steepholm

Walking home from Temple Meads today, I saw that Easton has given its own verdict on the proclamation.



Of course, I can't approve this, as it's been several generations since a king of England employed a Groom of the Stool.

Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, is not an obvious place of Japanese pilgrimage, even if it has the Temple of Vaccinia.



Here is my friend Eriko, clutching a COVID-19 vaccine plushie, and standing in front of the world's first free vaccination clinic, in Dr Jenner's back garden.

Still, there are some interesting Japan connections to be found. Witness, for example, this portrait (dated 1591) of Thomas Cavendish - the first Englishman whose name we know ever to meet a Japanese. In his case, it was off the coast of Baja California, where he captured a Spanish galleon and found two teenaged boys aboard, whom he then brought back to England. They'd have been there when this picture was painted, in fact.



Then there's this bit of Edo-era propaganda, persuading Japanese people to take the smallpox vaccine by picturing it as a demon-slaying kami astride a cow. Hey, whatever works!



And what about this kid who somehow found herself timelipped back to Civil-War era Berkeley castle, where she used her karate skills to break the siege?



A fun break in the middle of Monday, and I hope to see Eriko - whose visit was fleeting indeed - again in the Spring, when she returns to resume her work on spiritualist churches in Bristol.

Last weekend I was in Glasgow, co-hosting the 50th Anniversary Conference on Watership Down with Dimitra Fimi. I was too busy to take photographs, so you'll have to take it from me that the event did indeed take place, and not only that but was a success. Richard Adams's daughter gave one of the keynotes (she looks exactly like him!), but we had many other contributions too, from diverse disciplines: the inventor of the "Bunnies and Burrows" tabletop game, for example; a couple a French scholars talking about the French translation; linguists and Tolkienists on the Lapine language; classicists on the echoes of the Aeneid; the twin sons of the one of the key animators on the 1978 film, the novelist SF Said on Adams as a personal writing inspiration, and so on. (I talked about theory of mind in animal stories.) This the kind of mix I really appreciate.

Any other big WD fans here? I've been really surprised at how little academic work's been done on it, considering how many ways it seems to invite it.

In other news, I took delivery of a couple more reprints of books by Weeden Butler the elder. I thought I might as well order them cheap, since I'm unlikely to be able to get first editions. One is called Indian Vocabulary, and is essentially an early version of Hobson-Jobson, but published about a century earlier, in 1788.

One interesting thing is that Weeden deliberately attempted to write the words phonetically, so as to aid his English readers' pronunciation of Indian words, with the consequence that 'shah,' for instance, becomes 'shaw.' One of the earliest entries is for Abdallah Shaw - which gives a decidedly odd effect.

We also get little insights that fall outside strict word definition, as with 'Abrooa'n', 'A sort of fine muslin, manufactured solely for the king's seraglio; a piece of which, costing four hundred rupees, or £50 sterling, is said to have weighed only five Sicca rupees, and, if spread upon wet grass, to have been scarcely visible.' Steady, Weeden.

Rather cannily, Weeden promoted this book as being of topical interest, because it was published while the trial of Warren Hastings was ongoing - and he even throws in, by way of a makeweight, a detailed description of the process and rules of impeachment. Bonus!

The other book is merely a sermon, more interesting for the occasion of its delivery than for its content, given as it was before the newly formed 'Armed Association of the Parish of St Luke, Chelsea... on Sunday, 8th July, 1798.' The 'Armed Association' was basically a kind of anti-Napoleonic Home Guard, although Weeden is as concerned about sedition at home as threats directly from abroad.

I wonder what would happen if they tried to make the inhabitants of Cheyne Row into an armed militia today?

This week I've been slowly coasting down towards my inevitable departure from Japan on Sunday, a process of gradual renunciation and reconciliation, a bit like Hindu sannyasa but with better food. Only this morning I received an email from Booking.com with a load of vouchers for things I might wish to do "during my stay in Tokyo" - several of which looked pretty fun - but I sternly deleted it. If only you'd written six weeks ago, Booking.com! I suppose it's because I used them to book an airport hotel the night before my departure, and their algorithm foolishly understood this as a prelude to adventure rather than the drawing of a curtain on (at any rate) this act.

