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CRACKS ME UP EVERY TIME!

The journey of 2,136 kanji begins with 一。

I’ve memorised chapters 1 to 3 of Remembering the Kanji which is really just going over old ground but you have to start somewhere. Less than 2,100 to go! The system is each kanji is presented with a key word and an unusual. You don’t learn the reading or compounds at all. It’s an exercise simply in learning to recognise or read the kanji in terms of its key word meaning. The rest comes later. The system has its detractors but as I understand it is well regarded, generally speaking, and there are plenty of positive reviews to be found. It’s only early days, again, but let’s see how far I make it. Hey, WAGMI.

Kanji journey

Ok, please don’t roll your eyes but I’ve decided that I want to go back in time and start my Japanese learning journey again, just as if I was sitting at a desk in that Takadanobaba language school all those years ago. So with that in mind I refound the old Kanji Clinic column that used to appear, and baffle me, in the Japan Times when I was a newcomer to Tokyo. My map for this journey will be Remembering the Kanji, a book I bought so many, many years ago, tried to master a couple of times, and then put right back down again. Well, I’m inspired to give it another go in the never say die attitude. And I do it as an expression of love for my old town and all the people that made me so welcome and were so kind to me. I just want to remember those times, as I Remember the Kanji.

The park with the windmill and other happy musings

At the end of m street there is a park with a lake and a windmill. On my day of arrival, that intensely hot July day, I walked from the station to my apartment and noticed that windmill straight away. “What’s it doing there?” I wondered. It was a kooky thing to see in a park in Tokyo, with a digital clock display capturing that whimsical Japanese sense of cuteness with functionality. It looked a bit aged, like something from the eighties or early nineties. “Why put up a windmill?” I wondered again as I trudged along the footpath with my suitcase. It was standing in a lovely park though. Green and full of cherry blossom trees, with old men fishing at the lake. At the far end there’s a rising embankment that conceals the golf course behind it. I’d come to climb that embankment and walk along the footpath to Akabane, two stations away. There was a river too, Sumidagawa, and I used to look and think to myself “so much for Tokyo being a concrete jungle.” I was in a wide open, green space with a broad view of the sky and surrounds. How lucky I was. I loved it. 

I remember the day I moved out of Legend 101. Mitsuki’s dad had one of his truck drivers drive over and pick up all my stuff, not that there was much, and then drive to Todoroki. It was a blue truck, pretty battered, I think with a small crane on the back for picking up rolls of stainless steel. He was a cheerful old bloke, and with Mitsuki we chatted in broken Japanese and English. As I left the apartment I took lots of snaps of every room on my keitai but that disappeared long ago. I never did print those photos from it sadly. I remember taking them, thinking I’ll keep these, but I don’t have them or the phone anymore. I wonder what happened to that phone. I do wish I had more photos of good old Legend 101, my first of two abodes in Tokyo. 

I took a course of beginner Japanese lessons in Takadanobaba. It was a free course for beginners as it was a teacher training college and the teachers were about to graduate and start teaching Japanese for real, so this was the final practice for them. They were so kind, and some pretty nervous. One instructor held his fists to his ears and squeezed really hard to emphasise listening, then flicked his hands open and a paid of big, foam fake ears popped out which was pretty funny. There was another guy I think names Suzuki san who was one of the nervous ones. He motioned to a name badge that they were wearing on their shirts, and underlined it with his finger as he pronounced “Suzuki desu, Su-zu-ki desu,” but the only problem was he wasn’t wearing his name badge. I laughed at that as well but looking back I guess it was just part of his shtick to break the ice. It was cute though. Another time, Suzuki san was getting me to pronounce ringo which is apple, and you kind of roll the R as a soft sound, and to Suzuki san’s ear I obviously wasn’t getting it and he really stuck on it and made me repeat it so many times until I started freaking out a bit wondering whether he was ok! I told that story to Mitsuki and Rita a while ago and they laughed their heads off. It was pretty tense! I just looked up the school and it seems to still be in operation and using the same flyer from all those years ago I reckon!

