Why Dr Who is great...

... because I find it reassuring that no matter where you go in time or space, everybody you meet will be British. It's a bit like going caravanning really.

The Celebrity Look-alikes Widget

I use the internet a lot, primarily for cheap thrills and to distract me from the knowledge that every moment is a step closer to Final Death. I tend to go in for those personality tests that ask you a bunch of esoteric questions and then tell you which character from "Lost" you are (Apparently I'm badass Sawyer, so screw you all). But these tests are easy to manipulate and if you know your subject matter well enough you can usually sway the results, for instance, if you want to declare yourself the ideological successor to Wolverine or the Punisher, and lets face it who wouldn't? But one thing does not lie... the face! Which is why in some kind of contrived effort to "know myself" I fed my face into the Celebrity Look-alike Widget.

I used a handsome picture of myself. My hair, dark and lustrous, stands proudly erect above my noble brow, and my eyes are glimmering with mirth. I wear my most devilishly charming smile. The picture was taken from that particular angle from which my double-chin is at its least obtrusive. It should have been perfect.

While I haven't always been pleased with my face, I feel I've really been growing into it lately and have to come to consider myself something of a handsome boy. If I had to guess which celebrities the Widget would pull out of thin air I would probably expect maybe Bill Shatner or Bruce Campbell, some lantern-jawed heroic type.

Which is why I was shocked to discover that the widget gave me as 4 of my 8 closest matches older females - bisexual author Susan Sontag, first African American Nobel literature prize winner Toni Morrison, anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel literature prize winner Nadine Gordimer, and matronly actress Kathy Bates. My main male match is Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan, who is the only one of the group I consider to look even a bit like me in that he is male, sports a pair of spectacles and has dark hair. There the resemblance ends. In addition to that, I have been somewhat insultingly matched to fat Jack Osbourne. Also weak and innefectual Aki Hakala from the band the Rasmus. Finally, there is Mark David Chapman, celebrity assassin and J.D. Salinger advocate. Many new-age hippy types believe that you can tell a person's personality from their face. So is this me? Four old women, three motherly and one terrifying half-gay spinster? Two of them are Jewish and two hold Nobel Literature prizes. Is this indicative of anything? Does this mean it is my destiny to convert to Judaism and win a Nobel Literature prize? What of the Bollywood actor, and the drummer from a lousy European rock band? And the lone, gun-weilding nutter? It's too terrifying to even think about. I hope the hippies are wrong.

To make sure I wasn't being ganked I decided to upload Kaki's photo. I had assumed the thing was on the fritz, but depressingly Kaki's matches yeilded with one exception a bunch of hot chicks. The first one is Beyonce, which of course is very complimentary, then former Neighbour Natalie Umbruglia, Dominican bombshell Maria Montez, Japanese idoru Kyoko Fukada, R & B legend Lauryn Hill, Brazilian supermodel Isabeli Fontana, hot Vulcan chick Jolene Blalock, and androgynous Canadian songstress K.D. Lang. So she's about 60% pop star, and 40% attractive actress.

Compare this to my 50% old woman, 12.5% murderer, 12.5% fat asshole, 12.5% rubbish drummer, 12.5% obscure Bollywood star. Actually that does actually sound like me, more or less. I do fuss like an old woman sometimes, and I am prone to assassinating recording artists. I am a fat asshole (and fiercly proud of it), and I can't hit a drum for shit. Not sure about the Bollywood star thing, but you can't be right all the time, even if you're a computer. Anyway you can see this daftness for yourself at

http://www.bebo.com/Weirzbowski
(or http://Weirzbowski.bebo.com)

There is no real point to this post.

CENTRAL COMPUTER STRIKES AGAIN

Central Computer has launched another onslaught on my home PC. He has given it his best viruses. It is being fixed. There will be no posts until then. Good luck and Godspeed.

My name is your dad.

For all you Blackwoodphiles out there (I’m sure I still have fans, right?). I’ve put a rather extensive update to my bebo account. Last Thursday I uploaded about 170 pictures of my trip around South East Asia last Christmas. It was a mammoth task, uploading five pictures at a time, but I completed it in one night. I hope you all take a look at them and enjoy them. Just remember, the time that you spend looking at my photos now is time you won’t spend watching slideshows when I get back to KDY and Aberdoom. And please, please comment.

In other news, Crabu-Sama has started a blog. And it’s in English! After two years of avoiding this crustacean menace on the streets of Gifu, you can now keep yourself up to date on his movements via the interweb. Maybe it will be useful to you, maybe not. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Crabu-Sama’s work, he’s essentially a giant crab that has been killing and maiming more or less at random for about 90 years. This blog, written by the beast himself provides some insight into his comings, goings, and butcherings. It can be found at
http://www.myspace.com/crabu_sama
Please everybody add him as a friend.

Also, this Saturday Kaki and I are off to Okinawa to reward ourselves for surviving another dour winter in cold buildings made of slabs. We are visiting Miyako-jima, an island which has a reputation for harbouring the worst drunks Japan has to offer. I hope to see if this is true. I expect to be eating a lot of swine and turning impossibly red, swimming in the ocean and attempting to instruct Kaki further in the art of not sinking like a stone to the bottom of any body of water you happen to find yourself in. Just kidding, she’s getting much better. Every time we go swimming now, I’m at least 60% sure that she isn’t going to take on water. I am, after all, in the Business of Education, at least for now.

I have hit a small snag though, my fabled Union Jack swimmies shrunk a bit in the wash, and I now have trouble pulling them up past my ample buttocks. So, at the weekend I decided to go and buy another pair. Unfortunately, it turns out that nowhere stocks them right now, because it isn’t swimming season yet. Now, don’t get me wrong here, I would say that right now it’s not yet quite warm enough for a dip in the sea, but surely, with the abundance of indoor heated swimming pools, swimming is an all-year round activity? Am I right? Do you mean to tell me that swimming shorts can only be bought from June to August every year? What if I go off the diving board wrong at the municipal pool in January, and end up dangling from my grotesquely stretched swimmies? I’d be fucked, that’s what I’d be. I mean, what if I sit down to fast and bust a hole in them? Do you mean to say I can’t replace them until it’s the official swimming season? Is this the whole of Japan or is it just the malls near me that are fucked up?

This sort of links in to something that really gets on my nerves about Japan. However, other people have told me how much they love the same phenomenon so there you go. But anyway, my particular problem is the fact that everything has its own particular season. Japan is a country that is extremely proud of its four distinct seasons (some people to the extent that they don’t believe spring and autumn exist in other countries) and has some very important traditions that rely on seasons. Cherry blossom viewing or Hanami parties, for instance can only take place for one week in springtime when the cherry blossoms are blooming. This of course is a beautiful tradition. But there are other things that I don’t think need to be seasonal, take fruit for instance. Japan doesn’t import much fruit, and relies largely on domestic stock which costs a bomb, and is largely seasonal. This means that you will eat persimmons in autumn and oranges in winter, because that’s when they are plentiful. What if I want to do this in summer? You can’t, or at any rate you can’t without paying through the nose. There are even seasonal menus in restaurants. For instance, what would happen if I wanted a summer vegetable curry from Coco Ichibanya in February? OK, not that I ever would while there is still a manly beef katsu curry on offer, but what if? Answer: I couldn’t do it. I would ask, and the waiter would smile benevolently and think “Silly foreigner! February isn’t for summer vegetables!” Well get this asshole, buy the vegetables from somewhere it is summer or just freeze the motherfuckers in July. We have the technology. In Japan, beer gardens close on pretty much the first of September. It doesn’t matter if it’s roasting and people are still thirsty, it’s just what is done. It’s what they call “atarimae”. I’ve heard it translated as “common sense” but it really means doing things in the manner that they have always been done and sticking to routine at all costs.