Mostly I've been catching up with friends, some for the first time on this trip, some for the second. On Sunday I went to Kichijouji for a pizza with my old friend Tomoko, one of the very first language-learning partners I met in Japan - as early as 2016. On Facebook recently I mentioned that my greatest ever experience of culture shock was going to New York and seeing people eating pizza with their fingers (this was in 1986) - which sparked a long but essentially irrelevant debate about whether the Italians eat it that way or with a knife and fork. Having never been to Italy in 1986 my expectations would not have been affected either way, but it's surprising how heated people can get about the "right" way to eat food (whether you like it or not). Personally, I hate having sticky fingers, so can only enjoy finger food if I have immediate and constant recourse to some way of cleaning them.

Anyway, in that spirit, this is what the Naples-trained chefs of Kichijouji think about the matter.



Feel free to pitch in on whether you think they've got it right. Meanwhile, I'll be with Tomoko taking a stroll in nearby Inokashira Park, with its hidden Buddhist temples, black sesame flavoured ice cream, and of course the ever-popular swan pedaloes.



On Monday I met up with Toki, whom I had met only once before, in a cafe in Bristol three years ago, when she (then a total stranger) saw me studying kanji and we fell into conversation. She had just finished studying at a language school and was soon to go back to Tokyo, but she gave me the details of a friend - who turned out to be Moe. And it was through Moe that I go to know Ayako, and through Ayako that I got to know Rei - so the consequences of that chance encounter at Coffee #1 have been longlasting indeed. We had lunch in Daikanyama, a new part of Tokyo for me, and went to a rather splendid bookshop nearby (Tsutaya), which contained not only the usual cafe but a full-blown restaurant. and sold many a high-end good.



In the evening I got totally confused, and thought I had an evening free, so made myself some pasta and settled down to some work - only to get a message from Andy Houwen (a colleague of Miho's whom I'd first met at hers soon after arriving), asking where I'd got to. We'd originally agreed to go to an izakaya on Tuesday and somehow I'd not clocked that the date had been changed, so - rather full from lunch with Toki and the pasta I'd just made - I headed out with him to Kouenji where we met his wife Gladys and hit the local bars. Somehow I managed to tuck away quite a few more calorific snacks along with beer and sake, and eventually something that we had ordered as red wine but turned out to be a weird fruit-juice concoction stuffed with frozen strawberries. I've still no idea how the staff misunderstood us, since we not only said 'aka wain' but were pointing at it on the menu.

Weirdly, though, Andy later that evening found the following passage in the book he's reading - A Farewell to Arms:

‘If you imagine a country that makes a wine that tastes like strawberries’, he said.

‘Why shouldn’t it?’ Catherine asked. ‘It sounds splendid’.

‘It doesn’t even taste like strawberries’.

‘It might’, said Catherine. ‘It would be wonderful if it did’.

I'm here to tell you that it was not, in fact, wonderful after all.

One of the items at the final izakaya - more of an Italian wine bar, in truth - was a small cheese selection. I've been more or less off cheese for the last 6 weeks, although I love it to excess, because good cheese isn't really a thing in Japan. But a taste of piccante gorgonzola and a crumbly lump of salty parmesan brought all my cheese love racing back. It was another weird coincidence that the next day I got an unprompted WhatsApp message from Rei telling me among other things that it was possible to buy Stilton - at a price - from a high-end supermarket in Kichijouji. Of course, I had to go and sea, and sure enough...



I am ashamed to speak of the cheese debauche that followed, or the way my stomach reacted to that much creamy goodness and delicious blue mould after such a long fast. Suffice it to say that I woke several times in the night following, wondering, "Is this the long-feared Covid at last - just a few days before my flight?"

But there was more of Colston Bassett than of Corona about it, and the next morning I was in a fit state to eat a lunchtime curry with Sakae in Nishiogikubo, then look around a few souvenir shops in Mitaka.


Sakae after curry in Nishiogikubo

Thursday morning I took a stroll in Zenpukuji Park, which is just behind this campus, but (because it's the other end from the gate I have to use to leave and enter) I'd somehow not been to on this visit. The central features is a large pond, replete with cormorants and herons, and therefore also (one must suppose) at least a few fish. These kinds of spaces are never too far away in Tokyo, and neither are the quiet neighbourhoods with walkable - nay, dawdleable - streets and even the occasional farm. It's one of the reasons I love the city. I wish I'd done more walking sooner, in the gaps between the too hot and the too wet.


