I want convenience, just not this much －コンビニエンスがほしい。でもこんなにはいらない。－

“Too much love will kill you,

Just as sure as none at all.”

From the Queen song, “Too much love will kill you”.

For around five years now I have been teaching English to a student who is a little unusual.  She doesn’t own a computer.  She doesn’t own a mobile phone.  If I want her to read a lesson plan before the lesson, I have to print it out and give it to her a week in advance, rather than just sending an email.  If something suddenly comes up and I would like to re-arrange a lesson, I have to call her landline and leave a message on her answering machine.  In the heart of Tokyo, surrounded by vending machines and fast food restaurants and all-night stores, it feels a little strange to be dealing with someone who can’t be quickly reached.

On the other hand, I can see the temptation to turn one’s back on some modern conveniences.  A different student of mine said to me the other day that convenience stores were springing up around her apartment like mushrooms.  She lives a ten minute walk away from her local train station.  There are already four convenience stores on the road between her apartment and the station.  Last week she saw a notice on the wall of a construction site on the road.  It said that the site would soon be occupied by a new convenience store.  Does anyone need to pass five convenience stores in a ten minute walk?  What inconvenient thing could happen to you in the two minutes since you saw the last one?

Convenience is generally good.  But still, you can have too much of a good thing.  If you don’t believe me, think of the Queen song, “Too much love will kill you”.  Love is great, but have too much of it and it will lower your life-expectancy!  Convenience is great but have too much of it and it will lower your IQ and self-reliance.

I remember going on a night out in Osaka with my flatmate when we lived together in a small town, between Kobe and Osaka.  When we missed our last train home, we decided to walk back in the dark alongside the train tracks.  From memory, it took us about five or six hours to walk home.  But we were supremely confident that nothing bad could happen to us because we were bound to pass dozens of all-night convenience stores along the way.  And so we did, stopping for a drink, or to use the bathroom, or to eat some weird cheese snacks, or to ask for directions, many times before we made it home.  If it weren’t for those convenience stores we might have learned some discipline, and planned our night out a little more carefully.  And we might have gotten home and stopped drinking much earlier.  Too many weird cheese snacks and too much convenience can kill you.

Vocabulary:

in advance – before some planned event

to reach someone – to successfully contact someone

a temptation – a desire to do something, especially if it is wrong or unwise

to turn one’s back on something – to give up on something and avoid it

to spring up – to appear or grow suddenly, like a fast-growing plant

self-reliance – the ability to do things for oneself

one’s flatmate – someone who shares an apartment with one

from memory – As far as I can remember

bound to – almost certain to

Noticing the moss all around －辺り一面の苔に気づくこと－

“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent in the office or mowing your lawn.  Climb that goddam mountain!”

Jack Kerouac

“Travel and society polish [a person], but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is good on a man.”
John Burroughs

I never could have believed that the loss of a doughnut shop and a coffee shop could leave me so disturbed.

I went to a branch of Doutor – a well known chain of coffee shops in Japan – and tried to settle down for my regular Friday morning coffee.  Then one of the staff members said, “Thanks for your regular custom.  By the way, this is the last month we will be open.  This branch will close in November.”

“Oh,” I said.  “That’s too bad.  I’ll have to find another coffee shop.”

This happened just a few days after I learned that the local branch of Mister Donut would close.  I used to go there once every two months or so, when I needed a little sweet treat and free coffee refills to pick me up.

I have become as predictable in my habits as an old man.  I remember my grandfather eating regularly in the same cafe, ordering the same bacon roll, and drinking the same brand of gin.  “Ah, that’s old age,” I thought.  Now I too drink coffee in the same place, cook the same meals for dinner, and drink the same brand of sho-chu.  Well, my grandfather lived into his nineties and remained mentally sharp until the end, so maybe having regular habits is not a bad thing.  But it is very different from the ideal life I imagined when I was younger.

I never used to stay in the same place for very long.  I lived in Glasgow, then Edinburgh, then Osaka, then Kobe, then Kyoto, then Shanghai, then Saitama... and so on.  My idea was that a new environment would always refresh the mind and soul.  I dreamed of one day taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad from the edge of the Pacific Ocean to Europe.  I wanted to hike the pilgrim’s route of 88 temples in Shikoku.  I wanted to see the Golden Horn of Istanbul.  Instead, I somehow found myself drinking coffee in the same coffee shop every Friday and trying to refresh my soul with an occasional doughnut.  Let me tell you that this does not stir the soul quite as much as taking a night train from Shanghai to Wuhan, and eating spiced duck necks with some random local passengers you meet along the way.

