As the last cherry blossom falls from the tree, the last commuter misses his train, the last guinea pig is walked in the park, the last piece of rotting sushi drops off the end of the great conveyor belt of life and into the bottomless bowl of ramen and as the sun rises out of Mount Fuji for the last time, we bid Japan, "fair thee well, old friend."

It's all a bit sad saying goodbye. We've had an excellent year and a half. Here's the recap:

I terrorised my neighborhood and indoctrinated my students.
H apologised to everyone and told them I was probably joking and being English.
We ate everything.
We got married, for goodness sake!

It's all been subarashii and jolly good. Thanks to all you readers and especially thanks to all the people i have met who have made me feel so welcome and special special special thanks to the Shimada family for making me feel so specially welcome.

SAYONARA for now...

...but see you soon on
GordonsGoneToNorfolk

After staring at the atlas for too long, I came to see how Japan and the UK could have been thought of as quotation marks for the word 'Europe-Asia'. Then, when the New World was discovered for ' America '. Or maybe, if you spin your globe around, it's like they are the apostrophes in Europe-Asia's America's Europe-Asia's America's Europe-Asia's America's...

What does it mean? Well, in a recent mumbling to myself, I championed the theory that world history can be viewed as man's quest for coherent geographical punctuation. I call it the cartographico-politico syntactical theory of history and, I can assure you, if you think about it for long enough, all the facts fit.

Oh yes, about the the sushi police and the European response lead by the Earl of Sandwich that I was blithering on about. I spotted two Italians who must have been sent to revenge the "Neapolitan sandwich" and other Japanese food crimes against their nation. The two counter-culinarists came into Starbucks, all loud talking and gesturing. For a moment GordonThoughtHeHadGoneToItaly. Never mind it was an American cafe in Tokyo; "the menu says espresso and cappuccino and so its our culture," was what I supposed was their thinking. They blocked the aisle with their hand gestures, they spent ages deciding what to order, they tried to chat with the staff before announcing "Due Espresso!" and then they stood at the little service bar drinking them, while everyone else politely squeezed around them to pick up their own drinks. It was a right culture clash.

It was exactly the kind of situation that Japanese people dread - foreigner on the loose. The staff had obviously been trained in this and their response - maintain polite smile, increase bowing rate, don't panic - was admirable but ineffective. Everyone else, myself included, looked away for fear of being talked to.

This is the standard response towards foreigners. On the trains I regularly have two empty seats next to me, even if it's crowded. I had thought that this was a personal issue (girth or odour, not sure which) until I heard of other foreigners say the same thing and complain about not being accepted here (Mostly Australians and Americans. They expect to fit in. Old-worlders know that even if you live in Crewe all your life, one weekend break in Eccles brands you a pretentious outsider, who thinks he's better than you and is probably a poofter too) The real reason is that they are afraid that the foreigner might talk to them and it would be embarrassing. I know this because I too don't sit next to foreigners on the trains for fear that they will talk to me. You could almost say I was fitting-in by not talking to people.

The other day, I paid the rent in the building company's office. Every time I go in there, they panic,


"Oh No! The monster has escaped!"

"Look at his big belly!"

"He's eaten the poor little lady that looks after him!"


Then I give them the rent money and beat my chest and roar a little.


"Quick, give him a hand-towel and bow a lot!"

This makes me happy and so I run back home waving my hand-towel above my head and barking.

Japan's ministry of agriculture is sending out special Sushi police to patrol Japanese restaurants abroad in order to ensure authentic and pure Japanese food is served. Well I think we need to send our own Euro Food Cops here to look at my lunch

which simultaneously insults the cuisine of the English - home of the sandwich, the Italians - home of spaghetti in tomato sauce and the Scottish - home of the unidentifiable deep fried thing. Actually forget the food cops, we need to take this to the top. I want to see the Earl of Sandwich, the Prince of Pasta, the Fief of Fried stuff, the Burger King and the Dairy Queen sit down with the Shogun of Sashimi and tell him to put his own house in order before he criticises our cheese on sushi.