An arable "city farm", with honesty box for purchases, in relatively central Tokyo


Another Nishiogikubo meal followed, this time with Miho and two of her colleagues, but I didn't want to be too late to bed, as this was my final full day at TWCU, and I had received a very kind offer from yet another colleague, Naoko, to take me to Saitama Children's Zoo, the scene of my epic failure to reach the Beatrix Potter house last week.

This time, although the weather wasn't great, we made it in! I can't show you the inside of the BP house, but I think you'll agree they did a bang up job on the exterior:


The real Hill Top and the one in Saitama - can you tell which is which?

Clue: only one has this feature



We also took the opportunity to visit the children's zoo attractions, such as penguins, red pandas, prairie dogs, etc., but you've seen them before. Had we been there at the right time there would also have been a chance to do some milking - or chichi obori (literally "teat-wringing").



There was also a vending machine where you could buy the dairy products, along with a little English/Japanese pun:



The kanji says "kau" (buy) - which is pronounced the same way as "cow". I said that they'd missed an opportunity to write 飲む ("nomu") which means "drink" and sounds a bit like "no moo" - but when we used the vending machine it turned out that it did moo after all. Click on video below, if you wish, to verify this:






Complaints about Japan

I promised in an earlier entry that I would list my complaints about Japan. I do have some, but it's a pretty poor crop, in truth. Here goes:

1) Toilet paper. The toilet roll is super thin - "like gold to airy thinnness beat" as Donne said about something else. Why, Japan? What do you think people use it for? It doesn't save paper, as one just ends up using a greater length.

2) Children's playgrounds.

Japan has many fine parks, such as Inokashira, and children's zoos, such as Saitama, but when it comes to your bog-standard neighbourhood playground it's another story. The ground is usually gravel, the equipment old and sparse, and imagination entirely absent. I've no idea why. The one next to Sarah's apartment in Nishinomiya was fairly typical - just a flat expanse of nothing:



But wait, what's that pale blur in the far corner? Let's zoom in a bit...



Still not sure. A bit more...



Oh yes, it's a horse on a spring. This is the entirety of the play equipment available to the local children. To have just one is somehow more pathetic than to have none at all.

3. But We Are Speaking Japanese. This is a comedy skit, but it's also a work of documentary realism. If I'm with a Japanese person and speak to a customer service person (in a restaurant, at a reception desk), their gaze will be drawn with inexorable magnetic attraction to my Japanese companion and they will (almost) always address the reply to them. This is true whether I'm speaking Japanese badly or well, and it's kind of irritating. A good example was the day Abe was shot, and the news went round the teppanyaki restaurant I was in with my friend Yoko. I'd exchanged a few basic pleasantries with the waiter, and he was happy to reply to expected remarks about the food, but as soon as I asked about something off script he was quite lost. "Have they caught the culprit?" I asked in Japanese, and "Is their motive still unclear?" He looked at me in confusion, until Yoko repeated my question in exactly the same words, at which point they suddenly made sense. To do him credit, he did say rather sheepishly that he hadn't expected me to use words like that.

4) Noise and silence. This isn't really a complaint, as to be honest it doesn't irritate me at all, but I do find it odd. Japan is really hot on silence on trains and many other places: no conversations (certainly not loud ones) and no phone use - which is fine by me. But, to walk down a Japanese street is often to walk through a cacophony of tunes, recorded announcements, adverts, etc. Even the trains and buses themselves - particularly the latter - have a constant patter of announcements about stops coming up, stops just arrived at (always done in what I think of as a "snooker commentator" hushed voice that is actually quite loud), warnings about being silent and not disturbing other passengers, etc.

I've got those out of my system, but I feel there should be more... I suppose I didn't really have any complaints about Japan after all? Oh well, let's hope I can find something next time - because that implies that there will be a next time.

そうと祈っています。

The thing about having a two-week Japan Rail Pass is that it's tempting to pack more travel, activities, meet-ups, etc. into the fortnight of "free" travel than is really compatible with sleep, let alone writing. And that has been my own case. I simply haven't had time to blog, because I've been out there engaging in eminently bloggable activities. However, there's a school of thought that living is even more important than writing about it afterwards, so perhaps it's not such a tragedy. I may forget some of the details, but here goes my account of a fairly hectic week.

( Hanamaki )
( Kyoto )
( Osaka )
( Nishinomiya and Kobe )
( Hyougo and Himeji )
( Nagoya and Sumo! )

And how was your week?

