Miscellaneous

I am not depressed. I do not get depressed. It is not in my nature, which is to be unreasonably cheerful ALL THE TIME except when I am panicking about something.

In fact I have been unreasonably cheerful, in recent days.

BUT... as my regular readers may have noticed (or may not have) I have not been blogging quite as regularly as I usually do. This is because I am suffering from the mid-semester blues. This has manifested itself in a lack of enthusiasm for writing, this semester. I don't know why. Usually when I am suffering from mid-semester blues I counteract them by writing about what I am feeling shitty about. This semester I have been counteracting them by spending money on things I want but don't really need, like, for example, the Palm Zire 31 WITH WIRELESS KEYBOARD, which will be arriving soon, courtesy of an American friend who has bought it for me and is sending it over (thank you thank you thank you!).

Why are PDAs so rare here? Is it the ubiquitous cellphones? But why can't I even find the keyboards here? I want to WRITE, dammit. Sometimes nothing but writing will do, to cheer me up, and if you're a touch typist like me a cellphone keypad is just plain silly. And anyway, I do not want a cellphone.

One of the guys at work has one of these Palms, and I have been suffering from technology envy ever since I played with it.

Anyway, this is by way of explanation for the lack of blog entries recently. I am suffering from mid-semester blues, even though I don't think we're quite mid-semester yet. However, when my new Palm Zire appears in the mailbox I will be happy. I'm hoping that I will be able to use it to keep class notes, and when I do that, I will pretend to be taking notes when in fact I will be writing blog entries to download to my computer after I get home, and you will be endlessly entertained (or something) by a running commentary of what goes on in my classes.

I may have discovered the perfect way to combine work with play. HA!

Oh, and also, when the new Kate Bush album comes out I will be happy, too. I listened to the new single, and I like it. I like the video, too. Kate has now 47. She is not a beautiful teenager. She is a beautiful middle-aged woman, and she looks her age. (Well, almost.) I like it that she hasn't tried to hide this. She has jowls, and so do I. Jowls happen, along with age. (Unless you're The Man, in which case you look young forever, due to the picture in the attic and the fact that you've sold your soul to the devil, which is too bad for the devil when the soul in question is Buddhist and the devil in question doesn't exist.) In any case, even if I don't like the whole album I'm sure it will make me happy if only because I like music that makes me think and Kate Bush lyrics are always weird enough to make me think.

(Elvis are you out there somewhere, looking like a happy man?)

Other news (now that I've started writing I can't seem to stop) I called my older brother today, since it had been several months since we've been in touch. All my brothers are fine, apparently, and Youngest Brother is going to make me an aunt YET AGAIN in February or March. When will it all end? Hasn't anybody noticed yet that the family genes are in no danger of dying out?

I asked my older brother if he knew I'd been in Europe over the summer, and he said yes, he knew about that.

"Oh, Youngest Brother actually read my email?" I asked, surprised. Youngest brother is the only one with email, but he doesn't actually read it. He just sees that an email from me has arrived and assumes that therefore I'm alive and therefore there is no need to read the email. If I have anything urgent to say I have to compress it into the subject line.

"No, his wife did," said my older brother. "Second Youngest Brother called Youngest Brother to find out if he'd heard from me. Youngest Brother wasn't home but his wife was, and she checked the computer and read the email over the phone. Second Youngest Brother later called again and spoke to Youngest Brother, and told him that you were in Europe, which he hadn't known because he hadn't read your email. Then he called us, so we knew, too."

"Oh," I said.

I wonder when someone in my family WHO ACTUALLY READS will get email?

SOD

Recently I've been puzzled by a paper posted on a noticeboard outside a pharmacy near my house. The sign has been there for a while, judging by how it has faded, but I hadn't noticed it before. Perhaps I had to be in the right mood.

It fits my mood right now. I have to go to work tomorrow? I think. Sod it! And, We have the twice-yearly lunchtime meeting tomorrow? Sod it!

I think I need some of that medicine. The Man tells me its actual name is Superoxide Dismutase.

Whatever. I prefer SOD. It goes with the picture.

Speechless

Yesterday at work there was a very old wheelchair sitting outside the toilets in the corridor outside my classroom on the third floor. I had never seen a wheelchair on campus before, and I don't think I've ever seen such an old one before anywhere. I wondered whose it was. It didn't look like a wheelchair a permanently disabled person would use. It didn't look like a wheelchair a semi-permanently disabled person would use, either. The third or fourth time I passed it I looked more closely and thought it wasn't even a wheelchair a temporarily disabled person would use. For one thing, one of the footrests was missing. For another, it had small wheels, which meant that you could not wheel yourself around. You would have to depend on someone else pushing you.

I tried to think what it would be used for, and failed.

It was still there in the afternoon, and I guessed that whoever was supposed to using it was finding it just as unhelpful as it looked.

I was right. I bumped into the German teacher just before fifth period. He was drooped over crutches and book-laden bags were hanging from both his shoulders. I've only met him a couple of times before, because he's not in our language department. He has been hired separately by another department. He speaks English well, and seems a nice, somewhat bewildered sort of bloke. I imagine it must be bewildering, being the only native German speaker on campus and having to deal with a Japanese university bureaucracy all by yourself. I also happen to know that at least one of the Japanese German language teachers doesn't speak German AT ALL, which must make things rather awkward.

I stopped and chatted with him for a moment, and he told me he had broken his foot in a bicycle accident. He was looking more bewildered than usual, as anybody would while trying to negotiate those old buildings on crutches while carrying a load of teaching materials. I sympathised, and asked him if the wheelchair was his.

"The university lent it to me," he said. "But I'm afraid I'm not finding it very helpful."

He sounded somewhat apologetic, as if he thought he was sounding ungrateful. We both gazed at the wheelchair.

"Didn't they at least offer you a ground floor classroom?" I asked. "Or tell you to take time off?"

"Er, noooo ..." he said.

"And is that all they had?" I asked, pointing at the wheelchair.

"Er, no, actually," he said, and looked puzzled. "They had two. The other one is new, with big wheels. I mean, with this one I can't push myself and there's nobody to push me so it just gets in the way, especially because I need to carry the crutches as well. I asked for the other one, but they wouldn't lend it to me." He paused. "They wouldn't let me not take this one though," he added. "They seemed to want to be helpful."

I stared at the ancient wheelchair, and wondered how anybody could possibly imagine it was helpful.

"So why wouldn't they lend you the other one?" I asked. "Was someone else using it?"

"Nooooo," he said. "But they said they couldn't let me use it because they said they might need it in an emergency."

It is not very often that I am left speechless, but this was one of those times.

Paris

Remember I told you I got sick in Paris? This meant I spent a lot of time sitting in parks and looking at statues, because my legs refused to operate.

I didn't sit TOO still, though. I didn't like the idea of what might happen if I sat too still.

(Click to enlarge)

Family photos

I've just got around to downloading these photos from my camera. I took these just after coming back to Japan.

Remember when I posted pictures of the turtles in the river? Well, while I was away, a couple of them got busy and produced a baby turtle. Just one, that I've seen. Here is a picture of the proud mother with her baby.



As I was watching them, the proud father made his appearance. "Don't forget me!" he said. "I'm a part of this family, too! I had something to do with this!" (I am trying to imagine turtle sex, and failing, but I don't think it can be very FAST. This can only be good news for the females.)

He climbed up onto the rock, shoving his wife out of the way.



Then the whole family posed for me to take a couple of pictures. At least I suppose they were posing, because when I cycled around to the other side of the river to take a profile shot they didn't move. They were holding their pose. Wasn't that considerate of them?



Don't they have lovely undersides? They look like upside-down ladybirds. (That's ladybugs to you Americans.)

Here is the profile shot. Why do you think they hold their heads up like baby birds? Do they think a Great Turtle in the sky is going to feed them?



What a lovely family.

NOTE: I am only guessing about which parent is which. It is entirely possible that the larger turtle is in fact the female, and I have anthropomortified them by getting it wrong.

Clap hands

In my difficult class (also my favourite class) on Fridays, there is one guy who towards the end of last semester decided that ALL RIGHT, IF I INSIST, he will speak English - but only in a funny voice.

I thought about this, when I heard him being silly in English, and decided to not to discourage him. I remember being very impressed by something one of my own teachers once told me: that when you start to learn a foreign language you sound like an idiot or a child. It is inevitable. And as teachers, it is important to remember that our students are not idiots or children (except when they are), and to treat them respectfully and give them a place to feel safe experimenting with the new language, and where they can sound like idiots or children without feeling threatened or stupid.

