Priests and Postmen

Christmas in these parts was a somewhat eclectic affair, bereft as it was of the usual presents under the Christmas tree and oven-roasted fowl. Admittedly Christmas in Japan (thankfully) isn't as hysteria inducing as the shopping frenzy back home, but even by our local low key standards, it was rather underwhelming.

We began the day by going to 10.00 o'clock mass at the local Catholic church (of which, rather surprisingly, Muroran has two). It was plenty long - over the hour mark - in a very cold Church, with a lot of old people, who, I feared, might start succumbing to hypothermia if the priest didn't start hustling through his homily. After the mass, we were gently but firmly entreated to join the Christmas party. Sanae was bemused by it all, especially the fact that all the women present had white shawls covering their heads during the mass. She asked me why, so I explained how the Pope had just recently issued an edict about banning female dandruff from the Church. Cian, I think, is quite taken with Catholicism: as far as he is concerned, if you manage to endure the hour long bizarre babble, then you are rewarded with chocolate sponge cake, apples, and orange juice.

After mass we went for a walk on Itanki beach; a short cold walk, as despite the sunshine and blue skies, it was bitterly cold. So back to the house for a cup of tea and a quick bite to eat, and then off again to the post office. Yes, the post office. As traditional as turkey. We went there to open a special education savings - insurance account for Cian (or "he who must always be obeyed"), and the bloody process, in typical Japanese bureaucratic style, took close on an hour and a half. And apparently, because of the intransigent idiocy of having to write my name in two different writing systems (a topic for a future post), it appears I will have to redo the application again this coming Monday.

So, by now completely emptied of the Xmas spirit, we took ourselves off to the restaurant up the road from our house for dinner. And had pork curry and rice. And it was delicious. And I don't care if there was no roast lamb, roast potatoes, gravy, turnips, ham, more gravy, stuffing, bacon, the rest of the gravy, pudding, cake, Irish coffees, baileys, bushmills, whatever your having yourself...

(Angry) Book of the Noughties part 3

In his book about the roar and subsequent mauling of the Celtic Tiger, Ship of Fools, Fintan O'Toole details how the wealth created during the boom years created both an incredibly unequal and an incredibly uncritical society.

"Excluding the considerable value of its residential property, the personal wealth of the top 1 per cent of the Irish population grew by 75 billion euros between 1995 and 2006. Bank of Ireland Private Banking estimated in 2007 that, including private residential property, the top 1 per cent of the population held 20 per cent, the top 2 per cent held 30 per cent and the top 5 per cent held 40 per cent of the wealth...Yet, somehow, Irish people went on believing that they lived in a relatively classless society" (p.76).

Now contrast this with the latest budget, issued with the public mantra that as a nation "we all must bear the pain equally" (and the apparent private one of "lets beat the economic shit out of the young and the poorer sectors of society because everyone knows they don't vote"). Funnily enough, there was nothing in the boom years about reaping the rewards equally. No, the property developers and the like ("the new gentry" as O'Toole so aptly terms them) had to be given free rein, unencumbered from such proletarian practices as taxation and accountability. And Fianna Fail, in their grubby, gombeen desire for power and privilege (how the good f*** can Brian Cowen still be the third highest paid political leader in Europe?), were only too happy to prostitute themselves before the lords of bricks and mortar.

Marx was right: in the economic good times the owners of capital benefit the most; in the bad times (and this is one of the worst), the burden of pain falls disproportionately on the labouring classes. Equality has nothing to do with it.

Twas the Saturday before Christmas, and all was white...

The past week, even by Hokkaido standards, has been exceedingly cold. The daytime temperature stubbornly refused to rise above freezing, while the winds from Siberia blew and blew, and blew some more. In the center of Hokkaido in Obihiro, where Sanae is from, the mercury dropped to -23 Celsius last Wednesday night. I reckon the only person reading this who can relate to those sort of temperatures is my sister Sue down in Antarctica (though she would probably dismiss them as 'mild'). We have had our first fall of 'permanent snow', only a couple of centimeters thankfully. Further north, up around Asahikawa they already have 50 centimeters and counting. What is slightly troubling is that this type of cold weather, while not unusual in Hokkaido, is highly unusual this early in the winter. Typically a week long spell of sub-zero temperatures such as what we are suffering through, would be par for the course around the end of January / beginning of February. But in the middle of December? It doesn't auger well for the rest of the winter.

Birthday Boy

Well the 'big boy' just got that little bit bigger today. Cian celebrated his third birthday and discovered that there is one day in the year when everybody has to be nice to you, even if you throw a temper tantrum and various toys around the room because your new train won't go around the tracks the way you want it to, even if does involve defying the laws of physics and gravity.