Last week was relatively quiet from a bloggable-activites point of view, as I was working on my book and trying get everything sorted out in time for my two-pronged expedition to the north and west of Japan, next week and the one after. I have a two-week railpass, which allows me to travel on Japanese trains as much as I like - a kind 旅放題 if you will (that's for the lovers of Japanese puns) - so I'm trying to make the most of it. Probably I've packed it rather too full, in fact - as you'll discover in the next few entries. I've not yet decided whether to take my laptop with me, though I probably will, but if I'm silent for a couple of weeks, that's why.

Anyway, last week I saw a poster for an exhibition at Suginami Animation Museum, which turns out to be just 25 minutes' walk from TWCU, so I strolled over on Tuesday by way of a break. And a very nice museum - with free entry - it turned out to be, especially if you were exclusively interested in anime made before 2008, which is where they ran of wall for their presentation. (No Madoka Magica, alas!) I had it to myself, too, for the first 20 minutes or so.

The exhibition was on Ginga Tetsudō 999, which I'm interested in partly because it was influenced by Kenji Miyazawa's Ginga Tetsudō no Yoru, which was in turn influenced by the train scene in Through the Looking Glass. Does it make any sense, then to suggest that Ginga Tetsudō 999 was indirectly influenced by Alice? That's something I puzzled over for a while, but I eventually cut the discussion...


Ginga Tetsudō 999





So anyway, the other morning I was lying on my bed, reading, when I heard a voice outside say the word, "Gaikokujin" (i.e. "foreigner"). I was startled - I suppose I've become a bit self-conscious about such things, although I was calmed by its being followed by "Kyoushikan" - which when you put it all together, means "Foreign Teachers' Residence", which is the name of this building. My calm was short-lived, though, for when I looked out of the window it was to see about 40 Japanese schoolgirls standing outside, looking intently up at me, while a woman lectured them on the building's history. (Here they are going away, five minutes later).



That was just a bit unexpected, though it did evoke the silent crowds that Isabella Bird recorded following her about Tohoku. But even making due allowance for paranoia, it's been very noticeable how few foreigners I've seen on this visit, even in Tokyo. My visit to the 'pub' last week was the one exception. This does lead to strange fantasies: the other day, for example, I was walking down quite a narrow street in Kichijouji when two bicycles passed in the opposite direction. A moment later, there was a crash, and I turned to find both riders (both were young men) picking themselves up, having bumped into each other - luckily neither seemed injured. Normally I'd put this down to their being distracted by my refulgent beauty, but in this case perhaps my blonde hair alone was enough to break their concentration? (I realise there are other more likely scenarios, but this seemed such a shoujo manga possibility that I couldn't resist.)

Yesterday I went to Kanagawa, to visit Yuko (Haruka's mother) in her home near Odawara. I saw many, many people over the course of the day, but neither going to Shinjuku, nor on the Odawara train, nor indeed when we went to Hakone in afternoon - a very beautiful but supremely touristy place, where many of the restaurants display English explanations of chopstick use - did I see anyone who didn't look Japanese. I know tourism is meant to be opening up a little (for tour groups only), but it hasn't shown yet.


Hakone Hills Ahoy - and from the mountain railway

All the same, when we went to eat unagi near Odawara station, the waitress asked me if I would rather use a spoon, so some things never change.

This is the season for ajisai (hydrangeas), and we took the mountain railway up to Miya no Shita to look at some of the fine displays there, which were rumoured to be lit up at evening - as indeed proved to be the case. I hadn't realised that Miya no Shita was the site of the famous Meij-era Hotel Fujiya. I remember reading Mary Crawford Fraser's account of staying there at the time, which is what made it of interest to me, and indeed I saw displays of plenty of Meiji era photos, but also of Charlie Chaplin and John and Yoko.



It's strange to think that as we were looking at this forty-four year-old picture, for forty-two of which Lennon has been dead, Paul was tuning his guitar to play Glastonbury with Bruce Springsteen.

We went to a rather eccentric but very delicious sushi place that was soon packed with enthusiastic locals (encouraging), and included many pictures pixellated with origami cranes of barely-believable tininess. A poster on the wall informed us that the owner had been an extra in the film of Thermae Romae - one of the ojisan who are in the onsen when Lucius (is it?) pops out, having slipped over from the time of the Emperor Hadrian. (If you haven't seen the film, I do recommend it.) This of course put Lennon, Chaplin and the rest in perspective. We had a real film star in our midst, making our nigiri! I'm never washing my tongue again.

