Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Australia

Apologies to Korla’s most powerful blogger Micheal for the confusion over the mysterious double decker bus I briefly posted in the Moving from Tsukuba to Tsuchiura post. I didn’t like the purple frame around the picture I put up with it.

The bus was not found in Xinjiang, but between our current apartment and the house we will be moving to. It is outside the Cambden International Market. Mysterious place, it looks like something hobbled together out of plywood and 2×4′s.

Tsukuba’s Cambden has a hairdresser, optometrist, kilim and carpet shop, cafe, live house, grilled chicken restaurant and more. Only the optometrist and the kilim shop had staff present, and narry a customer was to be seen.

It seemed to be straight out of the twilight zone. Will we ever be able to find it again?

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We signed the lease for our new place today which is good news. Normally renting a house or apartment in Japan can be quite an involved process, but this time it was really easy. When you rent a place in Japan you need to have someone act as a guarantor in the “one in ten thousand” chance that something goes wrong. For us, we normally use Chooch’s parents for this (you can use anyone really, providing the other party to the agreement is satisfied with the guarantor). This usually involves both parties signing (well affixing their name stamps or hanko to be more precise) the agreement – then the copies are sent to the guarantor for her or his stamp. Today however, they were quite happy for us to use the same stamp for both us and  the guarantor which saved us a bit of time.

We met with both the landlord and the real estate agent today. Two very polite semi-retired gentlemen they were too. Our landlord is quite a history buff, and head of the local history society. He told us quite a bit about the connection between Akita and Ibaraki during the Tokugawa shogunate. They have quite strong accents which are noticeably different from the Akita dialect, at least to my ear so it was a little tricky keeping up with the conversation.

After signing the contract, and getting the keys, we went round to the house. I have been there before but today was my first time to have a look inside. It is quite spacious for a Japanese house – with a large 8 tatami mat room which we will use as a living room, and two smaller 6 mat rooms – one for sleeping and the other we will use as an office/study. The kitchen is quite large too. It will be nice to be able to cook on gas again. Our current place has one electric ring right next to the sink which makes cooking quite a mission.

Looking around the house has got Chooch into decorating mode – very dangerous.

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Quite a year, and it is almost over. This time last year we were in Xinjiang in Western China. The photo to the left was taken almost exactly a year ago as we drove from Korla to Bosten Lake. You can check out some photos from around last Christmas at The Opposite End of China. This Christmas is shaping to be bit more peaceful, and certainly a lot warmer than last year.
I have had a few emails asking where we were, and what is happening. So, just to bring you up to speed – now we are in Ibaraki, a province to the north of Tokyo in Japan.
We have been in Ibaraki for a few months now and things are definitely much quieter. A nice change of pace. We will be moving again though. At present we are living in a tiny little monthly apartment courtesy of leopalace. On Sunday we will go to see our new landlord, sign a lease and pay for our new place. It is a 3 bedroom house in the neighboring town of Tsuchiura.

Tsuchiura will be the sixth place we have lived in in Japan. That is one more than the number of leaders New Zealand’s opposition National party has had in almost the same amount of time. They need to settle on who is in charge, and we too need to settle in a place for a bit. The new house we will be moving to is very nice. I haven’t seen inside, just had a bit of a look at the outside a few nights ago. The place has a decent garden with something approaching a lawn (will need to brush up on my green-keeping skills) which looks pretty good for the odd game of french cricket.

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Was having a bit of a troll around Yahoo auction to see what I could see when I stumbled upon this beauty. The asking price – a mere 6,000,000 yen. Admitedly, no one has yet to bid on the bird, but that 6 million yen works out to a mind wibbling US$51.689.86. That is enough money to buy a lot of bird feed I would wager.

Carved from a single piece of wood one would imagine that a great deal of time and perspiration went into its creation. Still it doesn’t really speak to me as a work of art. That line is such a fine and fuzzy thing. The swords that my friend Pierre is into, and learning to make, I can see as beautiful, even if I don’t understand them that deeply and am not drawn to them as strongly as he is.

Sometimes watching Japanese television can be revealing. Television as the expression of the dreams and aspirations of a populus. Television as a mirror to the (shopping) soul of a nation. Recently we saw a program which took us around the homes of some of Japan’s ‘other’ half. One image that stuck in my mind – that of the President of a construction company talking about the ‘gorgeous’ house he lived in as he stood on a polar bear rug. Some things are common throughout humanity in all its flavors – and bad taste is one of them.

If it rocks your boat then you can check out the auction here; it closes in 3 days so you will have to move quickly!

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They are the back bone of cricket in Japan, and if you are vegetarian they offer choice and variety rarely found in other ethnic food on these pacific isles. Where would we be without our friends from the sub-continent?

Mantra is a restaurant proudly boasting the best the sub-continent has to offer. Located near Omiya Station , (close to Tokyo on the Keihin-Tohoku, Shonan-Shinjuku as well as numerous other lines) this restaurant brings a taste of the Himalayas to both visitors to Tokyo and locals alike – at very reasonable prices.

We were lucky just after returning from our overseas jaunt to visit Mantra while we were on our way back to Akita (the friends we stayed with, and who kindly took us to the restaurant have just finished designing Mantra’s new website). We had had Pakistani food in Kashgar quite some months before, so we were really hanging out to get our chompers around some tasty curry and naan. And they didn’t let us down.

My pick of their menu would have to be the Palak Paneer, a mouth-watering spinach based curry just waiting to be scooped up with their delicious garlic naan (I recently had a similar dish here in Tsukuba, but unfortunately it wasnt quite up to the same standards). For the more knowledgeable patrons out there, they are also quite chuffed when you ask them to prepare something a little more esoteric.

