Japanese Physique

I mentioned the Japanese mentality earlier and that is obviously not an easy thing to discuss in real depth in a Blog like this. Suffice it to say that most Japanese young women never really mature much past about fourteen years of age, they love all things cute, squeal at pictures of puppies or kittens and are quite vacuous, (Reiko is an obvious exception to this and there are many others, but these squealers are the ones you will notice most). Boys on the other hand, never mature at all and are a bunch of spoilt mummy's boys who want and get anything they want and are assured by their parents that they are the best thing since sliced bread. If anything should upset them, (someone telling them not to smoke in a train carriage, for example), they feel perfectly justified in being totally miffed and stabbing said person to death. Shallow, shallow, shallow! Thank god there are still many lovely, kind, decent folk here too or we would all go nuts.

Physically, the Japanese are rapidly changing. I now have third year students (14-15 years old), who are as tall as I am and obesity is a growing, (literally!), problem as the Japanese adopt a more western, unhealthy diet and will no doubt finally become big fat wobble bottoms like the Americans they admire so much. (why would they want to do that?)

Modern Japanese people, especially women, are fixated about beauty. (I've seen boys with Alice bands in their hair and they pluck their eyebrows and worry about their complexions just as much as their girlfriends). They are certain of their own inherent imperfection and any self esteem they might have is swiftly eroded by the media's depiction of female perfection in the form of western models who look nothing like an average Japanese woman. A current beauty salon advert has a poor hapless Japanese woman being called out of a waiting room to witness, in person, the personification of beauty that she should be aspiring to. Who is this paragon of gorgeousness, who is the perfect woman? Of course, it could only be.... VICTORIA BECKHAM!! Don't the Japanese know that she is a pig in knickers? The hapless lassie mentioned was actually far prettier than old hog face could ever hope to be.

It would be nice if the Japanese would simply accept the way they are. Physically, they do tend to be smaller than Americans or Europeans, but they are usually very sveldt and quite strong. Women tend to be willowy and very slim. They have beautiful black or dark-brown hair and this suits their colouring very well. Naturally, people want a bit of individuality, so they dye that hair within an inch of its life, every shade of brown and blonde, including old man grey and sunrise orange. It is actually refreshing to see someone who doesn't have orangy brown hair walking about the place. Thank god Reiko is sensible and doesn't go in for all that crap.
Pig in Pants or Asian Babe, you decide.

Anyway more ranting later.

No rain rainy season

Well, it seems that I was a bit premature in my welcome of the rainy season as it has now dried up and we are being treated to a rainy season that consists of brief showers and spits of rain for only part of the day. This is something else that we can probably thank our American cousins and their love of all things CO2 producing for. The weather is really strange this year as the temperature has suddenly soared to mid summer heights in June and the reservoirs are half empty. Meanwhile, the other side of the country, on the Japan Sea coast is being deluged and suffering from severe flooding. Thanks Mr. Bush, please sign the Kyoto Protocol anytime the flood waters start lapping around your neck, (just where I'd like to place my hands and squeeze).

Japanese perceptions

How do we perceive the Japanese? My own image of the Japanese evolved over a long period. I guess my first awareness of their existence was from the pages of children’s’ comics in which they were depicted as buck toothed, bespectacled little runty soldiers who were very cunning, but ultimately foolish and easy to defeat as they were too small to stand up to our huge western blokes who were all built like brick privies. What a load of crap!

The next stage would be when we watched films like ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ and ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’. These depicted the Japanese as brutal, unflinching, tough and also a bit human. We would still have been justified in distrusting them if this were the only knowledge of them that we had, however, as most of our stereotypes of the Japanese are present in these films.

My own more in-depth knowledge of the Japanese started when I began learning Aikido many years ago. Kanetsuka sensei was the representative of the Honbu Dojo in Britain and he was very human, affable and talented. He was also a consummate womanizer and liked a drink. It was because of Aikido and the large number of books and Japanese films I had experienced, that I first decided to come to Japan. So, has my perception of the Japanese changed much since I started living here? Yes, I guess it has.

