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.