The atmosphere is pretty laid back with some cool Buddhist statues on display. The owner is from Nepal, and the chef’s hail from India.

So if you are looking for a change of pace, and are in the Omiya area (some cool parks around there too, if you want to escape the concrete jungle) then head on down to Mantra for some great Indian and Nepali fusion and enjoy. I heartily recommend it!

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There is a warning flashing on all of the tv channels we get, as well up on the yahoo.co.jp website of a tsunami approaching Northern Japan.

It seems to be heading to north-eastern Japan, especially the World Heritage wildlife reserve of Shiretoko. The t.v. is forecasting waves of 2 meters in that area. Down the eastern-honshuu coast waves of 0.5 meters are expected.

We are along way from the coast here in Tsukuba, so no worries there. The warning system seems extensive, as one would expect from Japan. It is amazing how quickly they get the warnings out there on television. I wonder what will happen in the future though, if we move to an internet based information system where everyone is watching one of a million different channels.

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つくば市に住んで２ヶ月も過ぎました。時間の立つのは早いものですね。

東京に比べたらつくばのほうがのんびり、空がひろい、みどりがいっぱいです。TX（つくばエクスプレス）が走ってるで日本の首都に行くのは簡単です。

外国人に対して、田舎暮らしはちょっとちょっと（！）難しいです。やはり、洋書や洋画や外人さんがふつうに食べるものは欲しいですね。

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Have you ever read a novel that wasn’t a novel? Have you ever considered what a novel is for that matter?

Michel Foucault in his preface to The Order of Things talks about a moment of epiphany he experienced when reading the Argentine writer Borges:

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought….

The passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

There are books like that, incredibly rare, that seep through the ether, float around the world, the room, the mind. Genichiro Takahashi’s Sayonara Gangsters is one of those. A little teaser for you, taken randomly from page 193:

“Welcome Home”

12.

I walked over to the snoozing Song Book.
Her legs were aligned, sticking out perfectly straight.
Her hands were arranged neatly on her knees.
An open comic book lay under her hands.
Song Book makes no effort to follow the story when it comes to comic books. Song Book just likes looking through them, jumping from scene to scene. She goes on gazing for ages at scenes she likes. That’s how she reads comics.
Song Book falls asleep gazing at her favourite scenes.
I gazed gently down over Song Book’s shoulder at the scene unfolding beneath her hands.

I thought it apt to create my own taxonomy of Sayonara Gangsters.

The passage quotes a ‘certain Japanese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘characters are divided into: (a) immortal gangsters who die (b) virgil the poet as a fridge (c) ectoplasm becoming chair (d) the author Thomas Mann who did not exist (e) “Henry IV” (f) barman with wings (g) poetry school teachers (h) pontum adspectebant flentes (i) James Joyce expounded (j) “One After Another, Like Bowling Pins, the U.S. Presidents are Toppled by Gangsters (k) GILA monsters (l) potty poetry (m) a manifesto for the Fat Gangster, inelegantly expressed (n) JOVIAN pinky promises.’

Other reviews have said more normal things:

If readers are capable of ignoring the voice inside that wants to yell out that none of this makes sense, they will be well rewarded.

It’s about feelings rather than rationality

; it’s about the journey not the destination. This is a novel that will immediately captivate daring readers.

or,

Reading it can feel like sharing a tiny room with a manic kitten. Sayonara, Gangsters seems

mostly interested in amusing itself

, unfolding in accordance with private rules. Only you can decide whether this whimsical novel is worth your time, whether the emperor has clothes, whether or not he knows, and whether or not it matters.

Indeed.

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NTT Docomo announced today that they are releasing a new system which will enable mobile phones to switch ‘domains’. This has been developed in partnership with Intel and the system will allow for greater customization of mobile phones. It sounds like it will be possible to dual boot either the original OS or your own personal “flavourite” such as a linux build. I doubt Vista will run on it though (hahaha).

Specifications for this will be released 3:00 pm JST on November 1 at: NTT Docomo’s OSTI page.

=> Read more!

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I picked up a copy of Randy Taguchi’s Outlet last weekend from the Tsukuba Public Library. I was initially attracted to the fresh cover design by Chip Kidd – . I hadn’t heard of Randy Taguchi before I picked up this book. A little bit of poking around and on the back flap I learned that she started out as a blogger, and was picked up from there and offered a contract to write for Gentosha, a Tokyo publishing house. Outlet was first published by Gentosha, in Japanese, in 2000.

Overall I really enjoyed Outlet. The writing style reminded me a great deal of a number of Japanese authors, such as Haruki Murakami. There is a certain smoothness, and lightness, that Italo Calvino would approve of to be found in the works of a number of contemporary Japanese authors. The plot is to the fore, and being a plot driven work it is highly readable.

The story is based around the character of Yuki Asakura, a Tokyo based financial journalist, and her experiences as a result of the death of her younger brother. As a university student Asakura studied psychology and this provides on of the tropes that the story revolves around – rational “scientific” analysis as opposed to more traditional occult or shamanistic approaches to the psyche.

Sanford May in his review of Outlet explores the sexual aspects in some detail. There is a lot of sex in this novel but it is conveyed in a subtle way which doesn’t distract from the development of the story.

The outlet that the title refers to is a clever little wordplay on the meanings of power plug and energy release. In Japanese outlet is consento, although the final o is not sounded, making it sound a lot like the English consent. There are overtones of Timothy Leary to be found in Outlet. She was turned on is a way by the death of her brother, the rest of the novel details how she tunes in – often this is in direct conflict with traditional models of psychoanalysis, and finally drops out of the social milieu she was once part of.

Well worth a read.

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