I know, I know I’m moaning. And I love Japan really. I should let it be known that I’m letting the whines out here so I am able to remain positive and not cripple my students, teachers and innocent passersby who invoke my ire. Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE

(Pictured: the Genbaku dome; the floating torii at Miyajima at sunset; General Kuroki)
Good day to you, friends. It has been a while since I have updated you on my progress. Last week was Golden Week, the special week that people are allowed to go on holiday if they take vacation time. We have two long weekends, separated by two days of work, and if you can get those two days off, you can have a whole week to go wherever you want. This is really the best Japan has to offer, holiday-wise, the country where teachers have to stay in school all summer despite a distinct lack of work and people are too ashamed of looking like they aren’t gambarre-ing to ask for a day off. And even if they did they wouldn’t know what to use it for. None of my students, or even teachers did anything with their time. They think that traveling anywhere further away than Nagoya is hugely risky and expensive. So effectively we live in a state without vacations. What do I care? I’m leaving in two months. Then I can get a job where I’m not just pretending to work half the time, or go back to uni and do a qualification in a subject I’m interested in. But I digress:

I, David L. Blackwood, unlike the majority of my compatriots, do know how to have a good holiday. I estimate that I have seen more of the country than many Japanese have. And now I have added two new prefectures to my list of conquests: Hiroshima and Ishikawa. Now I will tell you about my delightful holiday.

I took a trip to Hiroshima, famous for having been the site of the first ever nuclear strike on a civilian population, and of course seafood. On the first day I took a trip out to the island of Miyajima, with its famous floating torii gate. The weather was clement and I took a long walk around the island which was very peaceful and had many secluded nooks and crannies away from the tourists where a body could enjoy solitude and listen to the many noises of nature. It was enough to make me feel a renewal of enjoyment of Japan. It was low tide when I arrived, so I walked out and examined the trunks of the gate. Its sides were pitted with barnacles and it loomed a bit. Later at high tide I observed that it was still looming except that I felt better now that there was a body of water between me and it. How I hate being loomed at. I took some photographs of the gate and enjoyed a light snack and a beer before getting back on the ferry. On my return to Hiroshima I went to find my capsule hotel. For those of you unaware of what a capsule hotel is, it’s a hotel where they put you in a sci-fi looking capsule which is stacked on top of other capsules. They are generally very small and cheap and no good at all for those with claustrophobia. In any case, it’s nearly possible to have a comfortable night in them. I went out for dinner with a book to read and somehow ended up getting entirely pissed on my own. This left me slightly ill-equipped to perform the important duties I had to perform the next day, notably my visit to the A-Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum. The dome itself is strange, like looking through some kind of lens at the past, untouched as it has been since 1945. The cracked concrete and the skeletal bubble of the roof give it a haunted look, and in the tidy, orderly city of Hiroshima it seems as out of place as if Dracula’s castle were somehow transported to the centre of Manhattan. After that I went to the Cenotaph, the Children’s Memorial and the Museum. The Memorials are a bit underwhelming – tiny, modern, hard to connect with the mass slaughter that went on 60 years ago - except the one that is underneath the ground with a 360 degree view of the devastation and fountain in the shape of a clock permanently frozen at 8:15 in memory of those who died begging for water. They also had a database of the victims there where people could look for their deceased relatives, which I played with for a while, discovering that not only Japanese, but Koreans, Chinese and American POWs where amongst the casualties. In the Peace Memorial Museum I was able to observe artifacts from that time, such as stopped watches, burned clothes and melted glass. I saw the stone steps which have a person’s shadow burned onto them, as well as some macabre pictures of horribly burned people. Very sobering. Slept long that night but kept worrying that when I awoke I would have somehow gone back in time to 1945 and be forced to find my way out of the conflagration to come. I think I would have run through the streets trying to explain in my bad Japanese to people and yelling あぶないよ! The next day I decided to take a trip to a different time period altogether and went to Hiroshima castle (not the original, obviously) where I learned about samurai, Japanese history and looked at ornate weapons and armour. I even was allowed to wear a suit of armour and ran around like a child with behavioural issues scaring old women.

Following that me and a few like minded individuals took a trip up the coast of Ishikawa-ken where we camped and barbequed and hung out. It was quite a fine drive, up through the remote fishing villages and past the recently earthquake-damaged Wajima. Highlights were Kaki and Shiloh being attacked by a hawk, and later being terrified of any bird-type noise that came from the treeline, the pleasant scenery on the drive along the coast, and generally socialising around the barbeque. Anyway, if anything else interesting happens I’ll be sure to update. I am aware this post is not funny. This is because it is a Monday and I am at work on the first day after my holiday and I do not feel funny. I am a broken man.

Ghost Guyz International

Another sure-as-shit hit from the degenerates who brought you Scotch Bonnet, Columboat, Bedshitter, and Escape From Bitchmeat Island. Watch and be amazed.

http://blip.tv/file/203446

The Chicken Thing

... happened again. Glory be!

Living in the Age of the Remake and Genre Saturation: Solutions for Modern Cinema by David L. Blackwood

(pictured: Assault on Precinct 13 = bullshit)

The state of the movie industry has never been so weak. As you are probably aware, we are living in the age of the remake. Creativity and inventiveness are stagnating in favour of a tendency to churn out remakes by the dozen. The Italian Job, Get Carter, Assault on Precinct 13, The Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wicker Man, to name a few fairly recent ones that shouldn’t ever have been made. Why can’t people think of good new concepts anymore? I think of like a dozen a day. Why can’t I work in Hollywood? They seem bent on cutting corners at any cost. If something looks like it’ll make money they will jump on a bandwagon, regardless of if there are 15 other films like it being released that week. For every Lord of the Rings, there’s an Eragon or a Chronicles of Narnia, and for every X-men there’s a Fantastic Four or Ghost Rider. Despite the fact these are “new” films, I place them alongside remakes in their sheer lack of inventiveness. Every title I have mentioned of course, comes from a book or a comic, which does sort of negate any creativity on the part of the director, because obviously you don’t want to mess with it or the fans will go banjax. And nobody wants that. The movie industry exploits geeks with quick fixes – hastily put together assembly line movies based on “what the fans want” ie the whims of a totally insane public. I honestly believe that every time some foolish housebound nerd says online “WOULDN’T AN ANTMAN MOVIE BE TOTALLY AWESOME LOOOOOL” there’s some Satanist producer there with a clipboard and pen going “hmmm, Antman, you say?” To top it off, they seem to reviving franchises that have been dead for years in order to squeeze some money out of people’s nostalgia – at 65 Harrison Ford should not be playing Indy. They should let it go. Likewise at 61, Stallone should give up on the Rocky franchise. Their lack of inventiveness knows no bounds. It reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which Calvin, designing a snowman purposely builds it to be as pedestrian-looking as possible, remarking that “people don’t want anything new, they just want more of what they already know they like”.

Why should I pay my hard-earned cash-money to go and see some shitty Hollywood remake of a Japanese horror film, in which the horror is invariably provided by a “scary” unkempt ghost child. Or indeed watch a carelessly constructed movie-version of some third-tier Marvel comics character hopelessly miscast and devoid of any of the depth that made you love the comic in the first place?

The last movie I saw in the theatre was Ghost Rider, which to be fair I didn’t have very high expectations of. And I wasn’t disappointed. Nick Cage plays Nick Cage who accidentally sells his soul to Mephistopheles, played by Peter Fonda - who is without a doubt the most overtly obvious devil since Robert De Niro played Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart - and is forced to become Old Nick’s bounty hunter and face off against four demons led by a bullshit version of Blackheart who in no way resembles the one seen in the comics. The whole thing is put together in a rather shoddy fashion, with only minimal attentions paid to plot. The four elemental demons Ghost Rider faces go out like pussies (The air demon he blows away with a fan made of chains, the earth demon he also kills with a chain, and the water demon he kills I think by boiling him with the hot fire on his head. I’m not sure) and the whole thing is resolved so quickly you wouldn’t believe. Ghost Rider’s motives are also unexplained, he seems to just power around town on his flaming motorcycle committing random acts of cruelty. Despite the fact that this was a terrible movie, I can’t honestly say though that I wasn’t entertained – most of the enjoyment and indeed humour came from my disbelief that I was watching something so retarded. Also starring Eva Mendes’s bosoms. I am really, really glad that I was never a regular reader of Ghost Rider though, otherwise I’d surely be feeling pretty jipped right now. The next title this director is supposed to be massacring is Preacher. God save us.

