蛇皮線を買った！ My Jabisen

Recently, thanks to my mildly improved financial situation, I decided to treat myself to a Jabisen (snake-skinned, stringed instrument), a traditional Japanese instrument that originates from Okinawa. It's very similar to, but not to be confused with a Shamisen (三味線) an instrument that came after the jabisen.

Having played the guitar for a couple of years, I wasn't completely at a loss as to how to get a nice sound out of it, but the lack of frets and the slightly odd tuning (A,D,A) make it quite difficult to play, not to mention that the strings are placed so closely together that when you place your finger on one string, it's quite difficult to avoid muting the adjacent ones.

Only by playing one note, you automatically generate a feeling of tradition, conjuring images of a long-gone Japan. It's a beautiful, tricky, and rewarding instrument. I look forward to getting better, and hopefully I'll be able to put up a little video of me playing it some time soon.

In the mean time, you'll just have to make do with a picture.

Memories of Spring in Japan

Some brief flashes of memory from Hanami, and a shrine atop Mt. Mitake, which I climbed this week.

Jazz

Hanami! 花見！

Ever since I arrived in Japan, all of my flatmates have been telling me, in ever-increasing excitement, about Hanami and how much I ought to be looking forward to it. If you're going to do one thing that's incredibly... Japanesey while you're over here, this is the event to go to.

Before the actual event, it's difficult to imagine how a picnic can be the cultural epicentre of a nation. Throw in the fact that this year I was confined to Tokyo, as far from nature as possible, and the idea became less and less appealing. I wouldn't have imagined that sharing a small concrete space with millions of families and salarymen while snaffling some supermarket sushi would be much of a relaxing experience. I was, of course, completely wrong. It was a thoroughly magical experience, so much so that I did three in the space of a week.

Firstly, the potential over-crowdedness which I was dreading turned out to be one of the best things about it. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people crammed into the park where I was plonked on my picnic sheet with friends and colleagues, yet there were no sounds of raucous shouting or drunken violence. There was just a wall of happy white noise floating through the cherry blossom trees. People, young and old, rich and poor, were just sitting, enjoying themselves, drinking and relaxing. Usually one only sees a crowd this size when sandwiched between two salarymen's armpits on the chikatetsu (underground), so it's wonderful to see an even greater crowd getting along with zero stress. It's this ability to co-exist without getting under everyone else's skin that Japanese people do extremely well. Even the Yakuza were there, sitting in their picnic spot enjoying themselves. Where else in the world would you find elements of organised crime sitting under pink flowers eating a sandwich next to a group of kids?

And then of course, there're the sakura blossoms themselves. Now, I've had some good picnics in my time (including some very bad ones, being forced to brave ice-cold rain storms with nothing but a sandwich to protect me from the elements, all in the name of steely British reserve), but nothing beats laying under a canopy of pink blossoms that stretch into the horizon. If you time it just right, you can picnic as the blossoms are beginning to fall, and so all afternoon you can eat with friends while petals are raining all around you. Visually, it truly is a magical experience.

I'm sure there are far more beautiful and serene places to have a Hanami, but sharing Yoyogi park with thousands of Tokyo-ites all getting along perfectly in the spirit of relaxation... I felt like I was a thousand miles away.

Having done a Hanami in a sprawling concrete mess, I think next time I'll head out into the country side and try to do one with just a small group of friends, but honestly, if you have the time to spare, it's worth seeing just how well Japanese people do things on a massive scale without everything descending into drunken brawls and shooting!

Did you trade green fields...

... for a cold steel rail?

Japan's rampant, runaway capitalism knows no bounds, and it certainly has little respect for Japan's traditional roots. Alex Kerr has already well-documented Japan's love affair with concrete, outlining the worrying dedication with which the government has seen fit to literally line the coast of this once paradisical island with miles of tarmac, made all the worse by the presence of tetrapods designed supposedly for the protection of Japan's coastal towns. But if one has to knock down, deforest and "modernise" the coastline beyond all recognition in order to save it, you've already done far worse than any tidal damage could hope to.

