Missing presumed found

The other day I saw a flat cap hanging from a tree by a pink thread. Perhaps all the finder had to hand. Nobody else walking along the street seemed to have noticed the cap. Clearly, none could have been the person who had lost it. How nice of someone to have found and re-positioned the cap in a more conspicuous place, more or less where it was first lost. I've heard stories- stories, I tell you, stories- of lost wallets left on benches with not so much as a finder's fee removed from within.

I'm in the habit of losing my mind. Or, at least, pieces of it. Last week was one such occasion. I wandered out of an izakaye and towards the direction of home. I do not recall precisely where I lost this last piece or indeed which part of my mind it was, but I do recall waking the next day with that feeling you often have before a grand trip as you survey your house from the front door, wondering what it was you forgot to pack.


Perhaps someone will stumble on a hope of mine and pin it to a tree.

Or maybe a fear of mine, trampled underfoot until the discerning eye of a tramp saw it, was added to a collection.

I am not in the slightest worried about any mislaid memories of mine, however, for these, of all parts of the mind, are most likely to warp and crinkle under repeated handling by the owner. As such, it would be unrecognisable were it valuable and therefore undesirable were I to have lost and forgotten a memory of mine. Lost, recovered and lost again, for once and all.

Dreams of course are myriad and alien and would beguile our finder from finding them. After all, just as we chance upon a dream, does it not transfrom and vaporise, shifting with the next stirring of the trees?

Lists, I can afford to cu

Diaries

English is catching on in 3-4!

At first it was just Ayaka that came to my desk bearing her English diary and a big broad smile, surrounded by 6 of her friends. Delighted, I decorated with coloured pens, superlative and sticker a response to the first entry.

She came back the next day with a new cover stuck on the diary with a message pledging to write the diary every day to get better at English. Then, the other day... 3 of them came in with diaries! Ayaka's best friends Shoko and Haruka both brought diaries too. Of course, it would be bad of me to divulge the contents of the diaries here. Suffice to say they're all studying English very hard and like music.

FCAK

Yesterday was football with FCAK. Match day.

Usually at practice we'll do 4 or 5 complicated drills that necessitate much stick drawing in the dirt and folded arms, furrowed brows and explanations. Last practice Hiroshi turned to me after the introduction to the drill and apologised in his own laconic manner, 'I would have translated...but...I don't understand'.

But yesterday was match day. 3 short matches actually, against teams in red/white, blue/black and orange strips, in that order. We play in an old Celtic, black away kit. (I say 50 Hail Marys after each occasion I am forced to pull on the jersey). In the same sports centre complex the local professional team (Yamagata Montedio) had a match too, a proper one against a J2 team from Osaka. 'Somewhere over the rainbow', the occasional trilling organ solo and roughly cut, abrasive blasts of house music amounts to Montedio's stadium music.

FCAK are like any pub football team, just without the pub. The football we play is the kind made up more of clumsiness, chance and laughter than actual skill. Lofty balls thumped high into the sky by the defence. I tracked one and my gaze got snagged on the mountains as the ball fell back down. Mis-trapping the ball and watching it skim along the surface underneath your foot, behind you, away to the edge of the pitch and beyond. Skewed passes. Fags at half time. Sore muscles.

The pitch wasn't exactly turf, nor astro, nor any surface I 've ever played on. It's made of fake grass and black rubber grains that the ball splashes when it bounces, like the pitch is waterlogged with bog-water.

Anyway, we won, won, lost. Damned orange team weren't so much of a pub football team. Far classier affair than that.

Sitemeter

Recently I looked at someone else's blog. Well, ok, an ex-girlfriend's blog. Well, ok, not so much ex-girlfriend as ex-fling but, you know, it was summer, fun for a bit, then she moved to Spain and I moved to Marchmont and everything was new again.

Anyway, I looked at her blog (she's somewhere in S.E.Asia) and saw she had a 'sitemeter'. I immediately wanted one. I didn't know precisely what it was and I confess, I am still at a loss as to it's exact function. Nevertheless, want one I did and get one too, I did. It should be somewhere to the right and above on this very page, reader. Which is why I wanted one quite so much- not to put something somewhere up and to the right on this very page, but to track you, reader. To gauge how many you are. And possibly more things like where you came from, where you went, the filling of that sandwich you ate today and other such information.