It was a wet Saturday so we confined ourselves to the house, the train set and copious amounts of strawberry and cream cake (with extra strawberries!), and vowed to go out tomorrow instead, if it is not too cold.

Cian seemed to enjoy his birthday, well, he definitely enjoyed the day, but I am not too sure if he has still quite grasped the concept of 'birthday'. Rather, he probably thinks it was just one of those bizarre, can't explain, but-what-the-hell-let's-enjoy-the-good-times-when-they-come, days when everybody is nice to him and new toys appear as if by magic.

In years to come I'm sure he'll know what it is and milk it is for all it is worth.

And in years and years to come, when the paths walked stretch further than the road ahead, he'll probably just want to quietly ignore it (but his wife and three sisters won't let him).

Books of the Noughties Part II

In the film, The Matrix, one of the sentient robot type thingies, Agent Smith if I remember correctly, captures the Keanu Reeves character and proceeds to belittle his humanity and beat the slow-mo shit out of him. Whilst doing so he delivers the following speech: "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.".

After reading Alan Weisman's discomforting book, The World Without Us, I reckon Agent Smith could be on to something here. Weisman's book, as the title suggests, begins with the deceptively simple premise of imagining a world that is suddenly devoid of humans. Abruptly shorn of you, me and everybody we know, the book describes what our legacy to the planet would be. It begins with the cute - woodlands and animals reclaiming the cities; and ends with the apocalyptic; runaway explosions at various untended oil refineries and chemical plants unleashing such a huge toxic maelstrom that it could potentially wipe out all known life forms. Yet, by outlining such possibilities, the book also provides much needed clarity about both what needs to be done, and perhaps more importantly, can be done, to avoid such a future.

Sundays in Sapporo

In lieu of a trip home, or anywhere for that matter, this winter, we decided to take ourselves up to Sapporo for two days last weekend to do some Christmas shopping. Unfortunately, Japan doesn't offer the equivalent of Ryanair or Easyjet, so short, cheap trips overseas are out of the question. Even flying down to Tokyo, the cheapest airfare you could get would cost about 230 euros return. Travel in Japan is ridiculously expensive - and they wonder why they can't attract more overseas' visitors.

Anyway, the three of us hightailed it off to Hokkaido's big smoke - about as glamourous as it gets in these parts. We splashed out on the hotel and stayed in the JR Tower Nikko Hotel, reputedly one of Sapporo's best (I am, given my drunken, 'damn-slept-in-the-park-again' escapades of my previous JET years, in no position to make comparisons). We took Dad to the observation deck when he visited and he may recall that it is directly over Sapporo Eki, the city's main train station.

For Cian 'Choo-Choo' Gaynor, this was train-spotting heaven. Not only were we beside the station, but our room directly overlooked the railway lines, so he spent most of the evening and the following morning excitedly pointing out every single train that came in and out of the station. It was only by taking the boy for a ride on an actual train that we managed to get him to leave the room at all.

For Cian, Sapporo is now synonymous with our room in the JR Tower, so from now on, any time we visit the city we will have to acquiesce to his very expensive demands and stay at the hotel. (Though I reckon Sanae won't complain too much the way she devoured, sorry, enjoyed the buffet breakfast on Monday morning. It was only by taking her shopping that I managed to get her to leave the restaurant).

Friday Afternoon

Late Friday afternoon, sun has disappeared behind the hills that loom over the university and the chill in the air is already causing your breath to steam. I usually have classes in a nursing school I teach at, next town over, but they have ended for the year, so my week's winding down time has lengthened. On Fridays I pick Cian up early from the creche and we head to Sapporo Co-op, a local supermarket, where we gorge ourselves on the free bread, cakes and fruit samples, before buying 100% guaranteed cholesterol enhancing croquettes for dinner. I like to think it is the highlight of Cian's week - well that and his back-to-back double header of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse we let him watch on Saturdays.

I have a 'bonnenkai' this evening - an end of year party. I realise it is only December 4th, but the group organising it are taking no chances. They know how in demand I am at these end of year rice and raw fish extravaganzas, so they booked me early. Plus they said there would be chips. I'll pretty much go anywhere if there is a chance of chips. Rice, let me think of an excuse, but chips...I'll bring my own ketchup.

Books of the 00's

Alright, I am only belatedly getting around to this, my promised selection of my best books of the noughties. The emphasis, I should stress, is very much on the personal pronoun - this is 'my' selection, in all its subjective, idiosyncratic, WTF!? glory. Feel free to agree, disagree, denounce my literary ignorance or best of all, riposte with your own selection. As an avid book lover, reading is as much about the anticipation of the unread book as it is about what you have already finished.