Fukubukuro: This means bag of joy. Here's the thing: for new year's sales some department stores offer a large sealed bag full of merchandise at dramatically cut prices. The only trouble is that you don't know what you are getting or if it's going to fit. A bit of fun marketing? Well maybe but there's always someone who takes it too far and so, last year, high-class Jewellers were offering fukubukuro at around 1m pounds which is half the price of the watches included. Phew! They also (I'm just copying the article here) contained a voucher giving you the opportunity to star in your own movie, complete with premier night. I had my eye on a bag of random cheeses from Japan's premier cheese shop. This year you can even get a house in your bag (you have to provide the land to put it on)


What next? Gordonsgonetojapan suggests carpet cleaning services, surgical operations, pets and socks.

Thanks to Jonny who brought us some festive fare from England which we had with my in laws. This explains it:

I also fed the mince pies to some of my students but, in general, our Christmas goodies - mince pies, pudding and cake - are a bit too rich and stodgy for the Japanese palate but they did seem to try to appreciate them. They ought to, traditional Japanese Christmas dinner is a Kentucky Bucky!

If you look carefully you can see that I made an effort at MERRY CHRISTMASing, although the christmas dinner I cooked was without Turkey, bread sauce, parsnips or cranberry sauce. There are sprouts here but we decided not to. Mind you we did cook bouillabaisse, roast potatoes , coq au vin and sausages with bacon wrapped around. So I was happy there. I even made brandy butter which I ended up eating it all myself with the mince pies left over from my "christmas special" class.

Jonny came to join us for our honeymoon. Normally I like to test out my visitors as soon as they get here and while they're still jet-lagged. So I fed my parents a huge heap of raw fish at 7 in the morning and I left photographer Nick waiting for an hour in a very crowded station. With Jonny we decided to freak his noodle by taking him to the design festa that I had been to last year.

He coped pretty well, though; it was only the huge baby that really got to him. That and the very odd jeweller Takashi Higashi who worked in the medium of mice, crows feet and other things I won't say.

Also, as you can see I made a new friend again this year.

Someone told me that Japan is like a banana: yellow on the outside but white in the middle. Mrs C (formerly H) says it's more like an inverted banana - a nababa I suppose - ostensively white but with a yellow core. Myself? I say it's a topologically complex sequence of interwoven alternately inverted bananas - a babananabanabanabanananabababa. But what does it taste like? Is there an inflatable version?
These are deep questions.

My parents came to visit again and of course we had a great time. Highlights included, the wonderful autumn colours of the gardens, shabu shabu beef, the Tokyo-Edo museum, the earthquake simulator, our wedding and most excitingly this amazing sign in the toilets of the Ikebukuro fire-station:



It's Engrish Gold!

Actually the wedding was the highlight:



Husband and Wife



Mother-in-law and Sister-in-law



With Father and Father-in-law



Wife and Mother

It all went very well. At the shrine we got into our trad-garb and then processed quite slowly through the shrine grounds which looked great with all the autumn colours. Then we went into a side room where three guys played strange music and a priest said a lot of things and we did a lot of bowing. It was all quite serious actually and when I cam to recite my vows, which I had spent the last few weeks learning, I got quite nervous but I think I got them all in. Then H and I drunk three lots of sake out of different sized cups and then we all drank more sake and did some more bowing and that was it - married!

Afterwards there was a big lunch here where our family's joined together and photographed each other. I made another speech and there was crying followed by introductions and questions. Everyone seemed really excited about us and were asking us about how we met etc. Language and cultural barriers came crashing down and we all got on really well. It ended up with some traditional synchronised clapping which only I couldn't get the hang of and then we went back to my in-laws and carried on the drinking/family thingy.

Beijing is trying to eradicate Chinglish signs before the Olympics in 2008.

Then, they'll have to find somewhere else to chuck away their organisms.