That’s another thing. The two most awaited comic book movies in history, Watchmen and Preacher, are being handled by people who I don’t really believe are up to the job. The dude who did the Dawn of the Dead remake and 300 is doing Watchmen – while DOTD version 2.0 was reasonable I haven’t seen 300 yet so couldn’t possibly judge. Please, please, please, don’t destroy this for me, I’ve been waiting for this movie since the 80s. Likewise Preacher, is being handled by the schmoe responsible for both Ghost Rider and Daredevil. Not a lot of faith there then. I heard actually that Preacher was going to be a TV series on ABC, which strikes me as a much better way to do it than as a movie, because it has a very definite plot progression, over the course of 9 volumes. There are no standalone episodes that could easily be made into an hour and a half movie. There could be a trilogy, but it would all depend on the strength of the first movie, which could end up being a massive dud anyway. If they make one movie, they’ll have to cut tons of stuff out and end up destroying the plot, ruining the characters, and crushing the dreams of fanboys everywhere. One day I swear we’ll take no more.

While the genre movie seems to be alive and unwell, one has to wonder whatever happened to other genres. Like when was the last time you saw a good cop movie? The formula is simple – take two mismatched cops, usually from different ethnic, educational, and class backgrounds, with differing personality types, put them in a car together and watch the race humour, vague homosexual overtones, bad driving, gunplay, maltreatment of women and poorly-conceived plot take over. For instance I watched 48 Hours last night. How good is that movie? Nick Nolte as a racist, sexist, drunkard cop forced to escort racist, sexist, mouthy convict Eddie Murphy around town in search of a cop-killer and bag of stolen ducats. The terrible things that Nolte is able to say in that movie and still somehow retain our sympathy is mind-blowing. He kicks off the day by taking a swig of rotgut, emotionally torturing his girlfriend for a while before busting in on someone else’s case and causing the deaths of two detectives. Nolte doesn’t care - he has lost his gun and wants it back. He enlists the help of Murphy, who he racially abuses at every turn and the two engage in a madcap two-day rampage of morally sketchy law enforcement, which culminates - of course - in the shooting rather than arrest of the suspects. Nobody cares about this. This is how cops operate in movies. They shoot roughly twice as many people as they arrest, if they even bother to arrest anyone at all. I can't recall. Indeed, Nolte and Murphy cause so much trouble that on two occasions beat cops try to stop them but are sent packing because Nolte outranks them. He can literally do anything he pleases. On one occasion Nolte drunkenly attacks Murphy and the two ruthlessly batter each other for a while until the cops intervene. Is this good police work? Murphy uses almost any opportunity he can to cruise for pros and at one point attempts to seduce two lesbians whose house they have broken into. How are they even allowed on the streets? They should both be locked up. My favourite scene is where Murphy hassles a gang of shitkickers at a barn dance proclaiming that he doesn’t like white people and he hates rednecks. Then he beats them up and vandalises the joint. They can’t do anything about it, because he is with the cops. How is this legal? I can’t believe it. Why is there even a barn dance happening in the middle of San Francisco? In the end of course, Murphy and Nolte settle their differences and become allies, like in every cop movie. Nolte agrees to stop being racist and, as a peace offering, buys Murphy a prostitute. Pure popcorn, but you have to love the cop genre. They just don’t do movies like that anymore. Movies like Lethal Weapon, Red Heat, Tango and Cash, or even Turner and Hooch and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. The only recent one I can think of is Starsky & Hutch, and that’s a remake of a 70’s TV show. Of course there is always Hot Fuzz...

The action movie in general is dying a death. It was killed by the Matrix, bullet time and wire work. Now every single action movie that is released has the protagonist pirouetting around on strings in slow motion to a nu-metal soundtrack while dodging slow bullets. It’s like when that movie - glorious though it was – came out everybody dropped several IQ points. Also its influence has permeated and ruined other genres. For instance, the vampire movie.

Vampire movies have stank for a long time, I think maybe the last good one was John Carpenter’s Vampires, preceded by Interview With The Vampire and before that Near Dark and Lost Boys. When did vampire and gay man in big black coat become synonymous? Seriously? If you want to look at bad vampire movies, take a look at Queen of the Damned, perhaps the worst movie ever. A bunch of fruity looking, twatty vampires, one of whom has obvious man-boobs (fair enough, the vampires in the book were slightly gay, but in the book that was acceptable because they didn’t fly around kung-fu fighting one another at lightspeed) a terrible cast, a rotten nu-metal soundtrack, and the single poorest script ever shat into creation. And for another example, let’s take Underworld – that has the distinction of being both a bad vampire movie and a bad werewolf movie. Lots of big black coats in that, yes sir. To top it off, I’m not exactly what the difference between the vampires and the werewolves are in that movie is. The vampires are gaybo-looking European male-model types, while the werewolves are gaybo-looking European male-model types too. The only thing I can think of is that the latter group generally sport beards.

Well what improvements could be made? Apart from a decent buddy-cop movie, something else I’d like to see a lot more of is “versus” movies, like Freddy Versus Jason and Alien Versus Predator. While FvJ offered exactly what was expected – sexually promiscuous teenagers being slaughtered, dream-murder, machete-hackings and a final battle in which the horrors fillet one another with their blades – AvP was, I felt, a huge disappointment. The studio could have made Aliens 5, which was going to be directed by James Cameron and written by Ridley Scott (or maybe they other way around) but instead chose to make AvP, directed by some pot-smoking teenager who has only directed the abominable Resident Evil and thought it would be “rad” to have a face-hugger jumping in slow motion while Slipknot played and the camera panned round dramatically. Good choice, 20th Century Fox. A pairing I’d quite like to see would be Robocop Versus Terminator, like in the classic videogame, or even in a stirring break from tradition, Robocop & Terminator, where the pair are forced to collaborate to fight crime in Delta City. That would be something to observe. Probably it would follow the same rough plot as 48 Hours, Robocop would bust Terminator out of jail because he needs him to fight - I don’t know - the Cylons, or something.

It’s a sorry state of affairs really. At the end of the day we just have to remember that it is an industry, and these are the kind of things that make money nowadays. Your average cinemagoer hardly ever knows he is watching a remake, just like he has never read the comic on which the movie he is watching is based. This allows the directors to do a half-assed job because while the fans do dictate what gets made, it’s the popcorn munching masses that bring the box office count up, and they must be appeased. Well-meaning folks who really do want to make a good movie that true fans will enjoy find themselves pandering to a disinterested and generally desensitised audience with a high tolerance for shit. So this is all the fault of you, the viewer. Good night.

Bear - 1, Germany - 0

(Pictured left - living bear; right - dead bear)

It doesn’t need to be said that Germany and the bear have a chequered history. Only last year, Bruno – bear and father of six - was gunned down in a revenge attack by a group of Bavarian huntsmen for crimes against humanity. But as we well know one man’s war criminal is another bear’s freedom fighter. Germany has been widely criticised for it’s stance on bears, having killed 100% of wild bears found on German soil since 1835.

Nevertheless, a great victory was won for bears this week when Berlin Zoo vowed not to execute Knut, an abandoned polar bear cub, despite calls from animal rights activists that he be killed for his own good. It was feared that Knut would become too reliant on his trainer, and eventually, in a fit of barely contained animal madness, devour every creature in the zoo including staff and patrons. But the public rallied around the adorable bearling and the zoo vowed to keep him until he is old enough to cope with being moved, and then ship him off to another zoo, obviously keen to avoid a potential massacre. Knut, for his own part seemed oblivious to this and merely looked on with murder in his eyes.

Why were ze Germans so willing to spare Knut when they so easily eliminated Bruno? The answer seems to lie in the power of cute. Knut is a very photogenic animal. Small, skinny, with milky white fur, he looks more like a lamb than a bear, while by contrast Bruno was a huge, stinking, filthy brute who would sooner slay you than look at you. In addition to this, the fact that Knut is a white bear surely appeals to the German’s barely-concealed Aryan pride.

What’s my policy on bears? Positive obviously. Anything that can eat a bus full of schoolchildren whole and makes a dump the size of a cat is good in my mind. Germany, by sparing Knut has a ticking time-bomb on its hands. When Knut is old enough, he will escape in a maelstrom of death, and take his deadly revenge on the German people for the martyrdom of his forebear (ho ho ho). The streets will run red with Teutonic blood and once again will the bear’s supremacy be asserted. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

God Revealed Himself to Me through the Medium of Chicken

No, it’s not a new KFC slogan, it’s an anecdote about something that happened to me about ten minutes before the time of writing.

