Big Sound Temple

Ah, so that's how you do it... Though will have to wait a couple more years before I'm able to introduce my dear daughter to this 'educational' video -

 One novel currently zipping up the bestseller charts is the excellent Luxury by Jessica Ruston. It's clearly aimed at the female side of the market - though is certainly not 'chick-lit' - and bears all the hallmarks of a bona fide blockbuster.

Just check out the publisher's description:

Sexy, smart New Yorker Logan Barnes knew how to take what he wanted to get where he wanted to be. But you can’t win the girl, make the money and live the high life without picking up enemies along the way...

There’s only one enemy who matters, and that’s the friend Logan betrayed years ago – Nicolo Flores. He got mad, but better still he got even, waitingin the wings to pull the plug on Logan and see his fortunes come crashing down.

Now Logan’s back, in London with a perfect wife, perfect family, and the perfect jewel to crown his rebuilt hotel empire: a stunning island getaway for the truly über-rich.Nicolo’s crazy to find a way to crush him again – but with gambling,addiction, sex and scandal all knocking on the Barnes’ family door, maybe they’ll destroy themselves before he even has a chance to...

Rather intriguing, eh?

I'm a few chapters in, but what with work, a 9-month-old baby etc somewhat eating into my reading time, I'm very tempted to save the rest for a forthcoming holiday. So far it's turning out to be that rare beast, containing as it does a rollicking good plot twinned with the sort of writing that rather reminded me - in more than several places - of John Steinbeck. Give me a tight plot over good writing any day (which is why books like White Teeth fall rather flat with me), but if I can get both together, which I find doesn't occur all that often, then even better.

Rumour has it that Jess has got another novel in the pipeline. I think we'll be hearing rather a lot about her in the very near future. 

'But how does the food stay fresh?' a certain gaijin is alleged to have asked, upon observing the type of display as featured above in a restaurant shop window.

This particular restaurant - a short waddle from the temple - does a mean fried ebi (shrimp) and tonkatsu (pork cutlet). 

Queen Min's purported assassins pose for a photo.

Exactly 114 years ago, early in the morning, a large number of sword-wielding Japanese troops burst into Gyeongbok Palace, in northern Seoul, Korea. They were seeking to assassinate the 43-year-old Empress Myeongseong (also known as Queen Min), who’d recommended greater links between her country and Russia, whilst at the same time advocating a distancing in relations between Korea and Japan. The Japanese assassins in fact slew three women before confirming that one of them was their actual target; they then burnt Myeongseong’s body in a nearby pine forest.

The killers escaped to Japan, where only after immense foreign pressure were they put on trial for murder. A total of fifty-six men – including Miura Goro, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army – were however found not guilty by a Hiroshima court, due to what was termed a ‘lack of evidence’. There remains to this day a strong suspicion that the Japanese government had a direct role in the death of Myeongseong; and as recently as 2005, two descendants of the Japanese assassins flew out to Korea, to express their regret for the actions of their ancestors.   

馬鹿

This is probably not the worst insult you'll ever hear (though it might just be the oddest). However, 'horse-deer' is how the kanji components of the common Japanese word baka (above, and almost always interpreted as 'fool') can be literally translated.

I've always presumed being called a 'horse-deer' was actually something really terrible in ancient Japan or China, just as being called 'nasty' was in Shakespearean times. (Honestly - it was about the worst insult you could give.) But, my dear Japanese wife informs me, it actually means someone who is so dim they 'point at a deer and call it a horse' (or, presumably, vice-versa).

As a footnote, 'Baka' was the nickname the Americans gave these flying bombs...

...towards the end of the Second World War. (The Japanese called them Ohka, or 'Cherry Blossom'.) 

You must be able to label (in kanji) all 8 sections of a common-or-garden koi in order to pass the Japanese citizenship test.

This has been making me laugh. It appears to be just the one page, and I know nothing about the author, but a book of this stuff should really be published, if only to put the noses of 'snotty gaijins' firmly out of joint. (If you've spent any time in Japan, you'll know the sort of people I mean. And if you are one of those people, please stop wearing a kimono and geta to every event possible. To be honest, you look less Japanese than you do a total ume ['plum']. Jeans and T-shirt is just fine )

In fact, if you're going to Japan for the first time, it will probably be of more use in educating you about customs etc than many 'proper' guidebooks. (With the exception of mine, of course.) Still, I don't know if it's quite true about koi never photographing well. I was quite pleased with a couple of snaps I took. 

The writing top-right down says 'Best!'

