Tale told by a friend in London

Dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes, black suit, blue tie, white shirt; a man, whose roots most likely came from the sacred sub-continent that has been such an incredible source of culture and knowldege in this world for longer than we'd care to imagine, steps onto the train. It's the 8:05 bound for Elephant & Castle. Prior to his entrance the usual dreary mixture of half-asleep commuters, agonizing over large cups of coffee, hiding behind broadsheets or trying hard to get those extra 15 minutes of shut-eye to ease the all-too-long day at the office, were doing what they usually do. The man enters at Queenspark. Like the match-point at a Wimbledon final the heads swerve in his direction and with Greek-choral timing scrutinize his every move as though the devil himself had appeared. The man, quite obviously taken aback by this austere greeting, moved as close to the alcove by the doors as possible in a feeble attempt to evade the blatant persecution. His movements were monitored all the way to his destination at Waterloo, and when he reached his office that day, I can only think that he must of felt low, hurt and unfairly condmened. The moral of this story? As always, it pays to be white in this sick world.

The sea of leaves

This is the 'infamous' forest close to Mt Fuji in the Fuji five lakes district covering a wide area of both the Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Its arboreal constitution is mainly of cedar, oak and Japanese hemlock. It is a dense and largely untouched forest region making for very hardious trekking. It is 'infamous' in the sense that it is nowadays (since the publishing of a popular novel depicting a romantic love suicide in the 1960's) associated with suicide. The local community police and fire brigade along with public associations and volunteers ogranize an annual 'sweep' of the forest, meaning that they form a human chain and comb the rugged, hostile terrain for remnants of the dead. It is also an occasion at which shinto priests perform an exorcism of the forest, driving out the evil spirits that are said to call the vulnerable to the forest. Legend has it that once you leave the lights and roads of civilization behind and penetrate deep enough into the forest there is little chance that you will return - lost forever in the sea of leaves.(photo by Ohyama Yukio all rights reserved.)

Doing your hobby

I have been in Japan for nearly 4 years and arguably I've come to know daily Japanese life fairly well. Last weekend, I was cycling along a road on my way to watch boat racing on a nearby river when I happened across the man in this picture. I pulled over and watched him for a minute before riding by and snapping the picture. Besides the fact that the guy had the musculature of Bruce Lee, that he was wearing a headband reminiscent of Karate Kid and that he had been sustaining this gymnastic feat for seemingly quite some time, besides all that it brought to mind the thought that whatever your hobby is in Japan, no, I should say no matter how extravagant your hobby is, so long as you are devoted to it and display that devotion openly and proudly then it is quite acceptable to pursue such extravagance in public space without anyone batting an eyelid. What I would like to know, becasue here I have encountered personal doubt on the matter, but what I'd like to know is whether anyone reading this has had the same thought about hobbies in other countries. If so then feel free to use the comment link to write about your stories. Perhaps you even practice an extravagant hobby yourself? In any case I would love to hear about them.

If I were a fish

Have you ever wondered whether you will become a fish after you die? I do, in fact I confess that I often do...
As somebody else already said, we know nothing about death except that the dead lie rigid and motionless, cold and pale. Only the dead know of the experience of death. All we see in a dying person are the last signs of life as we know it. But that doesn't mean that I cannot speculate, hypothesize, fantasize and write about my time after death. I say 'time' though I'm not entirely sure I want to belong to a world run by time after I die...forgive me, i digress. So what if I were a fish? Well then I'd want to be the kind of fish that swims in space, navigating by the stars, floating towards bubbling suns that keep me warm and, by the clarity of their radiant light, allow me to see the outer reaches of the galaxies, the limits of my territory. No, I don't think i'd want anything to do with the cold, dark oceans on Earth. Of course I'd have to devise a very deft method of adaptation to the black soup around me. I would need to grow galactic gills for one, they'd stop me from choking to death, another death, after which I might become a squid. I'd have to learn to avoid the inevitable predators too, becasue yes, even in the placid void of space there are predators who would give a great deal to snap up a humble floating fish. And then there's the problem of what I would do. Would floating from place to place suffice? Would feeling the complete weightlessness of being nothing within nothing be liberating? Yes, I can see already that there are many parameters to take into conisderation, life as a fish after death is no laughing matter, no simple venture...mmm...what if I were a bird?

Manga

When you think 'Manga', you think Japan. Indeed, I see spent manga everywhere in my Japan. From fluffy animal manga to hard-core panty-ripping alien penetration manga, from children's bookshops to convenience store shelves, manga play a decisive role in Japanese popular culture. But where do they all go after they've been read? Well, there are the obvious places: the luggage racks in underground trains; the waste paper bins on the platforms; the motorway roadsides where severed pages become one with city detritus; the communal waste-disposal areas where you might see towers of spent manga bound together with kitchen string, waiting patiently for the next rubbish collection. But there are also the less obvious places, the kind of spots you wouldn't usually associate with manga: river beds at low tide; the small plastic pouch behind the taxi driver's headrest; half a page hanging from a washing line; on a seat in the inner chamber of a buddhist temple; soaking in a rice field amongst the summer harvest; and there are more, many more if you're willing to open your eyes and look. So what is it about manga anyway? What's all the hype about? And why bother reading printed matter now that we have ultra-portable electronic devices at our recreational disposal? Perhaps it's somethign about the rough grain of recycled paper, or the blank smell of factory ink, perhaps you might agree that its worth paying tribute to all that time spent by drawers and script writers, cigarettes smoked, nights spent in small rooms to deliver the next big hit. But beyond all that is the powerful means of escape that manga offer to their readers. And although we are already 2 or 3 generations into the screen age, there is still an unbreakable transformation that occurs somewhere between the eyes viewing the print on a page and the brain passing that image on to the imagination and from thereon out the sky's the limit.