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Seihan Mori, chief priest of Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, writes the kanji for “wazawai” (disaster) during a ceremony Monday to announce the character best symbolizing 2004. The kanji garnered 20,900 out of 92,000 votes in the Kanji of the Year contest organized by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, indicating disasters like the Niigata earthquakes of late October left a lasting impression on people’s minds.

Taken yet again from the Japan Times newspaper we have the above article. “Wazawai” is made up of the words fire and river giving a clue to its meaning. This year has been a real disaster year for Japan. 23 typhoons hit Japan this year as well as some of them being the most powerful for decades with the highest death tolls seen for decades as well. Also the above mentioned powerful earthquake in Niigata killed lots of people and leaving many of them homeless even now.

But Japan has had a great year on other fronts. In the Olympics they won a record haul of 37 medals which included 16 Gold, 9 Silver and 12 Bronze medals so I reckon Success would be a good kanji. The summer was the hottest for a long time so Hot is a good one as well.

Previous winners of this award are:

2003 Tiger
2002 Return
2001 War
2000 Gold
1999 End

Today was a very busy day. I still have my cold and I had to get up at six this Sunday morning in order to walk the monster that is Marrosan. This weekend is when everyone in Japan gets their biannual bonus so Reiko`s sister got a room for the night at the Westin Hotel in Osaka city centre as a present for her and her mother. This left me to do the dog walk. (It`s always in the morning on a Sunday for some reason.)

I went for a quick ten minute walk and then couldn`t get back to sleep when I came back. At about 11, we set off for Umeda which is part of Osaka city centre. We live on the edge of Osaka so getting there means a thirty minute walk to the station, a twenty minute train and then a twenty minute subway journey. When we got there we went to a German Christmas market that was going on there. Six thousand miles and still no escape. They had lots of German sausages and other food and Gluhwein or mulled wine as well. I can speak German but living in Japan, I mixed it in with some Japanese so I would ask for two glasses of Gluhwein in German and then say onegaishimasu and arigato. It was really good to be talking German. I had forgotten how much I missed it.

Reiko won fifteen quid on Pachinko. I yet again crashed and burned. Crashed and burned. Then we walked around and found a large event promoting a new phone that lets you download music to it. We got given a free ten minute carriage ride pulled by a talkative Japanese bloke with our own mobile phones and oversized headphones to listen to. The songs were all in Japanese but the quality was amazing. Here is a recent article in the Japan Times about how these things may pose a threat to Ipods and other MP3 players in the future. At the moment however they can`t store as many songs as the mighty MP3 players.

Reiko and the rest of the female Shiraishi dynasty went to watch a play in the evening so having sufffered cafes and the shame and near mortal sin in Japan of blowing my nose (which is very rude in Japan) loudly in such an intimate location, I took the opportunity in the evening to go to Yodobashi Camera Osaka - a massive electronic store on eight large floors stocking the latest and greatest electronic gadgets. I fondled expensive digital cameras for a bit and then had a look at the new PSP and Nintendo DS. I did a few laps on Ridge Racer on the PSP which was amazing and Super Mario 64 DS on the DS which didn`t excite me as much. Both required queuing for about fifteen minutes behind a throng of Japanese from six to sixty. They were both good graphically although the PSP is superb with a large and detailed screen and the system was light and streamlined whereas the DS was bulky with small screens and gimmicky and hard to use touch pen. I don`t like it but I think the Japanese will.

Here are some other pictures from today:

This picture deserves it`s own post. For now let`s just say it`s a funky lion.

Before you think the Japanese are getting a bit overexcited with David or that it`s all gone to his head, this is David Beckham advertising the fact you can watch Real Madrid`s games on cable provider WOWOW.

This is a picture taken the other day. As you can see the trees are only now starting to lose their leaves. It averages around 16 degrees celsius every day and it is still warm enough to go out without a coat on.

