Hello Kyogo Furuhashi, Farewell Toothbrush-Biter －こんにちは古橋亨梧、さようなら歯ブラシを嚙みまくる人－

It was my son’s sixth birthday recently. 

My wife had the idea of encouraging him to leave some of his rebellious or challenging behaviour behind now that he has turned six.  She got him to write down “having temper tantrums” and “biting my toothbrush” on pieces of paper.  Then she had him tear up the paper and throw it in the bin.  It was like a little ceremony.  The idea is that it should help him stop having temper tantrums and biting his toothbrush.  I hope it has some effect!  We have to buy a new toothbrush for him every month because he can’t stop biting them. 

One of his favourite presents was from my parents in Scotland.  My local Scottish football team has several Japanese players now, including Kyogo Furuhashi.  Unfortunately no one at the nursery seems to know him. 

We got through another birthday without giving him a computer or computer games.  He still likes running around wild, pretending to fight monsters, and biting toothbrushes.  I wonder if this will still be true on his seventh birthday?

Vocabulary:

a temper tantrum – a childish display of sudden, uncontrollable anger

 

The (not so) Amazing Mole Man －アメイジング（じゃない）モグラマン－

There are some superheroes who take their inspiration and powers from the animal kingdom.  Think of Spiderman.  He has the spider’s powers to cling to walls, and spin webs. 

If you could take your superpowers from the animal kingdom, then what animal would inspire you? 

How about becoming Funguswoman?  Some fungi can control the behaviour of ants.  Their fungus spores get into the brain of the ant and release chemical signals, forcing the “zombie ant” to climb a high tree and then bite hard into the trunk to stay in place.  As more and more fungus grows in the ant’s body, it eventually bursts out, showering the fungus spores over a large area of the forest.  Funguswoman would have the power to release spores that would get into the brains of bad guys.  Thieves would breathe in his spores and their infected brains would start to dislike stealing, and crave to knit, or help little old ladies across the road instead.  Funguswoman’s boyfriend would always put the toilet seat down after he had finished. 

How about becoming Moleman?  Moles are great at digging tunnels underground.  Perhaps Moleman would be a supervillain, who would tunnel beneath the city streets to reach bank vaults and steal loads of money without getting caught. 

Unfortunately, someone has already taken the idea of Moleman.  Recently, the BBC reported this:

“An Italian man has been rescued from a collapsed tunnel near the Vatican, and police suspect he could have been burrowing his way into a bank.  He is now recovering in hospital after firefighters spent eight hours digging him out from under a road.  But he may now need to dig himself out of further trouble, as police have arrested him and a second man for damage to public property.  Officers believe he may have been part of a gang that was trying to break into a bank." 

Maybe Moleman is not such a great idea after all.

 

Vocabulary:

to cling to something – to hold tightly to something

fungi – the plural form of fungus.  Yeasts, molds and mushrooms are fungi.  (Joke: Why was the mushroom invited to the party?  Because he was such a fun guy)

a spore – the thing that some organisms, such as molds, use to reproduce.  Many spores are released, and some can grow and reproduce if they land in the right place

a trunk – of a tree, the main body

to crave (to knit) – to have an extremely strong desire (to knit)

to burrow – of an animal such as a rabbit, to dig an underground tunnel

 

Keeping up appearances, part 4 －容姿を保つこと パート4－

In parts 1 to 3, we learned about Mr. Teruya, a Japanese salaried worker aged 62 and Andy, a foreigner.  They met on an early morning train.  Mr. Teruya was shocked when an office lady stood up to let him sit down for the first time.  Andy stayed out all night drinking, and sleeping on a park bench.  When Andy playfully touched Mr. Teruya’s newspaper, some misunderstandings between the two led to bad feelings.  Andy pulled out his cigarettes and lighter, forgetting that he couldn’t smoke on the train.  When Mr. Teruya expressed his further disapproval, Andy set fire to Mr. Teruya’s newspaper.
 