Miya no Shita station at night was rather atmospheric...



And then this morning we went to Odawara beach, where we found this message warning people to beware of great waves, as only Kanagawa can...



By the way, if you're wondering why I'm not wearing a mask in this picture, it's because there seems to be a general practice of taking them off for photographs. Don't ask me why, but when in Thermae Romae... Not only does the mask mandate continue very strongly, but in restaurants you are often separated from your companion by a plastic screen, which irresistibly conjures a prison visit vibe. On the plus side, there are often little paper pockets provided to hold your mask while you eat.


Yuko chooses her unagi option

Oh, and just because I can, here's Mount Fuji as seen from my bedroom window this morning.

I should have mentioned in my last that when I was booking some trains at the JR office in Shinjuku station the other day - the very one where I had watched Date Masamune give a demonstration of samurai moves a few days earlier - I witnessed that rare thing in Japan - physical violence, or at least its aftermath. By the time it actually happened I was out of the office, and buying a snack from the Tokyo Cheese Factory stall next door (highly recommended), when a loud shout issued from a nearby stairwell, followed by loud clangs and bangs and a few clongs too. A young man emerged, kicking the street furniture, followed by some police, then more young men and more police, and finally a young man who appeared to be quite unconscious and was being hauled away on the back of one of his comrades.

If this had happened in any other big city I might not have paid it much mind, but in super-peaceful Japan, and the middle of the day (I'm not sure whether they were sober), it was very surprising. Mind you, it wasn't far from Kibukichou, the entertainment district, which is as close as Tokyo gets to a dodgy area.

I, meanwhile, have been indulging in far more peaceful pursuits, such as going to Ogikubo, the next stop down from Nishiogikubo, to photograph the house (or rather the building on the site of the house) where in the 1950s the legendary Momoko Ishii started the Katsura Bunko, a home library that was very influential in post-war Tokyo. It turns out that my friend Miho has never been there, despite Momoko Ishii being one of her heroines and despite Ogikubo being on her daily commute. Luckily for me, my photograph was the spur she needed to put this to rights, and she has now rung the Bunko and arranged for their Ishii Exhibit to be specially opened for the two of us next month, which I'm pretty excited about.



Yesterday I went to Taishou University, where my friend Yoshiko works, to give a lecture to her students (on Japan and Alice in the Nineteenth Century, since you ask). Afterwards, a few of them went with us to the Tokyo Dome, a slightly antiquated but very fun theme park in the middle of Tokyo. We went up in the ferris wheel, took photographs of each other having photographs taken, and generally had an excellent time - topped off with beer and sake in the case of Yoshiko and me. The students were a lot less formal and more bubbly, even - gasp! - tactile than most Japanese I have encountered, although being gripped by the forearm as we went round an obake yashiki (haunted house attraction) did bring back memories of being similarly clung to by a couple of random girls in Kyoto in 2015.



I've written about being all alone here in the Foreign Teachers' Residence, but I spoke too soon, because it turns out that I have a fellow resident in the form of (at least one, but there's never just one) very large Japanese cockroach. In Britain, I have never seen a cockroach at all, so to find it scuttling clumsily across the bathroom floor was startling indeed, especially as it was an inch long and had wings.

I mentioned this discovery to Miho, who said that, when Anne and Anthony Thwaite were staying in this very flat, some decades ago, Anthony T wrote a poem about cockroaches which proved to be one of the most popular of his time here at TWCU. I was duly impressed, and of course cockroaches have long been associated with poetry in the public mind thanks to Don Marquis, but all the same, I'd happy forgo both roach and rhyme. Let me throw myself rather on the mercies of another TWCU alumna, the redoubtable Marie Kondo. I feel sure that the cockroaches wouldn't dare bother her, lest they be put in a drawer sorted neatly according to size.

Finally, here's the latest in my collection of rather off-putting beauty salon names:

At lunchtime today, while eating katsu curry at a little eatery I know in Yoyogi - all right, I didn't know it this morning, but I do now - I read a report about Japan opening up to tourists this month. It's going to happen in a very controlled and limited way (no solo travelling, only tour groups, etc), but prices are still expected to skyrocket due to pent-up demand. I felt extremely relieved and grateful that I had already made it here two days ago, effectively with no limits at all - although the obligatory MySOS app is still checking in daily to make sure I haven't skipped off to breathe on the citizens of the wider Kanto region.