I felt a little disturbed by the closure of two chain restaurants in my area not because I loved their products so much, but because it made me realise how predictable my habits have become.  It made me aware of the slowing down of my life, and the bit by bit replacement of adventure with mundane regularity.  Perhaps I ought not to worry so much about repeating the same actions over and over again.  Whether it is drunk in Istanbul, or Shanghai, or Vladivostok, or Tokyo, a coffee is still enjoyable to drink.  And who doesn’t like doughnuts or sho-chu?  Man began life as a nomadic hunter-gatherer, and eventually learned to settle down in the same place and grow his own food.  Settleing down in the same place is more successful and satisfying in the long term.  Isn’t it?

Vocabulary:

to mow one’s lawn – to cut the grass in one’s garden

to polish something – to make something smooth and shiny by wiping it clean; to improve something

disturbed – not right or out of place

to settle down – to rest or stop in one place with the intention of staying there for a long time

a pilgrim – someone making a journey for religious or spiritual reasons

to stir something – to move or inspire something

mundane – commonplace and uninteresting

nomadic – of a person or people, living life without a permanent home and often moving around

The paralysing effects of Gaijinphobia －ガイジン恐怖症による麻痺の効果－

A phobia is an irrational fear.  They come in many different types, and they all cause problems.  For example, acrophobia is a fear of heights.  Someone who suffers from it may not be able to climb a tower or walk across a narrow bridge.  Claustrophobia is an irrational fear of small spaces.  Someone who suffers from it may not be able to enter a lift.  I would like to propose a new type of phobia: gaijinphobia.

“Gaijin” is the Japanese word for foreigner.  So gaijinphobia means a fear of foreigners.  There is already a similar word – xenophobia.  But xenophobia is usually used to mean dislike of or prejudice towards people from another country, like racism is a dislike of or prejudice against people of a different race.  I imagine gaijinphobia to be a little different, and less nasty.  It should mean a fear of talking to foreigners, especially for someone brought up in an island nation like Japan, which is a little cut off from the rest of the world.

I’ll give you an example.  Before I became blind I often used to go into coffee shops in Japan to relax and read a newspaper.  I would go up to the counter to order.  As I approached the counter I would sometimes see a look of panic in the staff member who was getting ready to take my order.  I could almost see them thinking, “Oh no – a gaijin!  Please don’t speak to me in English!  Please don’t cause me any embarrassment!”

It should not be hard to order a drink in a coffee shop.  Most of the vocabulary needed is basically the same in English as in Japanese – hot coffee/ hotto kohii and iced tea/ aisu tii, for example.  But when I tried to order the staff member would often be so nervous that they couldn’t understand whether I was saying hot or iced, or coffee or tea.  Their gaijinphobia was paralysing them with fear.  I don’t think it is a reason to get angry.  I find it kind of funny.

So I had to laugh when I read about an even more serious instance of gaijinphobia this week.  A staff member at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden was caught letting foreigners in for free.  Everyone was supposed to pay 200 yen to enter.  An investigation revealed that he had been doing this for years.  He had let thousands of foreigners into the garden for free, resulting in lost revenue of 25 million yen, or nearly 200,000 pounds.

When he was asked to explain his actions, he said that he had once been shouted at by a foreigner.  He had developed a deep fear of talking to foreigners, and so got around the problem by just waving them all into the gardens for free.

So you see that gaijinphobia is a less nasty word than xenophobia or racism.  It sometimes works out quite well for the gaijin.

Vocabulary:

irrational – not logical or reasonable

to propose something – to suggest something

prejudice – unfair opinion, not based on evidence; having a pre-conceived idea about something

nasty – very unpleasant or bad

The Karuizawa rap ー軽井沢ラップー

My wife walked ahead of me, pushing our two-year old son in his pram.  I held onto her shoulder as we wandered around, looking for somewhere to rest and eat.  Our legs and minds were weary, as if we had been travelling hard for days.  All around us, people shuffled slowly about in twos, threes or fours.  Everyone seemed lost and weary, like prisoners who had abandoned all hope.  Just then some loud music boomed out from the speaker system.  There was an electronic drumbeat like a machine gun and a rapper started spitting out terrible lyrics, full of swearing, hatred and promises to kill.  We were in an open-air shopping centre in Karuizawa, and it was a bright, sunny day.

There is something strange about the music played at shopping centres in Japan.  I have noticed before that they often play fast, angry hip-hop.  The lyrics are rarely appropriate for a happy family outing.  “I f****** killed that b**** then I shot a copPop!  Pop!  Pop!”

I used to think that the person who chose the music just happened to like hip-hop and couldn’t understand the inappropriate English lyrics.  But in that shopping centre in Karuizawa I realised that they were doing it on purpose.  We were looking for a specific restaurant – a branch of a Hawaiian style burger chain.  We knew it was there somewhere but couldn’t find it.  There were a few maps in the shopping centre, but they were not clearly marked.  None of the maps showed where you were.  It seemed like they preferred people to be lost.  That way, shoppers would walk round and round looking for something, and pass many shops they wouldn’t otherwise have gone to.  In the same way, I thought, perhaps they are playing fast, violent music with threatening lyrics because they want people to be stressed out.  To relieve their stress they might run into a shop and buy something.  That’s the theory of retail therapy.  Buying something gives you a momentary feeling of control and calm.