First I shall explain some background. I am a secular boy. I was raised with little or no particular religion but, was fairly well guided in terms of moral and social education. I know the difference between right and wrong, which was taught to me through true life examples and the odd beating rather than through the medium of bible teaching. I graduated through various stages of scoffing at Christians, complaining that the reformation ruined Scottish literature for almost 200 years, and sitting in the back of Mr “Ned Flanders” Jameson’s Religious Education class and going “Satan Satan Satan!”. On the few occasions I was actually in church, I found the thing to be horribly false, and the act of prayer terribly redundant. The religion of the bible, which I considered to have been corrupted over centuries of rewrites and edits seemed to me to be of hopelessly flawed logic. How can a tract that teaches peace and unity be used to justify so much hatred and killing throughout history? How can there be a loving God when so much pain exists in the world? If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he just turn Satan into a pillar of salt? The answer to all of these questions, from a Christian point of view, is undoubtedly that it’s all our own fault, and God likes to smugly watch us destroy ourselves, and that he wouldn’t need to smoke Satan if mankind could just stop yielding to temptation for five seconds. I hate this image of God testing us, making us jump through hoops for salvation. It makes no sense to me and it never will. The idea of a heaven for the winners and hell for the losers of God’s little game is fundamentally unfair. And, since the Christian God is the only true God all the followers of Allah, Buddha, L Ron Hubbard and Shiva will go to hell regardless of whether or not they live the lives of saints. Of course though, all the other religions say the same thing. Place your bets now.
Suffice to say, from an early age I decided, if there is a God, the church is not his microphone.

Nevertheless over the course of my life I have gained some sort of internal spirituality. I don’t mean a belief in God. I don’t like talking about God. I prefer to talk about the Universe, which is a much less stigmatized synonym. I believe that there’s a deeper and more profound meaning behind things, and very often feel a spiritual connection to the world around me. Staring up at the stars, for instance, has always filled me with these conflicting feelings of simultaneous significance and insignificance. On one hand I feel incomparably small, and on the other profoundly connected. I think of scales – the distance from star to star, the distance between me and those stars, the speed of the light traveling from these distant specks meaning that most of them will already have grown full and powerful then exploded in celestial combustion, or declined slowly and burned out over the course of billions of years. Looking up at the sky, you can see the Universe in its sum totality, and know that you are a part of it. The very matter that makes up your body is the very same matter that makes up those stars. The same matter is in animals, plants, the planet Earth itself. There’s a litttle bit of open brackets god close brackets in every one of us, and everything around us. It’s this type of god I believe in, the Emersonian transcendental god in nature. I’m the great transparent eye-ball that sees all and perceives all, part and particle. Observing things and the relationships between them is the path to understanding.

This isn’t really something I talk about much. I don’t feel particularly strongly about ramming my point down people’s throat. I’m willing to accommodate other people’s beliefs, after all among my friends I can count dedicated Christians, die-before-compromise Atheists, a bunch of homosexuals and substance abusers, and a couple of Wiccans. Whatever, I don’t care, so long as you’re good people and don’t try and indoctrinate me into your way of thinking. I’m fairly laid back about it.

Which is strange, because last night I somehow ended up arguing with my girlfriend about it - even though neither of us is religious. How did this come about? Well, I’ll tell you. A Japanese friend of mine, a pastors wife (Yes, they have the Christ here too now) were chatting, and I mentioned I thought I was coming down with the flu, and she said “Oh, I’ll pray for you”. Later on I mentioned this to my girlfriend and said it made me feel a little uncomfortable. She said “So does it make you uncomfortable when I pray for you?” I didn’t even know she prayed, but I had to confess to myself, yes it does. But why? For one, I don’t think anybody has ever prayed for me before in my life, not even good old secular Mama and Papa Blackwood. Secondly, that’s just not how I relate my own experience to the world. I believe we make our own destiny, not accept handouts from the big guy. In short, why pray for a Cadillac when you could be trading stocks in order to buy one? True, sometimes there’s nothing you can do to influence events, but even in those cases I don’t think it would cross my mind to pray. You see, I don’t believe in god as a conscious organism, and I certainly don’t believe he speaks back to us. Of course the theory goes that he does all the time we just don’t hear him, but if that’s the case I think a man of his position could afford to yell a little louder.

Today though, something strange happened to me. I had direct contact with Our Lord. It was nearly bento time and I was hungry. People, my bento is not a bountiful harvest. Usually it contains a few varieties of sukemono and some piss-tasting seaweeds, and a croquette, with all the dry white rice I can eat on the side. Sometimes though, it is even worse and I am served things which no man should be forced to eat. Today as I gathered my bento close to me I looked down and thought. “Please don’t be pregnant fish again.” Then as an afterthought, I thought “I hope it is fried chicken”. Bearing in mind we have had fried chicken for bento on one other occasion since I began eating it every day 18 months ago. The chances of fried chicken were infinitesimal.

And yet, I opened up the bento lid and there it lay. A large slice of fried chicken in breadcrumbs, with two potato wedges sitting beside it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And then it occurred to me… Holy Shit! I prayed a little! I prayed for chicken and it came true!” God was telling me I was wrong! Praise Jesus!

When I came down after my gratefully consuming my miracle-chicken, I considered things a little more objectively. What if it was really God telling me He exists? Then why would he do it through chicken? Must be these mysterious ways I’ve heard so much about. Perhaps God merely decided that in order to show me up he would answer the next prayer I made regardless of what it was. In that case, I’m upset because I should have prayed for something like INFINITE POWER or a million Great British Pounds. Or conversely, maybe God can only answer prayers regarding chicken. Why? I don’t know. The Ways of the Halls of Heaven are not for you to comprehend, mortal! Even more terrifying, the impossible miracle of the chicken had proven God’s existence, and since proof denies faith and without faith He is nothing, what if I had inadvertently killed God by believing in Him? Nietzsche was unavailable for comment due to a slight case of death.

So, after praying for more chicken and not being rewarded, and faced with either the prospect of having accidentally bumped off the Holy Father or a strange God who speaks to his children through processed poultry, I decided to resume my previous beliefs. I think the thing with the chicken was a coincidence. To my Christian friends, sorry guys, I still need proof. To my Atheist friends, don’t worry, I’m still down.

But, in my ten minutes as a dedicated Christian, I think I learned something. Maybe we don’t all share the same beliefs, or live or lives in the same way, but the best thing we can do is accommodate the beliefs of others and respect them. I believe now more than ever that we are all part of the same cosmic mechanism, all connected, part of the same matter. And you bet your sweet ass that if there is a God he would surely enjoy a megabucket from KFC.

Eureka! Moment of the Week

Don't you hate it when you have to defrost chickenmeat in the microwave, and it cooks they outside a bit while leaving the inside frozen and hard? Instead, why not simply try placing the chicken in a bowl beside a kerosene heater for 10-15 minutes. I guarantee you'll find it completely thawed and not even the least bit cooked.

Click Comments to thank me for this pearl of wisdom.

EDIT: Actually, I screwed up. I stuck some beef down there about fifteen minutes ago, and when I came back I found it had become jerky. I can't curry jerky, it would be inhumane.

Drinks that should probably be on the prohibited substances list

(Pictured: This colour appears nowhere in nature. But is approved by some guy named Dave, and he says it is bitchin')

I watched this Chappelle routine the other week the premise of which was that white kids drink “juice” and black kids drink “drink”. The “juice” refers to the fresh juices that come out of fruit when you squeeze it or pierce it with a knife, whereas the “drink” refers to the chemical compounds released when a drunken scientist adds sugar, preservatives and colouring to a bucket of water. Chappelle’s favourite flavour of drink was “purple”. Anyway, he uses this technique to judge a person’s wealth, whether they got juice or drink. For the UK, it was quite different – we didn’t have “drink”, we had either juice or squash. Squash, for those of you of the American/Canadian persuasion, is sort of concentrated orange fluid to which you add water in order to create liquid nourishment. Once when I was a kid I drank the concentrate with no water in and felt a dark dreamless sleep come over me. It was like the blood of Kali. Fortunately, my cereal had so much adrenaline in it that I got a burst of energy, ran around the garden and thereby negated the effects of the sick-maker. Squash is sold in very big, very cheap bottles, and therefore was popular. I was usually a squash boy, because my mother was always trying to save money, although we got one cup of juice every morning with our vitamins to keep us strong and healthy. It was Asda own-brand juice though, which costs about a sixpence.