The 'Empress of J-Pop', Ayumi Hamasaki, is 31 today. Ayumi – or just plain old ‘Ayu’ to her legion of fans – moved from Fukuoka to Tokyo whilst still in her early teens to pursue her singing, acting and modelling careers.

Her albums went on to sell millions, with Hamasaki’s 2008 single – the uniquely-entitled Mirrorcle World – making the J-pop starlet the first and, indeed, so far only Japanese female artist to have had a number-one single every year for a decade.

There has been a price to pay for all this achievement, however: in January 2008, Hamasaki revealed that frequent performing had caused her to develop severe tinnitus in her left ear. She continues to be featured on billboards, in magazine advertisements and television commercials, advertising everything from canned coffee to mobile phones.

Here's Ayu strutting her proverbial at a recent live performance. Enjoy:

Almost three years ago to the day, whilst living in sunny Nagasaki City, I began writing the book which would become A Gaijin's Guide to Japan. (Only it then had the working title 'The Cat's Nipples - and Other Things You Should Know About Japan'; a title which several people were kind enough to inform me was a bit crap.)

I thought there was a bit of a gap in the market for a book which took a slightly 'humorous' look at all things Japanese, but at the same time didn't just end up basically taking the piss out of a different culture. (I'll mention no names here.)

Well, to cut a long story short, it got published, along with my look at famous martial artists in From Lee to Li. And yesterday, I received my first royalty cheque. I really now can call myself an author. I'd already been advised by my publisher that I wouldn't be able to retire on the proceeds, but that it would 'pay for a few beers'. Well, the publisher was right about the retiring bit - not bloomin' likely, unfortunately - but it was still a little bit more than I'd allowed myself to expect. Would pay for quite a lot of beer, actually, even at SW London pub prices. So, time for a celebratory drink, perhaps...

What's the correct, collective noun for the above? A 'gaggle' of schoolgirls? Just had to take this picture, cause usually hogging the massaging electric chairs are a bunch of middle-aged women with their hair dyed that strange shade of purple.

Wife and baby were with me when I asked the girls if I could take their pic, so hopefully I didn't come across as being too much of a gaijin chikan ('foreign pervert'). I mean, gaijin are customarily viewed as being slightly suspect by many Japanese, regardless of how politely this is concealed, but still I suspect that there are limits.

Ah, what blessed machines. To be found dotted along many a Japanese road, entirely free from the threat of vandalism. The mark of a truly civilised nation. The contents within cost about the same as they do at any one of Japan's eight billion, 24-hour convenience stores. If you're lucky, some machines even serve up a case of beer.

Interestingly, although cigarette machines now demand that a card which proves that the buyer is twenty or over be flashed in front of an electronic 'eye' before the fags can be dispensed, it seems as though anyone can buy booze. I mean, tough luck if you're fifteen and the cops catch you making a purchase - oh boy, are you in deep doodah - but otherwise, nice one. For some reason, underage drinkers frequently consume their intoxicating purchases in temple graveyards. They also tend to smoke, though obviously have to rely on someone supplying them with their 'tabs'.

When Scott Pack of the Friday Project (my publisher) offered, on his blog, signed copies of Stewart Copeland's Strange Things Happen: A Life With The Police, Polo and Pygmies to the first five people to reply, I quickly made sure that I was one of them. I've been a fan of The Police for a long time, and was - I may as well be honest here - looking forward to discovering more about the legendary fights (both verbal and physical) that Sting and Copeland (the drummer, in case you were unaware) used to have.

Well, as the 57-year-old Copeland is quick to point out, The Police only occupied eight years of his life. (Not including the reformation tour of recent years.) And in any case, this is a man with a seriously wide range of interests, who does not seem to like sitting still for anything longer than about two seconds. Which makes for pretty interesting reading, especially when the narrator also comes across as being easy-going, intelligent, and generally a pretty likeable bloke. From growing up as a child in Lebanon, hobnobbing on occasion with Kim Philby's son (only later would Copeland discover that his own father was in fact a secret CIA agent) to making movies with pygmies in a remote rainforest, precious little of Copeland's life has been humdrum. 

So he rather briefly recounts his rise to fame in The Police, having previously tasted chart success (appearing on Top of the Pops) under the guise of 'Klark Kent'. He makes no secret of the fact that he was driven to become famous, at one stage posting letters written by himself, but signed off with different names, to various music magazines and newspapers, all of them demanding to know more about the excellent, up-and-coming drummer (i.e. himself) that the 'person writing' has just seen.

The book hops between points in Copeland's life; a page can suddenly leap twenty years forward, or back. The reader learns about Copeland's fruitful, post-Police career as a film-score composer, and of the 'fun' band he formed with Gene Simmons ('...he with the long tongue...' from KISS) and several other famous rockers, because their kids attended the same high school.