Here are the results:

                  --- Visits this Week ---                
     Day
Hour   4/6    4/7    4/8    4/9   4/10   4/11   4/12   Total
---- ----- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
1       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
2       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
3       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
4       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
5       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
6       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
7       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
8       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
9       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
10       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
11       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
12       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
13       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
14       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
15       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
16       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
17       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
18       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
19       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
20       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
21       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
22       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
23       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
24       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
  ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0


              --- Page Views this Week ---              
     Day
Hour   4/6    4/7    4/8    4/9   4/10   4/11   4/12   Total
---- ----- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
1       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
2       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
3       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
4       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
5       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
6       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
7       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
8       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
9       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
10       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
11       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
12       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
13       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
14       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
15       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
16       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
17       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
18       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
19       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
20       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
21       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
22       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
23       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
24       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0
  ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ -------
       0      0      0      0      0      0      0       0

Now, I know that my Mum is a reader (hi Mum), and I think Dad occasionally drops by too. But this information does not corroborate neatly with the sitemeter information. I propose an experiment. Here's how it'll fly...you, reader, post a comment to this entry saying anything, and I will smugly/distraught-ed-ly survey the results at a later date. Really, anything will do. Favourite cereal. Memory. Admission of guilt. List. Length of index finger. Anything.

I must stress, this is not in order to verify to the writer that the reader exists, not to bolster a fragile ego, not even to make me smile in the morning, but, moreover, to prove to the writer that sitemeter is just Wrong.

Does that make any sense? Should I just join Facebook and fuckgerkinbollocks to this blog?

2 famous people

The town newspaper wants to interview me. They'd like to know about my hobbies and my life in Japan: these things are interesting to some of their readers, I suppose.

Yesterday's evening paper had a murky image on the front cover. Discernible was a man, piping and fire extinguishers in the background and a white blur in the fore, where his hands apparently met with something. He's a teacher from the junior high school that's within spitting distance of my shrew box bed-sit and he's been caught stealing ladies' underwear. I didn't realise things like that actually happened.

There are times I would not happily trade here for any other place

Today I ran down by the river, then frowned at the sunset through my legs as I stretched. The mountains had turned a murky blue and lost all distinction, the sky beyond, red, orange, yellows. The cherry trees lining the river have each a spotlight poised before them and branches full and coloured a thorough brown. Pink lanterns and bunting has gone up in other parks. The bamboo-stake cages protecting plants and trees from the snow that never came have been dismantled and bunched, put away. The carp in the pool at school I can see from the toilet have been put back in the pool.

I can't swim

FUCKING HELL swimming is impossible. My action is less of the 'breast stroke', even less of the 'front crawl' and much more of the 'breast-crawl' (man breasts, I hasten to add).

Curses

There's a fresh face at school, new to teaching and new to Nanachu, new to work, just like me last summer. She's young like me, just graduated from university and seems to have buckets of energy. This her First Job and she's getting stuck in. She's a hit, she's really smiley, everybody is making an effort to talk to her and welcome and help her...except me.

I should explain. April not September is the new school year here and all the roles and desks have been shifted about in the teacher's room. It was done in a highly Japanese manner, that is, embracing both efficiency and negligence, like you would wife and mistress. All hands to the pumps! Throw everything out of the room and then put it all back in, newly positioned! Why recycle all that waste paper when we can just shred it?!

Anyway. the end product was that the ex-Third Form Teachers are all now First Form Teachers, and, consequently, all sit a lot closer to me. Like, right behind me. Trouble is, I'm not sure they like me all that much. Like, hate me.

I'm going somewhere with this, don't worry. The new young teacher- did I mention, new English teacher?- she sits with the ex-Third Form now First Form teachers, just behind me. And Takiko Sensei has taken her under her wing as if she's her prodigy, her long lost daughter or her younger sister or something similarly close. Takiko Sensei is amongst those I think see fit to look down their noses or throw daggers with their eyes at me. No, she's definitely not a fan of me.

And I'm intimidated (isn't that pathetic?) of talking to Yuki (the new teacher) because I know Takiko Sensei has an allergy against me (hitherto an unheard of condition, of course). Amongst all the desk shuffling yesterday I snatched a glimpse of Takiko Sensei's desk. On which she has a picture of her in full Japanese martial art (kendo: which I thought was just for men!) regalia, looking....well, the only word for it is fierce.

I can't have traded more than three sentences with anyone in conversation all day and here is someone on a level with me, who can speak the same language as me, and I shirk the chance and shrink into the background.

Triathlon

Even saying the word itself is a little bit too long for me, and I tend to slur its three syllables to 2. But I don't think you can cheat like that in the real thing. The thought of it scares me shitless. The thought of all that road, all that water, all that travelling along and through all that road and water. Not racing, mind. I have no intention of doing that. Tell you that for free right now so I will. Just travelling. Slowly, probably. If I'm going to do this thing, it will be with the patience and dignity of the fat kid at the back of the 100m who already knows he's lost and knows he'll get a hand when he finishes anyway, so he just stops running and starts walking.

Tip my hat to Ben. Following in your footsteps!