Not that it was easy to get here. It would be truly tedious to rehearse the innumerable steps necessary to get the visa, satisfy the requirements of the app, and so on, as well as the usual travel preparations of tickets, insurance and the like, but all those hurdles were cleared, and the result was an extremely smooth journey from Heathrow to Haneda. It was my first direct flight to Japan, and definitely preferable to the usual Amsterdam shuffle - even if it took 14 hours, due to having to go the long way around to avoid Russia. The plane was less than half full, whether from lack of demand or COVID considerations, and as a result the queues at Haneda were short, nor did I have to take the expected spit test to make sure I hadn't caught COVID on the plane, even though (on the advice of my friend Sarah, who took up a teaching post at Kobe University a few months ago) I'd hydrated to the point of deliquescence in preparation.

Japan is still fully masked - and quite right too, in my view. However, it's unclear how they're ever going to be able to take their masks off, despite the government having said it's okay to do so, at least outside. I got an insight into the difficulty towards the end of our plane journey, when - as we began our descent at around 4pm Japan time, the sun having risen many hours before - I asked the woman sitting at the window seat on my row if she wouldn't mind opening the blind, which had been shut since night fell some nine hours earlier. She did so, and for a few seconds we enjoyed the sight of blue and fluffy white clouds, but before long she gave a nervous glance around the rest of the cabin, and, seeing that (although everyone was awake) nearly every other window was still closed, hastily and apologetically shut it again. I had inadvertently put her in the impossible position of having to choose between acceding to a stranger's reasonable request and the cultural requirement to keep in step with rest of the (almost exclusively Japanese) passengers. It made me sorry to have asked - but if windows cause such anguish, who will dare be the first to unmask in Japan? Not me, anyway.

Despite the length of the flight, I couldn't get into any of the films available. I tried Dune, which I remember a lot of people praising, but gave up after 30 minutes, since it seemed so very familiar a story - Game of Thrones meets Avatar and yet another young man troubled about his destiny - and read The Coral Island instead, with more pleasure than I'd anticipated (and the sand was wetter underfoot). I thought there were a few hints that the narrator, Ralph Rover, might be on the autistic spectrum, which would make it a very early example of that kind of narrator - this by way of a note to myself.

Rei (my tenant)'s father was kind enough to meet me at the airport and see me onto the bus to Kichijouji, whence it was a short taxi ride to the familiar grounds of TWCU. He gave me several gifts, including a handheld electric fan with rechargeable battery, which may indeed save my life in weeks to come, although for the moment the climate (both temperature and precipitation) is hard to distinguish from that of Bristol, thanks to the rainy season.

And so to my flat, which is in the same building as in 2017, and decorated in a similar 'Shouwa-ppoi' style. (This useful word means 'reminiscent of the reign of Emperor Hirohito, particularly in the post-War decades'. Sometimes it's mocking, sometimes frankly nostalgic, depending on context and one's generation.) Behold a few glimpses:



As before, I'm alone in what is, by Japanese standards, a very old and dark building, and by any standards a rather isolated one. It seems to me that the bamboo grove has encroached a little since I was last here, and indeed seems to be leaning in eagerly in a rather "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" kind of way.



Moreover, my usual path to the building was this afternoon blocked by this sign, which reads: "Danger of Crows":



Last time I stayed here, I was reading a ghost story, which didn't help the general air of spookiness, and no doubt all these experiences combined to create the hypnagogic dream-cum-short-story that my jetlagged brain conjured last night, which I call "The Man Who was Too British to Make a Fuss". It involves a guest being shown to a room by an elderly hotel porter, and consists of this dialogue:

"It's a large and airy room, but I must admit that it's been some time since anyone slept in it."
"Oh, why is that?"
"I suppose - it's just that the last guest who slept there was found the next morning with a rictus grin on his face, and all his internal organs neatly piled on the side table."
"Oh my goodness!"
"Yes, it was quite shocking. It was really the neatness of it that was the most upsetting thing, if you take my meaning. But you needn't worry, sir, we believe that it was an isolated incident."
"Well, if you're sure..."
"As we can be, sir. Here we are. Now, if you don't mind, I'll be locking you in for the night, as we've had some trouble with the latch."
"What? Oh, all right then. I suppose that makes sense..."