I've noticed that my lower level classes act more idiotically than my higher level classes, and I suspect that is because they are very aware that when they speak English they sound childish or idiotic, and that therefore by being silly intentionally they are making themselves feel a little more in control of the situation. I can understand this. When I speak Japanese I frequently feel stupid, and clown around to cover my embarrassment.

Anyway, when this guy started speaking English in a silly voice (a VERY silly voice), I told myself it didn't matter as long as he was speaking English. And his English was improving. His silly-voiced English was getting better. When he had used his normal voice his way of coping was to be silent and cool, but now that he was clowning around he was doing pretty well. (I just hope that it doesn't become automatic, and he remembers to use a normal voice if he's ever in a situation where he has to use English outside the classroom, because his silly voice is PRETTY DAMNED FUNNY and he does funny faces to go with it.)

On Friday, he decided to try a new trick with his wonderful silly voice talent, discovered, I suspect, in my classroom. He decided to imitate a mosquito.

He did a MARVELLOUS mosquito imitation. I was writing an explanation on the board at the time, and the class was uncharacteristically silent and focused when this loud whining started. It was amazing. It sounded like a helicopter-sized mosquito was circling the room.

Bugger! I thought. Damn that boy! Just when I got them all paying attention he has to ruin it by distracting them!.

I could tell nobody was paying attention to me any more, and I didn't blame them. Mosquitos are distracting at the best of times, and this was a BIG one. I still had my back to the class, but my image of this mosquito was distracting me, too. It was HUGE. I kept writing, slowly, and pondered what to do. My first impulse was to turn around and glare and tell him to stop that nonsense, but I knew he would do a funny face and say, "Oh, sorry!" in a funny voice and that would be just as distracting, so I kept writing. But I had to do SOMETHING. This mosquito was driving me nuts.

Finally I stopped writing. I didn't turn around, though. I took a deep breath and yelled at the board, instead, as loudly as I could:

"SOMEBODY KILL THAT MOSQUITO!"

There was a shocked silence. The mosquito stopped whining, and the entire class mentally translated the sentence. The silence dragged on.

Then the mosquito started up again, but after a couple of circles of whining around the room there was a sharp, loud hand-clap, and it stopped abruptly. Then it made a sort of pathetic dying whine, and stopped entirely.

The class erupted in laughter, and I'd lost them altogether.

It was hilarious, but didn't really solve my problem. I had to work hard to get their attention again. Also, I had to stop laughing before I could turn around and face the class.

Later I was telling a colleague about this.

"It was hilarious," I said, having imitated the whining mosquito, the subsequent hand-clap, and distracted several other patrons of the restaurant we were in. "I really enjoyed that. Shouting made me feel better, and didn't hurt anybody's feelings. It was PERFECT - except it wasn't really good teaching. I mean, where was the English?"

"There was English," she said. "You shouted in English."

I thought about it. It was true! I shouted in English, and somebody responded appropriately, and everybody understood it and laughed their heads off! It was a successful lesson!

What a good teacher I am!

I love having supportive colleagues. They can make a lesson feel successful because one sentence (of several hundred, probably) that I spoke in the classroom was understood.

Become happy everybody probably

I stole these shamelessly from my students' backs, disconcerting them by standing behind them and scribbling in my notebook, giggling:

It is able to become happy everybody probably, when many circle and heart gather.

No wonder they find English incomprehensible. So do I.

The one time G-child prepapers to come into full-fledged.
DANGER
Handle at your own
RISK

-------

I had a haircut today. I told my hairdresser how happy I was to be finally getting it cut.

"It's getting really long and straggly," I said. "I can't even remember when you cut it last."

"February," she said promptly.

She keeps records? How embarrassing! I thought it might have been April, or possibly March, but FEBRUARY?

Then she added,

"Time is frying."

Actually, my hairdresser's pronunciation of English is extremely good. She pronounces her rs and ls perfectly. She just forgets where they go, sometimes.

She did a great job on my hair. Now when I wear it down I look like a normal person instead of a scruffy, aging hippie.

Good news, bad news, weird news

The good news is that the online Daily Yomiuri newspaper DOES have archives these days. I hadn't noticed, but the site now carries more than just today's news. I wonder when they changed it?

The bad news is that they have started truncating their stories, or at least this one, the most fascinating story to turn up since the LAST time it turned up. (I wrote about it here.) It gets weirder and weirder.

Man 'hit lover who hired killer to off his wife'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman with whom he had been having an affair after learning she had hired a hit man over the Internet to kill his wife, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said Wednesday.

Sadatoshi Machida, an ambulance worker at Shibuya Fire Station, assaulted the 32-year-old woman, who was a coworker, at a hot-spring resort in Shizuoka Prefecture on Sept. 2, breaking one of her ribs.

According to the MPD, Machida found a contract for the murder of his wife in the woman's bag while performing first aid in June. He arranged to meet the woman at a hotel in August and hit her, bursting one of her eardrums.

Machida then invited the woman to a hot-spring resort in Izunokuni, Shizuoka Prefecture. In order to console Machida, who was upset about the murder plan, she complied.

(Oct. 13, 2005)

This story made my jaw drop several times when I read it in the hard copy version yesterday morning at work. There were some sentences I had to reread to make sure I was reading correctly:

According to the MPD, Machida found a contract for the murder of his wife in the woman's bag while performing first aid in June.

How can they write stuff like this, that raises more questions than it answers? How did he manage to perform first aid and rifle through his girlfriend's bag at the same time? Who was he performing first aid ON? Her? After he'd beaten her up? But no, we learn that he beat her up AFTER finding the contract, so presumably he was performing first aid on someone else.

I wonder if the patient survived? Machida's reaction to this discovery was to invite the woman to a hotel and burst her eardrum.

The next thing to make my jaw drop was that after he had burst her eardrum she felt she needed to console him, by meeting him at a hot spring resort, although I suppose this kind of makes sense, in a masochistic kind of way.

"I'm sorry I wanted to kill your wife. I can see you are very upset. Let me make it up to you. Let's go on holiday together."

"Good idea. Let's go to a hot spring resort. You're paying."

"Pardon?"

"I SAID LET'S GO TO A HOT SPRING RESORT. ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETHING?"

But the story gets even more bizarre, and this is the bit they left out of the online version. Consider yourself lucky to have me, your faithful connoisseur of the weird, to type it all up for you:

Machida started dating the woman when she was assigned to Shibuya Fire station in September 2001. But since last year, he started charging her around ¥2000 an hour for the pleasure of his company. He received ¥200,000 to ¥1 million each time they went out, and she had paid him a total of ¥5 million as of November.

After beating her up at the hot spring inn, he said, "I'll stay with you until tomorrow morning. Pay me ¥5 million. If you don't have it, borrow from your relatives," the police said.

Machida has admitted to the charges, the police said.

The woman was arrested on suspicion of violating the Law Concerning Punishment of Physical Violence and Others for hiring a hit man. The MPD also arrested an Internet site operator Akio Okudaira, 49, and a self-described private detective Takaharu Tabe, 40, on suspicion of fraud.

(Now close your mouth.)

She PAID him to go out with her? Why? Blackmail? But if there was any blackmail involved, wouldn't it be the other way around, since he was the married one?

And also, if he was charging ¥2000 an hour for 'the pleasure of his company,' and she paid him ¥200,000 to ¥1 million each time, then does that mean they 'went out' for 100 to 500 hours each time? That's about four to twenty days per date! (Or were they just very, very bad at mathematics?)

However... let's put this and the previous story together and try to make sense of this. Here's how I understand it.

The woman hired a hitman on the Internet, paid him, and got a contract. (What sort of hitman issues a contract? Did he sign it, I wonder?) Machida found the contract to kill his wife (while performing first aid) and was incensed. The woman agreed to go to a hotel (for 100 hours? 500?) to 'console' him, and he beat her up, bursting her eardrum. Then they went to a hot spring resort and he beat her up again, breaking her rib. After this, she went to the police and complained about the non-performing hitman/private detective. The police promptly arrested her on suspicion of inducing a person to commit murder, and now have arrested Machida for beating her up, so presumably she decided to complain about him, as well. The police also arrested the non-performing hitman for fraud

Hold on... fraud? Oh, but of COURSE. He took the money but DIDN'T KILL THE WIFE. Boy, I bet he's kicking himself now. Bugger. I knew I shouldn't have chickened out. Being arrested for fraud sucks.

You couldn't make this stuff up. ISN'T IT WONDERFUL?

Naughty

Today I got the urge to do something naughty, but I didn't do it. Actually, I didn't do it because I didn't have a marker pen in my bag, but never mind that. I'd prefer to think I had a fit of responsible maturity and decided to behave myself.

