Hogmanay Hootenanny

I have a taste for (admittedly very low level) video editing now.

These are the highlights from last New Year’s in Edinburgh.

I had uploaded this to Facebook, but they just pulled it down as I am apparently a copyright infringer. I’m sure Mr. Bowie wouldn’t mind though.

Shuffling Along

On a recent trip to Okinawa it was discovered during the course of an epic game of Rummy, that one member of our party could not shuffle a deck of cards to save her life. This is her journey towards learning how.

Poetry about boozing.

Below is a poem I wrote a little while ago to commemorate an epic (and fairly stupid) drinking session undertaken with some friends. Not very relevant or interesting unless you know those involved, but there it is.

Things About Me

That upstanding gent, Deas, over at Rocking in Hakata was kind enough to tag me in this meme thing, and as I’m only too happy to catch a little bit of the resulting sparkle from his astounding traffic numbers, I thought at the very least I should attempt to fulfill the meme requirements.

“Come, old broomstick, you are needed”

This summer, the roster of schools I teach at changed. I now have a different junior high school as my base school and four new primary schools which I visit on rotation every Monday and Friday afternoons.

One of these primary schools, Tataki, has a grand total of five students and four permanent members of staff. However, this is no two-roomed shed, tucked away in the boonies. It’s a full sized school, with multiple classrooms, a playing field and a gym. If I were to hazard a guess I would say it could probably accommodate about a hundred students if it had to, perhaps more. The part of town it’s located in is relatively out of the way, but not excessively so. The residents of the area, it would seem, simply have better things to do than procreate. If my insight into Japanese society is as good as I think it is, then it’s pachinko.

Extreme Tea Ceremony

I’d never broken a bone in my body until a few weeks ago (I’d broken a bone in somebody else’s body, but that’s another story). Whether that is down to strong bones of a general aversion to bone-crunching activities, I’m not sure, but I would tend to lean towards the latter.

My unblemished record has now been wiped out, and in the most pathetically listless and humiliating circumstances possible. I would love to say I damaged my skeleton while putting my body on the line saving a cat from a tree or dragging an entire family from a burning building. I’d even settle for a run-of-the-mill pratfall or an innocuous sporting injury. Alas, despite my propensity for tripping over my own feet and the vigorous way in which I approach a game of table tennis, that was not to be. The culprit, in this case, was the traditional Japanese art of sadō, or tea ceremony.

Reading time – The Lawless Roads

In light of my desperately inadequate ability to update this blog with anything approaching regularity, I thought I would branch out and attempt to use it for other purposes in an effort to encourage myself to be somewhat more productive.

So I’ve decided to use this space to document the books I’ve been reading; more specifically, to provide book reviews of a sort. I’m ashamed to say, that in the first three or four months in Japan, my reading rate dropped to negligible levels, and while it is currently somewhat more sustainable, these reviews will hopefully have the added benefit of encouraging me to do more of it. Looking ahead to the summer weeks with nothing much else to do at a student-less school, I can foresee the devouring of plenty more reading material anyway.

“Travel is only glamorous in retrospect” – Part the First

Sneak out of school early. Spend five minutes searching for bike; curse students for having moved it. Eventually remember it has a puncture and was left at home. Forced to walk. Arrive home with the intention of packing. Get distracted by recently acquired pop-up Star Wars book. Feel inspired. Watch Star Wars DVD. Go to dinner, get home, realise I have to leave for the ferry port in an hour. Put remainder of Star Wars DVD on in background, check email, browse Facebook, change light bulb, read magazine, start packing. Frantically cram clothes, toothbrush, etc., into suitcase. Run out the door, leaving apartment in a calamitous state: remaining contents of wardrobe spread over bed, sink full of dishes, half eaten apple sitting on laptop.

Spend reasonably comfortable night on ferry. Happily avoid repeat of events of last night-ferry trip, namely waking up at 3am confused and disorientated by enclosed and cramped conditions of bunk, and hyperventilating due to sense of having been buried alive. Informed by travelling companion excessively averse to snoring, that I have passed first night’s test . Moderately auspicious start to trip.

The floodgates open

Stereotypes are a nasty business. Potentially very offensive, not to mention hugely limiting, when we do revert to using them it is usually as a result of sheer laziness more than anything else. This type of shorthand is particularly tempting in Japan, where stereotypes allow us to pretend we have at least a basic level of comprehension of a society and culture that is seemingly so alien from our own.

While many stereotypes are quickly revealed for the nonsense they are upon arrival here, others are perhaps shown to have at least a small element of truth to them, while, regrettably, yet more new ones tend to develop in our minds. (Much as I have resisted it, I am gradually, and largely unconsciously, coming round to the theory that Japanese people can’t whistle properly. More on this no doubt casually racist topic at a later date).

Shameless self-promotion

If a man can’t use his own blog to promote himself, then really, what good is it in the first place? I have written a piece for a travel writing competition, and while I’m not actually sure that it strictly counts as travel writing (being the story of something that happened to me which could have happened anywhere but happened to happen abroad. Happened.), those in charge of such things have seen fit to put it up on their website.