October

and I have been a bit sparse with the posts of late, I know. Unless I get my typing finger out, 2012 looks like coming in at under 80 (?) posts, well below my January resolution of cracking the triple figure mark. That said though, the nights are drawing in, the days are noticeably cooler and our collective motivation for  extended romps in the great outdoors is waning. More time for some idle thoughts perhaps, or then again bargain browsing on Sierra Trading Post (Marmot Vector Gore-tex Active Shell Jacket for only $150!! Me don't need, but me want, oh me so want, drool, slobber, succumb to default setting of mindless consumerism, etc.).
I do have a couple of things from September I will get around to posting at some stage, but not right now. As I don't know where the SD card with the relevant photos on it is, and I am wary of asking Sanae (tomorrow is the big Halloween party for Cian, his friends and his friend's mothers. And you wouldn't believe the amount of preparation that is going in to this thing. Nor the increasingly frazzled nerves its all leading to. Thus, I have hidden myself away downstairs in a dark corner, far from cut out pumpkins and sour apples. Tomorrow, I may well have to flee the house and take to the hills...).
Thankfully there are less participants than the M&M crazed hoardes who came last year. For the past couple of days I have been going up to collect Cian from his nursery school looking like this, and I think it had the desired effect.

Amidst the leaf strewn splendor of the hills, I will continue to (a) forage for nuts and berries to store for the coming winter; and (b) make incremental, one-grain-of-referenced-sand-at-a-time progress on my PhD. This topic will come to dominate my blog, life and quite possibly my death over the next 12 months. November marks the start of my fourth year and I am determined to finish it by this time next year as it is costing me a freaking fortune in time, money and surfable waves. As November 2013 approaches you can expect my posts to rapidly descend into splenetic incoherence until finally you'll just be left with,
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy
All research and no play makes Brian a dull boy

Apologies

For the lapse in correspondence from this end. The new term has just started over here and I have been reacquainting myself with the somnambulant species, studentus disnterestedus. That and the ever elusive concept of 'teaching'; one of these days I'll figure both of them out.
I was also attending the Japanese Association of Language Teachers' (JALT) annual conference. This was held last weekend in the city of Hamamatsu, an unremarkable place principally renowned for its eel and musical instrument manufacturing.
There may well be some sort of the connection between the two, but it eludes me.
What struck me about the JALT conference, besides the abundance of harmonica playing eels, was the number of late middle aged men, a balding band of brothers, who had spent most of their working lives in Japan. These, I am beginning to realize, epitomize my most possible future. They have about them a sort of hollow bon homie. The years of forced effusiveness, of being professionally cheery, has left them with exhausted smiles and fleeting, scurrying wit.
They also drink a lot. So the exhausted smiles may well be the default facial setting for a serious hangover. And yet, could this be, ten, fifteen years from now, me?
My hair is certainly disappearing at a fair clip, though I finally seem to have my drinking under control (I don't). My face has this default smile/grimace setting and I can do forced empathy better than Mitt Romney. And with a mortgage, a family, and a country of origin in economic ruins, it would seem to be the case.
That is unless of course, the National University of Singapore come to their senses and realize that their faculty sorely lacks the sure-to-be inaugural winner of the Nobel Prize for Applied Linguistics.
And with that my smile would become genuine.

Our mission

The next day, yes, that's right, the very next day I found myself a sleepy member of the Great Forest Kozan Expedition in search of the legendary head waters of the Horobetsu river.

Apparently somewhere up river, beyond the Do Lung bridge, deep in the forest there is an old Ainu trader called Kurtz-san whose methods have become, well, 'unsound'. It was our mission to find him and "exercise our discretion vis-a-vis the termination of his activities".
Or I think that was what Sato-san's explanation back at the nature centre was all about. Then again, it may well have been a general warning to watch out for squirrels and falling chestnuts.
Off we set, braving the unknown and knowing the brave. Which would have been me and Cian.



Things were progressing nicely until we came to the 'Decent of Death' ©.

Followed almost immediately by its terrifying sequel 'Descent of Death 2: The only way is down!' ©

This was tough going. Some of the smaller kids started crying. So we staked them to the chestnut trees and let the rabid squirrels have them.
On we went. The sun shone, the wind whispered through the trees, the cries of the children grew faint in the distance. And then we heard water, then saw it, sparkling through the yellowing leaves.
The Horobestu river! And a crazed Ainu wood carver called Kurtz-san!!



But before that we had lunch. And it was such a splendid sunny day, we grew tired of the stretched-to-breaking-point Conrad/Coppola analogies, splashed around in the water a bit, and then went back.





And on the way back yours truly snagged some wild grapes (as opposed to his son's fingers in the car door - Hello Dave), thereby cementing his victory as 2012's 'Daddy of the Year', even though it's only October.