native English speaker of the group, an Australian woman called Alana, showed me the way to the rehearsal studio in a large complex in Fukuoka. The room was large and very bare, with all the mirrors covered by curtains. There were four of us; Harada-san the teacher, Alana, a Japanese woman, and myself. We warmed up in a square, guided step-by-step by our teacher. Then we began a pushing exercise, in which one person stands, eyes closed, while a second gently presses their body in different places. With each press, the first person moves with the motion, their body flowing naturally with the energy, before gliding back into place. The aim is fluidity and flexibility; aiming, in Harada's words, to move like seaweed being washed around by the sea's currents. Moving naturally is not easy.

We then swapped places, the pusher become the pushee. I found myself pushing Harada-san's body, whose body flowed and pushed, amid deep breaths like the sea's waves. He is well into his fifties, but his body remains very strong and intimidating from years of intense practice of Butoh, Aikido, and Iai (a particularly hardcore form of fencing conducted with real swords, and focussed, like Butoh, on presence in the moment).

At that moment, a guest appeared in the room. An elderly lady at least in her seventies, accompanied by a translator, came to observe the lesson. A researcher and authority on dance therapy from London, her eyes sparkled as they looked around the room. It was time for performance, and she was keen to join in, stressing her experience of improvised dance. Alana and I would join her in a trio, to last the length of a 12minute track.

So, it was time for my first improvised dance performance. The three of us lined up, a fair distance apart, in a ragged arrangement. The music began, and I was pretty clueless what to do. Worse, I was intensely conscious of not knowing what to do. I began to sway a little, and stopped, stunned by the ridiculousness of what I was doing. I set my shoulders, shut my eyes, and breathed deeply, determined to give this another crack. My body moved a little, and I flowed around the place for a short time. Then I lost my thread, and drooped slowly to the floor. Conscious of the two pairs of Japanese eyes staring at me, I dropped my head to the floor and flumped around. I looked up to see Alana still, arms out, intensely focussed but immobile, while the elderly researcher stood shaking in time to the music, an electrocuted Frankenstein from a 50's horror flick.

Not for the first time in Japan, and certainly not for the last, I thought to myself: 'How on earth did I get here?'

When there's no competition, I guess beginner's luck doesn't come into it.

I've got a long way to go...


Photos:
i) Hijikata Tatsumi, photo Hiroshi Yamazaki (1998)
ii) Hijikata Tasumi by Eikoh Hosoe (1965), from Kamaitachi, the most beautiful book of Butoh photography I have seen.
iii) Harada Nobuo (2006)

The Zutons

noun. 1. [ðɛ zʋːʈɒŋz]
Liverpudlian Indie band, commonly found in the U.K. characterised by feel-good rhythms, swinging sax, and long sweaty hair.

I went out with my friends last Friday night. Exhausted from a hard week, I caught the last train home, but a few people stayed out. Throughout the night, my friend Hazel had been watching an ungainly, overweight, middle-aged gaijin. Fukuoka seems to breed a particularly virulent strain of sleazy man, kept here by the unnatural fillip afforded to his sexual attractiveness by his western origin. As the club closed around half five, she saw with resigned dread that the man was approaching her. Small talk ensued at arm’s length. Then:
“Do you want to see The Zutons tomorrow? I’m their tour manager.”
“Er… Ok?”
He pulled out various sweaty pieces of paper, including a long, detailed tour schedule, and Hazel gave him all our names for the guest list.