Japan is rife with these ludicrous policies which are the environmental equivalent of the famous Vietnam war doctrine "Bomb the village in order to save it." In a similar move, Japan is worryingly attached to the idea of digging up forests, drowning the coastline in murky grey slabs, and dropping tetrapods like carpet bombs in order to "save" the very vistas and coasts that are being ruined by such actions. Obviously most post-industrial countries, if not all, have sacrificed much of their indigenous habitats for the sake of "progress", but nowhere has it been done with such tenacity and wilful abandon as in Japan.

It is sad to think that a country that has its traditions so firmly intertwined with its natural habitat would so willingly destroy it for the sake of modernisation; modernisation at any cost. And so now it is sad to see that plans for a new resort that will decimate acres of precious coral reef as well as much of the mainland has been given the go ahead in Okinawa, perhaps one of the few areas of Japan that still remains relatively untouched (relative to the sprawling neon-concrete monster that is Tokyo). An area so unique that it may as well be a country in itself, it's all the more saddening to know that the concrete tide has reached so far.

Even more worrying is the tacit, and sometimes explicit, acceptance of this ugly trend of superficial modernisation sweeping the land of the rising sun. Many people believe the tetrapods being rained down on Japan's shores to be beautiful structures worthy of artistic merit. One only has to see a beach lined with these concrete monsters to realise that such a stance is utterly ludicrous. Nevertheless, one suspects that given the Japanese tendency to adhere to its cultural pillar of 建前（たてまえ・tatemae - not causing disruption or showing extreme emotion in public), if the government says it needs to concrete over every Sakura blossom in the name of the country's progress, most people would allow it to happen.

One can only hope that the current economic crisis might cause some in higher places to have second thoughts about the necessity of a concrete addiction. This is, however, unlikely. The relentless destruction of natural habitats is now tied into the economy to such an extent that it would be financially and politically detrimental for Japan to stop building over things. It has literally developed a dependency on wiping out much of its natural past.

Curse of the Eikaiwa

An unhealthy obsession

Having worked in one of the most reputable and successful eikaiwas 「英会話」in Japan, and having promptly decided to leave, I can't help but wonder what on earth all the fuss is about and why Japanese businessmen, students, and hobbyists alike, all seem so willing to part with vast amounts of cash for something so completely superficial.

Where to begin? Well, why do students go to an Eikaiwa like Nova, or Gaba, in the first place? One attraction to these kinds of schools is the focus on conversation. 英会話 after all means English + Meeting + Talk. Japanese learners of English sign up because in their education at school, English education is based solely on the memorisation and reproduction of grammar rules on paper; there's no focus on conversation. But does this really warrant going from one extreme to the other? Judging by the billions of Yen being poured into the coffers of English Conversation Schools everywhere, it does.

So what's the problem with the schools? Bluntly, that they completely fail to improve the students' linguistic abilities. This is due to the following reasons:

1. The teachers do not need any qualifications or teaching experience to teach. As such, very few of them if confronted with a marginally difficult grammar question will be able to answer or provide an adequate explanation.

2. Lacking proper training, the teachers are usually subjected to a superfluous induction program where they're shown how to 'search on the internet' and how to field difficult grammar questions (simply reply "It's not important"... seriously that's what I was told to say).

3. The quality of lessons is judged entirely by the students. This is simply ridiculous because if the students can't speak the language, how can they judge if they're being taught it correctly? The score teachers get is a reflection of how much the students enjoyed the lesson, but it is not a clear indication of whether or not they've learnt something. As such, lessons generally descend into overblown bouts of hyper-complementing the students and saying "Well done, you're great" even if they can't pronounce "a".

The lack of required training, suitable in house training, or continued effective evaluation means that students rarely make any progress, nor have any way of knowing if they are making any progress because they are their own judge. Senior Management plays no role in the students' progress and, seeing as the teachers rarely know how to track progress, neither do they.

Those are the problems, which begs the question, why are these infernal places still so popular? Well, so far as I can tell, it's basically down to massive marketing budgets and strong brand identity. TV commercials attack commuters on trains with a frequency that rivals McDonalds, TV commercials which have Japanese celebrities starring as the students. I would tentatively suggest that it's also tied into Japanese culture. It's not the social norm to rock the boat or complain by demanding anything different to what's already on offer, so if eikaiwas are pouring money into advertising and they become popular, once the trend is in place it's very unlikely to be broken.