What happened is that I spent Sunday marking students' homework. In this homework, they were writing advice. They looked at a picture of a fat slob with dirty hair and grotty clothes slouched in front of a TV eating junk food and smoking, and gave the person advice about how to clean up their act. This was to practice the forms I think you should... and Why don't you...? and so on.

Most of the students wrote,

Why don't you quit smorking?

- EVEN THOUGH it is spelt correctly in the textbook. For some reason this is a word they often insist on spelling wrongly.

So today, as I walked through the sparsely populated campus early in the morning, the naughty thing I wanted to do was to add an r to all the NO SMOKING posters I saw. Actually there are only two or three that are written in English as well as Japanese, but I really, really wanted to add that r. It would give my students an excuse for getting it wrong. It would be a retrospective excuse, but still, a retrospective excuse is better than no excuse at all, surely.








(I'm working there again tomorrow. I wonder if I have a marker pen around here somewhere?)

He must have cheated

Village Idiot tagged me with what has turned out to be a really awful meme. He told me I have to go back through my archives and find the fifth line of the twenty-third post I wrote, and post it. Coincidentally, this happens to be one of the most boring I have ever written:

"It's historical, sure, but so is practically every place in Japan."

I thought of cheating and making up something better. Who is going to go back and check? I thought. Then I thought maybe somebody would, and expose me as a blog fraud (oh, the shame!), and then I thought of cheating by editing the post so that the fifth line of the twenty-third post said something scintillating. But I couldn't be bothered.

That would make a good epitaph for me, actually. She couldn't be bothered.

Come to think of it, I suspect Village Idiot of cheating. Who could COINCIDENTALLY come up with such a great fifth line of the twenty-third post? I didn't check. I can't be bothered, but I think somebody should, quick, before he catches on to the editing trick.

Useless an English teacher

The part-time teachers' room at the place I work on Tuesdays has a secretary. I have been using her recently as I've been cleaning up old student records and so on. I take her the papers with students' personal information on them, and ask to use the shredder. She always takes the papers and tells me not to worry about it, she'll dispose of it herself. I also give her paper that can be recycled or used again.

I am apparently not the only person who has been getting rid of old papers, because recently she has placed a couple of cardboard boxes in prominent view, with neatly handwritten labels, in which we can deposit student records and scrap paper to be disposed of. This is typical of her. She is a friendly, helpful person.

However, I am a little puzzled by the labels. I know she doesn't speak much English, but does she not realize that she is surrounded by English teachers, any of whom would have been happy to help her?

The label on one box says:

USELESS A PRINTED SYNOPSIS OF A LECTURE.

And the other one says:

USELESS A PERSONAL ITEM. REDUCE TO ASHES.

I was going to say something about this (after I'd turned off the grin that had suddenly spread all over my face), but then had the sudden thought that perhaps she had asked one of the Japanese teachers of English to translate the labels for her. I tried to think through the ramifications of the loss of face my correction could cause, but it was the end of a long teaching day and I was too tired, so I went home instead. Now I feel stupid. I should have just told her, quietly. I am useless an English teacher.

I'll tell her next week.

Dolls

Cheryl wrote a lovely post about being five, and Doris followed it up with her experience of being five (which wasn't so pleasant), and mentioned her brother mangling her doll and the trouble it got her into.

I was given a doll when I was five, too, but I'm afraid the person who mangled it was me. I never did figure out what you were supposed to do with dolls. They couldn't climb trees, were useless on bicycles, and when it came to games they just sat there, staring spookily.

In fact I was given two dolls, one by an aunt and the other by a grandmother. (Neither of them knew me very well. OBVIOUSLY.) One doll I mangled in the chain of my bicycle when I took it for a ride and the silly thing just didn't hang on tight enough, and the other ... well, I cut its hair, expecting it to grow back, and then I poked its eyes trying to figure out how they closed when you lay the doll down, and managed to somehow (gag) poke them RIGHT INTO ITS OWN HEAD. I was puzzled and somewhat sickened. I'd only had the doll a couple of days and already it was bald and had holes for eyes, and its eyeballs rattled around in its skull. What kind of toy was that? Useless, creepy thing.

My mother was horrified when she saw what I'd done. She had wanted to take a photo of me holding it to send my grandmother, along with the thank you letter. She took the photo anyway, quickly, before I destroyed the doll completely. With a hat on the doll and from a distance you could hardly tell that it was just a doll corpse.

I gave the other one a haircut, too, in an effort to improve the way it looked, and then it also required a hat. Then I applied Savlon and bandaged its wounded arm and hand very carefully, but it never did heal, and neither of them grew back their hair, so I lost interest.

Garnish

Today I was telling a friend about my first meal in Budapest, when my friend and I had goulash. I wrote about it here at the time, but didn't give details. I did briefly mention the problem we had with the 'garnish,' and that is what I was telling my friend about today.

She wanted to understand, and when I explained that I didn't understand it myself, she suggested writing about it on the blog. "Maybe someone will be able to explain what it meant," she said. She seems to think I have a large readership (ha!) which includes people familiar with Hungarian food and language. Well, of COURSE. Only clever, worldly-wise people read my blog!

So here's the story that requires explaining.

As I mentioned in the original post, we were walking around looking for food in the wrong end of town, something we realized when we passed a szex shop. (And you thought I'd lost my spelling prowess, didn't you? I hadn't. I was being SCRUPULOUSLY accurate. And it wasn't the tricky keyboard, either.)



Right next to the szex shop there was a place that looked kind of like a restaurant, but it also had a big 'Health Club' sign up outside. I did not take a picture of it that evening, but did take one the next day, when it was clearly a restaurant and the Health Club sign had gone. That restaurant sign was not there at night.




Inside you could see a few tables and chairs, but it was very, very dimly lit, and we were peering through the window trying to see if it was open or not when a waiter came out. We asked him if this was a restaurant, and if it was, was it open?

"Yes," he said, and whisked us inside. He did this so fast and authoritatively we didn't really have a choice. Also, he was gorgeous, and we were totally disarmed by his dimples. (I suspect that if he'd ushered us into the szex shop we would have gone like sheep.)

Inside, we were taken through the darkened room with the tables and chairs, which was empty, and through into a larger room in the back, which turned out to be... a restaurant! Down the back of the room there was a large sign with an arrow pointing to the "Health Club," which was apparently through the back of the restaurant. The sign had a picture of a man flexing his muscles. The rest of the restaurant looked like a normal restaurant, if somewhat run-down, except that one wall was covered in revolutionary pictures.

I took photos when the waiter wasn't looking, which was frequently. He kept disappearing, and there were very few other customers. (I wanted to take a picture of the waiter, too, but was a little concerned about how that request would be taken. I mean, it felt kind of wrong for a couple of women who'd been wandering the szex shop area of town to ask a hunk if they could take his photograph, and I was feeling a little intimidated already.)





The waiter brought the menu, which was HUGE. It went on for pages and pages. It was not a normal menu. It was a novel.

We settled down to study it. Fortunately for us, there were English translations alongside some of the Hungarian. Have you ever seen Hungarian? Do they have to try to get every letter of the alphabet into every word, do you think?



Unfortunately the menu translations had been done by someone whose command of English was somewhat wobbly.

We decided that since we were in Hungary, we should have goulash. That was easy. However, goulash was listed as a starter, and we wondered how big it was. We asked, and the waiter told us it was a starter. We asked how big the dish was, and he told us it was the usual size. This was not very informative, but he was reaching the end of his English so we decided to order something else as well, just in case, but not a main. (Actually I can't remember if we ever got that far in the menu anyway.)

We found a couple of pages dedicated to garnish.

"Garnish?" we asked each other. "Is there some other use of the word 'garnish' that we don't know about?"

The menu was not helpful. I can't remember if that part of it had the English translations (some parts didn't) or whether it was just unusually obscure translations, but we couldn't figure out what 'garnish' was supposed to mean. We decided to ask our long-suffering waiter again.

"What is garnish?" we asked him.

"It is..." he waved his arms helplessly and shrugged, "...It is GARNISH."

We frowned. Then we pointed to one menu item in the 'garnish' list.

"How about this," we said. "What is it?"

"Oh no, you don't want that. It's noodles," he said.

"Noodles?" we said. "Sounds good!"

"But it's NOODLES," he said. We asked for further explanation but ran into language problems again. He clearly did not want us to have the noodle garnish, but we could not extract information about what would be a suitable other dish. But he was so against the garnish it was making us curious, so in the end we told him firmly that we wanted the goulash, a salad, and the noodle garnish. Oh, and a bottle of wine.