Here when I want to be there

I had a 40 minute Line video call with Atsu in Kanazawa last night which was good for the soul but heavy on the heart this morning. Naturally, distance gives us rose coloured glasses and no place is perfect, but I cast my mind back to my recent trip as I watch the goings on from afar via Line and I just wish above all that I was back there, living a life different to the one I have chosen for myself and have attempted to forge. I say this with a sense of the utmost selfishness - it was me that drove the charge back to Melbourne all those years ago. It was my wife who gave up life with her family and home town of Tokyo. It was me that created a picture that we’d be better off here rather than there. The reasons that were so clear to me back then I can’t really recall now, but the reality is that I was wrong. 

But I don’t want this blog to be a place of sad musings. I want it to be a celebration. So let me cast off the heavy heart and come back to my cheerful memories and pleasure at good conversation and funny interactions, like last night. It was so good to get a window into EJC again, even though I was actually there not that long ago. Yes, it is like looking through a sliding door but if I zoom out Japan for me will always be open. Never closed, and whatever happens, it will always be my most special place.

I wander the midnight streets of Kanazawa.

Atsu contemplating the library of whiskey.

Nostalgia is a beautiful thing

When I was in Tokyo recently I got a kick, as I always do, out of silly things like going to the local supermarket and seeking out old products that I remember marvelling at or even using back in the day. Below are two very special items that my non-existent readership may recognise from a couple of posts on this very blog from 2005. 

I’m sorry but when I encountered these two little beauties I felt like I had been reunited with two old friends I hadn’t seen in 18 years. Am I insane? I don’t think so, it’s just that I get such a kick out of anything that connects me to this place Japan and reminds me that I was here, living and breathing and treading my path. A different me to now but still me, and I’m so glad that the back then me of me made the effort to explore life and seek adventures. I guess I haven’t changed. The same things that drove me and fascinated me back then are still in me today which is probably why I love exploring and trying new things as soon as I’m back, and why I get so much enjoyment out of the small, everyday, household bits-and-pieces like “Shall We?” short bread and “Creap” creamy powder…I love them, me old mates!

https://tokyorush.blogspot.com/2005/07/yes-we-shall-damn-it.html

https://tokyorush.blogspot.com/2005/05/milk-cream-or-creap.html

Wow, it’s great to be back.

Nothing lasts forever but it is true that some things cannot die. I know where to put this blog out of those two scenarios. What can I say other than here we go again, resurrecting this old relic, posting and thinking and dreaming of Nippon. 

The good news is I’m back a couple of weeks from our first trip back to the land of the rising sun in 3.5 years and it was beyond magnificent! If you want to know, or even need to wonder, why it took us 3.5 years to get back just google “Covid.” 

But don’t bother. Why’s don’t matter. We got back and plugged straight back in. Reconnected massively. It all felt good and fresh and happy. I even had lunch with Old Mate Gav down Uki Funado way. It’s late, I’m posting on the spur of the moment but it feels good. I started this thing in Uki years ago, and here I am back again. Can’t keep an old Blog down. 

Me in an Oden shop in Kanazawa.

Gav out front of a Legend 101 all these years later. Love ya Gav. Missed you Kid Kane. Cheers to history.

My love of bathing in Japan

My first encounter with a Japanese bath was in my very own shared apartment in Legend 101, Ukima Funado. I posted on it back in the day here for those who would like a flash back. I took to that bath like a fish to water. It was the depth that did it for me and the control panel on the wall which allowed one to dial up the heat or give the water level a top up at the touch of a button (I know, taps do that too, but we didn't have control panels for baths where I can from - taps we did have). I'd sit in that bath full of hot, hot water and listen to the radio while drinking beers, thinking about the world and life in Japan. I especially loved that the bathing tradition called for washing thoroughly and then entering the bath in a state of absolute cleanliness for one purpose and one purpose only; to relax. Beautifully done.

As time went on I learned about onsen and visited a couple with a Japanese friend and some of his friends. Stripping off to the bone never really bothered me as it may some people. I simply felt that it was right not to be square and self conscious. Actually the one thing that I was self conscious about, rather than being in the nude, was my tattoos. I never got any grief for them though, luckily. Since then I've been to a good number of onsen of various types with various types, including wife and family, indoor and outdoor. The word for outdoor (or rather open air) bath has such a lovely ring to it; rotenburo.