The final part of the book primarily focuses on The Police's 2007/2008 reunion tour. Copeland makes no bones of the fact that he frequently finds Sting hard to deal with '...You fucking - Fucking - Fuckkkkinnng bastard...', is how Copeland delicately describes 'Stingo' at one point, after the person otherwise known as Gordon Sumner attempts to tell his sticksmith exactly how he should be playing the drums.

But, as is so often the case, all of this creative friction and drama only strengthens The Police's performance on stage. The book ends with Copeland's mild disatisfaction with the 'golden cage' lifestyle that a successful rock band is obliged to lead, and his desire to return to his opera-composing, polo-playing and many-other-things-besides life of before. If, on the final page, he'd written about how he was jetting off to Egypt to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx, it wouldn't have come as a surprise.

All in all a great book, and one which I read quickly and with great pleasure. Most recommended.

She's become something of a Youtube sensation. A young, attractive American woman who lives in Japan and speaks the language perfectly. 'Emily Applemilk1988' - for such is her Youtube username - makes her living doing a number of different things, such as posing in her underwear for Japanese men's magazines. (See above, if by any chance you hadn't noticed already.) This has made her what is known as a gravure idol.

Emily posts various videos, some based around her 'pretty intense' (as she describes it) Japanese lessons. Another video, however, has her bemoaning (in Japanese) the fact that her increasing fame has led to something of a 'net-based hate campaign. And it's true that a certain 'Wikipedia' imitation site - which doesn't deal in anything remotely factual - has superimposed her face onto a number of pornographic photos.

Others got a bit miffed when she humbly requested that her 'dai (big) fans' send her whatever money they could - typically ten dollars - so she could afford to attend university in Japan. (Obviously sitting around in your pants all day being photographed doesn't pay so good.) However, she then allegedly went out and blew her accumulated windfall on renting a fancy apartment, clothes etc.

Me, I don't mind her. And not just cause she's an attractive woman who frequently doesn't wear very much. (But it helps, y'know.) And not because I've never sent her any money, either. Her videos help my Japanese - she even sticks in subtitles for the more advanced ones, which is kind of where I am in my learning - and, whilst sometimes appearing just a little bit freaky, she certainly has that all important quality: charisma. But don't take my word for it, minna-san, judge for yourselves...

My brother made the following video for a song we recorded called On Any Other Day. Brought a wee smile to my face, anyway -

The instrument that is perhaps most synonymous with Japan allegedly made its way over from China some time during the 16th century. It soon became the instrument of choice for everyone from samurai to geisha. In fact, there's even a print of an akaoni or red demon having a plaintive pluck, whilst at the same time apparently working his way through a flask of sake -

The first shamisen were commonly covered with the skin of a snake. Although dog and cat skin were also used (the average-sized mutt could cover two shamisen) - and on the finest shamisen (a shamisen-playing geisha who performed at my wedding informed me) it was usual to see the cat's nipples. Which must surely form the counterpart to the English expression, 'That's the dog's...'

Anyway, in recent years, the popularity of the shamisen within Japan (at least amongst the young) had waned slightly in the face of rock, metal, rap etc. The same was true of enka, until Jero came along to save the day. A number of players have since served to make the shamisen seem 'cool' again, but probably the best known are the Yoshida Brothers, who fuse the sound of the shamisen with electric guitars, drumkits etc.

Here's a performance of their song Rising, which in places sounds a little to me like Jimmy Hendrix's Freedom. Turn everything to ten etc...

I've often considered that Japanese myoji, or surnames, are pretty cool. Say, for example, that Mr Takeyama meets Mr Obayashi.

'Hajimimashite ('How do you do?),' says Mr Takeyama. 'I am Bamboo-mountain.'

'How do you do?' returns Mr Obayashi. 'I'm Big Forest.'

My wife and her family fail to understand my fascination with Japanese names. Which is understandable, given that they've grown up all their lives used to hearing them, and fail to understand the interest they impart to Western ears. Or maybe just my own, because there are plenty of gaijin I've spoken to about this who also stare at me blankly. And yet, on a day-to-day basis, I meet more Fukamachi ('Deep-town'), Takayama ('High-mountain'), Furuta ('Old-field') and Yamaguchi ('The-mouth-of-the-mountain' - and a famous Yakuza gumi or 'gang' name) sans than you can shake a stick at.