There are a lot of drinks which are frankly unnatural though. At least Squash uses as its basis a fruit. Take Coca Cola, for instance. Does anybody actually know what goes into Coca Cola? No. Of course you don’t. Because it’s a secret formula. For all we know the Coca Cola production room could just be a kid filling bottles with ditch-water and grass (like those bottles of “drink” you used to make in your garden as a kid. Why did they always have grass?).

Scotland’s own Irn-Bru, as well. What the hell is that made from? “Made in Scotland from girders” the television commercial boldly proclaims. Although this is probably untrue, why would anybody think that this would be a good advert? Did they think that it would make people want to drink it? “Wow, there’s a drink made of girders, I HAVE to try it” You’d probably just get tetanus or something. You’d have to go to the doctors because you’d be shitting iron filings. Did they think people would do it to look tough? Like smoking? “Fuck you man, because I can drink a girder. That’s how fucking hard I am. Oh, did you want something? That’s right girly-man, cower and weep!” On top of that, the drink is utterly narcotic. Take one sip and I dare anyone to stop right there. When I moved to Japan I suffered withdrawal symptoms for at least three months. The ingredients to Irn-Bru are probably water, orange colouring No. 5 and opium.

Also, has anybody ever tried that blue Bubblegum Soda that they sell? There’s a drink that should be on some kind of banned substances list. I have never before that drank a soft drink that was so full of chemicals that I actually experienced paranoia. I became convinced people living in my building were trying to kill me. Then, I became convinced that the drink was giving me cancer.

I suppose I could drink water. But then the amount of chemicals that find their way into tap water these days are outrageous. In Japan, the developed country with probably the least regulations regarding chemical dumping, toxic waste burial and emissions, the chances of you ingesting some kind of industrial waste is very high. I can’t win really can I? Unless I drink bottled water. Or just alcohol, at least that’s sterile. Maybe that’s the only hope. Yeah.

Skiing is Awful

Well, here’s another sport I have no affinity for. Took a skiing lesson on Saturday up in Hida. Met with an accident. First of all, me and my instructor, a taciturn gentleman of around fifty took to the “snow bunny slopes” for me to receive the basics of skiing. Seeing that I was the only person on that slope over the age of ten, and having been separated from my peers I considered that my learning the basics may have been slightly overdue. So I practiced turning left and right for two hours while my instructor yelled “Bend! Bend!” at me in English. All in all we spent more time doing the crab walk up the hill than actually skiing. Eventually I harangued him into allowing me onto the grown up slope with the others. The second I got up there I knew it was a bad idea, but by the time I realized this I had no choice but to go, as I couldn’t work out how to get back onto the ski lift again. The top part was obscenely steep, and no sooner than I had put my skis over the edge, I fell over and started rolling down the hill. I eventually stopped, and got up. I started again, and with some assistance made it half way down the hill. Then, trying to make it down to the bottom, I shot off the run entirely, went through a barrier and before I knew it I was skiing on mud, caused by the melting of the snow. I toppled and fell into the mucky bog. Shocked and frantic, I felt the mud seeping through my trousers as I struggled to free myself. But I was powerless. I couldn’t stand up in the slime, but I also couldn’t get my skis off. I had no option but to lie there, squelching in the muck while I waited for help to arrive. People going past on the ski lift pointed and jibed at me. Even my taciturn instructor laughed a low, dead, laugh. I was humiliated. When the instructor eventually unfastened my skis for me, I crawled out of the bog and onto the snow, groaning with displeasure. My soiled form stained the white snow a dark brown. I lay on my back writhing and moaning in defeated agony. It somewhat resembled the scene in Star Wars Episode III when a dismembered Anakin Skywalker flails helplessly by the banks of that lava river howling in a hopeless frenzy.
I hate skiing.

Objectives:

A man who made more than a million quid with an HR business told me to set myself goals. Then he went off about how great his house, motor vehicles and bikini wife are. Despite how horrible the man was, I think he may have had a point. So, here are my goals:
1. By the end of 2007, I will have some decent experience on a newspaper and a serious portfolio. None of these articles will have the words “fuck” “assholes” or “lies” in them. This will be real journalism – no more kid stuff.
2. Also by the end of 2007, I will be moved in with Kaki, in a city were it is likely that we will stay for at least a year.
3. By the end of 2008 and I will have at least half of an NCTJ diploma. I will also have completed courses in shorthand and quark xpress. Hopefully, by then I will also have a proper job.
4. By the end of 2009 I would like to be living in Canada, hopefully with some kind of UK experience and qualifications that would be transferable over there. Get a job on a newspaper. Get a nice new place. Perhaps a car.
5. 2014: First book published. Win literary awards of some kind, either that or sell millions of copies of poorly-written but well-marketed crap targeted at people who don’t usually read..
6. 2015: Sell film rights for book to Hollywood. Make a mint. Sell out totally, but be very comfortable with that.
7. 2020: Ferrari, Cadillac, Aston Martin, personal hovercraft, flying lessons. Second novel should be published around this time.
8. 2025: Move out of the city, buy some kind of ranch. Buy guns.
9: 2030: Build large walls. Fortify ranch.
10: 2030 - ?: Shoot any intruder.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Why the hell wasn't there a Tango & Cash 2?

This might be the best thing I have ever seen

http://www.channel102.net/view.php?epid=199

Taking Care of Business in Japan

(Pictured: The TOTO toilet lures a child into it's robotic clutches using a song)
Have you ever been wandering in a busy metropolitan area when you were suddenly seized by a sharp, aching stomach cramp which indicated the epoch of a stinking beershit? Of course you have. We all have. The only thing there is to do then is bumrush the nearest comfort station and do your sinful business. But it ain’t always so easy. In the good old U of K, I was fortunate enough never to have been presented with such a dichotomy as to choose which kind of toilet to drown mud bunnies in. But here in Japan we have many different kinds. It’s true. Some are good, some bad. Some are brutally simplistic, while some are bewilderingly advanced. What follows is the definitive exploration and assessment of the main toilet types that you will encounter on a day to day basis, anecdotal scatology and solutions for your daily plop-plop.

1. The Squatter
The squatter is the typical toilet of rural Japan, and of public conveniences. Set into the floor, this porcelain menace can be intimidating for the first-time user. I confess I have only ever used one of these once, on the below ground floor of Nagoya’s Takashimaya mall. You can visit it yourself, there’s a plaque there to commemorate the event. Nevertheless my first visit was like everybody’s first visit – It literally couldn’t be avoided. I closed the door behind and stared at it the same way a pig looks at a typewriter. What was I going to do? I dropped my shorts, and squatted over the bowl, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to defecate at an angle and somehow soil them. I took off my shorts and left them in a pile in the cleanest looking corner of the bathroom. I let myself descend as close as I could to the porcelain without falling over and then let myself shit. I felt cold and naked, and didn’t enjoy it at all, as I usually do. Thirty seconds or so later the runny shit had passed, and I groped for the toilet paper. In doing so I had to let go of the plumbing and almost fell into the sticky mess below. A mercifully quick wipe later I was ready to assess the splatter damage. Despite the severity of my diarrhoea my shoes and bare flesh were miraculously untainted. More luck than good guidance, I thought, as I pulled my shorts back on. Dreadful.

The whole experience left me rather worse for wear, and thanking the good Lord that my own apartment’s squatter toilet came with a plastic converter. The converter itself is a poor defecatory experience, with its tendency to stick to ones flesh during the summer months and its habit of concealing the strange orange scum that gathers beneath the lips of the squatter toilet.

All things considered one might write the squatter off as a barbaric throwback to the days of yore when men were men, women were property and people hacked at each other with huge swords 24/7. But wait! There is an up side! There is method to the madness. The average squatter uses much less water than a western toilet, and are also easier to keep clean and are significantly cheaper. They are also (apparently) much more hygienic due to lack of seat contact, if you can manage to keep it all in the pan that is. In addition to that, squatting is a more natural position, and holds untold health benefits. For example, the position allows you to expel more slurry from the colon, and builds up muscles which help reduce incontinence. Some people also say that it improves breathing, strengthens ones knee muscles, and improves concentration. Some studies even maintain that the squatting position can prevent and even cure the Grapes of Wrath themselves, the deadly haemorrhoids. So by that merit, the environmentally friendly, hygienic and healthy old-school squatter should be the greebo or health-nut’s shitter of choice. Use it and be proud.