He looked exasperated with our choice, but gave up trying to convince us that noodles were a bad idea. His expression said that we were making a horrible mistake. He'd tried to stop us but we just wouldn't listen. You could see him metaphorically washing his hands of us as he left the table.

We sat thoughtfully, pondering what could be so awful about noodles, and after a while the goulash appeared (BIG bowls), along with a large basket of bread and the wine. We tasted it all, and it was FABULOUS. Exactly what we wanted, and quite clearly enough for our needs. (If that goulash was a starter Hungarian people eat like sumo wrestlers. I think that must have been another menu translation glitch.)

Eventually the salad appeared, which was satisfactory, and the 'garnish,' which was decidedly odd. It was not noodles. It was... I don't know what to call it. It might have started off as noodles, I suppose, but if so, the noodles had been chopped into bits, about rice-sized. It was made of some kind of pastry, or dumpling-type material. The plate was huge, and there was a MOUNTAIN of this stuff. The waiter had a told-you-so expression as he delivered it and almost but not quite rolled his eyes as he departed, probably to have a giggle in the kitchen about the idiot tourists.

We stared at the plate.

"Noodles?" I said. "NOODLES?"

"Well, I suppose we should try it," my friend said, doubtfully. We were both full already, from the wonderful goulash, and there was still bread and wine left. And salad.

We dipped our forks into the mountain.

It was remarkable. It had NO FLAVOUR AT ALL. It was like ... chopped up cooked dumpling dough, with no sauce, no salt, and no taste. It was not noodles. It was not garnish. It barely qualified as 'food,' although it would have made great landfill.

Our 'garnish' sat on the table for the rest of the meal, a hard-to-ignore reminder of the lesson we had just learned. LISTEN TO THE WAITER'S ADVICE, EVEN WHEN HE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the noodles, but I didn't, and nor did I note the Hungarian name. I was too busy regretting having ordered it.

But I really would like to know two things:

1. What is garnish, in Hungary? That was no sprig of parsley!

2. What WAS that stuff, and how are you supposed to eat it?

Any ideas?

Question

In polygamous societies, what happens to all the extra men?

Nobody has ever been able to explain this to me satisfactorily, and it just DOESN'T ADD UP.

They make me happy

One of my students surprised me yesterday, several times. His English isn't that great. Like most of my students his grammar is pretty awful, and he has trouble putting a sentence together. However, he knows a few juicy phrases. I don't know where he gets them from, but he has learned them by heart and takes every opportunity to use them. It takes me aback every time, because the phrases are so perfect, and yet so ... wrong.

He told me that he was taking French as well as English, and I asked him how he was getting on with the pronunciation. He looked pleased, and replied,

"I'm afraid that it's totally beyond my powers of comprehension."

The whole class gasped with admiration.

He came out with several of these during the class, but I forgot to take notes. I'm starting to be wary when he gets that pleased look. It always means he's about to say something staggeringly literate. Nobody will understand him except me, and I won't know how to respond.

---

Another student wrote about taking driving lessons over the summer. She wrote,

My counselor, Mr Hashimoto, was very interesting person and I could enjoy driving. First, I put my foot down hard. Mr Hashimoto's face was blue and he said, "You are tremendously scary person." But finally, I could get driver's license and I drive very well now.

Who?

The other evening, just before I went to bed, The Man said,

"I found some CDs of yours today, when I was cleaning up downstairs."

"Really? " I said. "I'll have a look in the morning. Don't throw them out."

"There were two," he said. "One of them is Fleet Macwood."

I needed an extra long pause to digest this information. I knew there was something funny about what he'd said. I just couldn't figure out what it was, at first.

Grafitti, or art?

(As you may have noticed, I've been sorting through some of my photos from the trip.)

I loved Bratislava. We only spent a day there, but it was full of surprises. We walked and walked and walked, and it seemed that every corner we turned there would be something surprising. It wasn't just the cows, either.

We went to see a church. I think it was the Blue Church. It was lovely, but the surprise was not the church. The surprise was the old, run-down building behind the church, which was not mentioned in the guidebook at all. I think we spent more time looking at this building than we did at the church. I certainly took more photos.

Who did this? How? Why? When? I don't know. There was no information, and nobody to ask.

Here are some photos. It was quite a large building, and I could not get the whole thing into one picture. This did not stop me from taking a lot of pictures, though, and here are some of them. (Click for larger versions.)

This is more or less what we saw when we came around the back of the church:



In this one, you can see the church on the right. The buildings are touching. The church, however, is beautifully maintained. The Gogh building (I don't know what else to call it) is not.



I did not visit any art galleries on my trip. This did not stop me from seeing some famous works of art, out in the wild.




We wondered about the rugs hanging out the windows. They were high up, and we couldn't tell whether they were real or not.





The stairs were not real. Or, if they were, I would not want to try climbing them. I wouldn't try opening the door, either.





Here are a couple more close-ups...





And finally, here is the view from the other side of the building, where we discovered there were yet MORE pictures.



I can't find any information about this building on the web, but I'm still looking. One problem is choosing search words. Graffiti, or art?

Walking on water

I took this picture at the little river that runs along my friend's place, in France.

Cricket

When I was in Baden-Baden, sitting in a cafe and eating crepes, I was joined by a cricket, who also studied the map. The cricket wanted to go to Schafberg, I think.

Cat at window (photo)

When I was staying with my friend in France, I took this picture of one of her cats. I can't remember which one this is. Buster, perhaps. Isn't he lovely?

Big fat lies (and how useful they can be)

Carrie got pulled over by the traffic police the other day, and found it an unsettling experience. It reminded me of the times I've been pulled over, in the days when I used to drive. It only happened twice, and I never got a ticket.

The first time was when I was fifteen, and speeding home in my father's car. (Yes, I had a licence - that was the legal age in NZ way back then.) The policeman told me to get out of the car, and I opened my mouth and a big fat lie came out. I was SO surprised. I'd always thought I was an honest person, and had to revise my opinion of myself.

"I, er, just got my... um... period," I stammered, acting all coy. "Do you mind if I don't get out? It's just that, er, I wasn't expecting it and I think I've made a mess of the seat and I'm REALLY embarrassed and trying to get home in a hurry so I can clean up ..."

The very young policeman went bright red and didn't know where to look. He told me to go. I drove off, feeling guilty and astonished and exhilarated all at the same time. Where did that lie COME from? It just popped out! And what if he'd told me to get out of the car anyway and found out it wasn't true?

The next time I was pulled over was a few years later. It was the early hours of the morning, and I got pulled over because I was driving so slowly and was too tired and drunk to bother braking when I went around a roundabout (aka traffic circle). Instead I slowed down well in advance and went around it slooowly. The tyres squealed, which was a bit surprising because I was going so slow. The police car was at the other side of the roundabout, and two policemen waved me down. I stopped, leaped out of the car so they wouldn't notice I wasn't wearing a seat belt, and they asked me if I was all right. They'd been watching me and wondered if my brakes were working. I told them I'd been working late and was very tired, and thought I was going slowly enough to not need to brake. They pointed out that the car's WOF (Warrant of Fitness) had expired the day before (I hadn't even noticed) and that my tyres were bald (I hadn't noticed that, either), which was why the car had squealed so badly around the roundabout. I lied and told them I had the car booked in for the WOF and a overhaul the next day.

I also told them I'd been working late. This was true, except that I'd worked until midnight and then partied until 3am, and the non-alcoholic punch was LETHAL. Somebody had emptied two bottles of vodka into it halfway through the evening and I hadn't noticed until I went out into the cold night and found myself staggering all over the place trying to get the key in the car door. I went back into the party and demanded an explanation, and that's when someone confessed about the vodka. But I had to get home, so drove anyway, even though I knew I shouldn't.

The policemen were sweet. They kindly offered to drive me the rest of the way, saying they were concerned that I was too tired to drive safely. I thanked them and refused. I said I was fine, the shock of being pulled over had woken me up, and I would be careful. Actually I would have liked to be driven, but I was worried that if one of them was in the car with me he might smell the vodka on my breath, or I'd start giggling. They insisted on following me home anyway, to make sure I was all right.

Wasn't that nice of them? It is incredibly stressful, though, being escorted by a police car while you're driving drunk along a winding coastal road.

I don't know why they didn't notice I was drunk anyway, or even ask if I'd been drinking, but perhaps it was the car. I had an ancient Morris Minor, a car usually driven by harmless little old ladies, and you took on an innocent aura when you drove one of those. Naughty people did not drive Morris Minors and that was all there was to it.

What do harmless little old ladies drive these days, anyway?

Boots

The weather has finally cooled down a little, and about time, too.