GordonWentToChina. We visited Andy and family in Yunnan. Highlights are broken down into four categories:

1) The Culinary category: We were so blown away by Yunnan cuisine that at one point H was considering being Chinese. They like it hot, mind you. Oh mammy, they like it hot.

If you look carefully you can see a fish covered with chillies, Kunming's famous "cross bridge noodle", a mushroom hotpot made with half a dozen special wild mushrooms and a fish stew that had a profound effect on all of us, for, such was it's fiery depths, that we came to speak of it in only the most respectful terms.

2) The shopping category:
I tried on every shoe in western Yunnan eventually coming up with a bargain pair both trendy and comfortable. We also picked up fitted suits at Raja's in HK and a sparkler for H's engagement ring.

3) The tourism category:
The lights of HK, the bustle of Kunming, the friendly Bai people of Dali, the old town of Lijiang.... cue the montage:


3) The warm feeling category:
Andy, Rong Fen and Laura. Thanks for everything.


All in all an excellent trip. China was almost unrecognisable from seventeen years ago when I first went there. Only when we went on an train or saw a horse and cart in the road was I transported back to the place that thrilled me when I was 18. Still, as in Japan, progress is not necessarily Westernisation and the lights of Kunming, the rebuilt streets of Dali and Lijiang and the new hotels and restaurants in old buildings seemed new and confident in a Chinesey way.

One of the best bits was to see H get used to and then come to like China. People often thought that she was Chinese and would start talking to her. I would reply with my broken Chinese but they'd just look at her again as if to say - couldn't you do the talking? We then realised that if Andy squatted down behind H we could get something that looked and sounded like a Chinese person.

Looking forward to returning in another 17 years when, if statistics are anything to go by, we'll all be Chinese.

Vending Machines:

Fact:
Vending machines here sell everything: insurance, beer, eggs, pornography, fortunes, umbrellas, pet beetles, toilet paper, flowers, fried food as well as the obvious canned drinks and girl's used grundies.

Fact:
There are 5.6 million vending machines which is about one for every three Tokyoites. Mine is a tissue dispenser in the station and I share it with H and Mrs Tanaka who likes to buy them to wipe her glasses.

Fact:
You can even get married in a vending machine. You walk into a cubicle and get a robotic priest, plastic flowers, confetti and then a derogatory speech, disco lights, Abba, vol au vents and three sandwich toasters (why can't people stick to the wedding list!)

Now...which fact is the lie?

Cleaning:

My student just told me that Japanese people are taught that cleaning is of primary importance. My other student, who works long hours every day except Sunday when she cleans, was recently forced to take her first day off this year. What did she do? 'Clean more thoroughly.' The nation is obsessed with bathing. The word for beautiful is also the word for clean - kirei. I saw a man vacuum cleaning the station steps in Tokyo. The first part of a Geisha's training is cleaning and, of course, Mr Miyagi in the Karate Kid starts the eponymous hero's education with a car cleaning task.

We shouldn't be surprised. Cleaning has deep roots in the Shinto religion where you may become impure through you actions and need to be cleansed for your own peace of mind and good fortune. Rituals include bathing in waterfalls and washing hands and mouth before visiting a shrine.

Had a few days away in Hokkaido which is the least populated area of Japan. With it's cooler temperatures and open spaces it was the perfect antidote to Tokyo and a great place to let off steam.



This was atop of the highest point on the isalnd and, at 5 degrees C, the coolest place in Japan - some trees going autumnal already. We had a great time.

Food was special since it's really fresh up there. The best was the "Genghis Khan" restaurant. It was a tiny little place around a bar packed full of people half of them eating and half waiting for a spot. The staff were a miracle of ergonomics: one on veg one on the huge kettle one on the left side of the bar and the head chef who was continuously chopping up bits of icelandic lamb and monitoring our Genghis-Khan-helmet-shaped grill onto which he put lumps of lamb fat so we could fry effectively. It was more or less silent while we all focused on cooking and eating the lamb. I have no evidence but I imagine that Genghis would have been proud of them.

I got engaged to H!

