Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Went to the library today - Minato Ward here in Tokyo has an excellent library system especially where foreigners are concerned with a great selection of books that rivals even that of the Tsukuba Library. I used to have a card when I was living in Tokyo before, but that got lost somewhere in all the moving, and they were very friendly and helpful and I soon got a replacement.

I found the book Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara that upstairsforthinking mentioned commenting on a previous post. He said that it was good but didn’t quite measure up to the two Murakamis. He sure hit the kugi on the head with that one.

Weighing in at 120 pages, and at that not very dense pages, Snakes and Earrings is a pretty light book - I polished it off in a bit over an hour. A lot of Japanese books seem to be about that length, ideal as they are at that length for printing in pocket size and reading on the train to work.

The story is dark and debauched, more like Ryu Murakami than Haruki, which I think is the main reason it picked up Japan’s main literary prize - The Akutagawa Prize in 2004. Revolving around three characters - Lui (not named after Louis the Fourteenth, but rather Louis Vuitton), her boyfriend Ama and the tattoo artist and body piercer Shiba.

It is very much a novella of the surface, life lived at the surface, young people trying to find meaning in a society that takes everything at face value, where appearances are everything. And it is amazing how little they end up knowing each other (not wanting to give the plot away), how they don’t even know each others real names, nor even what they do during the day.

Nicely paced, and giving I think an insightful look at the world of Japan’s transient youth world of the freeta, I think Snakes and Earrings is well worth a read. But get it from your library. It isn’t worth reading twice.

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Sometimes concurrences occur in the most unlikely of places. I have just finished reading a couple of books - The Bookseller of Kabul by Norwegian journalist Anse Sierstad and The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi - both of which strangely echoed each other. A novel written in Japan’s Showa period and set around the Meiji era by a Japanese novelist and a piece of ficto-journalism detailing life in current day Afghanistan? Strange as it seems both these books deal with similar themes and highlight interesting similarities despite there great differences.

Fumiko Enchi’s The Waiting Years details the interplay within a powerful upper-class family during the period in Japan’s history when the country was beginning to Westernize. The novel revolves mainly around the character of Tomo who is the wife of powerful bureaucrat Shirakawa. Shirakawa himself is the scion of a minor Samurai family and embodies a set of values which, even at that juncture in time bordered on the anachronistic.

The Waiting Years derives its strength as a novel from the interplay between Tomo and Shirakawa and, as the story develops the relationship between those two as well as that between the other two women Suga and Yumi who become Shirakawa’s lovers. This leaves his first wife Tomo in more the position of a household manager. This is a tragic and at times touching look at life in Japan, as well as sexual relationships during this period.

On the other hand, The Bookseller of Kabul is set in post-Taliban Afghanistan and describes in fascinating detail the family of Sultan Khan, a bookseller from Kabul (as the title would suggest) as he and his family struggle alongside the country of Afghanistan as it tries to find its’ feet again following the destruction caused by first the Soviet invasion, then the Taliban’s ultra-conservative attack on people’s freedoms and after that the ongoing fighting involving the American-led attempts at securing peace, cloyingly known as Operation Enduring Freedom.

A large part of The Bookseller of Kabul looks at the relationships within the Sultan household. The journalist who wrote the book, being a woman, was able to enter both the male and female sides of this Muslim household and as a result was able to bring to the world a balanced view of life in Kabul that would have been impossible for a male journalist to enter.

Sultan, head of the household, early in The Bookseller of Kabul decides his first wife is getting a bit past it and that he wants to take a second, and much younger wife, and it is this point that really brings the two books together. Despite their differing nationalities, religions and the different periods they are found inhabiting, Sultan and Shirakawa share surprisingly similar attitudes to both life and women. Their elevated social positions allow them certain “freedoms” within their societies even if these “freedoms” are frowned upon by segments of their societies and certainly in most of the Western world.

Both books offer insightful windows into parts of the world impossible to visit (at least in the case of The Waiting Years) or bordering on the insane (in the case of present-day Afghanistan). Read together they provide an interesting comparison of what it is to be human, and to remind us that despite differences in religion, nationality and even temporal location there are similarities both positive and negative within that experience.

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I was very glad to get a copy of Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip earlier this week. I mentioned Mr. Pip briefly in an earlier post, and with the awards ceremony for The Man Booker Prize just around the corner I thought it might be nice to give Mr. Pip the once-over.

The Man Booker Prize is the world’s leading book award and has been won previously by a New Zealander with South Island author Keri Hulme picking up the prize in 1985 for her classic novel The Bone People. Unlike the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Man Booker Prize focuses on choosing the greatest novel of the year, so if Mr. Jones were to pick it up for Mr. Pip it would be an honour indeed.

Mr. Pip is a delightful read. It is a story told through the world of Matilda, a child growing up on the Papua New Guinean Island of Bouganville. Named by the Australians who controlled the extremely valuable and productive copper mines on the islands, Matilda’s story brings us right down to earth at the very juncture between many different memes. During the period the story is set in - the 1990’s - the island was blockaded by the Papua New Guinea government as the island was rollicked by war.

