steepholm

I'll be leaving for the UK tomorrow, so here is the final instalment of my Japan blog for this time. There's a lot to pack in, though, so some may have to wait until I get back.

After Kanazawa, I spent some days working fairly uneventfully at the Prefectural Library. Perhaps my most interesting experience was cooking and eating sanma (the Pacific saury), a delicious fish that can't be bought in the UK and even in Japan is a strictly seasonal autumn treat, to the extent that its kanji - 秋刀魚 - mean "autumn blade fish". This one was gutted when I bought it, but when I went back for a second time I did the deed myself, using this gruesome but undeniably effective technique:



Anyway, last Friday I set off for the second time to Kyoto, where I met an old Cardiff PhD student (now a lecturer at one of the private universities there) for coffee, before walking to the Kyoto Railway Museum, by way of Umekoji park cafe, which sold a really tasty curry and rice for 1000 yen, should you ever be passing. This was all part of my Thomas the Tank Engine side project, and although all traces of the Thomas exhibition that had been held at the museum a few years ago were gone, they were still selling the Thomas Goes to Kyoto book that had been a spin-off:



Several scenes in the book take place in the Museum itself, so it was well worth the detour. In any case, though I can't pretend that I'm very interested in trains, the location of the museum at a kind of railway intersection, with commuter trains going in one direction, shinkansen in another, and tourist steam trains in a third, was undeniably cool.

I met my friend Mitsuko later, and she drove me to her home in the depths of the Hyogo countryside (by way of a rather nice tonkatsu place in Kameoka), where I spent the night. The next day Mitsuko had booked a washi-making session not far from her house, which I admit made me nervous, because when it comes to crafts I a) am hopeless and b) get frustrated with people's expectation that I not be hopeless. But actually this was not a very onerous task at all. One begins by repeatedly dipping a rectangular sieve in a bath that contains the not-quite-dissolved bark of a tree, until you have a layer of sludge that serves as the background to your creation - then add various colours, motifs, leaves and like, as you wish. After that, the sopping masterpiece is handed over and you go off for an hour while it is pressed and/or dried. Simples.



By my standards, this is an artistic triumph.

While we were waiting, we visited a nearby temple, and I caught my first sight of 紅葉 (kouyou), or the turning of the autumn leaves, which is as big a thing in Japan as in New England, but has been rather delayed this year. Between the leaves, the moss and the mist, Hyogo showed itself to advantage.



At the temple there was a place where those who had died infancy were commemorated by rows and rows of small baby statues, some with bibs reading (in English) "Pretty baby", and toys slowly fading and cracking in the mountain weather.

I didn't photograph it.

I met up with Yuka later that day in Osaka, then made my way home. Sunday saw me having lunch with Irina in Fuse, and on Monday, the destination was the National Ethnographic Museum in the north of the city, just next to the park where the 1970 Expo was held - presided over the the Tower of the Sun, which was apparently inspired by both Jomon and South American forms. I was lucky enough to meet it when the sun was casting a rainbow at its back:



I was there to see my friend Eriko, who now works at the Museum. What a wonderful place for an anthropologist to find herself! I met several of her colleagues, and they seem like a great bunch. The museum itself took a global perpsective, and was divided by continent. Here I am in the Japanese section, for example:



Those of you who have pored over British Children's Literature in Japanese Culture will no doubt remember the passage describing the anthropological exhibition known as the Human Pavilion, held at the Fifth National Industrial Exposition in Ōsaka in 1903, where Okinawans, Ainu, Koreans, Taiwanese and Chinese were to have been displayed. (The Chinese, slated to have been represented by a woman with bound feet and a man smoking opium, succeeded in removing themselves after an official protest.) Significantly, no
mainland Japanese or Western nations were considered for inclusion. The modern museum, though I'm sure the researchers working there spread their nets much more widely, partly reproduces this approach in its selection of exhibits. The Ainu and Okinawans still get disproportionate exposure, while the American section - heavy as it is on Latin American and Native American culture - is notable for the virtual absence of any hint that the United States exists, and may even have a culture of potential interest to anthropologists. It seems that, as far as museums are concerned, you are still more visible if you're poor rather than rich, brown rather than white, rural rather than urban, traditional rather than contemporary.

I put in a final day at the Prefectural Library on Tuesday to bid farewell to Yasuko and her colleagues, then had dinner in the Korean quarter of Tsuruhashi with Saeko, a friend of my old Japanese teacher, Yuko - and quite a feast it was.