The next evening we all trooped up at the venue, half expecting to be turned away. But no, all our names were on the guest list. In fact, we WERE the guest list. It seems The Zutons didn’t have many friends in Fukuoka, so we got in for free while everyone else had to pay a hefty 5600yen (nearly thirty quid).
The venue was small, and chock full of an incredibly polite Japanese audience. No anarchy, little dancing, polite silence during each song followed by rapturous applause. The crowd was great at clapping in time, but individual exuberance was rare. When the band cleared the stage to tempt calls for an encore, the crowd’s applause was a rhythmically consistent diminuendo. With the very real danger that they would fall silent, it was left to the westerners to make the noise.
“MMMMMOOOOOOORRRRRRREEEEEEE!!!!!!!!” I rasped, immediately followed by Japanese shouting, which just as swiftly died down again to a background hum.
“MO-ICHI-DO! MO-ICHI-DO! MO-ICHI-DO! [‘Once Again!’] ” chanted Hazel, alone.
The band seemed perplexed at the subdued crowd, but return they did, and rounded off the gig in anthemic style. As the final chords unfocussed into stock feedback, the band bowed and waved to the crowd. The bassist leant down to shake a few hands, and the crowd surged forwards. They became teenage pop fans, desperately struggling for memorabilia and the touch of their idol. It was a real shock after their previous behaviour. It’s as if they have had Indie Rock carefully explained to them, but haven’t quite understood it yet. Something of their original Japanese reserve remained. It definitely did not feel natural; more like an attempt to live up to an alien ideal.

Spiders

I used to think I wasn't scared of spiders. Then I went for a walk in the woods.



I've been in Japan for nearly a month, and I hadn't been for a proper hike yet. So I got suited and booted and cycled up through Dazaifu to a shrine at the base of the very-small-mountains (well, hills). It took about an hour to get up there from my house, and on my skoda of a bicycle it was exhausting. Had a pleasant lunch in the grounds of the shrine, next to a friendly little old lady nattering to her friend in speedy nihongo [Japanese]. I decided to only attempt the smaller hill by the shrine, and save the much larger and steeper Houmon-san for another day. (Japanese mountains are given the same honorifics as people, eg Mount Fuji is Fuji-san, just as my name is Ollie-san. Or rather Oh-rrie-san.) Once I got into the woods and started up the hill I found the path was repeatedly broken by fallen trees and bamboo; Typhoon Shan-Shan clearly did more damage than I'd thought. I was in a bit of dopey mood from lack of sleep, and when I found there were three paths up the hill rather than the expected one, I was a bit flummoxed. Similar confusion followed my discovery of a signpost at a fork in the path, pointing in two different directions, neither of which I could read. Check mate Nihongo.

After a bit of an explore, I deemed the whole path thing to be overrated, and decided to go off-piste. With a map and compass, clear skies and well-spaced trees, what could possibly go wrong?

Suddenly I stopped. There was a cobweb inches from my chest, poised like a trip wire, ready to collapse onto me. My whole body flinched backwards, skin crawling. At the web's centre, an eight-legged, three-inch, black and yellow striped spider, balanced on its toe tips, curled like a claw. It was feeding on a large, tightly-bound moth. The web stretched between two trees about 2m apart, and the core of the web formed a disc 2ft in diameter. Baby spiders patrolled its edges, where the wind had scattered a few insects (now dessicated bundles).

I used a stick to clear the way in front of me, snapping the silk joists at arm's reach. With the first jolt the spider shot upwards with graceless mechanical speed, before freezing at the highest point, well above my head. With its strength broken, the web wafted free, hanging on the breeze. The thought of walking into it made my skin shriek. The stroke of those fine strands on my face, the realisation and hurried flutter of hands brushing away the clinging silk, carefully exploring the backs of my arms and body, dreading that I'd find needle legs on soft skin, unnatural scuttling across my lumbering limbs, sharp black and yellow on pale pink. With those thoughts in my mind and my stick held firmly above my head, I cowered under the web. I may even have whimpered, which can only have lowered the spider's opinion of me yet further. Then, well past the web, I stepped forward with relief.

Only to find another web, expectant, in front of me. I stopped to look around me. Two in every five or so trees had just such a web stretched between them. Every web with its dominant spider, content to wait and watch. As far as I could see, sheets hung in the trees, a creeping jewel nestled in each. Blowing full in the breeze, but remaining tightly bound as they stretched. The sheer number of them turned my stomach.

