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.