Comfort: 0/10
Splatter factor: 9/10
Green factor: 10/10
Healthiness: 10/10
Ability to operate while under the influence: 0. You may as well shit yourself now before you do it in your bed, fool.
Total: 2.9 out of 5

2. The Western Style, or Regular toilet
The Western style is found in most Japanese homes now, having overtaken the squatter as the shite-receptical of choice some time ago. Without the somewhat obscure health benefits of the squatter, the Western toilet provides a comfortable plastic seat with a porcelain funnel which allows the user a carefree and splatter free bowel evacuation without having to hoist oneself up by gripping the wall or plumbing or remove one’s clothing. Especially good for old people whose backs have been ravaged by decades on the squatter, who just want to sit down at their extended old age while they clip a biscuit. The twin flush option allows you to save water by making a small flush for a piss and a big one for a jobby. In addition to this, there is a sink on top of many modern toilets that allows you to wash your hands in the water that flows into the cistern in preparation for a new flush. Unfortunately, the rather slow flow of cold water doesn’t really cut it for washing one’s hands. I need a little more pressure to feel clean. And some soap. And a towel. Here’s a question for you; what is it with the lack of soap and towels in Japanese toilets? Am I supposed to carry soap and towels with me? The answer is, of course, yes, I am. Perhaps I should buy a brokeback man-purse to carry all these things in. But I digress.

Comfort: 7/10
Slowly killing you? 5/10
Green factor: 6/10
Healthiness: 5/10. Healthy in the sense that not going to the bathroom would be unhealthy.
Ability to operate under the influence: 10/10. Textbook.
Total: 3:3 out of 5

3. The Super Toilet AKA Washlet or Ubertoilet
For the ultimate in toilet technology, next time you’re baking brownies why not head over to a TOTO washlet? Boasting more gadgets than James Bond’s Aston Martin, these state of the art toilets provide the pinnacle of comfort and cleanliness, if one can get over the intimidating interfaces and sometimes surprising injections of fluid into one’s anus. I’ll say one thing for the Japanese; they’re a people who take taking a shit rather seriously, as anyone who has listened as an overzealous workmate in the cubicle next to you hatches a loaf, punctuating every plop with the exclamation “Yosh!” Nearly half of homes in Japan sport a Super Toilet, cementing their importance as the pinnacle of conveniences. Since their introduction in 1980, the Super Toilet has evolved many striking features, such as the much loved heated toilet seat, which in some people’s opinion negates the need for central heating in one’s house. Some seats even glow in the dark, so you can drain the snake without even turning the light on when you stumble through in the early hours of the morning wishing you hadn’t drank so much soda. Super Toilets feature a high level of automation, some popping up the seat when you approach, or lowering it when it’s time for twosies. Perhaps the most striking feature is of course the integrated bidet, which sprays a jet of water at 38 degrees centigrade into the sphincter or special lady parts of the user. A foreigner first arriving in Japan will treat the integrated bidet initially with suspicion, then with disgust. This disgust will turn into curiosity and eventually acceptance. For most straight men and women, the anus is strictly out of bounds, and the idea of a powerful jet of water shooting out of the toilet evokes a terrible fear of anal intrusion. We worry that it might hurt, or worse still, in the case of straight men, that we might enjoy it and begin to question our sexuality. Gay men, I assume, fear the water jet less, knowing as they may well do that a water jet and anal intercourse are not the same thing. But straight guys are inordinately afraid of that sort of thing. So we reject the jet spray and label it sexually dubious. We become convinced that the Japanese people who use the water jet must be getting off. Indeed, that hypothesis still holds some water (No pun intended). One of my workmates, a Judo black-belt of enormous proportions is obscenely thorough in his use of the jet spray. Once I was standing at a urinal and my workmate came into the toilet, went to the cubicle, locked the door, and sat down. Immediately, I heard the spray start, full blast. He hadn’t even taken a shit yet. I finished my piss, went over and thoroughly washed my hands, and when I left, he was still spraying on full strength. While I secretly suspect he was merely pleasuring himself, a little research explains the process. Apparently, according to Dr Hiroshi Ojima, the fibre intake in Japan is not great (surely rice has a lot of fibre?) and that can cause constipation. This possibly dubious claim is backed up by the makers of the toilets, who maintain that constipation can be cured by rigorous application of the jet spray. Personally, I suspect this might be nonsense, but one can’t fault the hygiene argument. Of course scouring one’s exhaust port clean with a powerful jet of water is superior to merely wiping it wish low quality paper! In addition to that, since most public restrooms are without soap or hot water, it will undoubtedly leave the hands feeling cleaner too. Marvellous.

One particularly useful feature that is found on women’s toilets is the Otohime, or in English, the Sound Princess. This device was created after Japanese scientists realized that urinating Japanese women, mortified at the thought of other urinating Japanese women hearing them urinate, were flushing the toilets non-stop to conceal the sound of their urination and wasting around 20 litres of water per toilet visit. What the Sound Princess does is play a loud flushing noise to cover any noises made in the performance of daily ablutions. Of course, some Japanese women think the Sound Princess sounds fake and as such still constantly flush the toilet. But what can you do?

Other features utilized by the top of the range toilets include massage functions (which would be sure to leave the experience feeling even more sexually dubious) an automatic deodorant spray, and some even play relaxing music, possibly to induce some kind trance where defecation can be preformed with ease. Some toilets even collect usage data which allows them to shut down and save power at times when they are unlikely to be needed, and to provide and a toilet experience based on the user’s individual preferences. Smart toilets! Incredible. And they keep on advancing too. Toilets currently being developed can perform urinalysis, measure pulse and blood sugar levels to provide a health assessment of the user and fax it to a doctor if there are any problems. Also they have invented a toilet that talks to you and understands simple verbal commands, but frankly I can’t think of anything more perverse and ridiculous. What would I want to say to my toilet? What would it say to me? God only knows. Surely that would be an awkward conversation.

A downside to the modern Japanese washlet is the level of energy that they use. It’s estimated that 5% of the energy used by the average Japanese household is eaten up by the Super Toilet. This places something of a dampener on the other environmental advantages such as saving water. However, who cares about all that stuff? You’re sitting on the Cadillac of Commodes! Fuck Kyoto protocol and shit like a king.

Comfort: 10/10. So comfortable, it’s maybe even a little arousing.
Fear factor: 9/10. A little bit too much like colonic irrigation though.
Green factor: 7/10. Good on water, not so good on power.
Healthiness: 7/10. OK, but you’d be better squatting.
Ability to operate under the influence: 5/10. Likely to get confused and wind up injuring yourself.
Total: 3.8. The King of Toilets has been crowned.

4. The Pit Toilet
Technically these things shouldn’t even still exist. Although the earliest sewerage systems in Japan date from about the Yayoi period (300 BC – AD 250), in days of old pit toilets were primarily used. This was because one could go save the excrement for use as fertilizers. The Japanese diet was always based more on growing rice and other vegetables than rearing livestock, so there was always a need for human excrement to use as fertilizers. Because of this Japanese cities have were always cleaner than their European counterparts, where the citizens were usually ankle-deep in their own faeces because people’s idea of disposal simply involved tossing the foul-smelling excretions into the street. In any case, sewers were built in many places in around the late 1500’s, and in the 20th century, western-style toilets began to manifest, becoming more commonplace during the post-war American occupation. So the pit toilet should be extinct right? Wrong. They can still be found in certain places, like for instance in dirty, prefabricated restaurants on the side of a major road, or in filthy arcades where old men who drive small trucks play pornographic mah jong games and smoke. The pit toilet these days is of course connected to the sewers, but beyond that not much has changed. A circular hole, often concrete, leads directly down to the sewers. No flush to speak of. The hole is usually wide enough to fit a small to medium sized child down. And the stench, oh the stench! Don’t drop your keitai, watch, wallet or spectacles, whatever you do.

Comfort: 0/10.
Offensive scent: 10/10. Stinks to high heavens.
Green Factor: 5/10. At least it doesn’t waste water, because there is none.
Healthiness: 0/10. Possibly that smell is carcinogenic.
Ability to operate under the influence: 0/10. There’s a danger you’d fall in.
Total: 1.5. Miserable.