Whereas in London there are constantly different styles of schools vying for top place, which in turn encourages students to experiment between them, in Japan everyone is happy to maintain harmony by going along with what's already popular. In London, the market has a voice and habits which thus leads to a variety of different schools, but Japan's student population is largely voiceless and held rapt by existent trends, unable to break out for fear of disrupting the norm. As such, it's quite possible to imagine eikaiwas being the dominant market force in English education for some time to come.

The end result of this is quite sad for the students. I've taught individuals who, despite having come to the school for 3 years, still had a low-intermediate level of English. I've been teaching alongside other teachers who think that "speach", "ourselfs" and "I am hope seeing you soon" are acceptable examples of the English language. I've had a superior not know that there were two different ways to spell "Practice/Practise" and overheard other teachers berate students for saying "I'm fine thank you." "Fine thank you? Is that good English? We only say 'fine' when we're angry about something." (Really?! Which bizarre country do you come from?)

My advice would be to study at home with a decent textbook (anything by Murphy) accompanied by a CD, and gradually build your level from children's books, through to teenage fiction, to newspapers and higher fiction, all the time listening to natural English from online news broadcasts and television shows.

My advice if you're a qualified teacher is: don't be lured by the easy offer of a job. Stay in your current job in your country and wait until you've secured something that demands more of its teachers. It'll save you a lot of disappointment, hassle, and stress.

Jazz becomes a salaryman

Yes, the dolphins of financial content have beached themselves on the rocky shores of disappointment leaving yours truly with absolutely no cash. I can't use my English pounds because they wither away when exchanged into Japanese yen. On top of that my Eikaiwa (conversation-based) language school is paying me about 4 years in arrears, meaning I'm not going to see a significant amount of money any time soon. Therefore I have now joined the thousands of salarymen who cram themselves onto the trains early in the morning with almost asphyxiating dedication and perseverence in order to earn the bread... or at least the crusts... well mouldy crusts. I say mouldy crusts, it's actually just the mould in itself; the bread has long gone.

I have no idea how some of these guys do it. At a time far too early to be considered civilised, these smartly-dressed sardines physically force themselves onto the train, turning toward the door as they get on, and then push backwards, compressing the people behind them into a fine commuter-based paste. There is no rush hour on earth like Tokyo rush hour. I don't care where you've been, or how many thousands of people you've seen trying to crawl into a space half the appropriate capacity, Tokyo simply beats everywhere hands down. No one complains, tuts, or sighs. They just accept the fact that they are about to be made into one giant, homogenous salaryman pancake.

It seems a lot of salarymen do things to extremes, the majority of them getting up before sunrise, travelling in unhealthily-sized crowds, and returning home close to midnight after putting in a minimum of 12 hours, though usually closer to 15 or 16. Of course they return home only after drinking whisky to the extent that, when getting on the same train, one is immediately hit in the face by an almost tangible whiff of booze so strong that it practically gives you a face lift.

I've only been on this regime (minus the booze) for two weeks and I'm already nearly dead. I've been nodding off in my lessons while desperately trying to pass it off as philosophical whimsy. I've been subsisting entirely on Calorie Mate which, while good enough for the fictional gaming super-CIA-Marine Solid Snake, probably lacks the nutritional value required to keep people who exist in the real world alive. I'll be honest; it's like eating a block of solid anti-matter that's been sprayed with chocolate. If you're a real masochist you can go for the cheese flavour but you'd be better off asking someone to punch you in the face with boxing gloves made with reeking, fusty milk. Calorie Mate: it kept a virtual character alive because it only has virtual nutrition.

With the economic situation the way it is, it looks like I'm going to have to keep this up for another month perhaps. But as soon as I get out of this patch of 14 hour days, I will hopefully have some cash to see more of Tokyo, and some free time to actually write what I've seen other than the back of a very tired Japanese man's head pressed into my face on the underground.

Worse than Neighbours?

The cultural legacy of Japan, so far, includes the intricate code of the Samurai, countless martial arts full of ritual and levels of respect, ikebana, calligraphy, not to mention the linguistic honorific idiosyncracies that permeate every sentence of the country's beautiful language. How then, from this cultural primordial soup, the current state of Japanese television has emerged is a mystery. Imagine stumbling across an alien world populated by some kind of barely sentient, motionless jelly, only to discover an ancient fossil that proves the land was once inhabited by two-legged book readers. What went wrong?