Themes of innocence versus power, the effects of industry on an island people, intelligence versus christianity drive this book in a delicate and informed way that both intrigues and stimulates the mind. It would be easy given the themes that this book deals with to drop into glibbly patronizing the characters but Lloyd deals with the themes in an elegant manner that inspires the reader.

Those of you familiar with English dinosaurs may recognize the character from the title - Mr. Pip - as being drawn from Dickens’ Great Expectations. Mr Pip as a novel works in layers and the Dickensian Mr. Pip is several of these. On the island there is only one white man - a certain Mr. Watts who ends up teaching the children. Untrained as a teacher he teaches in a ‘novel’ way - by reading Mr. Pip to the kids. But in a sense he also becomes Mr. Pip. I really enjoyed the way this layering creates a sort of palimpsest enticing the reader to dig between the layers to create their own meanings and interpretations.

This book conjures up images of author such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being’s Milan Kundera. It does, very slightly miss the lightness that makes A Hundred Years of Solitude such a magnificent read. I think Jones is on the verge of greatness - perhaps just one novel away from creating his own masterpiece.

For a rating I will give it nine carriages of drunken salary-men on the Yamanote line out of ten.

There is a nice review from Australia’s The Age here (thats where I got the photo) and if you want to pick up a copy from Amazon then click here.

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One of the big changes in New Zealand over the last twenty or thirty years has been the increasing diversity in restaurants and eating and drinking choices in general. I remember interviewing Mike Moore (this guy, not this Mike Moore) when I was living in Wellington and hearing how when he first moved to Wellington as a young politician, Wellington had a grand total of two restaurants that served wine.

Today in New Zealand there is a huge variety of food as well as wine and alcohol available, and indeed some of the worlds greatest wines are produced in the land of the long white cloud. Immigration has played a large part in this, as have the significant number of refugees that New Zealand opens its’ doors to. So from the standard Italian and Indian fare to Malaysian and Somali restaurants, through to my favourite - Lebanese - New Zealand offers some great gastronomic experiences. I heard a news report recently that Maori cooking is undergoing a resurgence - a delight I am yet to explore.

Lebanese food has always been a favourite - and I must admit to being a died in the wool, one-eyed humus and felafel fan. So when I read about the existance of an Iranian restaurant in the Tsukuba / Tsuchiura area I was over the moon. And then some.

They have felafel on the menu, and it is really, really delicious. When it is available. We have been there 4 times now and Ali’s Kebab’s has a batting average of .250. Having been there with a couple of meat eaters (yes, they do still exist) the carnivore options are varied and apparently delicious. We always seem to end up having pizza when we go there. Old school Japanese pizza. And if you have been in Japan for a while then you will know what I mean by that. I know the main target market for the restaurant are Japanese people, more specifically Ibaraki citizens, and that is why the chili sauce is about as hot as my jokes, and why MTV seems to be incessantly blaring from the very nice flat screen TV they have installed on one wall.

That aside Ali’s Kebab is a nice place to visit, with great, friendly service and I would highly recommend it, especially if you are, or have Muslim friends to entertain as the restaurant serves حلال (halal) food (yes, they do serve alcohol, but this place is about as one gets in Japan).

If you want directions here is a map (in Japanese unfortunately) which is one page on Ali’s Kebabs website.

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One of the most pleasant experiences these fair isles have to offer is that of a visit to an onsen or hot spring. Particularly rewarding after a hard day hitting the slopes on your snow board, there is nothing better than leaning back and relaxing in the hot waters of some rural spring and watching the snow flakes flutter down amongst the bathers.

With a truly huge number of hot springs, and a corresponding range of quality from the superb resorts down to dingy joints that haven’t seen a cleaning cloth or a builder since some time in the 1960’s finding the perfect hot spring can be a challenge. If you live in the country it probably isn’t so much of a problem, just ask around at your local drinking hole and you are bound to start a veritable fireball of a discussion amongst the regulars on the respective merits of the plethora of springs to be found in most parts of Japan.

If you live in the big smoke of Tokyo you will want to get your hand on a guide book, and if it is the idea of soaking away those aches and pains of city life in some beautiful out of the way onsen, then I would highly recommend Anne Hotta and Yoko Ishiguro’s well researched A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs.

Featuring 160 select hot springs scattered the length and breadth of Japan, A Guide to Japan’s Hot Springs offers a wealth of information to the traveller - hot spring newbie or onsen connoisseur alike. If you are looking for a romantic getaway from Tokyo then this book will be indispensable in helping you select and unforgettable destination. Or, if you are looking for some apres ski action (something Japan is sorely lacking) then this book should do the trick.

Surprisingly Chiba has no hot springs worth speaking of. Tokyo gets a mention with the Rokuryu Onsen, (near Ueno and comfortably close if you are staying around the Akihabara / Ueno parts of Tokyo), but it is in the rural areas that A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs really bubbles.

Like the last two off the main-stream guide books featured (Tokyo for Free and Kanto Pilgrimages (day walks around Tokyo)) this book is highly recommended if you are looking for something special during your time in Japan.

# Title: A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs
# Authors: Anne Hotta with Yoko Ishigura
# Paperback: 284 pages
# Publisher: Kodansha America; 1st ed edition (April 1986)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0870117203
# ISBN-13: 978-0870117206

If you would like a copy, you can pick up a copy from Amazon by clicking here: A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs.

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