It was worryingly easy. We went over to Saitama and I had to ask Mr S,
‘OJOUSAN O KUDASAI,’
which is literally
‘CAN I HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER PLEASE’
I could easily have said this by mistake in one of my Japanese rants. In fact, later, when we were eating our sashimi, I asked
‘WASABI O KUDASAI’ = ‘CAN I HAVE THE WASABI, PLEASE’
I got that too. Now I think about it, I could have asked for all sorts of stuff.

Probably best not to though. Just in case the 30% return gift law applies. I haven’t dared ask if this is so, because if it is then I reckon I owe him a pair of legs.

Also, spare a thought for the poor foreigner who got just one syllable wrong when he went to his future father-in-law and asked,
‘OJISAN O KUDASAI’ = ‘CAN I HAVE YOUR GRANDFATHER, PLEASE.’

Had a few days in “motor city” Nagoya which is the home of Toyota, Pachinko, Miso flavoured everything, fish on a castle and it’s very own haircut: the “Nagoya Maki” which is a long curly business. H also told me of special themed cafes like the Viking one or one with a trampoline in the middle.

We met some lovely Nagoyans who showed us around and of course the food was the thing. We had Miso flavoured udon noodles, Tebayaki chicken wings (I learned how to eat them in one bite), proper sushi (it’s all in the way you pat the fish onto the rice apparently) but the highlight was Houraiken eel restaurant.

H says it’s the best and was excited for weeks in advance and she doesn’t even like eel! But I do and so I arrived there at 11:15 am, a quarter of an hour before it opened and already there was a queue of 30 people. I ordered extra large Himmabushi which was a wooden bowl of filleted and grilled eel in their secretly ingrediented Teriyaki sauce and a pot of green tea so you can make a soup out of it which I did. The web site tells you exactly how to eat it but I managed to work it out by copying my neighbour once she had photographed her lunch from every angle. Good? Yes it was. It was really very good. A lot better than avin em in jelly anyhow.


Nagoya Castle. If you look carefully you can see that "hello kitty" is showing us Nagoya's speciality foods on my new sweat-towel.

Remember Nick Clark, Gordonsgonetojapan's photographer? Well he took some great shots when he was here in December and one of them is this one of a monk. We went to see him yesterday to get his permission for Nick to use his photos which the monk was happy to do. His father owns the temple which is a large one in the middle of a busy shopping district and he, after a gruelling year's training at the centre of his sect, is now in charge. He showed us the perfect garden with its stone steps, raked gravel and bamboo grove and it was impossible to imagine what was outside as we stood with him there in contemplation.

You can see more of nick's photos at http://www.nickclark.co.uk

I saw a woman with a T-shirt saying,

No Shirt
No Shorts
No Juicey

Post-feminist dogma or what? I can't quite get my head around it. There's lots of funny English on T-shirts. Mind you, H says she sees lots of funny Japanese on English T-shirts.

It's Hanabi season! Everyone dresses up in their Yukata (long gowns for men, a lighter style of kimono for women) and goes out to watch the fireworks, drink a beer and eat some food from the food stalls.

If you look carefully...

I went with H's family to lake Yamanaka where, apart from Hanabi we also enjoyed Christmas World, Doggy Park, a nice Ryokan and, of course, great views of Mount Fuji which is right near.

"I'll tell you what I like about Chinese people. They're hanging in there with the chopsticks,aren't they? You know they've seen the fork. They're staying with the sticks." Jerry Seinfeld

My boss at the Language school where I teach asked me "have you had the opportunity to use chopsticks yet?" He knows I've been here for 8 months never mind that I've been to China too and he should have known that I've had plenty of opportuniy. It's perhaps illustrative of a big gap out there. I suppose it's likely that someone his age has never used a knife and fork since this is very rare here. A fork on it's own for pasta is very common and a western style spoon is always used for curry but a knife and fork would probably only be used for steak.

