The Def Leppard Post

Yes, this is the one you have been waiting for!

So, recently I was thinking about the fact that I had just turned 25 and I remember the first thing I bought with my own honestly earnt money (AKA money I didnt steal, little shit I was back then) in 1987. It was Def Leppard's Hysteria album. Yes, before MC Hammer and Gn'R there was this epic album.

I decided that I would actually download some of these songs, to relive 1987. (The problem is that I keep on finding out things that I thought were the 80's were actually the early 1990's which is when the 80's "came of age" so to speak. The early episodes of "In Living Colour" being testament to that I think). Anyhow, I was not disappointed, with immortal lyrics such as these

"Take a bottle, shake it up Break the bubble, break it up"

"You got the peaches, I got the cream Sweet to taste, saccharine 'Cos I'm hot, say what, sticky sweet From my head, my head, to my feet"

AND last but not least:

"Do you take sugar? one lump or two? "

That said, I had not really thought too much about the meaning of saccharine before now....

I made a rather horrendous error in class the other day. During a Q & A game, which is a pretty simple affair which involves kids answering simple questions in english like "how old are you?how is the weather today? what is your name? Where can I get some crack?" which in turn allows them to sit down and not be humiliated as the last person standing. Now I went through until I got to the dumb kids (which incidentally involves me asking them questions like "What is your name" which they still cant answer even after the teacher translates the question for them- yes, it is strange given that their names are actually, well, prounounced in japanese and all that......) and I ask what I thought to be the last question to the last unfortunate student, she answers after much agony, and then I say "right, finished". Guess what. I was not. There actually was a kid in the class SOOOO SHORT that I could actually not see him over the rest of his classmates sitting down. Oh lord. What's worse, all the kids pointed out this horrific error to me, by well, pointing at him. Arrrgghhhh. Poor bastard. Somewhat surprisingly, I felt a little bad.

As a disclaimer, I dont actually like such Q and A games, because as much as they aesthetically appeal to my darwinistic mindset, they tend to cause me as much agony as they do to the kids. That said, my last week of classes involved myself basically having discussions about one of my favourite subjects, namely pizza. One of my teachers, somewhat rightfully I believe, subscribes to the idea that english immersion with a native speaker is where its at, ie they get to listen and ask questions in English (aided by a Japanese teacher who translates if need be, but not dominated by the Japanese English teacher (JTE)). So often she asks me to give a little 10 minute speech at the start of class, where I can quite simply talk about anything I want. This is something I do quite like. So I decided to talk about pizza. 50 minutes later, after I had described all of my preferences, talked to the kids about theirs, where to get the best price pizzas, the differences between Japanese, Italian and American pizza and so on, I finished the class. Fantastically, the teacher and students were so interested in pizza that the lesson plan was discarded in favour of this. Excellent. And I get paid for this shit. More Excellent.

Sarah has come and gone. It was a hard trip given the weather, but she came through okay and seemed to adjust pretty well for the most part. Most excellently, I got to eat her Kobe Beef when we stayed at the Ryokan

I have welcomed the first group of Fukushima JETs to Fukushima, taking them out and looking after them in Tokyo in their first few days in Japan. Quite surreal to see how people react to Japan, first with Sarah and then with these guys. Also, quite nostalgic. I wonder how strange it must seem to other people that I have become somewhat accustomed to, perhaps even disinterested in how casually unusual Japan is. The big things yes, for sure, they still give me bouts of exasperation, but while Sarah was here, Japan was pretty much on its best behaviour. In some ways I am disappointed, in some ways not at all. Although the time we were watching television, at prime time, and a current affairs show seamlessly switched from a short story about a Japanese women in Tokyo with unusually large breats to a story on a cute little deer prancing around in the countryside with gay abandon, well, that was pretty special.

I watched Lost in Translation for the first time since coming to Japan the other day, and while I appreciate that the story is not really deeply concerned about representing Japan in any sort of accurate way, indeed the story is about something quite different, and furthermore, is still a nice piece of film-making; I couldn't help but find the implied disaffection with their surroundings somewhat grating. Basically I thought they were a bunch of boring whingers. I guess they were concerned with other things going on in their lives, but, I love Tokyo. I probably like Osaka a bit more, from the little time I was there, but Japanese big cities are basically pretty damn cool I think. And some of the quirky "Japan" moments in the movie that I found funny the first time, I actually found kind of moribund. Japan i so much more strange and at the same time predictable than the movie suggests, which makes it a lot easier to deal with. I guess you have to live here to get to that point.

Point in case. A friend of mine is sitting on a Subway line in Tokyo, and a punked out teenager (Japan can be anywhere from 5-20 years behind fashion wise, although it has its moments of inspiration), which a purple hair-do gets on the train. Looking apparently bad ass, he ignores all the empty seats on the train and sits in the priority seats reserved for pregnant mothers, old people, handicapped people and foreigners (kidding on this last point, although it is the de facto foreigners seat sometimes). So as you can see, like all punks, goths and "gangsta" teenagers in Japan, he was tough. HARD CORE. So after sitting down, he apparently pulls out a mirror and starts intentionally "dishevelling" his hair in the mirror in way that apparently conforms to the proper dishevellment that a punk hair style should have. Stuff like this both pisses me off, but at the same time makes me feel so much more comfortable about the country I live in. As Sarah learnt on this trip, the phrase "Because it's Japan" is a concretely defendable, philosophically robust answer to any question that may be posed about the way things are in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if Kant himself, had he ventured more 5cm out his door and lived in Japan, would have after decades of thinking settled on this very axiom.

There is something very comforting indeed about the phrase "Because it's Japan" which might be unsatisfying to people new to this country, but is ultimately where you need to get to, to survive here. I guess it is a kind of a foreigner's "Zen" in some ways.

Sarah in Japan

haha, Sarah is an idiot.

She isnt to impressed that i wrote this. We also took a weasel to the top of Mt. Fuji. I climbed a 3776M mountain, something that I wont do again. It was rather beautiful though.

We found fruit.

When is Tim coming to Japan?