Yesterday morning when I got to the station, I looked down and discovered I was wearing shoes. I was astonished. I could have SWORN I had put on my boots. How did that happen? I'd had no intention of wearing those shoes. They are scruffy, and not very comfortable when I'm on my feet all day. I didn't have time to go back to the house and change, and spent the day being aware of my feet.

Classes went all right, but I HATE these five o'clock risings.

Books

On Friday a man from Missions to Seamen is coming to the house to take away my books. I have far too many books, and they take up too much space. I have decided to be ruthless, and have told The Man to just send all the cartons I've been piling up downstairs to be sorted one day. I have no time to sort them. They're all going.

He has been taping up the cartons and getting them ready for collection. Some of them are piled up by the front door already. I don't know how many there will be. More than twenty cartons. I don't want to count them. I am trying to ignore them.

Yesterday, as he was repacking some of the cartons, he called,

"I think I saw a Doris Lessing book in one of those boxes. Don't you want to keep those?"

"YES!" I shouted. "Which box?"

"I think it's that one. Or maybe that one."

I ripped off the tape and opened the cartons, and looked through. Immediately a little voice in my head started. Ooh! This is a good book! Maybe I'll read this one again... and look! Do I really want to get rid of this one? These are GOOD BOOKS. Do I really want to give them away? Are ALL the cartons like this, so full of good stuff?

Suddenly I wanted to throw myself on the piles of cartons, screaming, "NO! NO! DON'T TAKE THEM AWAY! STOP! THESE ARE MINE! MINE! MINE!"

Then got a grip on myself and put them all back. The Doris Lessing was not there, but The Man found it for me in another carton. I kept only that one. I also still have a lot on my bookshelves, the only ones I actually sorted. I kept about a quarter of those.

I'm grateful to The Man for doing this. I never open these boxes, normally. They just sit there, taking up space. Lots and LOTS of space. As the books are getting packed away and put aside, the house keeps getting bigger.

But I'm glad The Man is packing the books, and not me. If I were packing them the job would never get done. I would start reading and wondering if perhaps I should keep this one, and that one, and ...

But I wonder if any of those missing Leslie Thomas books are in those cartons? I can't go through them to find out. I couldn't bear it. And anyway, The Man would kill me if I untaped any more of those carefully packed cartons.

I have to stop thinking about this now.

Computers and cows

Last night I had computer problems. It is so long since I had computer problems that I had forgotten the usual troubleshooting procedures. As it turned out it was not a problem I'd ever had before, and I had to do a power reset. I didn't know how to do this at first, and have lost the manual for the computer. I never need it.

The Man found instructions on the web, and hit the power reset button. The computer turned itself off. For a panicked moment I thought he had killed my computer, because it had been stopping halfway through starting up, and I couldn't turn it off at all before. I could only restart, and have it freeze halfway through the process. But then I turned it on again and EVERYTHING WAS FINE. HALLELUJUH! EVERYTHING WAS FINE!

(I really thought it was the end of my computer there for a couple of hours.)

Today I was reading the student homework I was worried about last week. I have marked more than half of them already. (Ha! No need to panic about that, either.) The students were writing about what they did in the summer vacation. None of them had as good a time as I did, but one wrote something that made me snort. He had visited a farm with his brother, and wrote:

We watched cows and goats. They prowled around.

They have really interesting farms in Japan.

Concert

I promised I would tell about the Kodo concert.

It was, of course, wonderful. But it was also a disappointment. I first saw Kodo more than 15 years ago, when I first came to Japan. A friend had been told about them, and we bought tickets for an outrageous price and went to the concert, not really knowing what to expect but having been told it was worth every yen of the hugely expensive tickets.

At that concert, I remember the drummers coming on stage. Then I was shaken to my bones, and ten minutes later the concert ended. I looked at my watch, thinking it was intermission, and discovered that two hours had passed.

This time, technically they were very good. The audience was on their side, and loved them before they started.

About halfway through the third piece, I found myself being disturbed by the snoring of one of the secretaries, who was seated right behind me. I wanted to turn around and slap her face, but then thought, no, wait a minute, maybe she has a point. Last time I saw Kodo I didn't even notice the rest of the audience was there. A bomb could have gone off under my seat and I wouldn't have noticed.

So what happened to them?

One thing I think happened is that this was a pared-down Kodo. It was not the full group. It was a free concert, and it's not even listed on their web page. I don't know the details. I don't know why it was free, or how the university Coop managed to organize this. Maybe someone owed somebody something.

They are still wonderful, though. I would still recommend that you see them if you get the chance, even if the tickets are expensive. Maybe it was just this one time they were a bit off, and maybe my expectations were too high. And anyway, towards the end it did all start to come together.

It just didn't happen soon enough.

I started thinking of other Japanese music concerts I have been to. There are not many. There's a free festival thing they have around at City Hall every year, in which various groups perform, usually fairly amateur but occasionally surprisingly good. I have been to a few Okinawan music concerts, and they are always good. The most memorable have been those of Kina Shokichi. He is completely nuts, a crazy person, and his concerts are unforgettable. He makes you dance, whether you want to or not. His music gets INTO YOUR BONES AND YOU HAVE TO DANCE, EVEN IF YOU CAN'T DANCE, OR IF YOU ARE DYING, CRIPPLED, OR VERY OLD. That man could make DEAD people get up and dance. He is the human equivalent of the red shoes in the fairy tale. His concerts always end in chaos, with half the audience up on stage with the musicians and his face occasionally appearing amongst the rabble, playing like a maniac, bouncing around like a rabbit on speed.

The best Kina Shokichi concert I went to was one he gave for the benefit of handicapped people, after the earthquake. These people had a very hard time - deaf people were not found, because they couldn't hear rescuers and the Japanese government was stupidly quarantining sniffer dogs when they were offered by other countries. Mentally handicapped people were bewildered and lost. People in wheelchairs were helpless. At this concert there were all kinds of handicapped people, and there was a lot of impassioned ranting, and interpreters for the deaf had their fingers given a real workout as Kina babbled on at high speed, unable to slow down, apologizing, laughing, twitching, bouncing around with the force of his passion.

Then the concert started. It wasn't long before the mentally handicapped were on their feet. They did not have the ability to control themselves. One young man was totally overwhelmed by the music. He was so happy he could not stand it, and ran up to the stage, shouting incoherently. Kina grinned at him. He went up and danced, shouted in Kina's face, Kina shouted back, and the young man ran down again, happy, still dancing. He went back to his seat, but was soon back as the music sped up again and the drumming got wild. Others followed. The music got faster and faster, and soon nobody could stay seated. It was all wild, wonderful, and mad. I was happy for days afterwards.

I asked The Man what happened to Kina Shokichi. I haven't heard any news about him for a long time, or of any concerts.

"He became a politician," said The Man. "Forget about him."

A politician? A POLITICIAN?

HOW COULD HE?

Legs

France made me grow taller. (In Germany I was a midget.) I also discovered, on my friend's mother's porch, that if I positioned myself JUST RIGHT I could give myself a waist. And you didn't know I had such long legs, did you?

Neither did I.

Bonjour!

When I was in France, I thought of you all, my dear readers. I waved, even.

Ruthless

Two days ago, The Man said to me,

"I'm going to clean the house."

I looked at him sideways. "Uh huh," I said.

"We have too much junk," he said.

"We do," I answered. It is true. We are both pack rats, and the house has been shrinking for years as we have accumulated more and more and more. We never chuck things out. We have old futons in the cupboards downstairs that have become unusable. We have castoff furniture from previous tenants that we have never used. This should be a big house, but it isn't. It is full of STUFF.

"I'll start tomorrow," he said, and he had that look in his eye. I know that look. It's the look he gets when he really means it.

I braced myself.

Yesterday morning he asked, "What shall I do about your books?"

I thought about it. There are several dozen boxes of books downstairs. Many of them are mine. I put them into boxes when I run out of shelf space, and intend to sort them later. Then I don't, because I never have time during semester. During the vacations, in the last few years, it's either been too hot and/or I was studying, and in the spring vacation I used to be studying but last spring I wasn't here. And before I was studying I was sick, and all I did was read because I couldn't do anything else. Those boxes have been piling up for YEARS. I had a book-deprived childhood, and I've never quite got over the feeling that books are treasure.

"I'll sort them out," I promised. Then I thought about it. "No, on second thought, there are boxes there that have been there for ten years or so. If I start opening them I'll never throw ANY of them out. Don't open them. I don't want to spoil this. Just let them go."

Being ruthless feels GOOD. It is also kind of scary for a packrat. I am not a natural chucker-outer.