Part 4:
 
Officer Kouga looked at the man who had been picked up at Higashi Nakano Station and who now sat behind the one-way glass in Interview Room B.  He didn’t look much like a terrorist, he had to admit.  An over-excited member of the station staff had called it a terrorist attack on the public transport system.  The Australian embassy had been contacted and the Ambassador was due to call back in an hour or so.  Officer Kouga doubted whether terrorists were recruiting their members from park benches and getting them drunk before sending them on their evil assignments.  The suspect, Andrew Locke, English teacher on a working holiday visa, let his head sink down onto his folded arms on the desk in front of him in a convincing show of drunken tiredness.
 
A number of coffees, cigarettes and phone calls later and Officer Kouga was in Interview Room A with Mr. Teruya.
 
“It is clear that the man isn’t a terrorist.  He wasn’t making any political statement.  And, as you may have noticed, he was very drunk.  Tokyo Metropolitan Subway are not insisting on prosecuting him.  So, we’ve half a mind just to stick him in the drunk tank and let him sleep it off.”
 
Mr. Teruya sighed and sat back in his seat.  “He set my newspaper on fire.  I had to throw it on the floor and stamp out the flames.  Someone could easily have gotten hurt.  There was all sorts of pushing and shoving when people ran to get out of the way,” he said.
 
“Yes, of course you are right.  We can’t have people setting fires on trains.  But you wouldn’t believe the paperwork involved if we have to write this up as a terrorist incident.  If he just sort of, you know, accidentally touched his lighter to your paper due to drunken confusion… it would be quicker for everybody, including yourself.  But it is up to you, of course.  He damaged your property.  And you were lucky you could put out the fire without getting injured.  You are entitled to press charges.  I’ll leave it up to you.”
 
“There were women on the train, you know,” protested Mr. Teruya.  “What if one of them had gotten hurt?”
 
“Well, quite,” said Officer Kouga.  “It was a very dangerous business.  By the way, Mr. Locke said that the problems all started because he tried to get a look at a picture of a girl in a bikini on the back of your paper, and you tried to hide it from him.  Is that right?”
 
“What?!” exclaimed Mr. Teruya.  “I don’t know anything about a girl in a bikini.  I was reading an article about politics!”
 
“Well, quite,” replied the officer.  “A drunken misunderstanding.  Do you want to take a look at him?  He’s behind one-way glass.  He won’t know you’re there.”
 
Mr. Teruya was curious to see how the fire-raiser was coping in police custody, and accepted the offer.  The policeman led him to a spot where he could see into the room where the tubby foreigner sat.  He was sitting slumped back in his chair and smoking a cigarette with a distant look on his face.  A small pile of butts was sitting in the ash-tray in front of him.
 
The man’s flesh had a blotchy look.  A stain of some sort was visible on the front of his woollen sweater.
 
“Would you believe that he’s still in his early twenties?” asked Officer Kouga.
 
“No, not really.”  The man looked some fifteen years older.  “What does he do?”
 
“English teacher.  You know the type: they come over here and drift around, with a new girlfriend more often than a new hair cut.  But still, we were all young once, eh?”
 
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Mr. Teruya.  He tried to remember the face of the office lady who had given him her seat, but struggled to recall it clearly.  He was able to bring to mind her sweet perfume, though.  He reached for his briefcase.
 
“I won’t be pressing charges,” he said.  “It’s not worth wasting time over.  We were all young once.”
 
**
 
Thanks to those who read all four parts of the story!
 

Vocabulary:

a drunk tank – a room, usually in a police station, for people to recover from excessive drunkenness

a fire-raiser – an arsonist; someone who starts fires

to be slumped – to be leaning heavily or fallen over, due to tiredness, lack of energy, injury, etc.

a (cigarette) butt – the end of a cigarette which is held and not smoked
blotchy – covered with spots or patches of colour
 

Keeping up appearances, part 3 －容姿を保つこと パート3－

In parts 1 and 2, Mr. Teruya, a 62 year old businessman, was shocked when an office lady stood up to let him sit down.  Her actions made him realise that he was getting old.  Meanwhile, Andy, a young Caucasian, spent much of the night drinking, and fell asleep on a bench next to the river.  Smelling of alcohol and cigarrettes, the dirty Andy got onto Mr. Teruya’s early morning train, and stood in front of his seat. 