The next stage of bathing I discovered was sento, communal baths dotted around the suburbs which date way back to when the family home didn't have a bathroom. Sentos are magnificent throw-backs to an almost by-gone era although every time I've been to a sento I've seen plenty of dads bringing their young sons along, no doubt continuing a tradition that started generations ago with their father or grandfather. I enjoyed observing the passing down of such a lovely custom from father to son and I imagine on the other side of the wall the same from mother to daughter. I know some of my own daughter's happiest memories of being back in Tokyo are of visiting an onsen (not sento) with her mum and grandmother. The thrill of it was obvious to me; she felt part of a tribe, deeply connected to an older generation, time and place and particularly Japanese. She'll cherish those memories.

When staying at the family home I'd often get on the train of an evening and head a couple of stations down the line to the one sento I found closest to my house, Tsubameyu. It was old school, not one of those new, highly polished and soulless Super Sentos, but one from back in the day. It had the brown vinyl massage chair, wicker furniture and an old, worn rug in the reception area where you could sit and watch TV with a bottle of fruits milk or a beer and just take in the atmos. It's moments like that when I couldn't help but think, "This is the Japan for me." I went back a couple of visits ago and Tsubameyu was closed for good. Like so many rare and beautiful pleasures in Japan the proprietors simply grew too old to continue and had to retire with no-one to replace them. I still miss it. The loss of that sento was to me the canary in the coal mine. Its closure, so sudden to my mind, imparted an awareness that time is indeed fleeting and it is not only wonderful, old sentos that are vulnerable to the all-too-soon passing of it, but people that we love as well.   

Ukimafunado - Legend 101

My top google searches when I really miss the old days include Ukimafunado and Shinjuku, the first being where I used to live and the later being where I used to work. I google images and reminisce about my old life back there and how unreal it all felt at the time. There was something so natural about being over in Japan teaching English and something at the same time so alien and supernatural about it all. I remember the small details like the green public phone next to the local 7 Eleven which I would use to call home on when I didn't have a mobile, the local supermarket where I would buy my nightly eats and beer, the park with the windmill at the end of my street. The fact that I was there, living in a dreamland, not really sure what to make of it all, or how to really embrace it and make the most of it. I guess there were plenty of days when I felt overwhelmed. That's all natural and normal. I feel the same now but in reverse. Having been back in Melbourne for eight years but at every moment knowing that this is not the place I long to be in I realize that sometimes the best times in your life do pass by without you even realizing. But can you do it all again, years later? I still wonder.

Your room is a little bit stink

Looking around the living room and kitchen I realise it's time to tidy things up, even though I'm currently on holiday. Chips on the floor, laundry hanging out, dishes to be washed. The title of this post popped into my head accordingly, spoken by the girlfriend at the time of a long ago Tokyo flat mate. He had to go over to her house the whole time and she never wanted to come over to our apartment. When he asked why she replied with the all-time classic line; "Because your room is a little bit stink."

I continue my Japanese studies. Years later I still torture myself with low level grammar and the same vocabulary learnt, forgotten then learnt again. It's a real groundhog day. But I've resigned myself to it and will press on regardless of my snail's pace of progress and frustrations. I really do think that JLPT is out of the question. I'm turning into the Australian equivalent of Aki, the ancient Nova student with a transistor radio for a hearing aid, who had completed every lesson in the level 3 "text" book literally thousands of times (each page of his "text" book was slate grey from the blanket of pencil scribble that had accumulated therein over the years). He took great pleasure in shouting out answers, entirely devoid of context, every time the instructor would so much as open their mouth to ask a question.

It's largely nostalgia, part functional necessity. Family and I still get over to the mother country regularly (me once a year or so) and here in Australia most of our friends are Japanese couples who all speak the lingo when they're together, so I've got plenty of reason to want to continue to improve. Back in the day I couldn't speak a word, and I remember dudes in the Nova teacher's room reading a column out of the Japan Times called Kanji Clinic. I would shake my head and marvel at their perseverance, never once thinking that I should also take up the habit of learning the language of my host country.  

I looked up Kanji Clinic online a while back and it really was like time travel, reading those old columns again. The writer was a lovely American lady who had a really gift for imparting the great sense of achievement that comes from getting your head around a foreign language. I've posted the link below for old time's sake. Take a look and enjoy a relic from my earliest days of learning Japanese.

www.kanjiclinic.com

Ah the good old days

I know, I know it's been done to death but I still get a kick every time I see an oddly named Japanese product. These days there are so many things available from Japan that we didn't have in Australia when I first went there. There a lots of Japanese and Asian groceries, and more lately, heaps of ramen shops that have recently started spreading out. The Japan booms continues unabated, and we all know why.