While other types of toilet do exist, for instance the female urinal, this esteemed scientist has not experiences them, and in any case they are immensely rare. As well as type of toilet, Japan differs from the west in terms of attitude to toilets, and the act of urination or indeed defecation. For example, where else in the world could you see a respectable looking man soberly urinating in a supermarket car park at 11am on a Saturday morning in full view of a crowd of schoolchildren? Where I ask you? And where else in the world can you find toilet doors that open directly onto urinals, allowing onlookers (women, children, old ladies) to glimpse a row of man-hoses every time someone opens the door. Japanese men don’t seem to have the same attitude to privacy while taking a piss that we do (maybe that’s why they always stare when I’m beside them at the urinal). There’s no law against public urination here, something which is grossly illegal and considered utterly barbarous in many western countries. Unfortunately, women don’t share the same rights as men, and for them public urination is illegal; possibly in case any prowling urophiliacs should see them and be unduly aroused. Which I think suits Japanese women fine since the idea of anyone finding out their sinful secret – that they do, indeed, pee and poo like everyone else – fills them with cold dread.

Going to the bathroom in Japan is like playing Russian roulette. 50% of the time you are going to be disappointed by a squatter, so perhaps it’s best to go at home. It’s always best to check the cubicles first in case there’s a Super Toilet hiding in the corner. In which case you might end up hanging a rat more comfortably than in your own home. But before you diss the old-school Japanese methods in future, think about the environmental and physical benefits offered by the poor, maligned squatter. So rejoice! There’s a toilet built for every preference in Japan, be it for comfort, cleanliness, or environmentally friendliness. The trick is to know where to look.

Winter of Discontent

(Pictured: Last year's nad-shatterer)
This morning, as I stood in the stinging air outside my mountain home, I noticed a sight that filled my noble heart with terrible foreboding. I beheld upon a mountaintop not so far from me, a crown of crisp white snow, glistening in the morning sun. I immediately felt The Fear, because I know that when the mountain turns white, it signals the beginning of the end, the perpetual, ball-shrinking winter that lies ahead. I rolled my head back and moaned in dread, watching my breath come out in a cumulous white cloud of dragon-smoke.
“Zounds!” I said. “I’d better find some way to keep warm.”
Winter. Japanese winter. That bone-chilling wind coming down from Siberia while the planet tilts us mockingly away from the sun. Will we ever be saved? Can I survive another winter here? Last winter, I took a mulligan on the season and pissed off to South East Asia for a month, but this year I’m out of nenkyu – I’m in for the duration, I’m afraid. A prisoner of this season’s bone-chilling grip.
Truly, my sainted home is not the most well-designed building in the world. A dirty block of concrete, laid like a steaming architectural turd sometime in the 1970s, it has no insulation of any kind, and as such heats up in summertime like a bread oven, and in wintertime acts as a large fridge – indeed sometimes it is actually warmer outside than in. It makes one wonder why the Japanese have never really embraced the central heating system. Today, it’s still a relatively rare thing in most parts of the country, yet in Korea they’ve had the ondol system (traditional central heating which pumps the house full of warm air through pipes) since the middle ages. Enough to make you ponder why the Japanese haven’t taken a leaf out of their book.
The Koreans have a number of other ways of staying warm that we would do well to remember. My Japanese comrade swears blind that the primary method that the Koreans use to keep cool is the consumption of vast quantities of blood-warming kimchi. Having tested this method out myself I can state categorically that this is a falsehood. Whatever else kimchi may be good for, stopping the human body from succumbing to exposure is not one of them. At best all it will do is give you a bit of a sore mouth and force you to take a drink thereby rendering all cold-related complaints secondary for a limited period of time. And even then only if you are a pussy who can’t take spicy food. Or if your idea of hot is eating an umeboshi. I got news for you Jack, just because it tastes like you’re licking an electrical socket doesn’t mean it’s hot. In reality it’s just a little bit sour. But I digress. While I recommend a hearty portion of Kimchi for consumption every day, this particular doctor urges you to seek other means of keeping oneself warm.
Probably the most popular way in Japan of staving away the Devil’s frozen fingers is by utilizing the kerosene heater. While these do actually heat your place they are unbearably expensive to run, require constant refueling (who else here has only just lain down after prayer for a nights Godly rest when the whirring of the heater’s fan stops and in an instant the room is deathly cold? Who else has had to take a walk to the landing late at night to obtain fresh kerosene? All of you, that’s who, you wretches!) they stink to high heaven, and on top of that they kill you. Yes, yes, that is right. The carbon monoxide fumes given off by said contraptions actually have quite a respectable bodycount to their name. Every year all across Japan people go to sleep with the heater on and just don’t wake up. If that’s not a reason to get an ondol or some other form of central heating I don’t know what is.
What will perhaps put you in better stead for the winter will be to get some decent winter threads – perhaps an anorak of at least three-quarter length, like the PE teacher in your local high school wears as he mercilessly drives a class of shivering, be-shorted 15 year olds around the track savagely berating them. Stick some of those hot pads in the inside pockets – slambango! Instant mobile sauna inside your clothes.
Bear in mind that the only place colder than a Japanese apartment is a Japanese school, and if you work at one – which a significant proportion of you probably do – be prepared at all times to wear your scarf and gloves indoors. Sometimes you might ask yourself why they don’t heat the place. It’s probably for the same reason that they don’t put the air conditioning on in summer. The teachers like to suffer. Why do you think they stay at work so late? Well, at least you are safe in the knowledge that any school so cold that you can see your breath in the middle of the afternoon would be closed as some kind of health hazard in any western country, and the teachers who forced students to study in there in those temperatures would be denounced as sadistic criminals and moral destitutes. Hey, it could be worse. You could be wearing a miniskirt. Like 50% of your students.
The same Japanese friend who offered me kimchi as a solution was also quick to recommend onsening. While the onsen process does stave away the cold, I would be loathe to recommend it for the following reasons: while it might be fun to sit in a warm pool of water and laugh at the snowflakes falling ineffectually around you, the actual transit to and from the water is sack-shatteringly painful. And if there are people around you, you’d better get prepared for shrinkage, because that sucker is going to retract. Men, protect your dignity!
For a temporary solution to the cold, what could be better than booze? Tried and tested for centuries by such diverse groups as Russians, the Irish and of course the Scots, a group of which I am fortunate enough to count myself as a member. The consumption of a bottle of brown liquor anesthetizes the senses to the extent that one could go to sleep naked on a wind-swept moor on the coldest night of the year. And I should know. If you want my opinion, the best way to keep warm is to stay drunk from early November to mid-March. Booze is the perfect substitute for Christmas cheer.
Well, the kerosene is out now, and stinking up my apartment like a dead dog in a shoebox, and day by day the white menace creeps further down the mountain. It’ll only be a matter of time before the snow starts falling and I am forced to start burning old copies of the Daily Yomuiri. This is an evil day. Good-bye sunlight! I pray that I will see you again. If you don’t hear from me by April, send an ambulance with a snowplow my way. Tell them to look for a frozen punk.

Happy Anniversary

Since it was our anniversary yesterday I feel completely justified in posting a large picture of me and my better half in what appears to be a very passionate embrace. I make no excuses. It is my blog and I will do with it as I please. What do you expect, articles all the time? What do you people want from me?

TV Casualty

(Pictured: Beautiful food like this curry could never find its way onto Japanese TV)
Youtube, the internet’s most popular video sharing service was recently forced to wipe 30,000 files from its website due to copyright issues. The Japan Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers is considering lobbying for a screening process for videos being posted on the site, to prevent copyrighted material from being illegally screened. Most of the clips that find their way onto the internet from Japan are from TV shows or commercials. They are also immensely popular viewing. But why?

The answer lies presumably in the innate quirkiness of Japanese TV programming. It seems that westerners regard the everyday weirdness of Japanese TV with a mix hilarity and confusion that makes viewing compulsive. Indeed receiving an email with a link to a befuddling or disturbing clip featuring Japanese people maltreating or otherwise embarrassing themselves is not by any means an irregular occurrence for many.