Part 3: 

Wishing to put a barrier between himself and this foreigner who smelled of alcohol, Mr. Teruya half stood and lifted his newspaper from the luggage rack. 

Andy jerked his head twice to stop himself from drifting to sleep and began a large burp.  It tasted of bile, amongst other things.  He looked down at the businessman who had just pulled down a newspaper.  He was a typical salaryman, he thought, much like the rows of similar workers in the seats to either side.  But Andy noticed that this businessman was staring at him, and he didn’t like it.  After staring disapprovingly at Andy for a moment, the man’s gaze went back to the front page of his newspaper.  “Can’t a foreigner stand on a train for five minutes without being stared at as if he were a Martian?” thought Andy. 

Andy looked at the back of the businessman’s paper.  It seemed to be a pretty low class of tabloid, because the type was big and there were lots of pictures.  There was a panel showing a full figured lady in a bikini, holding a frothing glass of beer.  Andy didn’t know what headline news could have required such a picture: New study shows that beer tastes better in a bikini? 

The businessman looked again at Andy and followed his gaze to the back of his newspaper.  In apparent irritation, he folded the paper in half, covering the girl in the bikini. 

“Damn it!” thought Andy.  “So it’s like that, is it?” 

He reached out a chubby finger and lifted the back of the paper, so that the bikini clad beauty was visible again.  He raised an eyebrow at the businessman in a humorous gesture. 

Mr. Teruya was shocked to see the end of his paper lifted by the foreigner.  He felt his heartbeat quicken as he saw the man open his eyes wide and stare at him challengingly.  Not quite knowing what to do, he lifted up the paper and slapped the foreigner’s finger with an open palm.  He prayed that the office lady hadn’t seen the incident but he was too ashamed to look for her.  He pulled the paper close to his face and tried to concentrate on an article on a politician’s misuse of public funds. 

Andy couldn’t believe that the man had slapped his finger.  “What arrogance!” he thought.  “What happened to your sense of humour?” 

Feeling stung and embarrassed, Andy fell back upon his general stress response.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter and cigarettes.  It was only when he had them in his shaking hand that he realised he wouldn’t be able to smoke on the train. 

Mr. Teruya tried to calm himself.  To be thrown on the scrapheap of old age and now this?  He found a song playing at the edge of his mind.  It was by Imawano Kiyoshiro.  He was singing that Papa in the daytime was shining.  He was working up a good sweat, Papa in the daytime is a man.  It had been used in an advert for a construction company.  Several lines of the song were going round and round his mind in a tight loop. 

Mr. Teruya moved the paper back to a more natural distance from his face.  He looked up and to the right, searching for the office lady.  But she was gone.  Maybe she had found a seat somewhere further down the train, or maybe she had gotten off.  He had lost her. 

Looking back at the foreigner, he found that the fool had pulled out a packet of cigarettes and was apparently about to start smoking on the increasingly packed commuter train.  He glared at the man, took a long disapproving look at the cigarettes, tutted loudly and then went back to his paper, turning over the page and carefully folding it over so as to take up less space. 

Andy was shuffling the cigarettes and lighter around in his hands when the man stared at him with disgust and tried to shame him with a loud tut.  An ache had sprung up behind his nose and was spreading into a bad headache.  “He’s such an important businessman that he can’t take a simple joke,” he thought.  He watched the man carefully and defiantly fold his all important newspaper, jealously guarding its bikini girls. 

Andy put his cigarettes away and felt a whim bubble up to the surface of his mind.  Before he had time to question the wisdom of what he was doing, he stuck out his lighter and set the bottom of the businessman’s newspaper on fire.

 

Vocabulary:

to jerk (your head) – to move (your head) with a sudden, sharp movement

bile – a bitter fluid which helps the stomach to digest food

a tabloid – a newspaper aimed at less well educated readers, often featuring sports stories or celebrity gossip

to be thrown on the scrapheap – to be thrown away or rejected as useless

packed – of a train, room, etc., filled with many people

to tut – to make a slight noise with your tongue and the top of your mouth, generally indicating disappointment or disapproval

a whim – a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained