桜

 
 
 

Give them Peanuts

It was so slow for an Assistant Language Teacher at school at the beginning of term, that I took to wearing the same shirt twice in a fortnight (someone would notice if in a week) and made reams of worksheets in preparation for lessons.

Lately, things picked up a lot.

Today, I decided to theme the worksheets for the Third Grade Kids and the theme is peanuts.

In the Food Chain worksheet, "Peanuts are eaten by small fish"

in a cross word, one clue runs, "When I smell delicious peanuts, it makes me______". See if you can guess the answer to that one.

a question for the Character Find sheet: "How long have you loved peanut and beef sandwiches?"

And finally, the Information Gap exercise and, "Was the peanut sausage invented in 2007?".

All this talk of peanuts. I'm peanut hungry.

Bloody knees and busted shins

The really great thing about half inch bolts on flat wide white bike pedals is that your feet hardly ever slip off the pedals.

The really shit thing is that when they do slip off...

花見

Even though I knew what to expect from things this time round, a second year in Japan, still, expectations seem to have been thwarted.

Last year this time of year was a week of school nights spent under the trees, surrounded by grander parties with blue tarpaulins and platters of sushi, office workers straight from the office and us sat on jackets til it got a little too cold and we a little too tipsy to care, and pulled on our jackets. Trees illuminated with spotlights, a dozen of us and a white quivering ceiling.

This year, I've managed to get to Kajo Park late, and no-one seems to be sticking around like last year. In fact no-one seems to be around like last year. I went last night with a friend Nicole and we bumped into some students of hers from Nanko High School and took pictures with them on the bridge, then ate dango, because it's what you eat at Hanami time.

This morning the rain broke, sputteringly it came down all day long and the clouds smudged right down into the mountains until the two were indistinguishable in great charcoal blue swathes. In a strange way, I liked it. Cowering at home then under a brolly and on my momma cherry town-cruising bike all the way to school. Drinking hot mugs of Houji Cha at school like we were served with extravagant breakfasts, in ryokan, my mother and I, in Kyoto this last trip I was on. The blossom falling, speckling pavement, collecting.

Black eggs and green tea

A little time has passed now since my Dad came to visit Japan for the second time. The cherry blossom front that sweeps up from the Ryukyu Islands on a diagonal to the furthest tip of Hokkaido and the disputed spits of land beyond has breached the eastern gate of Yamagata castle, as yet unfinished (both blossom and the resurrection of the castle). Purple tipped weeds or flowers or brush of some sort have sprung up in clumps, bunching on the banks of rice fields that as little as five weeks ago were levelled with the road for a blanket of snow piled on crop stubs. The light pools a little late afternoon in hills that glow vibrant, brown, new. The rains came, the season changed, my mum came and went and Fuji San streaked in the sun before haze shrouded over again one train ride by- all of these things happened more or less in reverse order, since my dad took his second trip to Japan.

Of that trip, black eggs and green tea stick in my mind. We moved room one night after the next for three in the Parkside Hotel, Tokyo, unprepared as they were for our sudden change of plan. Each time we returned I would brew a cup of green tea for Dad and me. Tea tea-bagged and water brought to the boil in a clever little thermos come kettle. And one day, one more black egg each from the sulpher springs of Owakudani, Hakone. There, I'd hoped we'd glimpse Fuji-San, basking in the fresh sunshine that would three weeks later hit Yamagata and breach those walls and tease out those delicate little pink and white wafers. As it turned out, that privilege was saved for Mum, that train ride we took by, on Mum's way to Tokyo, to the wrong terminal, to the right one and away from Japan.

Dad and I did see Fuji-San, but the crown nestled in a large, spongy cloud. Large enough for the largest mountain in Japan. I climbed Fuji-San seven years or so ago- that didn't provide too many problems, but the descent was quite another matter, in the dark, with nothing but an empty beer can and a spare jumper tugged tight over my body by interlocked crossed arms- my preparation for the hike. I told Dad that story as we descended another peak in Hakone, in the dark. Not as high as Fuji, this one, but just as dangerous and even more so, as things turned out. We'd misjudged the time and the view from the top was crap. Onsen and dinner in the hotel's reputable restaurant awaited and we descended briskly. A little too briskly, as it turned out.

