Posted in Vidiot on Wednesday July 8, 2009.

The new Uniqlo Calendar mixes beautiful time-lapse photography with music from FPM. It’s drop dead gorgeous: I’ve been watching it for an hour, mesmerised. So, who can remember their old postcode?

Posted in Japan on Thursday June 11, 2009.

This week I am going to do my damnedest to find a bottle of Awamori in Canberra. I don’t know if it’s possible, and suggestions are welcome here, but I’m also assuming I can stoop to Umeshu, Shochu or even Soju if desperate. Then I am going to go to Iori, order Katsudon, drink my death liquor, and if all goes well I could end up on a boat punching people. One can but hope.

Posted in Mwah on Monday May 18, 2009.

The sun creeps behind the swooping edifice of the Sanyo solar ark and creates an office-block sized silhouette of a banana on nearby rice paddies. The bespectacled man beside me is reading a translation of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and katakana speckled motivation charts line the pages, urging readers to be the ideas man (アイディアマン) and to innovate, effectively. Unfortunately, his comb-over is not as effective as his reading material and he has to reach up and brush away the wisps that catch in his glasses every time we swing around a bend. The rest of the train is filled with high-school children, half from what appears to be a well to do girl’s prep school, and the other from the local special-ed school.

After careful observation, I’ve decided that Japan is unique in its treatment of young adults with down syndrome, primarily because its method of keeping them occupied is to issue them with a train-pass, put them on the first passing train with an “atta-boy” and leave them to their own devices. I’ve talked before about the curtain of invisibility that surrounds those doing anything out of the ordinary but I always find it fascinating to watch. In this instance you have a ten year-old shrieking with delight as he swings up and down the carriage on the provided hand rails, feet never touching the ground.

In the corner three other children, also with down syndrome, stand and plot loudly. They take it in turns to walk to the other end of the carriage where a fourth kid sits rocking back and forth, touch his nose until he looks up, then slap him in the face as hard as they can. They do this for about 15 minutes before the seated kid gets up and starts walking up and down the carriage ogling the girls, who respect the curtain of invisibility and don’t even spare him a glance, even when he hovers centimetres from their chests, zipping and unzipping his pockets.

The train creaks to a halt at a tiny rural station as we wait for the limited express to pass us and all the kids pile out onto the platform. The intrepid trio of bullies form a circle and investigate a rubbish bin on the platform, whilst the girls adjust their socks, and flip open jewelled ketai to begin texting. My man with the comb-over has given up being effective, has fallen asleep against the window, and is dribbling on his book.

I still find it hard to believe that every time I get on a train in this country, the occupants turn as one and stare at me.

Posted in Japan on Tuesday March 24, 2009.

The whole complex has an air of heady, bubble-era optimism long since turned sour. This is a fairground set coming apart at the seams, or that first broken window in the abandoned warehouse. The website I looked at, before we pulled the bikes from the weeds and set off, mentions the whole thing sprung up in the eighties from reclaimed land around the bay. There’s a selection of sketchy rumours about the then mayor having connections to the central government and cashing in on the national frenzy for bubble-economy construction. The next town over, home to a dilapidated concrete-clad fishing port, a single ramen shop, and a stall that sells okra, boasts a bullet-train stop, so there’s a lot to be said for the politics of influence.

“What possible reason would you have for building this? It’s just. I mean, from a business perspective it’s insane. It’s in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of some town that no-one outside this region has even heard of, and there’s practically no way of getting here by public transport. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.” I mutter as I boggle at the concrete plinths supporting a chipped fibreglass sun for several minutes until she tells me to shut up and leads me by the hand over a series of stepping stones to the middle of a shallow artificial lake. We are all alone.

“Do you know the word rakkan?” she asks as she traces the characters onto the palm of her hand. The first one means pleasure, or enjoyment, and the second I can’t really make out. I think it has to do with a view of something. “It’s about good feeling, ne. It’s about when you don’t give up. Like, ‘he has very rakkan personality so he thinks only about the best things…” she screws up her face and spins on her stepping stone to face the sun. “This place. When they built everyone had sonna rakkan. They, everyone, had positive feeling for the future and so many place like this was built.” I realise she is talking about optimism.