That's because the Japanese surely have the best design for chopsticks in the world. Unlike the Chinese ones, they are fine at the ends and so can easily be used for cutting like a knife or for spearing like a fork. Unlike the Korean ones they taper to a substantial handle and aren't too fiddly.

Tokyo is a sleepy town. Everyone is always asleep. Cafes are full of table sleepers, parks with bench sleepers and especially the train. I've seen a whole carriage asleep. I’ve seen a man who has bound his hands up in the hanging handle thing and fallen asleep hanging from it. I also saw a young lad fall asleep while playing his game toy thing, then waking up for two seconds, playing a bit more and nodding off again. Then, yesterday, there was a man who fell asleep in the middle of texting.

Also you have to be aware of sprawlers who might be sitting next to you and fall into your lap with maximum embarrassment for them. Even worse is a standing sprawl, falling off the handles straight into a seated person. H said she saw this. I almost did it the other day. My MO is foolproof, though. I sling my head back and rest it on the window. There's no chance of sprawling but I do worry about snoring.

Gifts: Every time you recieve a gift you should give a return gift at approximately 30% of the value of the first gift. Of course, this system leads to an infinite sequence of gifts of decreasing worth. Case in point: when we moved in we gave our neighbour a box of sweets, she countered with a bag of oranges, we gave back a smaller box of sweets, the bowing had hardly finished befoe she had summoned her mother who came rushing with half a watermelon. I now have to give her an apple, I anticipate a plum in return, then I'll give just one small sweet, perhaps a fruit pastel and she can give me a cherry etc.

Also, every time we pay the rent we get a hand towel. We have eight hand towels from the landlord now. I'm not getting sucked into this one: I give a handkerchief, they give a tissue etc.

We all know that the Japanese invented football. Well, not really, but they had a game called kemari which was a cultured keepy-uppy game played in traditional garb around 600AD. This is the Japanese character for kemari which, in case you don't have the Japanese fonts installed, looks almost exactly like Hide Nakata doing a fancy move while wingeing about his team mates.

Then the Chinese added the goal posts and the British added the rules and the Argentinians added cheating and that's why we never win but I don't really mean it because they're actually very good now.

"If you wait on side of mountian with mouth open, eventually roast duck fly in"

"If you walk around with your mouth open eventually a meat pie will fall in"

"Rabbit, tree, snack"

These are actually Chinese proverbs about patience and free food. The first one, I am told, is probably made up by some Westerner whereas the second is authentic (roast duck is western but meat pies are Chinese?) The third one is a nifty three character way of saying "If you wait behind a tree eventually a rabbit will run into it and you'll get a free snack".

The Japanese version emphasises the patience aspect and not so much the free food:

"you have to wait for 3 years of continual rain on a stone before a hole forms"

My advice is to hide behind a tree with your mouth open. This gives you three opportunities for free food. Not sure why you need a hole in a stone.

Nothing really coherent this week but just 3 nuggets:

1) Saw an advert in the Japan Times, "Wanted: 15 Native Americans for proof reading work." What are they translating ? Totem-poles?

2) People like to dress up at weekends. Fine. It's called cosu purei (costume play) Fine. Some people like to dress up as policemen and then go around acting like policemen and pretending to arrest people. That's not fine.

3) I have heard and have read that some people enjoy keeping rabbits for pets and are also to be seen walking them in the park on special rabbit leads.

The other day we dined at "Doma Doma" which is an izakaya restaurant meaning that they do lots of classic Japanese food as well as crazy variations on it and even mixing with Western dishes. Thus you may have a plate of Sashimi, a cheese fondue and a plate of sausages all in one meal.

The fun does not stop there. By no means. In fact we ordered Russian Roulette which comes as six delicious pork or srhimp steamed dumplings except that one of them is packed full of enough Wasabe to make your nose fall off. You can imagine the tension as a Deer Hunter style stand off ensued. It went down to the last one with me, my fate determined, galantly taking my medicine.

The same restaurant serves a mystery dish (just a covered dish in the photo)called "Bomb" and another restaurant does "Garlic Bomb".