This is a computer screen at a sushi restaurant I went to. You select the sushi you want by touching the screen and they send it round on the conveyor belt by the side of your table for you.

At the moment I am ill again. I visit so many schools and talk to and shake hands with so many children, I feel like a bumble bee picking up all the germs and pollen and spreading it around. I`m like a maniac with obsessive compulsive disorder frantically washing my hands after every lesson.

And shoes. There is a link below to an interesting article about shoes in Japan. Everywhere you go you have to take them off and exchange them for slippers or socks in public places such as schools, hospitals and onsen. Upon entering the schools, I change from my shoes to plastic slippers which are on average three sizes too small. If I have to talk to the head teacher, I change from them into soft slippers for his room and then back into the bright green plastic monstrosities for the lessons. If I want to use the toilet betweeen lessons, there is normally another set of slippers to put on as well. This is another quirk of Japanese society explained far better and more eloquently in the linked article. Have a look.

I thought I would answer some questions posed by a very persistent American who regularly comments on my blog regarding the PSP or Playstation Portable. (Comments by any (both) of my readers are much appreciated and dare I say encouraged?)

Being bimbo (ie. poor) in the Japanese sense I am not able to purchase any of the latest technology. We bought a second hand PS2 and I have a Gameboy Advance as it is small and the system and games are cheap to buy. I have been addicted for the last six months to a game called Greatest Nine in which you guide a Nippon Pro Baseball Team (for me being the mighty Osakan greats called the Hanshin Tigers) to glory in tournaments and a seemingly endless season.

This Christmas in the videogame world in Japan a battle is being fought between the dual screen Nintendo DS and the new PSP. This is shown in saturated advertising slots and A-list celebs in Japan selling them including the talented Japanese singer songwriter Utada, in my opinion foolishly trying to break into the American market with a song whose chorus contains the lines “I`m easy breezy and I`m Japaneasy” and the PSP advertised by an Antonio Inoki who is a professional wrestler.

If I could afford it I would buy a PSP they look amazing, the adverts show games that look detailed, involved and playable. They are cheap. All hardware in Japan is cheap. 20GB Ipods cost about 150 quid, the Nintendo Ds is 75 quid and the PSP is only 20,000 yen or 100 quid and it plays high quality games and movies.

Not having enough free cash to devote to these mortal pleasures, I shall play them solely in the numerous games and technology shops liberally scattered around Japan. The Nintendo is available to buy but I haven`t been able to play on them in the few shops that selll them. From first opinions the Nintendo DS looks gimmicky with it`s bulky body, touch sensitive dual screen and pen and a set of games which seem mildly amusing yet I`m sure the novelty factor would wear thin. It has far worse graphics than those of the PSP but the Japanese seem to be ones for gimmicks and retro cool which the DS oozes in the numerous quirky and inventive games in its collection.

In my humble opinion the PSP outruns the DS by far in Ridge Racer (the game being most pushed by Sony corp. I think the PSP will win in the long run although games play an important part in any systems success. As a Christmas present, I would be happy for any of them. Hint hint.

Links

Nintendo vs PSP 1
Nintendo vs PSP 2

As in any country you will have your very own Linda Barker such as we do in England. This is a person (normally fresh from a reality show or a minor celeb) who will sell anything and everything including their own grandmother if the price is right. Of course Japan has it`s own fair share of these and due to the incredible slow news day/week I am experiencing, I thought I`d go through a few.

This is Bae yong joon. He is Korean. I am thinking of devoting an entire future post to him. He was the main character in a daytime Korean soap opera that was exported to Japan and hugely popular with middle aged housewives. A recent visit by the great one provoked stampedes and handbags at twenty paces between the middle aged fans outside a hotel he was staying at. Look at the woman screaming bottom right. This man is perhaps the king of ad whores. He sells chewing gum, sony video cameras, cars and nutrition drinks with mimimal conviction and smarmy smile despite chubby face, specs and similar Japanese ability to myself. He is now quite literally rolling in money. This man is (begrudgingly) therefore a genius.