As we skip from block to block across the lake, I ask her if she knows that Japan pours more concrete each year than America. “Yes, but don’t believe the truth. Come on. Sunburn and kangaroos.” And with that we head for the Ferris wheel.

There’s no one on duty at the ticket booth and the other rides, a rickety looking merry-go round and something akin to a bouncy castle, are deserted. Yet the wheel turns a lackadaisical revolution above.

Finally, we find the attendant, a man who looks to be about seventy, with a faded green uniform and wiry salt and pepper hair. He’s perched on the concrete prefab knucklebones that make up the seawall, and takes slow shallow drags on a cigarette that looks as old as his calloused and wrinkled hands.

“The wheel open?” she asks.

“It’s turning, isn’t it?” he grunts and extinguishes his cigarette on the lid of the portable ashtray that hangs around his neck, then flicks the butt into the ocean.

“未来のことをどうしてそんなに楽観できるんですか”

Previously: Kangaroo Court

Posted in Mwah on Tuesday September 2, 2008.

The rain thumps against the angled glass and then runs in rivulets toward the original façade, where it trickles between the red brick and darkens the off-white tuckpointing until it is the colour of bile. I angle across the road and take a quick two-step onto the pedestrian island in a vain attempt to dodge the ute splashing toward me. I clutch my bag to my chest and shelter my eyes with an insubstantial magazine I’ve grabbed from the mall. The rain is worsening and the slate coloured sky promises more, heavier, and soon.

I head for the bus stop and, amidst the bedraggled suits and exchange students, you’re standing there, bouquet in hand. I realise you’ve spotted me as soon as I step off the island and head for the tiny rectangle of dry space under the angular bus shelter.

“Just keep walking,” you say as I approach, “keep walking” and I do, pulling up my collar and stepping back into the rain.

I look up the line of identical shelters and weigh up my options, there’s another just over the hill I can catch a bus from. “Hey.” It means I need to walk a little further at the other end, but hopefully the rain will have let up by then. “Dan.” I’m lost in my thoughts when I hear you behind me, and I stop and turn around. The flowers make for a poor umbrella and stray drips wander down your forehead and play havoc with your mascara. “Hey. Hey, look. Sorry. Look, I’ve got twenty minutes. Get a drink?”

It all seems perfectly ridiculous, you looking like you’ve just escaped from a wedding and me, work clothed and soaking, hands stained from the running ink of the x-press I’m now holding beside my ear.

We descend the stairs and take a seat at the back. The lights make ragged oblongs of white on the worn purple velour, a bainmarie steams slowly on a table against the wall and the ancient man behind the counter keeps a rheumy eye on the television as he mops the counter with a dirty cloth. The warbles of Coltrane’s sax issuing from tinny speakers are a perfect accompaniment to this pop-art-painting view of little city depression.

It reminds me of the tiny coffee shop we stopped to have breakfast in, that day we spent roaming the back streets of Osaka for an exhibition of Australian art, hidden in an ivy covered warehouse near the port that stunk of fish and kerosene and sweat.

The night before we shared a tiny tatami room in a run-down business hotel in Tennoji and every wall had a cupboard built into it. Our room backed onto the tracks, and there was no bathroom, only a stained and chipped communal bath in the basement. You pushed the futons together and we had slow, quiet sex to the vibrations of the late-night cars stuffed with commuters headed for Bentenchō. I lay on my back, fingers locked in yours, and studied the roof; the train illuminating cracks in sequence, like car headlights from an old movie in jerky fast forward. When you came you lashed out with your foot, caught the TV, and the room filled with smell of the powdered green tea now floating in the air around us.

Funny that the trains were still rumbling westward long after they’d locked the front doors and wrapped a chain around the machine dispensing hot water in the lobby. Funny too, that the next building down was the gargantuan edifice of spa-world, a sprawling six storey spa complex that would go broke three weeks later: its vision of a pristine chrome-plated future too out of place amidst the crumbling suburbia around it. We’d planned to go, before we knew of the curfew, and arguing with the octogenarian in brusque dialect changed nothing.

Judging by his scowl, this guy mopping the counter could be a long lost cousin. I think Coltrane is playing “After the Rain” and this makes me smile, as I can plainly hear it drumming against the sandwich board outside.