He started the job yesterday, and you know how things always look worse before they get better, when you do this sort of cleanup? Last night it looked like a bomb had hit the house.

I left for work this morning just after six. I was teaching all day, and then there was a Kodo concert right after my last class (more about that later) for which I had free tickets. A bunch of us went, and some of us stopped for coffee on the way home. I finally got home at 11.30 pm.

Tonight it looks like TWO bombs have hit the house.

We don't have regular free big gomi (rubbish) collection these days, like we used to. When you have big gomi, you have to call City Hall and arrange for them to pick it up, and you have to pay. We have to wait for a collection date, so all the stuff he's throwing out is being arranged into piles which I am carefully avoiding investigating. What if I see something I want to keep? I DON'T WANT TO KEEP ANYTHING. I WANT IT ALL GONE. I have to be strong and ruthless, and I think the only way I can manage to maintain this for the time required is to not look. I am determined not to spoil this. I won't have time to help much, with work getting into full swing from next week, and the most helpful thing I can do is to keep out of the way and let it all happen.

But I'm also still kind of amazed. When The Man says he's going to do something, and he gets that look in his eye, he REALLY MEANS IT.

My favourite imaginary number

Student: I have a sister.
Me: How old is she?
Student: Twenteen.

Not my fault

Today was my first day back at another place, with four classes of entirely new students. (Courses there are one semester only.) I spent yesterday preparing today's lessons.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. I INTENDED to spend yesterday preparing for today's lessons. In fact I spent most of yesterday on the phone, doing grocery shopping, doing an emergency load of washing, and then forgetting to hang it out because I was playing the OTHER two versions of GROW CUBE: GROW ver.3 and GROW RPG.

I have now solved them all. HA HA HA!

At around nine o'clock in the evening I was presented with a banner saying 'CONGRATULATIONS!' but my gleeful cackle was cut short by the sudden realization that I had to get up at six and still had no lesson plan. I made one. Then I made a second, backup plan, remembering the disastrous start to last semester.

My classes at that place were fairly awful all last semester, due mainly, I suspect, to the awful way I started. On the morning of my first day back, I turned the alarm off in my sleep, woke up an hour later than I'd planned, RACED to work without breakfast or any of the usual things I need to get me going in the morning (several cups of caffeinated beverage of some description, especially), and babbled to the poor students all morning. For the afternoon classes I suddenly came down with some kind of stomach upset that had me dashing from the classroom every ten minutes or so. The entire day was devastatingly horrible for me and for the students. I think the students decided, collectively, that I was a baffling foreigner they could never hope to understand, and gave up from the start. I was never able to win them back, and spent the entire semester feeling like a failure.

This semester I was determined that things would be better, hence the two lesson plans.

I finished preparing all the materials by around 11.30 pm, had a shower, and went to bed, setting the alarm for 5.45 just in case.

When the alarm went off my sleepy brain VERY NEARLY tricked me into thinking that it wasn't a work day today and I'd just set the alarm by mistake, but fortunately I was able to override my internal snooze button and catapult myself out of bed.

When I got to work I discovered that I had left a whole bunch of materials there from last semester (so THAT'S where it all was!) and found something I decided was far more suitable than the lessons I'd planned, which I put aside. My suddenly new, third lesson plan went down very well. But then, in a spur of the moment decision while the students were writing something, I rushed downstairs and made photocopies of the materials I'd prepared after all, and handed them out for homework.

The students were stunned. They had enjoyed the class, I think, but they weren't expecting homework on the first day.

Later on I started feeling a bit stunned, too. All four classes went well. I have a good feeling about these new classes, and I think the students do, too. But if they all do the homework next week I will be handed 120 papers to mark. The three places I work all have different starting days, and next week will be my first full week back at work. I will not have time to mark the homework during the week. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

I hadn't had enough sleep to be thinking, that's what.

After work I went to visit a friend who has been ill, and we had a lovely chat. I meant to stay only an hour or so, but had far too much fun and didn't get home until ten thirty.

Now I am tired and somewhat worried. My classes today went well, and my friend is looking good, but when I look at what I have to look forward to my heart sinks a little. Five full days of work next week, a weekend lost in homework marking, and then another full week of work. What if I have another brainstorm and give my OTHER classes homework as well? I'll have to at some point, anyway. Is this coming weekend going to be my last weekend off before December?

The weather may be still hot and humid but the summer vacation is well and truly over.

If I hadn't been playing GROW CUBE, I might have had my lessons planned and had an early night, as I'd intended. If I had had an early night, I might have not had a lapse of judgement and given homework on the first day back at work. If I hadn't given homework I might have had a weekend to look forward to after my first full week back at work, when I'll need it the most.

And that is why I blame Francis, who introduced me to GROW CUBE in the first place.

IT IS ALL HIS FAULT.

Why I didn't post yesterday

It's all Francis' fault. I read this post, went to have a look, and the rest of my evening vanished mysteriously.

NZ Elections

Did anybody actually win? What about the special votes? When will they all be counted? Will they make a difference? If National gain one more seat after the special votes are counted, what will happen? What about the Greens? What if they lose one? Why is Helen Clark already saying she'll form a new government? Can she do that before the special votes are counted, when it's so close? What if Don Brash does the same thing, as he says he will do in this article? Can he do that?

National's leader, Don Brash, also said he was going to work to form the next government.

What if they both form governments? Can a country have two governments? Would it work? Maybe one should take the North Island and the other should take the South. Or, since most of the population is in the North Island, perhaps they should draw a line down the middle of the country, to be more fair. One party could take the right side (National, of course) and the other the left (Labour, naturally). Would that work? That would have the additional advantage that righties wouldn't have to go so far to have holidays in the Green and environmentally lovely nuclear-free Left side, and lefties wouldn't have to commute so far to their offices on the concretized capitalistic Right side.

I once knew a marriage that worked like that. After separating, this elderly couple decided they couldn't live without each other, but found it hard to live together. They solved this problem by drawing a chalk line down the middle of the house and the garden. She had one side, and he had the other. The line went straight down the middle of their big double bed. One side of the house was a mess, and the other was as neat as a pin. The garden was schizophrenic.

But it worked for them. Couldn't it work for NZ?

What happened to my fingernails? Where have they gone? Why did nothing I had planned to do today get done? Why do I feel so CONFUSED?

So many questions, so few answers...

First day back at work (really)

It was the first REAL day back at school today, and everything went haywire, as usual. The fantastic new level checking method for streaming students worked fine in the first semester, but our department had decided to do it again mid-year. We were not happy about this, for various reasons.

Fortunately, this only happened in one of my classes today, because of the seven faculties whose students we teach, only two decided to cooperate with this new method. The others told us today that they'd decided not to do it. TODAY. The first day of teaching, and NOW they tell us! Meanwhile we have already ordered new textbooks for the new semester, and they've arrived, and the students HAVE to buy them even though we didn't finish the textbooks we used in the first semester. The students are not happy. The teachers are not happy. (I have to admit being a GLEEFUL about the faculties not cooperating with the stupid idea, but not happy. Gleeful is not the same as happy. They should have told us.)

But there were two bright spots in the day. The first was when I met my 'difficult' class. They thundered into the classroom, greeted me enthusiastically, and were cheerfully cooperative and noisy and funny in very bad English. When I think of how I used to have to bellow at them to get them to stop using Japanese all the time I wanted to kiss them all, individually. Even my so-called 'best' class (i.e. highest level) doesn't try that hard. (Perhaps I should bellow at ALL my classes.)

They told me all their news. Koji, who was wearing a suit and looking like a kid dressed up in Daddy's clothes (but wouldn't tell us why) claimed that he had spent his summer vacation speaking English ALL THE TIME. After listening to him for a while I decided that at least he THOUGHT about using English once or twice - but good for him! He has held onto the progress he made in the first semester, and now believes he can be an English speaker, which he was firmly convinced was impossible at the beginning of the year. My little squeaky guy, Naoki, was looking pale and wan, and told me that he'd spent all of August sick with a viral inflammation in his bowels. He'd looked it up especially so he could tell me about it. Poor little guy. He was looking even skinnier and smaller than usual. Everybody was sympathetic, especially the cool guys, who crowded around him asking questions about his illness and shaking their heads, looking mature and concerned.

I realized all over again that this class, which started the year as the one I dreaded the most, has become my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE. I am very pleased that they haven't been shuffled around - their faculty was one that didn't cooperate with the new system - so I have the same funny bunch I had in the first semester.

The second bright spot of the day came from my newspaper, which I thought I'd finished reading and had left in the teachers' room. A sharp-eyed teacher spotted the article below, which I have copied in its entirety because the Yomiuri does not archive news stories, and what's the use of a link that will only work for a few hours? (I have included the link anyway.)