Dad dropped one footfall into thin air where he had expected firm rock. He staggered on, seemed to regain his balance then tripped and stumbled a pace or two more in the gloomy dark ahead, before falling flat against the slope. I remember his speed scared me. Then when he didn't get up immediately, that was the next thing that scared me. The grunt of discomfort, muffled by the rock that now cushioned his face, next. And finally, the blood that Dad declared, 'There's blood', as he raised himself up, the blood that grew so sticky so quick in my hands and against my kei-tai phone as I realised I had spent a year in Japan without needing to know the telephone number for the emergency services. So why would I know it?

I called Akiyoshi first, because he always knows what to do. No answer. I called Justin next, because he always answers, or replies to mails within seconds. And when he answered, I realised I didn't know what I wanted to ask him. I think maybe I just needed to tell someone we were in trouble. Shouting help wouldn't have done it. In an hour and 45 minutes up and down, we hadn't passed a soul.

I really thought he could just drop and pass out at any point, blood gushing from his head. Along with Dad saying, 'There's blood', I remember the sound of it striking the rock he'd fallen onto as he lifted his head, like the sound you make pissing up a tree, I remember thinking fuck he's bleeding quickly, here in the dark, away from everyone else.

Ambulance (the first my Dad has ever been in), a needle prodded in a dozen times to anaesthetize, a difficult stitching job on a deep, jagged cut that went this way, tacked back and carried on it's original direction again. Swelling, slow moving, Dad shaking uncontrollably with a normal expression on his face in the car back from the hospital, and me feeling nauseous for an hour. Sugar in Dad's tea. A hot bath and a round of sandwiches in our room rather than the onsen and the French restaurant. Stares for the rest of the trip.

Next time no more hills.

Best of times, worst of times: after and before Dad's accident, 花の寺, Mum struggles

 
 
 
 

Cut and Paste

I could have saved Arsenal, claims Jens Lehmann

"I stayed here to win the Champions League and I saw good chances to play, but I have not had these [chances] and that makes me very angry," he said. "For me personally, it is a tragedy, particularly since I did not have a chance to prevent it," he said. I have had such thoughts [about being able to prevent defeats] ever since the coach took me out of the team following the 0-0 against Milan."

"To be sitting on the bench behind somebody who only started to play when he was 30 is not funny," he said. "I am very angry. If the coach had spoken to me before the start of the season then I would have been able to decide if I wanted to sit on the bench. He has a different opinion and I don't really believe he can be happy with it. If he has not seen it yet then he won't see it at the European Championships either if I perform well."

- If you need cheering up, Lehmann's the man to put a smile on your face.
Andy H, Galmorous Croydon

Revelation

I find nothing more challenging, driving, frustrating than expressing myself as precisely as I can, be it creatively, through some kind of medium, or god forbid, another language. I guess we borrow bits of everyone else's languages to make our own. Mums Dads friends old and new, ex-lovers and heroes, pulp-back or silver-screen. That occurred to me a few weeks ago.

THIS MORNING

I arrived back in Yamagata on the night bus at 5.10a.m. and got this far on I don't know what but there's a point when you break through fatigue and then can't see the next horizon until you realize it's already enveloped you and it's just a question of time bef

Tonight we welcomed the new teachers to Nanachu. The Head teacher changed. Out went Yoshida Kocho Sensei, prolific smoker, ex-baseball coach, in came Harada Kocho Sensei, ex-music teacher, prolific smoker, soba master. This last autumn and the one before he taught me and a bunch of other ALTs how to make soba. The year before last, me and he exchanged a bit of banter, as I thought him soba master drafted in for the day nothing more and he him me nothing, probably. We fingered flour and water together and trampelled and trammelled dough 'neath pin between board and all worked out specially well, more for the fact that I'd been paired with a teacher who aspired to retire and set-up soba shop than more for anything else. That was last year not the one before.

And then he ends up at the school I happen to be teaching at. Happy days, pink pinkety views of bulbs silently plucking darkness from the night sky one dot by eye by dot at a time, and we all roll on to the next venue with Abe Sensei leading the charge to I don't know what, he and I were both a a little drunk.

The station, I stopped to say hello to Tsutomu, who I hadn't seen in maybe 5 months. I try to catch up, too late.