We order roast veggies, but no meat, and sit picking at peas in the dim. I marvel at the oddness of us sitting at this table, together, and eating roast pumpkin. I realise I have absolutely no desire for small talk. “How is it then,” I ask, “are the goods as good?”

You put down your fork and flick an errant pea away from the bouquet on the table. “You know, it’s different. I think, for us, for me, it was the bad that kept me.”

Posted in Mwah on Sunday August 17, 2008.

We’re lying on the futon that’s angled carefully between the several teetering piles of cardboard boxes that line the walls of the tiny second-floor room. She’s in transit: half-way between packing and unpacking and no strong motivation to go all the way in either direction. Downstairs there’s one spoon and one fork in the cutlery drawer and a motley collection of disposable chopsticks to go with them, the moist refresher towels wrapped around them long since dried into brittle husks. The fridge empty, bar two unfinished tubs of miso and a six-pack of cheap beer.

She’s on her side, thumbing through a small pile of books and she moves one onto what I’ve gathered is the “to dispose of” pile. I flick her in the ear as I lean over to grab the book, and she swears at me in incomprehensible dialect, then stomps downstairs to make coffee. She must have supplies I missed on my initial survey of the kitchen – or she’s very creative with miso.

The book I have grabbed is one of those overly cheerful, not-quite tourist brochures, explaining regional treasures with the kind of breathless enthusiasm usually reserved for aging volunteer tour guides or, in this case, a bored local-government employee with a flair for hyperbole. The cover features a photo of a grim looking stone warrior wielding an axe. In the background, just visible between a line of beveled pink text and a cartoon warrior hefting some kind of halberd, is the silhouette of a Ferris wheel.

Following the Japanese text is a short translations of the key points in English, Chinese and Korean: the charmingly naive Japanese attempt at “if we build it they will come” multiculturalism. Judging by the English, the consensus in the office was that though no one spoke the language fluently, it was worth having a crack at a translation and, besides, if it was stuck in the back pages of the book, who was going to notice?

“Ako ruins of the castle, which was built in 1661 by Naganao Asano, the lord of Ako, more than 300 years old, has been classified as the monuments and cultural assets of rich tradition.”

There’s a single line about the Ferris wheel which I now learn forms part of a huge seaside park somewhere south of the town. It’s got artificial lakes, a small zoo and something called “Wonderful Land.” I’m sold.

She return with two mugs of coffee strong enough to make me weep. When I ask her about the wheel admits that she’s never ridden on it, although she’s lived in the town for nearly five years. “It’s not something locals do,” she says. “But they must,” I insist. “Look, there’s a website and everything.”

“It doesn’t feel right, being a tourist in your own town. Not that it’s my town. Shall we go some time?”

“Now?”

Posted in Mwah on Tuesday April 22, 2008.

IKEA decks out the Portliner running to Port Island in Kobe so it looks like you’ve just walked into a university student’s first apartment. So hot.

(More photos here: 1, 2, 3, 4 via PinkT)

Posted in Japan on Wednesday April 9, 2008.

Shuetsu Sato is a Japan Railways employee known for making complex, stylish signs and maps from strips of coloured duct tape. The majority of his work could be spotted around Shinjuku station over the past couple of years, but similar beautifully ad-hoc construction signs can been seen at almost all those (seemingly) perpetually under-construction stations around Japan.

Posted in Design on Wednesday September 12, 2007.

LovingPerth is a new website I’ve been working on with the Western Hyogo All-stars. It’s still in its infancy, but we’re happily growing an audience and it’s been a lot of fun so far. As you’ve probably guessed from the name, the site is all about Perth through the lens of those in Perth with an interest in things Japan-related, or those in Japan (or Perth) looking for local info in Japanese. We’re totally independent and proudly bilingual.

So, if you’re an English speaker wanting to get the latest on Perth, but with all the hot tips on hard to find Japanese restaurants, social events and special-interest businesses you probably didn’t even know existed, or a Japanese speaker looking for the advantage of local knowledge and expertise, but in a language you understand – we hope you’ll find LovingPerth of use. If you’ve got any suggestions or hot tips on what you think we should be writing about then please, let us know. We’ve also got a forum and would really love locals who share our interest in Japanese culture to sign up and get talking on what they want us to cover, or just have a chat. It’s all about the community. Onegai guys!

Posted in Oz on Tuesday March 20, 2007.