This story MADE MY DAY. It made everybody's day, when my colleague read it aloud. We were laughing so hard she couldn't get past the first paragraph.

I don't think any comment is required. It speaks for itself.

Woman held over hiring hit man

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 32-year-old woman who complained to police that a hit man she had hired to kill her boyfriend's wife had failed to do the job was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of inducing a person to commit murder, police said.

The ambulance officer from the Tokyo Fire Department's Shibuya Fire Station allegedly asked a self-described private detective to kill her boyfriend's wife. The private detective also was arrested for allegedly receiving money to commit murder. The wife was found safe.

According to police, Eriko Kawaguchi of Tama, Tokyo, met Koji Tabe, 40, of Kunitachi, Tokyo, through an Internet site where hit men allegedly can be hired.

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Kawaguchi and Tabe on suspicion of violating the Law Concerning Punishment of Physical Violence and Others.

Kawaguchi called a telephone number listed on the site, which apparently was Tabe's, in November and requested that he kill the 32-year-old wife of the man she was having an affair with, according to the police.

Kawaguchi paid Tabe 1 million yen in cash for his 'investigation' in late January. Tabe allegedly accepted the payment as a fee to murder the wife.

Tabe allegedly explained to Kawaguchi how he planned to kill the wife when the two met in Tachikawa, western Tokyo, in mid-January. He allegedly suggested chasing the woman on a motorcycle and spraying her with a biological agent in a tunnel.

Police also discovered that Kawaguchi had transferred millions of yen to a bank account opened by the administrator of the Internet site. Police are questioning the administrator under suspicion the administrator may have been aware of the plot.
(Sep. 16, 2005)

First day back at work

Today I had my first day back at work. My alarm went off at five (FIVE!) and I crawled reluctantly out of bed. After my second cup of tea I felt more or less human, and headed off out the gate.

The commute felt longer than it used to. That's what happens when you haven't done it for a while. It stretches. It will get shorter later, I'm sure.

Once I got to my station I went into a coffee shop for breakfast. (I do this rather than breakfasting at home so as to avoid the HIDEOUS rush hour on the Osaka Loop Line.) I have about 40 minutes for breakfast, which is enough time to get three cups of coffee down me. After this I feel REALLY AWAKE. Then I head off to work.

I still have half an hour for prep after getting to work, so I generally spend this time... prepping. Today I found the teachers' room door was locked. I was the first one there! I heard a cough, or fart, or something, from the boss' room, but didn't disturb him. I checked the other door to the teachers' room, and found it was open, so went through and opened the main door. I sat down and started going through my things, wondering if my plans for the first classes of the semester were adequate. I hadn't left too much time for ad libbing, had I?

After a few minutes I thought it was odd that nobody else had arrived yet, and went through to see the boss. I knocked on his door.

"COME IN!" he shouted.

I went in.

He offered me coffee. I hesitated, remembering the three I'd already had, but then reasoned that they were SMALL cups, and not very strong, and accepted.

We sat and chatted for a while. What we did in the summer vacation, what kind of chaos to expect from the stupid new system where students are moved around in the second semester so we'll have mostly old students but some new ones in our classes, why so many teachers do not speak Japanese, what the gossip is at the university, blah blah blah.

After a while I checked my watch. It was 8.55. Class started in five minutes!

"Where IS everybody?" I asked.

"Er... you do realize that classes start tomorrow, don't you?" said my boss. He snorted. "I thought you'd come in early to prepare."

"NOOOOOO!" I wailed. "DO YOU MEAN I GOT UP AT FIVE THIS MORNING SO I COULD HAVE A CUP OF COFFEE WITH YOU???"

He sniggered, and pointed at the schedule, which was pinned on the bulletin board.

"But I copied the dates from this schedule!" I said. "Were they changed at some point?"

"No," he said, and sniggered again.

"You shouldn't snigger," I informed him. "It's unattractive and undignified. So is snorting. And anyway, my summer was MUCH more interesting than yours. Nah nah!"

"AND YOU WROTE DOWN THE WRONG DATE! NAH NAH!"

He laughed and laughed and laughed.



(Message to The Man, if you are reading this. YOU, TOO, CAN STOP LAUGHING RIGHT NOW.)

How not to learn a language

Yesterday I met a couple of friends for a drink, and it cheered me up. I knew it would. I had my first real belly laugh since I came back to Japan.

Friend One was talking, and happened to mention something about her Japanese teacher. Friend Two interrupted.

"I didn't know you were having lessons!" she said. "When did you start?"

Friend One waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, twenty years ago, or so," she answered. "I'm still on the same textbook."

We stared.

"My teacher can't understand a WORD I say," she said. "I'm SUCH a bad student."

When we stopped laughing, Friend Two said,

"Hasn't it occurred to you that it might be time for a change of teacher?"

"Oh, but I LIKE her," answered Friend 1. "She's my friend. She's a cool lady."

"I bet she teaches you in English," I said, giggling.

"Well, yes..."

"And I bet her English has REALLY improved after all these years!"

We hooted.

"Well... yes..."

"And YOU pay HER? How much do you pay her?" asked Friend Two.

"Oh, not much," said Friend One, somewhat defensively. "It's hardly anything."

I think it's sweet that she has remained loyal to her teacher for all these years.

On the other hand, I wonder how much of her trouble with Japanese would not exist if she had switched to another teacher, say, oh, nineteen and a half years ago?

Cows in Bratislava (the explanation)

Remember I told you about finding cows in Bratislava? Well, I found a link on the web about the Cow Parade, and all has been explained. It started in Zurich way back in 1998. How come I'd never heard of it before?

Anyway, these cows were everywhere, and I took lots of photos because they were so colourful and funny, but there was one time I missed getting some really good photos because I was laughing so much I forgot, until the last minute. My friend and I were sitting in the town square, and there were some other people there, including an Italian family. The little boy was about four, I suppose, and he was really taken with these cows. In fact he took the cows so seriously that he decided to milk one.

His mother called to him, embarrassed. But she was laughing, too, and he looked anxious and went on to the next cow. He had to milk them all. He'd done one, and it wasn't fair not to do the rest as well. So he ran from cow to cow, and milked them all. I think he must have been a farm boy, because he also did the sound effects - the hissing sound as the milk hits the pail. And after he'd finished all of them, he went to the front of the last one, stretched up his arms around its neck, and rested his head on the cow. Then he patted it comfortingly and finally went back to his parents, satisfied that he'd finished his job.

I only got one picture, as he was milking the last cow, and as you can see I wasn't the only one. Can you blame us? He was SO DAMNED CUTE.

Peculiar curry

I've forgotten how to write. It's been too long since I was writing every day. When I did, it was like falling off a log. I just sat down and the words spewed from my fingers, and I hardly edited at all. Now I sit down and wonder what I'm going to write about, and how.

I've also forgotten how to make potato curry. I decided to have potato curry last night, and went out to buy cabbage and yoghurt, two of the ingredients that weren't in the house already. Then I had to look up the recipe, which I had written somewhere on my computer. I don't usually need the recipe, but I'd forgotten what to do.

There was a bad moment when I couldn't find the coriander powder, and thought the spice thief had been at it again, but then I realized that the second jar of turmeric was in fact not turmeric, but coriander powder. Right at the end I spooned in two big spoonfuls of yoghurt, and licked the spoon.

That was when I discovered that I had accidentally bought sweet yoghurt.

I spooned as much of the sweet yoghurt out again but some had already gone into the curry. I cursed for a while. Then I found a lemon, juiced it, and added the juice to the curry, hoping it would cover the sweetness.

The curry wasn't bad, exactly, just a bit peculiar.

I've forgotten how to write, I've forgotten how to buy yoghurt, I've forgotten how to cook, and I've forgotten how to be a gaijin. I think this means that I should be on holiday PERMANENTLY.

Eek!

I am working on the photos I took in Budapest. This one made me laugh, so I thought I'd put it here. It will go in the Flickr 'Budapest' set when I have finished, but I just couldn't wait. (Addendum: the Budapest page is now up, on a new Flickr account - they wouldn't let me have more than three sets without paying.)

Grumble grumble

It always takes a while to adjust to being back in Japan. After five weeks of being a real person I am suddenly a gaijin again, and I don't like it. I will be fine after a couple more days, but in the meantime I am feeling a bit grumpy.

The weather is not helping. It is supposed to be cooler. It's September, right? And classes start next Thursday. Isn't it supposed to be autumn?