Today's afternoon snack, with no connection to the above comments:

Time Traveller

One moment it's 2006, next it's 2016. And here I am, resurrecting Tokyo Rush. Where do I begin? Well, to be honest there were a few posts that I'd done when I first got back to Melbourne which really didn't fit with the tone of my old TR baby. I used to look at them online and feel that they were completely out of sync but because I was no longer in Japan I had no reason to remove them and they would just sit there like smelly old turds turning white and hard with age. So tonight I removed them. And it felt great. I stripped the blog back to the last post I had done out of a Nova School in Shinjuku. From memory it was called "Ogardo" and I remember it as being one of those new schools that opened at the tail end of the Eikaiwa boom and attracted very few students. There were some, but not many, and I remember sitting in the "staff" room by myself for hours at a time just thinking how damn cruisey the life was.

Anyway, the point of tonight is that I have re-found my blog, removed the stuff that was out of place and boring, and embarked upon a new stage. I hope that those who experienced Japan, left, then realised they could never leave, will find something here that appeals. That's what's driving me. Peace.

Japanese bureaucracy...exposed!

Here are two humble little pictures which succinctly capture the true spirit of hear no evil see no evil. Enjoy!

So far so good. PET bottles on the left, cans on the right. Easy.




















But HOLD ON! What's this deceit I see before me? Shame, shame, shame!




















Now I've exposed the truth of the matter to the world, I'm off to enjoy my Laphroaig single malt, with a few episodes of The Office.

Back despite lack of popular demand...

Having successfully connected the old work horse to the interneto, I've taken it upon myself to resurect the old blog. It's good to be back. Wedding plans are coming along swimmingly and before too long, the real countdown begins. About a month and a half to go. Before that particular big day, however, another looms...my next finance exam. Yes, I'm still at it. Wish me luck. Oh, with a heavy heart I moved out of Legend Ukima last February. It was not terribly sad to say goodbye but for a first home in Japan, it made a good one.

Mickey and friends...

Consider this blog pitied...

You may be interested to know a certain picture caught my eye as I was strolling through the new release section of my local Tsutaya Video Library. A picture of a certain team. A certain A-Team, that is! Given the spate of Mr T/Chuck Norris emails circulating at present, I wanted to prove how 'in the loop' I am by posting a shot of that infamous gang of outlaws on my you-know-what. After all, someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will...















Wow. Brings back memories, don't it? I remember I had the whole A-Team bendable figurine set, with their little guns and army uniforms, and Face had removeable pants. What was really kick-ass though was their black van, which had a totally functional sliding door. It even opened to reveal the figurine of a bound and gaged high school girl wedged under the back seat. I never made the connection back then, but now I guess she had something to do with why they were being hounded by the Law.

For something really shocking and awesome, GUESS WHAT! After taking this photo, I finally put two-and-two together. Hannibal didn't go to the stockade or die, or anything like that. He got a job teaching English in Japan, and as luck would have it, ended up right alongside your's truely. Check him out...




















Nah, only kidding. It's not Hannibal. It's Adam. Wish it were Hannibal though...

An update for Andy...

Proving myself, once again, to be a great and loyal friend I have gladly accepted Andy's request to add more pics to this here Blog. "Who's Andy?" you ask. If his dreams or yore have been realised he's the man who may one day be firing a RPG or automatic assault rifle into your face, or lobbing a grenade through your window, or placing a black hesian bag over your head and applying live wires from a car battery to your neck. That's why I'm more than happy to accomodate his desire to see a few pictures of the place he once called work, and the city he once called home. Missing you, you old scallywag!

Here's a lad you should remember...decidedly Irish as usual. Irish Joe hits the gym as equally hard as he hits the books and I reckon his head could take a punch or two.




















Dick Richards was having a good day until the homeless man called, demanding the return of his knit.







































And Larry thinks it's funny. Shame Larry, shame. Whatever you do, "Don't turn around". You know what I'm saying...




















One big bunch of losers. Notice I'm not in it? The girl sitting down was new this day. She quit the very same afternoon. Can't says I blames 'er.