'So what does your name mean?' some Japanese have asked me. Ignoring that my full first name is Benedict, I can say that 'Ben' is 'mountain ' in Celtic, and, perhaps slightly less impressively, that 'Stevens' was 'blanket' in whatever language the Vikings spoke. (I once read this in a 'trace-your-surname' type book.)

Other countries - I'm thinking particularly China and within Africa - no doubt have names that also sound pretty funky when translated into English. In my martial arts' book From Lee to Li, I write of one Chinese kung fu wizard whose name apparently translated as 'First-step-crushing-fist-strikes-everywhere-under-heaven'. Although, somewhat more prosaically, he was also known as 'Smarter-than-an-active-monkey'. (A compliment?)

In any case, just a few weeks back, I was at the Crazy Horse rock bar in Nagasaki and due to play a few numbers with Kambara-san, a drummer to whom I'd just been introduced. I'd not heard him play, but as soon as I instinctively translated his name as 'God-field' I knew he'd be good. And so he was.

Oh, and as for the title of this entry - in Japanese it's 'Yamashita'.

Recently, at around 2 am on a Saturday morning, my friend Alan was walking home from the Crazy Horse rock bar. (Close to Nagasaki train station, and well worth a visit should you ever get the opportunity.) From out of nowhere two policemen suddenly appeared, and only allowed Alan to continue on his way once he'd shown them his charmingly entitled 'Alien Registration Card', which is something all gaijin resident in Japan must carry about with them at all times on pain of death. Or at the very least a severe warning down at the local cop shop.

I've only had dealings with the keisatsu twice during all the time I've spent in Japan. The first occasion was when I was witness to a fight two young yakuza-types had outside a Nagasaki McDonalds. Not that I've any desire to watch two people smash each other to pieces, but still I have to say that it wasn't a very good fight - in fact, it resembled nothing so much as a game of pat-a-cake. In any case the police were quickly on the scene to break it up. Then, ignoring the several Japanese witnesses who were standing around, one cop came up to me and asked (in English)

'Did you see anything?'

'Er, yeah...' I replied, feeling a little nonplussed. 'A fight...'

My second dealing with the Japanese police came around the start of this year. It was a dark and stormy night (sounds like the classic opening line to a shite novel, but in this case the weather genuinely was vile), and I had my head down and my hands in my jacket pockets as I made my way down a dark side-street. Suddenly what I thought was a taxi came to a halt beside me. I waved the vehicle away, indicating that I didn't need a ride, when at once a policeman appeared and began patting me down. His friend stood a slight distance away, hand hovering ominously around his weapons' belt.

'Have you got a knife?' demanded the first policeman (in Japanese.)

'No,' I replied. 'Just a small revolver stuffed down my pants.'

Course, I never said that at all. Doesn't pay to be lippy to Japanese coppers, in my humble opinion. They wield a lot of power, and can make a poor gaijin's life very uncomfortable. I just declared that I was entirely knife-free, as indeed is usually the case, let myself get patted down, and during our short conversation revealed the fact that I had a Japanese wife (which would either impress or piss them off, depending on their personal viewpoint concerning East-meets-West lovin').

They let me proceed on my way after a few minutes, and later, when I told my (all Japanese) judo friends about what had happened , they muttered something about how some anonymous gaijin had apparently waved a knife around a few days back. So far as I am aware, however, this never happened. Put baldly, the story was in fact a lie, albeit one told with the best of intentions; to try to disguise from me the fact that I'd been singled-out for a police 'shakedown' purely because I'm gaijin. This, I think, embarrassed the judo bunch. But while a little brusque, the policemen weren't exactly rude or aggressive, and, hell, it gave me something to write about in this blog. As Alan - who's lived in Japan 25 years now - does, it's probably best just to accept the odd police stop-'n'-search as something of an occupational hazard. Other gaijin might complain about how appallingly racist it is, and they do have a point, but, well, sho ga nai, ne ('what can you do?').

Apart from staying overnight at a hotel in order to get a flight the following morning, or to change planes at Narita or Haneda, I've only 'properly' been to Tokyo - you know, seeing the sights and everything else - once. It was a three day trip with the wife, and along with the obligatory temples and all the rest of it we visited a number of her old university friends who were living in incredibly 'compact' apartments with (typically) their husband and young child.

But what I remember most about Tokyo is the sheer mass of humanity. It may sound an obvious thing to say, but the city is just stupidly rammed full of people. At one stage, struggling against a crowd of commuters who were surging one way along the sidewalk, I genuinely feared that I might fall under their marching feet and thus be trampled to death. And I remember literally hundreds of people massing at road crossings, waiting for the green man. A memory that was refreshed when I came across the following Youtube clip: