Time spent Complaining

When Air China and Heathrow combine!

Amongst what I can salvage from last night, Max and I sat on his balcony a short while before everyone else came and the meat was bbqd and the man upstairs called Yamagata South High School who called Max to tell him we were all being too noisy while the cute next door neighbour popped her head round with a bag of cherries then came over and joined us later in rough roll where again there was too much noise and this time a policeman came in telling the master, Daisuke, to turn that bloody racket down as the complaints flew left right.

Max taught a private class how to complain in English, 'Now listen here' and '-was a disgrace' and the ladies all loved it but I can't help feeling Japanese people already know how to complain, if at least not face to face.

A complaint of my own has winged it's way into a deep dark e-mail box from which it might never be retrieved, rather like the hours spent in transit from London Heathrow to Tokyo and Narita.

All smiles and hugs with Dad and glad I didn't decide to fight through London to get to the airport after all.

20.25 came and went but the plane just arrived and idled. Something wrong with the cargo door, someone with a tour booked in Beijing said.

23.00 rolled around and we were all shuffled on to the plane but the 23.30 cut-off got the jump on us and we all shuffled off. Noise pollution.

01.30 and the first coach left for Heathrow Holiday Inn. I lay down on an airport seat and got on the fourth or fifth coach at 02.00 or so. 02.30 and I got a room that smelt of still stale smoke and might have had a view.

10.00 the next day and finally the plane leaves. 03.00 China time Air China gets us into Beijing, China, and my connecting flight left all those lost hours ago left in between time differences and the cracks between the cargo door and the hold. In China, in the wrong place, officially with no visa to enter the airport. Lucky for me China are so good at overlooking the official parts.

05.55 and the guy at the Air China desk I'd been sitting opposite for 25 minutes lets 5 minutes slide and oh oks me to check-in and even puts me in the exit seat I later discover- the second lucky break I had over the course of one long day smeared across three.

09.30 and the first lucky break, out for the count on another airport seat with my suit bag lain across my me and a strange dream barely aware somewhere back there at the back of someone near me and a cleaning lady pokes me awake with a vacuum nozzle and gabbles something in Chinese and points to the gate and no queue and a plane outside with a cargo door firmly in place all revved and ready to go and just me left to float on and take the last seat, the exit seat and collapse opposite a very attractive air hostess. The third lucky break.

Which just left Monday afternoon to breeze away til night in Tokyo and a night bus back to Yamagata.

I think I should try complaining to Air China again now this time listen here and really give them what for.

Home

Back in England and everything is cut in more vivid colours shapes and noises than ever before it was, or at least it seemed to me to be back then. The buttercups more yellow than yellow itself, in plain or in translation, from whatever pallette you take it. The fields stretch further, the wind blows familiar and strange all at once. Honeysuckle froths like babies do, at the knuckles of the stem. All kinds of things I'd never noticed before, or paid attention to.

A week or two ago I sat in a room next to the computer room, with broken desks and old pcs pushed up against the wall. I called in '!Next' and when that failed, I slid the door open and motioned in the next first year student. As part of the speaking test, Kikuchi Sensei had them memorise and sing to me the chorus

Country roads, take me home
To the place, I belong,
West Virginia, Mountain Mama,
Country roads, take me home.

Mangled would not do justice their performance. Another few days along and the school anniversary, 'じゃがいも' (JagaImo- Potato) and their full compliment of young old older from all around the community centre who'd gather there and prepare songs of their own and songs of others and deliver them a whole lot better than any first year kid could a chorus in another tongue. One of which (another and not their own) was Swing Low, Sweet Chariot...... Coming for to carry me home.

I had another strange moment entertaining the first year kids, tykes, in Meiji Elementary school around about the same time. They'd never seen me before. I introduced myself, my family, my country of birth. I pinned up pictures of them all. I drew a blue chalk line between a two blobs of the U.K. and four blobs of Japan and a little fat round plane in between. I did it all like I did two years ago, when I had to introduce myself to every class in three elementary schools and one junior high school. Everything the same, except when it came to guessing my brother and my sister's age and realised they'd moved on two years along with everything else.

And now I find myself back for my grandfather's funeral on Friday and a reading from Philippians not Filipinos.

Count to 10... In Greek.

Release dates for
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

France 18 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
Belgium 21 May 2008
Egypt 21 May 2008
France 21 May 2008
Morocco 21 May 2008
Argentina 22 May 2008
Australia 22 May 2008
Brazil 22 May 2008
Czech Republic 22 May 2008
Denmark 22 May 2008
Estonia 22 May 2008
Germany 22 May 2008
Greece 22 May 2008
Hong Kong 22 May 2008
Hungary 22 May 2008
Iceland 22 May 2008
Indonesia 22 May 2008
Israel 22 May 2008
Mexico 22 May 2008
Netherlands 22 May 2008
Norway 22 May 2008
Poland 22 May 2008
Portugal 22 May 2008
Russia 22 May 2008
Serbia 22 May 2008
Singapore 22 May 2008
Slovakia 22 May 2008
South Korea 22 May 2008
Spain 22 May 2008
Sweden 22 May 2008
UK 22 May 2008
USA 22 May 2008
Venezuela 22 May 2008
Bulgaria 23 May 2008
Finland 23 May 2008
Italy 23 May 2008
Latvia 23 May 2008
Romania 23 May 2008
Turkey 23 May 2008
Pakistan 30 May 2008
Japan 21 June 2008

Mostly last month: late spring flowers

 
 
 
 

Small town

The trees in the hills all burst into fresh bright vibrant green new leaves, throwing the dark leafed evergreens into relief.

Last week at the Plant Festival in my neighbourhood, I was accosted by two high school girls, thrilled to spot a foreigner. They insisted on taking my picture with Keitai mobile phones.

Yesterday I sat outside, but under shelter at Tully's, watching the rain they'd predicted come bucketing down. Moments before, one of those girls had passed, sat herself down and began searching for the photo she'd taken, to show a different friend she was with nicknamed Nago.

Before she found that picture, he showed me two more pictures of foreigners. The first, hilariously, was of two Mormons she introduced as Christians. I see them all the time, pairing up on some poor kid on his or her way somewhere, caught between the red man and an earful of Godspeak at the traffic lights.

The second was of Clare, in Tendo, and was equally hilarious.

Hair today

Eiko, one of my supervisors at the City Hall finally said something about my hair. Cut it. I want you cut it. But she wasn't the first.

Yesterday, little Shota-kun in 3-3 had the sheer bloody gumption to say outright, as we climbed the stairs seconds after arriving at school, 'You know you should cut your hair' (well, he said 髪きたほうがいいよ).

Gassan

The flyer for Gassan boasts April to July open months and pictures boarders and skiiers in t-shirts, in a nice glossy colour A3 fold-out. The snow is bright white and the sky, blue. It all suggests a rather lovely little spot- which winter sporter could resist the opportunity for such a novel experience, especially in a country where novelty is gobbled up like

Tugging on the boots, finding your gloves have stiffened and tightened without weekly use, not really bothering with gloves on the hill. Most novel of all, all that life bursting up and through what's usually a barren, white crispening of everything standing or laying. Spiders amble over dirty snow, in between reedy leaves peeking out. The snow shrinks back from clumps of green, the view is rich, not muted in a poor man's palette of blue and black and white and white.

But enough of all that. Skiing on Gassan was like skiing in the Afghan mountains. There are only four lifts, and of those, one is a chair lift. Two others consist of a thick metal rope, run round on a loop only when someone needed to go up, and not any other time. One manned by a single guy sat under a parasol. We hiked further up, into the cloud that shrouded the top. It was still bright, like someone was standing just, just beyond with a searchlight and a mist machine, or like we'd wandered off-set into the blanks between the tape ream stills.

We crossed a grand open bowl, scoring clear white lines with our tracks in the lead grey snow. We went down too far and looked to be heading down the wrong valley, so we hiked some more, and cut back across to the man sat under his parasol and the restaurant building. Inside there, I'd eaten a black pork maan (a doughball). The poster advertising them was hung sideways from the ceiling. I saw them in the hot glass cupboard and wanted one. At the counter, behind the counter, a guy and a girl both young looked on at a croquette in the deep fryer. Poked it a little. Picked it out, dropped it, giggled. 大丈夫？　大丈夫そう。　大丈夫。　Is it ok? I think it's ok. It's ok. they exchanged, before pulling out a tannoy mic held together with black duck tape to announce the food order to the customers, sat one table away from the counter.