The other point I would like to make is that this is a selection purely of books I have actually read. There were many, many worthy books published in the last decade, but limited time has meant I could only read a fraction of them. So not only this list biased in its subjectivities, it is necessarily narrowed by the depth and breadth of the reading I managed.

Alright, enough of the yadda yadda, I am going to kick off with my Top 5 non-fiction titles. I will introduce each one in turn over the next week and today I am going to begin with...

"Think" by Simon Blackburn (2001, though I am cheating a little here. It was originally published in 1999, but the paperback edition didn't come out until 2001 and that is what I read. Hence the inclusion. Anyway, it is too good of a book to pass by).

Think is one of those books that makes you go all fervent and wild-eyed as you earnestly impress on your friends just how good it really is. No, it really is that good. Really.

It is a book on philosophy that acts as an introduction to the major topics in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, justice, goodness and the GAA, but done in a very unassuming, accessible manner. Like having a long, fulfilling conversation with a witty, erudite, compelling friend in a warm, comfortable pub on a slow, winter afternoon.

Guess who's coming to dinner

On Sunday we had Indonesian friends of ours around to the house for lunch. We got to know them through their daughter, Aika, who is the same age as Cian and goes to the same creche. Roma, Aika's mother, is a PhD student at the university, and her husband, Himsar, is himself a university lecturer in Indonesia who has taken a year's leave of absence to stay with his wife and daughter here in Japan. They are both from Medina in northern Sumatra were I spent one, mosquito-bitten night on my way to Malaysia many years ago. I don't to be honest, remember much about the city besides rather cruelly likening it to Beirut circa 1982, but by that stage I had exhausted my love for Indonesia and just wanted out. I am sure it is a much nicer place than a fleeting one night visit could possibly convey, but I'm not so sure I ever want to really find that out.

Anyway, the three came round for a very enjoyable afternoon of food, conversation and more food, while Cian and Aika turned the house into their very own playground.

Saturday

Saturdays have, of late, become rather delayed starting days where we sort of ease ourselves into the weekend. In summer I am usually out of bed by 5.30 - 6.00 and in the water before 7.00, but winter puts paid to that. It is still dark at time, cold outside, maybe even snowing and, well, the bed is warm, soooo warm. So today for instance, commenced at the rather late, by our standards, time of 7.40, when we finally got it together to get up. Cian was waiting patiently in his bed for Mammy and Daddy but I reckon another five minutes and Cian would have got his army of stuffed toys together and attacked us.

The rest of the day was mundane in its ordinariness - I went for a jog, Sanae and Cian went to visit Mrs. Takahashi where Cian, as usual, was given his body weight in fresh fruit. In the afternoon in attempt to rid ourselves of our mundanity, we went for a drive and a walk down to a cove on the far side of Muroran. As you can see from the accompanying photographs, it is a surprisingly picturesque place, albeit a bloody cold one.

Day Off

Cian had a fever yesterday, the boy can't seem to get enough of them lately. He's already has been through the whole oink, oink swine-flu thing, so we weren't too concerned, but it did necessitate taking a day off to look after him. One of the drawbacks of living so far away from family and friends is that on days like these, either myself or Sanae have to take time off work to look after sick-boy. Yesterday was my turn, today Sanae gets to start her weekend early. The result is that weekends lose their 'weekend' status, as one of us, or both of us, have to go into school to make up for lost time.
See, I warned you this blog would quickly become plaintive and whiney.

Introduction

As emails to all and sundry have become scarcer and scarcer due to the pressures of time and a soon-to-be 3 year old boy (world's most demanding, too), we, the Gaynor-Takahashi family, have decided to explode onto the blogger scene with this, our eponymous titled blog.

It will be of necessity, brief, intermittently updated, riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings, unreservedly self-pitying, utterly subjective and prone to long, weary diatribes against the evils of English education in Japan and the herculean task that is toilet training.

Some of it will even be written in Japanese.

Topics, topics, topics...well some grand, a lot mundane, maybe vaguely interesting, probably not. Rather, this blog is an attempt to bridge the distance between here and wherever your 'there' may be, by offering red-eyed snap shots into the life and dreaming of the three of us here in Muroran.

'Daily' is not something I can promise - the best I can do is 'frequently', though even that could be a bit of a fools promise, maybe 'not so infrequently', would be closer to the mark.

To begin, I am going to kick off a series (indecently cribbed from the AV Club, see: www.avclub.com) on the best of the noughties, the best books, music, films, stories, websites, places I've been, hot, dinners I've had, etc. in the period from January 2000 to December, 2009. It is, note, my best not yours so feel free to disagree, criticize, berate me, label me ignorant, and generally treat me the same way as I usually treat my students. My ultimate aim is to spark some give and flow from the millions who undoubtedly read this blog (hello Mother).

First up, this weekend hopefully, are the best books of the noughties.