Well, it is not. It is humid and sweaty and uncomfortable, and I just checked the weather for tomorrow and discovered that while the temperatures aren't that bad, tonight the humidity is going to be 100%. I think that must be a mistake. It can't be 100%, surely, unless it is raining? But that's what it says on the weather page. I suppose I should be grateful that the temperature is going below 26C tonight, but it hasn't happened yet, and I am grumpy and sweaty and not in the least bit grateful.

Childish, I know

These signs, spotted in London, amused me enormously. Did somebody say, "BOO!"?

KL photos

I've uploaded some photos from Kuala Lumpur onto Flikr, if you're interested.

Addendum: I've now added a London set as well.

Jet lag

I didn't suffer from jet lag when I flew from KL to London. Nor did I have any trouble with jet lag flying from Paris back to KL. I was expecting it to be awful, and it wasn't. I had no problems at all.

I have a theory about this. I think that jet lag is more likely to afflict people who have reasonably regular routines. If you have a regular sleep pattern to start with it makes sense that you are more likely to suffer when it gets disrupted. I do not have a regular sleep pattern. When I am working I get up at a different time every day, and when the vacation starts I turn into a night owl almost instantly.

Flying from KL back to Japan is no problem anyway. There is only a one hour time difference.

But I got back to Japan at six this morning, and at around one this afternoon decided to have a short nap. It is now nearly eleven o'clock, and I just woke up, utterly confused.

Bollocks. NOW what am I supposed to do with myself?

Recovery

Magic medicine

Yesterday I spent most of the day napping, and taking the Chinese medicine The Man got for me.

"Take this," he said.

I read the label. "It says it's for distended stomach," I said. "I don't have a distended stomach." I looked down. "Well, no more than usual, anyway."

"Ignore what it says," he said. "It has stuff in it that will help you."

I took it.

"Oh, and take this one, too," he said.

I didn't bother reading the label this time.

After napping most of the day I was feeling quite a lot better. By dinnertime I still didn't really want to go out to eat, though, so The Man went out and bought some tofu pudding and soybean milk, which I wolfed down so fast his eyes popped. I guess my appetite was coming back after all.

Then it was bedtime, but although I felt sleepy I couldn't drop off. I thought I should, though, and lay there twitching and listening to the noises around the hotel, which I hadn't noticed the night before. There were some dogs arguing, rather musically, I thought. Doors sometimes banged in the hotel. I got hot. I turned on the air conditioning. Then I got cold, and turned it off again. The Man snored.

Around 4am The Man woke up. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me.

"Can't you sleep?" he asked. "We could go out and have Dim Sum and porridge. That place opens around now..."

I stared at him. "It's four in the morning!" I said.

"I know. It opens early, and it's REALLY good."

"You're just a walking support system for a stomach," I informed him.

We sat and chatted for a while, then both went to sleep, and slept until the phone rang. It was the man at the coffee shop of the hotel, informing us that it was now 10.30 and breakfast was only served until 11. He was concerned because we missed it yesterday and it was included in the price of the (cheap) hotel.

How kind of him to think of us. We hurried downstairs just in time.

Shopping

After breakfast we went over to Shukran, my favourite place for roti chanai, for a second breakfast (yes, I have my appetite back!) and then went shopping for a while. The Man worried about me. Was I well enough for this? We took a taxi to the shopping area we wanted to go to, and bussed back. Normally we'd walk.

Visiting a friend

In the afternoon I visited a French friend. (Yes, I know. I visited English friends in France, and now my French friend in KL. It doesn't make sense to me, either.) The Man didn't want me to go.

"You'll get tired," he said.

"But I'm feeling fine, now," I told him.

"I don't trust the feeling," he said. "If you get tired it might come back."

I went anyway. I haven't seen this friend for five years. Actually, I'd thought he was in Paris, so it was a surprise to find out he was in KL.

Dinner

I still felt fine after visiting my friend. He wanted us to go to a concert with him tomorrow, but I'm leaving in the evening. Bad timing.

The Man and I went to Chinatown instead, and bought some movies and a few other things. Then we went to a good Chinese restaurant The Man had found the night before.

"You have to have the mushroom noodle clay pot," he told me. "I've been feeling guilty about having it yesterday when you were sleeping. It was REALLY, REALLY GOOD."

So I did, and he was right. It was SCRUMPTIOUS.

Just as we finished eating a fuse blew and all the lights went out in the restaurant. The waiter brought a candle (eventually) and we sat by candlelight, sweating and drinking the rest of our tea.

Superwoman

That had to be one of the strangest and shortest flus I've ever had, if it was a flu. Either that, or the medicine The Man gave me has turned me into Superwoman. I have been on the go all day, it's midnight, and I still feel FINE.

Heading home...

Sick

If you ever visit Paris, I highly recommend that you do not get sick. The headache turned out to be a little more than that. Every bone in my body ached. My legs decided to pack it in altogether. Walking became painful.

The GOOD thing about having a problem like this in Paris is that there are chairs and benches all over the place. In Paris, they know that if you are walking around their lovely city you will want to sit down sometimes. By the time I had finished buying the medicine, got to the Internet cafe, sent that last blog, and started heading off to the Louvre (my plan for the day) I discovered that my body was refusing to cooperate. So I sat. I walked, and sat. Then I walked a little more, and sat some more. Then I stopped for coffee, although I wasn't sure my stomach would hold it, and took the medicine and waited. It helped, quite a lot, but my legs were still not cooperating so I went to the Jardin de Luxumburg (sp?) instead of to the Louvre. I knew from passing there the day before that there were benches and chairs ALL OVER the place. And I sat. I took a few pictures, too, and wondered what the hell was wrong with my legs.(What kind of flu gets you in the LEGS?)

After a while I went back to my hotel and spent the rest of the day sleeping, sweating feverishly, aching, and feeling generally miserable. Between bouts of sleeping I watched CNN and marvelled at what looked like pictures from the third world coming out of the US.

Those poor people.

Homeward bound

The next day I had to get to the airport by ten, so left very early in case I'd need to sit on the way. I had to take the Metro and then change to the RER, and was worried that the way I was feeling I'd get lost and confused. I dragged my bag to the Metro, and found a man behind a counter.

"Bonjour!" he said.

"Bonjour," I replied. "I, er... do you speak English?"

He looked at me seriously.

"Only on Saturdays," he informed me.

I had to think for a moment. I didn't know what day it was. I took out my diary to check.

"Oh, good. Today is Saturday," I said. "In that case, can you tell me EXACTLY how to get to the airport? And where I can get a ticket?"

He was helpful and friendly, as everybody was in France. He sold me the ticket, and gave me very exact instructions.

Kuala Lumpur Revisited

Now I am in Kuala Lumpur, with The Man (WITH THE MAN!!!)and feeling miserable and happy in pretty much equal quantities. Whatever this thing is has not gone away, but it is evidently some sort of inflammation because when I take Ibuprofen it goes away, more or less, until the Ibuprofen wears off. I will go to the doctor when I get back to Japan, in four days. The Man is staying on longer, but I have only a week after getting back before I start work. I am not looking forward to working with this thing, so I have to get better.

I am taking it easy.

I love The Man. I love KL. I feel as though I'm home already.

Paris politeness

People persist in being polite and helpful. I went to the PO today, expecting at least a rude look when I explained that I could not speak French, but instead got a very friendly man who did his best with his limited English and was very helpful. He sold me a box to send back to Japan.

I went back to the hotel and filled the box (with all the heaviest things I could find, since the cost of sending was not related to the weight) and took it back to the PO, where a large queue had now formed. I watched the three guys at the counters being polite, helpful and friendly to everybody. The people waiting in line were very patient. Then my turn came, and I got a different guy to the one I got the first time. He looked at me and frowned.

"But, madamoiselle, you did not need to wait!" he told me. "You have paid for the box already. You could take it to my colleague downstairs, where there is not such a long line."

"Oh," I said. "I didn't know. Thank you."

"If you send another parcel, remember to take it downstairs," he said. "You waited too long, and you didn't need to."

He was distressed that I had waited so long. I reassured him that I didn't mind, and he shook his head sadly and smiled. "But you didn't need to wait," he said.

Later I went to a chemist to get some Ibuprofen. The last two days I have had a headache, which this morning had transformed into an almost crippling backache. (This is what inspired the sending of heavy stuff through the mail.) The woman in the shop was wonderfully helpful, and when I asked, also sold me something to rub on my neck, to help with the pain. She was friendly and funny, and when I suggested Tiger Balm she told me they only had Dragon Balm, which was very expensive.

"It's because dragons are expensive," she said. "They're hard to find in France."

How true. I haven't encountered a single dragon.

I bought something cheaper that did not involve tigers or dragons. I hope it works on the plane tomorrow.