Today I devoted to mooching around, buying souvenirs and packing. I'd thought of visiting Osaka Castle, having watched Shogun only a few months ago, but after I accidentally got out at the wrong stop I took it as a sign that this was not meant to be, and walked instead to Tennoji, with its pleasant park and zoo, and touristy Shinsekai (New World) quarter, dominated by the Hitachi Tower.



Altogether this has been a very enjoyable trip - I seem to have packed in far more than a month's worth! Tomorrow and the next day will be taken up by a rather arduous journey home with an eight-hour stopover in Shanghai, so wish me luck. I hope to see you safely back in Bristol!

After a couple of quiet days (spent looking at early translations of Tom Brown's Schooldays, since you ask), today I went to Kyoto to meet my old PhD supervisor and his wife, who happened to be visiting as well. They lived for a year or two in the city (and before that in Kobe) during the 1990s, rather after I'd finished my PhD and more immediately after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. This was their first time back since those days, and they reported that the place really hadn't changed much in essentials.

Anyway, we had a lovely few hours hanging out in Kyoto, walking around the garden at Heian Jingu (where, despite the many headlines about overtourism in Kyoto, there were very few tourists to be seen, Western or otherwise) and then at a soba restaurant.

Afterwards I had tea with Shino Hishida, a doctoral student whom I'd met at the Diana Wynne Jones conference in August, and we ate parfait together.

I don't have any adventures to relate, but check out the pretty pictures!

This has been a rather train-orientated couple of days. On Saturday I made my way to the other side of the city and the Katano branch of the Keihan line, where (following a tip from my colleague at the Prefectural Library) I had heard that there was a Thomas the Tank Engine promotion ongoing - connected tangentially, I believe, with the forthcoming 2025 Osaka Expo.

I wasn't sure what it would entail, but I had reason to hope that there would be a 'wrapped' train running the line, decked out with characters from the Thomas franchise. And so there was: here was my first glimpse of the Thomas train pulling in to Miya no Saka station:



The decorations were pretty extensive, inside and out:



The sign showing tHe name of each station on the line was dedicated to a different member of Thomas's intimate circle, with the terminus at Kisaichi representing Thomas himself. There were various other Thomas-themed displays there too, including a floral Thomas Halloween tribute.



Altogether they'd put in an impressive amount of effort - I've certainly never seen anything this elaborate in the UK, even when visiting a Thomas-themed steam weekend. And it paid dividends, at least in the sense that when I visited there were several small children who were clearly making a pilgrimage, even though the theme has been in place since April.

Kisaichi was virtually countryside, and there wasn't much within walking distance except a cafe that was already full, so in the end I got back on the train and returned to downtown Osaka. However, I was intrigued to read about the nearby Iwafune Shrine, with its cave system and tight squeezes between boulders to reach the sanctuary. It's somewhere I would very much like to visit, though it's not easy to get to if you don't have a car, and even then the cave seems to be closed more often than not. English-speaking YouTubers appear not to have discovered it yet, but here's a walk-through video. There's also a 12-metre boat-shaped rock (Iwafune means "boulder boat"), which was apparently used by a kami to descend from heaven back in the day.

Otherwise, I've done a little light souvenir hunting, but basically had a quiet time. Only, returning to my apartment via the Kintetsu Line earlier, I found an even more elaborately 'wrapped' train, this one advertising the charms of nearby Nara and its bowing deer:



Pretty as the outside was, the detailing of the interior was still more impressive, going as far as deer-patterened upholstery:



And - wait - what's that on the strap-handles???



Yes, each handle is being nibbled, as if it were one of the senbei used by tourists to feed the animals in Nara, by a little plastic deer.

This is very "extra", I know - no one would have complained if the little plastic deer had been absent - but the extraness is the point.

For years, I've been meaning to go Pywll Mawr, aka the Big Pit - a coal-mine-turned-heritage centre, not far from Pontypool. I see the sign for it every time I drive to work in Cardiff, and my daughter even went on a school trip about 13 years ago, but I haven't had the motivation to follow in her footsteps until Monday, when I took Yuko and Moe. The main spur was Moe's wish to soak in the background to the Ghibli film, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which was partly based on Miyazaki's visit to the South Welsh coalfields in 1984, at the time of the miners' strike - which inspired the feisty spirit of the miners in his film, but also its landscape.

Anyway, partly due to the weather, but mostly the place itself, we had a great time. We started off with a visit to the nearby Blaenavon Ironworks, or what's left of them, with their furnaces, workers' cottages, balance tower and the rest.



