Moral Quandary

I suppose it had to happen, this is after all a fairly conservative place. Social innovation isn't a high priority in Japan. One of my students told me how a friend of hers working for JR (the national Rail company) was dismissed when she became pregnant. I was fairly shocked one assumes that the modernist exterior of this place would be reflected in the legal system but it appears not.

Capital punishment is still legal here. In fact when the time comes to execute a prisoner he/she isn't told until the morning of execution and family and lawyers don't get to know until after the state has had its revenge. By any civilized standard that's pretty dire I'd have thought. I worked some overtime at another branch today, my last student asked for help with her college homework. Happy for a change I agreed, it turned out my task was to be the creation of a coherent argument in favour of state sanctioned murder. She had a few ideas that she had written down. I suppose if I had been a higher being (or less worried about losing my income source) I'd have told her why she was so wrong, sadly I'm not so I helped her make sense of her barbaric impulses. Probably the wrong thing to do.

On a lighter note in response to Mr Buckleys question, yes it is quite possible to buy Coffee and Tea in a can from a vending machine! Not just possible but also common, in the summer they come out cold and in the winter they start to warm up. It is pretty manky coffee though. As I walked home today I saw a man walking his dog before bed, only he was wandering the streets in a pair of stripy woolen PJs and happily scooping poop as he went along, I have to hope he is a bachelor no human should have a dog shity hand in their bed!

Keep well, thanks for all the comments/e-mails,
Roger

p.s (If a p.s. is appropriate on the web) You are lucky to be reading this post as I thought I'd lost it and am a bit Knackered so didn't really fancy writing it again so lucky you that I found it!

Ice Cream and Tea

Tea is a popular drink in Japan of that there can be no doubt, you can have tea on your rice, tea in your ceremony, tea in crisps and my most favorite tea flavoured ice cream. Before you retch remember this is uber sophisticated green tea none of your PG Tips out here. Whilst on strange foods its also possible to get Wasabi flavoured snacks and deep fried sweet potato with sugar. Restaurants will sell anything you will eat so its not unusual to see chicken cartalidge kebabs for sale. The culinary magic of this place will never fade. And the Sushi isn't bad either.

I think Kyoto is a slightly less sleazy place than the bigger cities so I was a bit shocked when I went to get a can of coffee from the vending machine only to discover that this was not a coffee vendor, no indeed, it was 24 hour on demand porn from a machine. Classy. Porn is everywhere all the convenience shops stock a wide range and we were shown what looked like a very nice fan in the local pub but turned out to be a graphic depiction of a Samurai and his Lady friend making the beast with two backs.

I am engaging in some cultural activities and have visited something interesting most weekends. There are markets several times a month in various places. I went to the one at Toji temple said to be one of the biggest, it was indeed very big and offered countless opportunities for pictures contrasting the temple faithful lighting incense and the capitalists hordes in the garden.

More soon,
Roger

Lucky Balls

If you wonder around our part of Kyoto you might well presume that we have a higher than average number of testicle doctors. Almost every house has a fox with huge dangly balls between his legs outside their front door. They tell me he is a spirit who catches bad things and stores them in his balls! I suppose it makes as much sense as lucky horseshoes. Once I work out how to do it I'll put a picture of him on the blog so you can all see.

I am currently suffering from a very very severe hangover the result of our now weekly poker game. I managed to clean up! Impressive until you consider that we each started with 100 yen and I won about 400 which is still only 2 pounds! I was drinking a Japanese grain spirit called Sochou its a bit like vodka except my stomach really disagrees with it.

Although Kyoto like any city is noisy and smelly it has the redeeming feature of very musical traffic crossings, instead of bing bing (noise foe blind people) we get a rather cheerfully little dity. At the school as well the end and start of lessons is not indicated with the traditional bell rather an electronic version of the Big Ben chimes, I think I might go into work on New Years eve just for the nostalgia.

Cheers
Roger

Swords, Quakes and Cards

I have started making a few notes as things occur to me so that should either mean that the blog is more interest packed or more likely that its full of boring shite...

Japan is a pretty safe country although I'm told that the part of Kyoto we live in is gangster land, I don't think its quite LA though. I saw a chap leaving our local supermarket all dressed up in the traditional garb and though how nice it was, until I realized he had a great big sword strapped across his back. Glad I didn't take the last loaf of bread after all now.

Having survived a typhoon I have now also survived an earthquake. To be honest I thought it was just someone slamming the door to hard at first it was only when I got to work and Dana asked if I'd felt the earthquake that I realised what had happened. It wasn't all that exciting but I am now a survivor.

The teaching continues to be pretty easy although the constant use of American spelling and Americanisms is beginning to sap my will to live. A few things do present problems I spent fifteen mins the other day trying to get someone to pronounce 'it'll' you wouldn't have thought it would be so hard but I really think that tongues here are not designed to make certain sounds!

We have started a weekly poker night in our flat, it provides plenty of entertainment for the five of us (Mike, Jon and two Canadians Jo and Julie) and a stonking hangover for the following day. I managed to get cleaned out at the most recent game the princely sum of ￥100 was lost (that's less than 50p) but it felt like more. The people at work are very nice although I have noticed that a lot of Gaijin (foreign folks) purposefully turn away when they see another non-Japanese coming down the road. Seems a bit pathetic but I think they like to pretend they are the first westerners ever to come to Japan and the sight of me woddling down the street could shatter the dream (it could just be the sight of me of course!).

I'll have more for ye soon,

All the best
Roger

Trouble in Paradise (Kinda...)

As I'm still on my economy drive till I get paid I brought my own food for lunch into the office, to make it I only required some boiling hot water! Simple except when I came to get water - we have one of those kettle things that you push on the top to get the water out - when I pushed the button the kettle wobbled a little and a whole roach family came scuttling out! Icky I have to say. It was my first encounter with real dirt in Japan and to be honest cockroaches are really manky animals no wonder there are so many nothing with any sense would want to eat them.

The second encounter with problems of the dirty kind came the other day when we discovered our loo leaking all over the floor. This is not an ordinary loo, it has an ingenious device where a little sink is incorporated into the cistern so the water that fills it up can first be used to wash ones hands! Genius, except now it wont stop flowing and so our floor is wet!

On the culinary front I have made an important discovery, the Japanese equivalent of the batter burger - fried octopus balls... Ummm... Not balls as in testicles just balls of fried battered octopus. They are greasy and fatty and have a surprise in the middle - fantastic! Of course being Japan the batter is a little more sophisticated but still.

Although we work at the weekends the working week seems pretty short, I　think its because as my days of are in the middle of the week but I still think of Saturday/Sunday as the weekend the week sort of falls into two halves. Uhuh? Doesn't make much sense I know but its a complicated theory.

Flights to other Asian country are dirt cheap you can get to Hong Kong for 30,000 yen about 130 pounds, apparently its much cheaper to travel around Asia than within Japan hopefullyｙ I'll be able to mix it up a bit.

Talking of travel I'm getting a free mind trip to Dublin at the moment as I'm tuned into TrinityFM on the Web.

Well hope all are well,

Roger