This is Masahiro Nakai. He is one fifth of the omnipresent boyband SMAP. Thanks to clever placement by their management team you will see one of them somewhere at various ponts of your day. Watch as he gasps with near orgasmic satisfaction after eating the rubbery noodles, watch him switch effortlessly between coffee commercials to chocolate ads. Imagine him counting his fat payments from these companies with hideous laugh and evil leer. Git.

This is Akai Hidekazu an ex-boxer who has his own light entertainment television programme and a lucrative sideline in the ads such as house removals, television companies and the like. Watch as his smiley face turns into a frozen grimace of fear and remark that as a professional boxer he could quite literally beat you to a small paste if he finds out you are insulting him. Damn..

I saw a roundabout for the first time in six months in Japan today. In fact I saw two. This piece of informaton should give you an idea of the crazy life I have been living recently. I am back from mass festivals and the unusual to the realms of the hum drum and ordinary.

Today though a rather surreal thing happened in that one of Reiko`s family in some far flung corner of Japan decided to send us six large crabs which we have been making our way through this evening. It is quite a thing to come home to a large polystyrene box full of six dead yet still menacing sea monsters but this has been happening all year. Before we have been sent (and eaten) crates of oranges, chocolates and biscuits. Today sea monster.

This has also given me the dubious pleasure of ingesting crab`s brain which like all those other foods which fall under the umbrella of delicacies are out of the ordinary, disgusting and expensive. It wasn`t especially bad tasting although slimy and grey but it is one of those foods which I don`t want to eat again. It tastes exactly like you`d think a brain would. Upon opening a crab we found that it was pregnant with enough babies to fill Noah`s ark. “Oh it`s a female.” Reiko exclaimed. As if it`s slim waste large, sharp claws and hard shell weren`t enough to distinguish that fact. I like crab but the large effort of prising apart the shell to reveal a miniscule amount of (admittedly delicious) flesh inside is not appealing to a lazy man such as myself. It was very tasty however. Still I think that is the most unusual thing I have ever seen delivered in the post.

Last night I watched a TV sports programme for an international three legged race competition but instead of just two people running there were thirty school children tied together. Incredibly they managed to run fifty metres in about 9.5 seconds. I sat there open mouthed throughout the whole programme as they all ran in perfect synchronisation and consistently reached these times. It was however also the most depressing thing I have ever watched as some of them didn`t quite make the times or there would be a (admittedly hilarious) trip or fall and the camera would cut to that team backstage with thirty 10 year olds literally crying their eyes out and I sat there thinking “This is the saddest thing I have ever seen. Those poor children. I want to kill myself.” I think a Chinese athletics team who could do handstands for thirty minutes won it in the end.

Yesterday we went to karaoke for more alcoholic tea drinks and to sing songs from my extensive multilingual repertoire such as, ” Sie liebt dich” by the Beatles, “Matsuken Samba” by Ken Matsudaira and other “classics.” As the alcoholic tea is free (sho chu mixed with oolong cha) and the hourly rate is so low a good time was had by all (ie. me.)

I haven`t had a bath for three days (incidentally not my intention or fault) and so we went to a famous onsen in Wakayama which is about an hours drive away from Osaka for the day. I bathed, I ate and tried to sleep in a room full of people with chronic snoring problems but that is how it is. Reiko`s family bought me a learn English words for kindergarteners ring book which can be easily reversed for English people with little Japanese knowledge such as myself. Ah ee lub u. Yes.

Last night I went to a cheap Chinese/Italian all you can eat fusion restaurant where for an extra fiver you could drink as much as you wanted. Mixing Chinese with Italian food isn`t the first combination that would come to mind if I were a restaurant owner but it was okay. I spotted what I thought was sweed stir fried green pepper and egg and piled my plate with it but it turned out to be the much less sweet dish known as bitter melon and egg. It was nice but I didn`t want a whole plate of bitter melon as you can imagine. It was to celebrate Reiko`s last day at her hated travel agency job.