It took me a few minutes to get back onto the path, walking slowly as I peered ahead of me; checking for webs and clutching my stick, ready to fence. I wanted to head straight back down to the shrine, but decided to try one last path. After clambering over yet another fallen tree, I found myself facing an extended troop of 10 or so japanese hikers, descending in the opposite direction. My 'konichiwa' was met with an amiable but curt 'ah, english teacher'. (I don't think I've tried my Japanese on anyone yet who has not immediately replied in English, whether stilted or fluent.) They had kindly cleared the path ahead for me, so the remainder of my ascent was spider-free.

That said, I walked into my room that night and felt those slender strands across my face. I could see neither web nor spider; perhaps it was just my over-active imagination. But I keep looking in corners, and flinch whenever I see a spider. I wonder how long this will last...


ADDENDUM: Am not actually mad. Just found the spider in my room. Very small. Definitely not scary. Phew.

Novelty Japan II

Don't you just hate it when you get on a commuter train, and the only seats left are facing the wrong way. Nausea and lethargy inevitably ensue. Nightmare.

Or when you are with three or four friends, and the only seats left are sets of two, all facing in the same direction. Disconnected eye contact; irritatingly raised voices; broken conversations; awkard silences. Again: nightmare.



Well, the にしてつ train company has the answer. While the bottom of the seats remain solid, the seat backs can swing, yes SWING, back and forth. So the seats can be made to face either of the two potentially desired directions. So you can always face front. Or you can always find a block of four facing seats for you and your friends.



Now THAT is genius.

Novelty Japan I

Free Dry Ice on tap in the Supermarket.

Typhoon Shan-Shan

Typhoon Shan-Shan had been approaching Japan for a few days, working its way northwards along the Asian mainland. By the time it passed over Fukuoka it was much weaker, but still considered the worst storm in many years.

I live on the 8th floor, which overlooks a set of paddy fields, and then a built-up town between there and the facing hills. I went out on our balcony to watch the storm draw in. The sky was full of bulky white clouds, but underneath them raced sharp black whisps. The wind had a warmth that I’ve never felt in England; like a hair dryer at arm’s length. Clouds could be seen flying in five different directions at once. Rain was only occasional, but when it came it was flung onto the balcony with such force that it stung my face. I had to prop the window open so I didn’t get locked out on the balcony, and hold it shut with an outstretched arm so it didn’t slam and shatter in the wind. As the wind got stronger it became more and more difficult to hold it shut, so I had to press the weight of my body against it. Given that I was on a circular wind trap on the 8th floor, it seemed time to go back inside.

Over the next couple of hours I could hear the storm worsening outside, and my ears popped from the pressure change. Cambridge House is a large modern building, and locked up safe inside it would have been easy to forget about Shan-Shan but for the wind bashing against the windows. So I went for a walk with Dave and Graeme.

Once we got out the door it was clear that though strong, the wind had died down a bit, and was nowhere near full Typhoon speed. It was nighttime, but the distant glow of lightning and cold artificial light from the petrol station lit up the paddy fields. The rice was dark in silhouette, but when the wind turned it over it showed pale green. Plastic bags flew hundreds of metres in seconds. The cicadas strained to be heard above the shrieking and humming fence. The wind washed through swathes of rice, and scooped water from the pools and scattered it like seed. The neat lines of paddy field no longer spoke of rural peace and order; now their strict edges became token boundaries, desperately trying to contain a chaotic lake of billowing rice.

Between gusts it was calm, but when the wind blew it was strong enough to lean into, though never enough to blow me off my feet. It was beautiful and exhilarating; a tiny glimpse of power much greater than my own puny self, though it never fully exerted itself.

Honestly, I'm happy with a glimpse for now.

Schizophrenic Japan

Komyozenji Shrine, about half an hour from my house, is one of the most peaceful places I have ever been to. The zen garden seems silent at first, until you begin to notice the grating cicadas, rustling leaves, and heavy wind. People just come to sit on the walkway, gaze, think, be.





The raked pebbles surround various boulders, with deep hues of brown, red, and grey. In between are small oases of thick moss, with slender trees that bend and bow in the breeze.





Then, two minutes walk away...

Seaweed Soup

Tastes like warm sea.