To most westerners, the Japanese appear as highly inscrutable, wise Orientals who know secrets of Zen and the Way of Harmony that we can only guess at. We can never be like them as they are so otherworldly and different from our own mindset and culture. I think that this is merely what they want us to believe. Anyone from outside who wants to be accepted as a member of Japanese society and goes to a great deal of trouble to do so…. Is aff their heid! What possible advantage could their be to adopting a culture that tortures its own members to such a degree that record numbers of them commit suicide every year? At what point does the ordinary teenager on the street, raised on a diet of Playstation, pot noodles, crap TV programmes and baseball, become immured in the deep cultural identity that stretches back through the mists of time and culminated in the study of Zen and the way of the sword?…… Never! They never gain that deep insight into the universe that we assign to them as they are members of Japanese society. They may know certain things that we will never know, but that is more likely to do with the level of politeness required when speaking to a manure shoveller than anything esoteric and weird. Honestly, they are just people with many of the faults, failings and fine qualities that the rest of us have, added to which, they are spoiled, arrogant, xenophobic and childish, (not all of them, this is a generalization). Japan has been described as the only non-communist collective society on the planet, and I think that it is true. The group mind thing is very powerful and woe betide anyone who goes against the status quo. If you don’t know what to do in a given situation, don’t panic as their will be an announcement over the Tannoy to tell you when to leave the park or when to stop working in the fields and go and eat lunch. It is really amazing what the people here put up with when it comes to official interference in their everyday lives.

Another picnic in the park

Well, while Saturday turned into a day of thunderstorms and torrential rain, Sunday turned out to be a day of brilliant sunshine, flowers and mulberries. We set off to go to the flea market at the water park on the other side of the Iruma River. Upon arriving, however, we found the usual market area had been entirely usurped by every ‘Yankee’ in Saitama out to show off their customized idiot wagons. (Yankees, by the way, are the Japanese equivalent of Chavs, i.e. low life scum. The main difference being that Yankees work for a living and drive abominable vehicles that a chav would kill for).
We went in search of the flea market and found it in the actual water amusement area, which is only open in the summer. This is a huge swimming pool complex with flumes etc. The only part open all year round is the fishing ponds, which look like dirty swimming pools full of fish for the catching. Sad fisherman types sit around them all day pulling out fish and wasting time. We did a quick turn around the flea market, which I thought was rather above average, but which Reiko thought full of cigarette smoke and not worth another look, so we cycled round to the boating pond and had a picnic on a bench overlooking the water.

Since this is a rather typical Japanese boating pond, the usual rowing boats are supplemented by pedalos in the shape of swans and others with Koala bear heads (?) on them. Quite what the nautical connection is between Koala bears and boating ponds, I have no idea, but I guess the Japanese love of all things cute can explain it. I had the usual, boring sandwiches for lunch, but Reiko had rolled sushi, i.e. vinegared rice with a filling of salmon, tuna, meat or fish eggs, rolled in nori seaweed. It’s actually delicious, but I can’t seem to bring myself to buy it. Anytime that I have to eat it or starve, I thoroughly enjoy it and resolve to buy it again sometime, but I inevitably put it off the very next time I am browsing Seven Eleven’s shelves for a snack.

The picnic over, (Akira had a rice ball and some of our food), we went in search of amusement for the wee fellow as he was getting far too much enjoyment out of picking up fag ends and eating dirt for our liking. We cycled to the far end of the park and found the play area. It had a couple of those multi purpose installations with all sorts of activities on them such as chutes and mirrors, tunnels and ropewalks. Akira was straight onto the one for younger children, (it was actually for three to five year olds). He loved one of the slides which turned through ninety degrees as it went down, even though it was quite short. I regretted not taking my video camera, as the look on his face and his amazing ability at scrambling over everything was well worth recording. One of the nice things about being out and about with a toddler, is the way that it allows you to interact with other people with very little feeling of awkwardness and it makes you feel less isolated, we chatted to quite a few of the other parents. After mucking about on the play gym for a while, Akira and I wandered over the river embankment, (for flood prevention), and into the woods on the other side, which turned out to be mulberry trees. The trees were covered in fruit and a lot had fallen off and was lying on the ground in various states of squishidness. In order to keep Akira from stuffing his physog with the dirty stuff off the ground, I was kept busy picking ripe berries off the trees to keep him happy. Reiko said it wasn’t very sweet, but he loved it. We were a bit worried about the effect on his digestive tract however, so we left after a few minutes and cycled home. Akira had enjoyed himself so much that he was unconscious long before we reached the house and had to rest his tiny head on Reiko’s rucksack as we bowled along.