The Christmas decorations on the houses are becoming more and more predominant with whole estates draping the garish red white, yellow and green lights, decorations, santas and snowmen over their houses. The worst I have seen so far is a brightly lit up see-sawing santa arranged amongst enough lights to land a 747. I want to burn it down. I`m in Japan not America.

The school I taught at yesterday was one of the best ever. We played Simon says for directions Turn Left/Right /Forwards which is cunning enough for me as I am in fact Simon. “Simon says Jump. Jump. Simon says Jump. Simon says Jump. Jump.” It was a lot of fun but very tiring. Then there is a blindfold game where they have to direct the blindfolded guy around the room to shake hands with other people. They were literally screaming my name as I left the place. One kid kept on saying, “See you tomorrow” which scared me as it was a Friday.

Here are some more legendary personals I found in the local magazines. Purely research for my blog of course……

ITALIAN PILOT. I am Italian. My job is airplane pilot. I am already married in Italy. I am looking for nice Japanese women. Only fun girls. I am nicest person in the world. If you are pretty and fashionable please email me.

RICH GIRL. I am an American man. 30`s looking for a rich woman to marry. You give me all the money I need and I will give you whatever you need..

DISCREET FUN Single 26 tall athletic, white married (to a witch) male seeks single or married JF for casual, discreet fun in Osaka. My wife doesn`t satisfy me, can you?

SEEKING BORED SEXY HOUSEWIFE. Are you a cute housewife bored in the daytimes? Do you know how to dress sexy? Let`s meet! I am a WM, tall and in shape (41, married) Daytimes, Osaka.

At the start of work I needed to have a large shit but I was at a school but the only toilets they have there are of the sit and squat variety pictured below and whch I have mentioned before. I have managed (miraculously it may be said) to go six months without using one of these and today was a very close call. Do not let it said that I do not have the guts to go in one those as I have used the toilets at Glastonbury with full abandon. That however is a rock festival and this is the real life. I do not want to assume the take off stance and with full force expel large quantities of my own faeces into my underwear. It was a close call whether I would use one or not but I would rather suffer three hours of anal agony than walk around the whole morning with a large quantity of manure in my trousers. I am sorry that is just the way I am.

At the moment I`m sitting in front of the computer eating my way through a large bag of delicious freshly picked oranges we bought at a local farm near our house. It was basically a shed near a busy road manned only by an incredibly old woman in a chair with a towel and gloves to keep warm. We could have just nicked them all and run off. What could she do? She loked like she could barely walk let alone run after us. Unless she had a rifle underneath her towel (which on reflection was quite possible) we could have been fugitives from the law. However I would never have got away with it. If she described the main anatagonist to the police as a tall, young looking western boy there aren`t that many in this small corner of Osaka and I am sure they would be at the door within fifteen minutes and arranging my deportation within another twenty. We just paid for them and ate them.. They are delicious.

My favourite Japanese word of the moment is zan nen. This means denied. For example, “There is no furikake on my rice. Zan nen. The trafic light has gone red. Zan nen. This piece of sushi gave me food poisoning. Zan nen.” Etc Etc. Use it today.

I`ve just taken a phone call from some random Japanese person. Unfortunately I think the phone is breaking and it was a very faint connection. I couldn`t hear anything so I kept on saying, “Moshee moshee” which means hello whilst on the phone. Eventually I started to hear her very faintly and I tried to say, “I cannot hear you your voice is very quiet” in Japanese. I had learned some verbs today including to listen but not hear so what came out was me blaring at the receiver, “I am not listening. You are very small. I am not listening. You are very small.” She said something which may have been a resignation of defeat or an oath to track me down and scalp me but she is gone nonetheless. Zan nen.