The coal mine did not allow cameras - or indeed anything with a battery - underground. This is because it's still legally classed as a working mine, even though it's 44 years since any methane-releasing mining went on down there. But believe me when I tell you that it was quite an experience, going down long tunnels that wholly justified the necessity of helmets in terms of their height. I had a strange, Baudrillardesque sense that this must be a real mine because it so strongly resembled all the fake mines I've seen in various films and TV programmes over the years - my only point of reference.

Certainly, the landscape round about did seem quite Laputa-esque (with just a hint of Ivor the Engine). And this point-by-point comparison backs up that impression.

In the comments on my catch-up-and-apology post the other day, aerodrome1 was kind enough to ask for more details of my latest Japan trip. This will be a very edited account, but here and in a few later entries you'll find some highlights from that tour, which took place in late March and early April, and involved 16 days in Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto and Matsuyama (the last just to shake things up a bit), with side-quests to Osaka and Kobe (the latter very much for the beef). It was the first time I'd been travelled in Japan with anyone else, which made for a new kind of experience in which I was forced (albeit not unwillingly) to don the mantle of the Old Japan Hand, leading my daughter and her boyfriend trepidatiously into Looking-Glass Land.

This was actually our third attempt at the trip. It was scuppered four years ago by COVID and last year by BF's loss of his passport - but this time we made it to Japan. It almost didn't happen, even so - a motorway crash meant that our coach from Bristol to Heathrow was diverted (along with all the other motorway traffic) along many a busky backlane, and I was apparently overheard saying sepulchrally "We're doomed, doomed," or words to that effect, but in fact we weren't doomed after all, and landed at Haneda quite handily and on time - even though we were the last to board.

D & BF are big Pokemon fans, and a noticeable Pokemon bias characterised what was, in many ways, a standard "first time in Japan" Golden Route tour. That's why we stayed in Ikebukuro's Sunshine City to begin with, home of the Ikebukuro Pokemon Centre - but we also got a lot of use from the Observation Deck at the top, and the not-so-micro-pig cafe below. [Note: I normally import my photos via Flickr, but am having trouble doing so right now, so apologies for the weird appearance of some of these, which have come via indirect crook'd ways.] D&BF were both rather awestruck by the horizonless extent of the biggest city on Earth - as well they might be.





It was a family holiday, but that didn't mean we neglected to see old friends, and even give a little lecture - in this case at Taisho University (by way of the Shibuya Pokemon Centre), followed by a gathering of children's lit friends at a Sugamo izakaya. The Ghibli Museum with Satomi and Akira also featured in this part, as well as a cat cafe and a rather splendid lunch in Nakano with Miho and Hiroshi (to say nothing of Chubby the Shiba inu), before heading off to Hakone - which will wait for next time.

Well, I don't think I've ever had such a long period of LJ truancy. It's not that I've been depressed, inactive or in a vegetative state, but I did get to a point where I wasn't sure that I had much to say that would have been of general interest here. For example, I've had plenty of fun trips with my lodger, Yuko, and more recently, Moe, my new, second lodger, who was in Bristol for a while 5 years ago and no doubt crops up in entries from that time but had to return to Japan (where she is a nurse) because of Covid. Each adventure had its own incidents - but were they different enough from previous trips to warrant a whole new entry? Perhaps - but in any case, it didn't get done.

I also went to Japan again, this time in the company of my daughter and her boyfriend - my first non-solo trip! For that reason, I didn't blog it as I usually do, because I was too busy inducting these Nipponic neophytes into the ways of that most rewarding country. It was a great two weeks, though, and I think I can safely say that I converted them to something approaching my own state of besotment.

The UK election came and went, and of course I had many thoughts about it all, but none that couldn't have been predicted from earlier entries. Tl;dr, I'm glad the Tories are out, but the possibility of fundamental improvement that flourished briefly under Corbyn is long gone, and Starmer, with his authoritarianism, reheated austerity policies (except for the rich) and lack of any political or moral core, is barely an improvement on - indeed, only marginally different from - Sunak. Also, his health minister seems about as transphobic as Kemi Badenoch could wish.

On the other hand, I got promoted to Professor last month - which was very pleasing. Perhaps it should have happened earlier - I was startled to read in the official letter that I was now (at 61) an "early-career professor" - but I'd never actually applied before, which makes me feel a little like the hapless protagonist of Kafka's short story, 'Before the Law'. It probably means that there were a lot of committees I never had to sit on that I might otherwise have been obliged to chair, but perhaps other, more exciting opportunities would also have come my way? We'll never know.