The first day was a bit of a jet-lagged blur - I woke at the unheard-of time of 9.44 - but mostly involved getting the wifi in my flat set up, meeting various officials and colleagues connected to the university, and so on, with the help of Miho, my sponsor here at TWCU.

I did get time to spend an hour in chic Kichijouji, where I drank a black coffee named by the self-confessed "eccentric" owner after Jimi Hendrix's "Little Bird" in a small, sixties-themed cafe, and passed the time checking my manuscript for stylistic blemishes, but I had very little energy for anything else. Today (Friday 10th), however, I was sufficiently recovered to go as far as Shinjuku station, where I needed to have my JR Pass made up - a wonderful invention that allows tourists to pay a flat fee and then have free travel on the Japanese rail network for a given amount of time. My two-week pass will be activated at the end of this month, when I begin my Hokkaido adventure.

Anyway, when was the last time you went to your local rail office to buy a railcard and encountered Date Masamune, the sengoku-era warlord, coming to big up Sendai and Miyagi Prefecture from beyond the grave? My guess is never.



This kind of thing does seem to happen quite a lot in Japan - I well remember encountering the kawaii horse character, Gunma-chan, at Ikebukuro station four years ago, on a similar mission for Gunma Prefecture. It seems that Japan's less metropolitan prefectures are forever sending these kinds of envoys to Tokyo, much like the daimyos of old on their annual duty-visit to the Shogun. Never have I seen a group of clog-dancing Yorkshiremen on the concourse at King's Cross, but perhaps the "levelling-up agenda" might get a fillip if they did?

My only other aim today was to revisit Meiji Jingu shrine, where I went on my very first day in Japan seven years ago although never since, in the hope of recreating this photo:



Alas, even massy torii gates occasionally need to be renewed, and so this was the closest I could get:



Mono no aware for the win!

Almost as soon as I'd posted my previous post, announcing my forthcoming trip to Japan, my lodger Rei came down with COVID. She was quite poorly for a few days, but was so prompt and thorough in her self-isolation that I was spared. (I have a strong mental image of her opening her door a crack to accept the soy iced latte I had brought at her request, dishevelled hair hanging down in front of her face like Sadako from The Ring.) Now, of course, from a purely selfish point of view, she has become 'safer' to live with in that she's unlikely to be infected again in the 17 days before I set sail into the air.

Yesterday I had a nice day out with my daughter and her boyfriend in Glastonbury, where - despite living in Bristol for at least 5 years - he had somehow never been. It was a very pleasant day, and although nothing out of the ordinary happened in one sense, in another it was the kind of memory - of time spent happily with loved ones - that I want to store in my mind against the time when I'm sick or housebound, to be able to take out and inspect. It seems wise to create a nest of these glossy little eggs, because that time will come.

I used never to share pictures of my children here, because they were minors and all, but I guess we're a bit beyond that now, so here we are at Chalice Well Garden, and on the Tor:




Pride of place must go, naturally, to the tea cosy that I bought my daughter, at a shop dedicated to the saint-cum-goddess Bridget. It was handmade by the owner.


"Shall I be Mother?

As per the post title, this is all happening during marking season, which is taking up most of my waking hours besides these odd breaks; but I also have a sense of marking time the other way, trying not to get ill, have accidents, or open myself up to other obstructions that might conceivably stand between me and Japan Airlines.

Still dipping my way through great-great-aunt Annie's Glimpses of Maori Land. Interesting as it is on colonial New Zealand, the truth is of course that I'm more intent on finding biographical material, so my heart races a little when I encounter passages such as this one, describing a Wellington library:



So, her father, Thomas, used to knock off at 4pm? Were those the usual hours of work for nineteenth-century gentlemen? I've a feeling it may be so - some frail memory is whispering as much in my ear. I know he eventually became Assistant Secretary to the BM, but it seems unlikely he would have risen that high when Annie was a young child (he was born in 1809, she in 1841). Still these things are checkable, when I have the time. The idea of a private tour of any museum is of course highly appealing.

It's hard to justify the institution, of course, as James Acaster has pointed out very amusingly. If I were to make an inventory of items to be returned, I would put frankly looted things such as the Benin Bronzes at the top of my list, but no doubt the Parthenon marbles would have to go too.

On the other hand, it's often occurred to me that the space the marbles vacate could be used to house the Bayeaux tapestry - a work central to English history, made in England by Englishwomen - but still held by the former colonial power. What about a campaign to get that back?