There's no better way to say this: Japanese television is fucking terrible. That's not the same as saying it's unwatchable. I can watch hours of it in a sado-masochistic trance, aghast yet somehow intrigued by the intellectual black hole swirling before me in a vortex of neon signs, bright flashing slogans, bizarre costumes and various kinds of fake hair. "But every country has some bad television." Yes I know... but what I'm trying to tell you, is that in Japan all of it is bad, and I was brought up on Neighbours and Home and Away. Now that's saying something.

Japanese television seems to consist of two main kinds of program: strange, not to mention woefully tacky, chat-show/game-show hybrids; and dramas acted so poorly it makes George Bush reading off an auto-cue look like Laurence Olivier. The first kind of show usually involves a group of about 20 guests (yes, that's right... TWENTY) reacting to the host's jokes and stories, or to various unstimulating activities. The host's job seems to be to elicit various funny comments from the guests and then add his own, often punctuated by him hitting a table with a novelty object, or saying something normal but REALLY LOUDLY SO IT MUST BE FUNNY! Sufficed to say, these shows are complete chaos and appear to be little more than a massive and overacted conversation with occasional advertisements. The focal points vary of course. Sometimes it's animals doing funny things, people proposing in overblown yet romantic ways (cue all 20 guests crying), or guests competing (who can make 20 pizza bases the quickest, or eat a glass full of ice). Usually the guests are people off the street, yet even when it's someone famous, they get dragged into performing trivial tasks and competitions.

The dramas all seem to be about late 20-somethings working in Tokyo, all of whom are involved in some kind of love-quadrangle. Cue many close ups of weeping, cute women/girls, and men with immaculate hair looking off screen at an angle that makes them look all pensive and moody. The only downside is that the acting has about as much severity as a U.S. election. Perhaps they don't want to make the aforementioned chat shows look bad, so they have to keep the quality fairly low to blend in. It's either that or period dramas always involving feuding Samurai, which in itself might be interesting, especially to foreigners wanting to learn a bit about Japan's fascinating past. However, this potential is quickly put aside in order to explore a love-quadrangle between late 20-somethings, all decked out in cheap costumes and very bad wigs/bald caps.

These two main staples are, of course, occasionally punctuated by such trivial matters as the news. However, even some news broadcasts are often blended into a chat show format, making it very difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Often one will hear of a recent political crisis, only for the camera to pan back to the host of the previous chat show who will, with unfailing loyalty to comedic standards worldwide, hit a table or some other inanimate object with his fists... or another inanimate object.

Speaking of comedy, being a budding stand-up (I say budding; try budded, disgruntled, wilted and now lying like compost on the soil of disappointment) I can only sit back, slack-jawed as comedy's newest arch-nemesis (can you have a new arch-nemesis...? Pah, nevermind!) is proudly paraded for all to see. Worn down by the overcrowded and trivial game-chat shows, forlornificated (you can have that for free G.W.B.) by the dramas, I almost openly wept at the comedy, and they were not tears of joy.

Comedy in Japan usually goes by the name of Manzai, which always involves a double act talking very quickly, essentially exchanging quickfire gags and puns while pretending to misunderstand each other. Sufficed to say, having being brought up in a country that's given us Monty Python, Billy Connolly, and Eddie Izzard, Japan's offerings are about as funny as a list of illnesses. Manzai, coincidentally, when translated from it's Kanji characters, can take on the meaning "involuntary talent," which is quite apt for a form of entertainment that induces involuntary manslaughter.

One, two... THREE-YAAAY-EEEE

The demon cherry on this hellish cake has to be Sekai no Nabeatsu ( 世界のなべあつ）whose gift to us all is the ability to count in a funny way... and that's it. Before starting, he announces which numbers are going to be funny. So he might say "Multiples of three are going to be hilarious this time!!" Then off this moustachioed underling of the dark lord goes, counting away until he hits a multiple of three at which point he says it in a mildly eccentric fashion.

To think I spent so long in Manchester and London, gradually working my way up in the stand-up comedy world with cutting material about current affairs, when I could have been getting paid to be on television in Japan... COUNTING!! I mean this guy's been doing the same act for years! I appreciate that, potentially, the amount of numbers he could count is infinite, but surely there's a limit to this guy's shelf life?

I'm sorry I left you Neighbours. All is forgiven.