In general, my own life has been pleasant this last half year. I've enjoyed good health (no recurrence of the detached retina), plentiful friends, my daughter and Will only a ten-minute walk away, and even a blessedly cool summer (though that was not everyone's perspective on it). My cat, Maisie, went missing for 9 days but turned up unharmed under a shipping container at the end of the street, and has now put the whole distressing incident thoroughly behind her. None of this calm weather makes for ideal blogging, perhaps.

Anyway, apologies to whoever might have been wondering about my whereabouts - and indeed to my future self, who may in her dotage wish to use this journal to help sort out her muddled memories. I'll try to do better in future.

I've long been interested in stories that take place in futures that were anticipated (by author and characters alike) but never came to pass in reality. Indeed, a couple of years ago I wrote what I think quite a good article on the subject. There, I concentrated on the First World War and its relationship to Golden Age children's fiction, because it's a rich source of such instances, but of course it's not unique. Around the same time I enjoyed reading my friend and colleague Christopher Hood's thriller, Tokyo 2020, topically set at the Olympic games that (at the time of original publication) were set to take place imminently. I think Chris may have since published a slightly amended version that moves the events of Tokyo 2020 to 2021, much as the IOC itself did, but I'll always have a fondness for the story as it was set in that liminal lost future, caught between anticipation and reality.

Lost futures are always fascinating, but I've recently noticed a complementary phenomenon, namely lost pasts. For example, I've just started watching Why Didn't I Tell You a Million Times? on Netflix, a series set partly in 2023 Japan, but with numerous flashbacks to 2021 and 2022 (as well as other times). But this isn't 2021-3 as they actually existed. This is a version of the very recent past in which Coronavirus is simply not a thing. No one wears masks, for one thing - even though pretty much everyone in Japan was wearing masks in reality (and most still are).

It would have been very easy to set the story just a few years earlier, to a point where this would not have been an issue, but the makers have decided to make it ultra-contemporary. They presumably did this with the intention of accentuating its relevance - but it's relevance to a life that Japanese people would like to have been living, not the one they actually did live.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in a few other programmes, such as The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House - but this is the first one where they've been so emphatic about the dates, with the constant flashbacks and flashforwards necessitating precise dates being displayed on screen every few minutes.

Have you noticed any other examples of this phenomenon, perhaps outside a Japanese context?

I went with my brother to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican last night - an early birthday treat from him. It was an excellent production, which I can't show you any pictures of, on pain of being smothered by soot sprites, but can assure you was wonderfully inventive, visually and aurally.

Why I am I taunting you like this? Well, it's just that having the show broken into two halves brought home to me how much "tighter," from a plot point of view, the first half of the film is than the second. Up to the point where the girls and Totoro make the seeds grow, it's really hard to fault. And then we get the formal climax, or double climax, first with the mother being reported to be dangerously ill, and then Mei going missing as she tries to walk all the way to the hospital carrying some healthy corn that she's just picked, and being believed to have fallen into a nearby pond when the search party finds a slipper like hers.

Except that it's not her sandal, as her sister Satsuki quickly confirms. Mei is actually fine, if temporarily lost. And the mother, when they eventually reach her, turns out not to be that ill either - it was just a cold.

It seems to me there's an obvious alternative plot, which I find it hard to believe that Miyazaki didn't at least consider. In this version - which is also basically the version in Mei's head - the mother really is in danger, and the children save her by bringing her some needful medicine or charm, perhaps carried to the hospital by magical agency. This is the plot of The Magician's Nephew, where a winged horse plays the part of the cat bus, and of many other stories besides. (Likewise, Mei could have fallen into the pond and then been rescued.)

Was Miyazaki holding back on the 'mild threat' with a view to his very young audience? Or was his restraint a more purely artistic decision - a distaste for crude plot trump cards? I don't know, but I report it as I found it.

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.

The population of Steepholm Towers has doubled in the last week. First, on Monday, we picked up Maisie, our new cat, from Bath Cats and Dogs Home. Maisie is 15 years old though she doesn't look it, has a touch of arthritis, and knows what she likes (and doesn't like). I think we're going to get on fine.



Then, yesterday I picked up my new (temporary) lodger, Linda, from the airport. She's the daughter of one of my Japanese language partners, and will stay here a few weeks before moving to Brighton to start studying English. My friend, her mother, is Japanese but lives in German-speaking Switzerland; and Linda is thus fluent in Japanese and Swiss German, and to be honest already pretty good at English too, so it's become an even more Babelish house than before, especially when you throw in (as you must) Maisie's impressive repertoire of feline imprecations.

It's going to be an interesting few weeks.