I remember some time ago I received an email with a link to one such clip. The show was one of these physical challenge type shows where the guests have to perform feats of limited athletic prowess to an audience who invariably laugh as they are humiliated. In this show, a group of pretty young Japanese women had balloons stuck to their backs, and had to run around for sixty seconds and evade an aggressor who was determined to burst them. The aggressor in this case was a muscular seven-foot-tall shirtless black man bearing an expression of affected animalistic cruelty. Having a microphone shoved into his face, he bellowed in English “I SHALL DEFEAT YOU ALL.” Then the referee blew his whistle and he was off. For such a huge guy, he moved with the swiftness that surprised and terrified his cutesy-girl opponents, who squealed and shrieked in naked terror as he pursued them relentlessly around the room, bursting one balloon after another, howling and ballooing. The Japanese girls slipped and slid around in a futile effort to escape his terrible wrath, but when the sixty seconds were up, not one balloon remained. The presenter broke up the melee and separated the victorious gaijin from his vanquished foes. A couple of the girls were actually crying. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Aside from doing absolutely nothing to negate certain ingrained racial preconceptions in Japanese culture – that all foreigners are animalistic and rapacious - this clip serves to highlight the sadistic edge of Japanese comedy. The Germans would call it Schadenfruede. As the Japanese would say: “Tanin no fukou wa mitsu no aji” which roughly means “others misfortunes taste of honey.”

Popular with internet viewers is the game show “Silent Library” where inexplicable and terrible things happen for no reason at all. The game plays like Russian roulette, each player picks up a card, one of which has a skull and crossbones motif on it. If they draw that card, a horrendous punishment will be inflicted upon them by their fellow contestants. Among the tortures I witnessed was “Wasabi Roll”, where the hapless contender is forced to consume the some sushi laden with the aforementioned foodstuff. He of course then hacks, coughs, slavers a bit and demands some water. Later on in the show the poor fool falls victim to two other pranks – “Bad Smell Air” and “Slapping Machine”, the first of which involves the donning of an air mask which supplies the contender with foul air, as he once again nearly loses his lunch, the second of which needs no explanation: his colleagues hold him down while a machine delivers a series of painful looking slaps. The most terrifying of the torments inflicted though was “Old Man Bites Tenderly”. This involved an elderly Japanese man who removes his dentures and then furiously gums the ears of the unfortunate bearer of the skull and crossbones card. He whimpers and moans in obvious discomfort as the old man takes his fleshy earlobes into his toothless mouth and jaws on them. Truly awful. Also I forgot to mention as it's set in a library they have to be silent at all times.

I have to confess, I don’t really “get” Japanese TV, and not just because I suffer from the twin curses of cultural ignorance and lack of Japanese language ability. Japanese TV programs, in general are a great deal cheaper-looking than their US, Canadian or UK counterparts – the sets seem to be sparsely decorated and the props seem to be primarily made out of card. Possibly it only seems this way to me because there are so many variety shows on Japanese TV and they are reportedly very cheap to make, or because my TV set is broken and I can only get two channels.

I remember the first time I switched the TV on when I arrived in Japan. The show that I watched featured a man with a red coat, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to wake people up really early in the morning, for no discernable reason. He would drive around town in his car, wearing his red coat, in the early hours of the morning, when it is still dark outside. Then he would select a house and go up and knock on the door. When the residents emerge, bleary-eyed, he announces they are on TV and their expression immediately changes from weary irritation to delight. Usually then the resident will invite the red-coat-man in for tea and they will discuss the prank in detail. One time, the red coat man arrived at a door to discover that the resident had left it unlocked, so being as quiet as he could he snuck himself and his camera crew in, and made his way to the residents bedroom. Seeing a woman asleep, he shook her awake. She immediately freaked out, thinking the intruder was either there to rob, rape or otherwise mischief her. But the red coat man explained she was on TV, and she soon saw the funny side of it. I cannot begin to comprehend what the point of this Endeavour of his was was.

But it’s not all juvenile torture and dubious pranks on Japanese TV. From my experience, Japanese TV is generally very boring. For instance, most shows on Japanese TV in the evening - especially around mealtimes - stick to the following formula. Some food will be cooked. The food will be Japanese in origin, or if foreign in origin at least so thoroughly Japanified for public consumption that it will be unrecognizable as such. Generally speaking, I have no idea what the food is, often it is sushi, which is easily identifiable, but more often than not it will be a food that the gaijin does not know and is possibly not meant to know. Ask your Japanese wife. In any case after the food has been thoroughly examined a middle-aged woman in a kimono will pick up a pair of chopsticks and gingerly take a bite. She will usually look shocked for about three seconds then cover her mouth and say “O… O… Oishi!”, elongating the last syllable for an inordinate amount of time to accentuate just how delicious the food is. I myself gain no pleasure from watching middle-aged women eat sushi so this type of programming does not interest me, but there does seem to be quite a lot of it, so it must appeal to somebody. God only knows who though. Some degenerates no doubt.

The other thing that bothers me about Japanese TV is that there’s always so much clutter on the screen. Numerous titles and assorted text cover the screen at any given interval. What they say is an enigma for my non-kanji-reading self, but much of the time they seem to have a sense of mysterious urgency about them, or so the double-exclamation points would suggest. Also, is there any reason why there needs to be a box with somebody’s face in it in the corner of the screen constantly? Why is the host’s reaction to a woman eating sushi deemed important enough to merit being shown in a separate frame while the event is taking place? My theory is this: just as Japanese school students will seek to confer with others before answering even the simples of questions, so the Japanese TV viewer needs complicity before reacting to the images the TV shows. It has the same effect essentially as the laugh track does, it encourages the audience to react thereby strengthening the empathy between the viewer and the people on the screen. Ha! Nice psychological voodoo, but you won’t fool me. I can see through your cheap parlour tricks.

So am I selling Japanese TV short? Am I missing out? I decided to spend the whole day watching TV to try and find out. I witnessed rather a lot of baseball coverage, which given the season is unsurprising. Also I saw a documentary on the Japanese volleyball team. In this documentary the exquisitely coiffed members of the volleyball team are harangued and pushed about by their menacing coach, who forces them to perform various menial tasks around the gym to learn self-discipline. He has them scrub the floor and sweep up. Then he forces them to write some kind of essay. This both amused and delighted me. The boys of the volleyball team are of the bangs-and-white-jeans type you see in trendy clothes stores, with immaculately plucked eyebrows and vacant expressions. The kind of feminine-looking guys my good friend Mike was referring to when on one lagery evening he said in his broad Southern drawl “Some of these guys, Dave, if I was drunk, I’d fuck ‘em.” Which makes it all the more hilarious to see them being savagely berated by a squat, square-headed minotaur of a volleyball coach.
Later on in the afternoon I witnessed a singular event, a father/son swimming competition which pitted three families against each other. Not too interesting except that the men were all rake thin with a ghostly pallor, and clearly in far worse shape than their kids. Too much work and not enough exercise perhaps? The best bit of this show was when the presenter tied the kids together and made them swim in opposite directions. How nobody drowned I have no idea.

The next show I watched actually was quite transfixing. It was that show where the hosts reunite families who have been separated for years. In a series of reconstructions it told the story of Yumi-chan, the guest on the show. A child of mixed Japanese and Filipino parentage, when her parents split up she is forced to return to the Philippines with her Mother who abandons her in the rural Philippines. My favourite part of the reconstruction was when the mother tells her this is where she is going to live and the child-actress says “eeeeeehhhh???”. Of course, of course the poor girl doesn’t want to stay in the smelly Philippines, poor thing! God forbid. In any case, she eventually goes back to Japan to live with her mother and “new father” an abusive drunk. Eventually Yumi-chan’s mother snuffs it and leaves her alone. Quite sad, of course but that’s when TV does its magic. The presenters locate her father and they are reunited on the show. Yumi-chan, now an 18 year old mother, who has been sobbing solidly since she entered the studio, finally meets her father, who also starts blubbering and raking his hands through his thinning hair. Then the host, who had surely been selected for this job due to how dignified he looks when he cries also let a noble tear roll down his cheek. And then the other presenters started sobbing uncontrollably too. Then the audience. I could hear the woman in the apartment next to me start to cry too. That must be good programming.

Later on I watched a solid action movie about a Japanese Naval ship that gets taken over by bad army men, and are fought off by two navy guys who save the ship with only minor scratches. Having not seen a decent boat movie since Under Siege this was refreshing to me. Lots of people get shot and one of the heroes drowns a woman in the ocean. Fresh.

So in the end of the day, behind all the juvenile humour and arbitrary punishments, perhaps Japanese TV is worth watching after all. It’s just like TV back home, if you sift through the tripe for long enough, eventually you might come up with a golden example of televisual ambrosia. But at the end of the day maybe you’d be better of reading a book or getting some exercise. I feel ill.