The tatemono below sits diagonally across from our building, while the tatemono below that is our building! Freaky.







































So to those of you who do not know Andy, and have no interest in him or his lifestyle of violence and mayhem I apologise, and thank thee all for suffering the indignity of not being addressed personal like, like Andy just was, as above, now. Thankyou. You are all, dear readers, dear.

Snowed...

Saturday last week. It snowed like a bastard in Tokyo today. As Victoria burns, I slip and slide around the place in my damp, inappropriate footwear. While standing at the local eki (train station), I noticed this sign and thought, "If only those crazy Victorians would take heed."















...indeed.

The snow let up by Saturday night. It was only a day's dumping, but it made for both a miserable and pretty interesting sight. Anyway, it's not like we've never seen snow before, but compare this shot of Shinjuku to that of a summer's day in the July archive.















Bring back summer. That's all I'm sayin'.




















This is not me. He's far too well prepared, as he trecks through the park at the end of my street.

What shall we do with a drunken sailor...

Billions of blue blistering barnacles! Someone's going to feel crappy tomorrow. Now and again my train terminates at Akabane station so I have to wait for one that continues on down the line to trusty Ukima Funado. While I wait, I like to capture the mood with a few snaps of the local town folk.




















Now don't go getting all angry at the station master for his apparent disregard for the alcohol saturated squater. I stand witness to the station master's attempts to revive the drunken bastard, only to be rewarding with cusses, insults and a even dash of man-handling, allbeit from an indolent, seated position. Well I say the pox on him. I hope he misses his last train...




















Oh yeah! Better bed down for the night old son!

Earthquakes, earthquakes everywhere...

I don't really know what to make of this earthquake business. To be sure, it is unsettling. Take this morning for example. I was sitting on my blue couch, catching up on the morning's headlines in Aus, when I thought I'd had a sudden dizzy spell. I wasn't drinking coffee and I don't smoke so as I regained my sensibilities I turned my attention to the door standing ajar. Sure enough, it was gently swinging on its hinges, back-and-forth, while my shirts on their hangers rocked from side-to-side like a school of cotton jelly fish floating through my bedroom! Weird. But that's exactly what earthquakes are. Weird with a capital W. I got up and pulled on some pants (I was fresh out of the shower) and strode into the living room then back into my bedroom then outside then back inside again and so on, until before I could walk in any more circles it had subsided. That's the thing. It's impossible to know what to do. It's as great a sense of apprehension as I've ever felt.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the meaty one that caused all the train delays in Shinjuku. In that case, real fear invaded my mind but panic did not. My heart pounded, adrenaline pumped through me and a nervousness sounded clear as a bell in my voice. I didn't panic but I don't know how much longer I would have held out, had that particular quake continued. But, imagining I had well and truly freaked, what would I have done? Flown down the stairs and out onto the street, surrounded by department stores and multi-story office blocks? Refuge? Hardly. So it seems, as with most misfortunes in life, it all comes down to sheer luck (or lack there of). You're either lying in an open field with nothing but blue sky above you when the big one hits or you're stuck in a crowded subway train. As the Japanese say, shoganai. It can't be helped. As for me, I just hope I've got my pants on.

Supermarket fodder...

The summer fruit in Japan is really great, but it comes at a pretty high price. Watermelon is usually my favorite, but peaches are fast closing in on first place. I like them because they're so easy to peel. The nectarines always look choice, but the ones in my local supermarket were about $5 each so I didn't partake. I saw some beautiful grapes yesterday, but as tempting as they were, $100 for a bunch was a little to rich for my blood. Understandable, ne?




















Like little pigs wedged in buckets with their tails cut off.




















"Dyn-o-mite!" Who used to say that? Nice watermelon anyway.




















A very popular desert type snack in Japan is "Dango." For some reason the name really gets to me. Can't quite put my finger on it, but not to worry, for it is a tasty morsel. Made from sticky pounded rice balls on a skewer and covered in a thick, sweet soy sauce it's naturally very edible.

What better place to enjoy these summer delights than in the world's most depressing play ground. This is located near Mitten's house and although I waited for a child to come along and stand here crying, none were forthcoming. With playgrounds like these, no wonder the kids stay inside all their lives. The entire arrangement consists of a worn fiber glass lion, a concrete log with two nubs which appear to be ears (one visible on its left end), and something that resembles a disused long-jump pit with no sand in it. What's the deal?















Beware of fun.