Wordy Urges

This place never ceases to amaze, delight and perturb me. My list of possible blog topics has become an overgrown mess of images, confusions, conversations and quotable quotes. The tumultous events of the past month combine, my brain a humming mass, electric impulses of joy and grief snapping back and forth, pinging around like the silver pachinko balls that keep the working masses sedated. In my case though, the effect is anything but inert – urges rise, a hankering to DO stuff…write, raise some cash to try and fill even a tiny hole in the web of hurt along the coastlines of asia, get our tune out to the good people of Japan…and now there is a wedding to organise!

Haiku is a deepening passion, reading the old masters and younger upstarts (who wrote 50 odd years ago) and sorting out the tangled thoughts of my mind by a process of shaving off syllables. Here are a few of my recent offerings:

December dragon wakes
Shouting down the phone
Mountain stands silent

Oh happy heart!
even as the snow lies
frozen on the ferns

the smell of sagebrush
and shimmering landscape
this lonely winter bed

I flung out my arms
and cursed the sea
every little bit of it

The child within her
this his morning thought and then-
the angry tide came

I search for the words
to conjure a raging foam
but I was not there


When a language is removed from it’s native source, it’s scope for meaning is not necessarily diminished…In some ways, a whole new dimension of possible meanings are created for the foreign ear. The way a word sounds when one has no idea of it’s concrete meaning, this allows language to become a form of music. Random combinations of words written down seem exotic, secretive and impressive. Nowhere does this theory ring truer than in Japan, where the English language and the romanji script are used as signifiers of quality, fashion and class. What the words actually mean hold little significance, it is their very visual or auditory presence through which this message of quality is transmitted. For the English wordsmith this means one magical thing: found poetry. While many people see ‘Engrish’ or ‘Japlish’ as a comic phenomenon (which it surely can be) many native English speakers view this practice as an example of just how little the Japanese really understand of their mother tongue.

I see it as a marvellous form of poetry, combinations of words I would never think of using, the coupling of conceptually alien objects and descriptions…here is a little example.

A FOUND POEM FROM MY PANTYHOSE PACKET
If only you screw up your courage to step in
The brightest life will be yours
In which all the guys praise your beauty
To the skies
With relish any your dreams will come true.

Eedesu.dakara.yume.izakaiya.gandiki.shaberu.tatoiba.tamago.san shu.kimochi.ikeman
The more Japan feels like home, the less I feel compelled to conquer it, or even to feel that we must stay for any particular stretch of time. I’ve met so many ‘old timers’ here – people who have lived here for 20 or 30 years and who still can’t speak a simple sentence of Japanese. I’ve met people who seem to hate the place, but who, shackled by the money, or a Japanese spouse, watch their lives sweep past them. They give off a faint air of disintegration, an odour of regret, and generally they bemoan their jobs, their students, the society.

Of course there are many, many others who have taken to their Japanese life with gusto. The other night in Kyoto we went to see some ex-pats do an Noh play in English - an adaptation of a Robert Frost play. The play wasn`t much chop and their stage craft was pretty stilted, but they were embracing their adopted culture with verve and passion - and the audience, a mostly greying collection of gaijins and spouses were doing the same thing...It`s a wonderful thing to see a foreign lass or chappie picking up the shamisen (yay for Ry!) or mastering the tea ceremony and who does this with an air of general enthusiasm for Japanese culture and not some incorrigable desire to be authentic.

We have settled into a far more settled existence - we get up at the same time in the morning and eat dinner together most nights - even the ones where I go off and sing my karaoke to those cardboard men. I work days on the gravy train at a university (that`s a whole other blog I will save for when I`m not at work:) )
do my proofreading in between times and then work on my tunes...Ryan is THE music teacher of the International school circuit here in Osaka and the kids absolutely adore him...I mean how could they not...photos to follow!

Speaking of pics, here are some of our recent trip to Takehara, where we WOOFED at a soba shop and a pottery store. So much has happened since then, so we never got around to writing all about that - suffice to say that we had an absolutely marvellous time and ate like kings. I am writing an article about soba at the moment, so stay tuned!
In the mean time enjoy a pictorial journey of our trip!