We eventually found the burger store.  It was the first day of our trip to Karuizawa – the first family vacation for myself, my wife and our two-year old son.  With one blind adult, one wild toddler and one more adult (with an egg allergy), it was quite difficult at times.  At the hotel buffet meals, my wife had to run around to get food for three people (no eggs), and we had to wolf it down before my son got tired and started screaming.

But we had a good time.  The hotel had a large, heated family bath we enjoyed together.  And we found an amazing roast chicken restaurant called Kastanie.  It was the tastiest meal I’ve had in a long time.  The weather was good and we played with a ball in the park.  The best thing for my son was the pair of room slippers in the hotel.  He found a mini pair just for him and marched around the room happily, taking them off and putting them on again.

Hopefully, this was the first vacation of many together.  I can already picture our next trip, wandering around a shopping centre in Osaka, searching for a speciality restaurant that makes okonomiyaki without eggs, all the while listening to violent rap.

Vocabulary:

weary - tired

to shuffle – to walk slowly and clumsily

to boom out – for a sound to be made loudly and powerfully

open-air – without a roof

an outing – a trip; an excursion

to happen to (like) – to (like) by chance

stressed out – to be anxious, tired and irritable because of too much pressure

retail therapy – the idea of relieving stress or anxiety by buying something

to wolf something down – to eat something very quickly 

The fox and the tail ーキツネとしっぽー

I recently retold a Native-American folk tale in which a fox came out badly.  I wanted to write a story which gave the fox a happier ending.  So I wrote this story, which is based on an old Scottish folk tale.

The fox and the tail:

One day the fox and the wolf were out together at night, and they stole a dish of porridge from a farmer.  The wolf was the bigger of the two beasts, and he had a long tail and sharp teeth.

The fox was afraid of his companion.  When the wolf ate almost all the porridge and left him only a little, he was too afraid to complain.  But he vowed to get his revenge. 

So, a little while later, the fox began to sniff the air.  “We have had a fine night together.  But I feel tired and I had better get some sleep,” he said.  “I thank you for sharing the porridge with me.”

“Wait,” growled the wolf suspiciously.  “You smell something tasty, I can see.  Are you planning to have a midnight snack before you go off to sleep?”

“Well, if you must know, I had planned on eating a little cheese before I went to sleep.”

“Come,” growled the wolf.  “That’s not very friendly.  Aren’t we going to share the cheese just like we shared the porridge?”

The fox’s ears seemed to droop in disappointment before he answered.  “Of course, my friend.  Thieves like us work better as a team, especially with farmers around who would love to kill us if they had the chance.  We will go and fetch and eat this cheese together.”

So the fox sniffed the air again and trotted off towards a loch.  It was winter, and the surface of the loch had frozen.  “The cheese is there, in the middle of the frozen loch.  Do you see it?” asked the fox.

The wolf looked, and saw the full moon reflected on the surface of the frozen water.  It looked very much like a round of delicious cheese.  “I see it!” he said, and prepared to run off towards it.

“Don’t be too hasty,” warned the fox.  “A farmer lives near here with his family.  It must have been him who left the cheese there.  If he sees us making a midnight snack of it, he will surely come and kill us.  So here is my plan.  Go and sit by the cheese and hide it under your tail.  Keep your tail as still as possible so that the cheese is completely hidden.  I will go to the farmer’s hut and make sure that he is asleep.  When I see that he is asleep, I will come back and we can eat the cheese together in safety.”

So the wolf walked onto the loch, and covered the reflection of the moon with his tail.  The fox saw that he kept his tail as still as possible.  The fox trotted off to the farmer’s hut.  He waited quite a long time, and then started yelping and making a lot of noise.

When the farmer heard the fox, he rushed out of bed and chased after him with a stick and a gun.  The fox ran towards the loch and ran past the wolf, shouting “Run, wolf!  The farmer has woken up!”

But, as the fox had guessed, the wolf’s tail had become stuck to the ice.  When he tried to run away, he found that he couldn’t escape because of his tail.  So before the farmer could catch and kill him, he pulled so hard against the ice that his tail came off as he ran away.

From that night on, the wolf felt smaller and less confident when he compared the fox’s bright, bushy tail with his own stump of a tail.  And they shared their stolen food equally.

Vocabulary:

to come out badly – to lose or be at a disadvantage after some event

porridge – a dish of oatmeal boiled in water or milk

to vow – to swear; to strictly promise

to sniff – to breathe in sharply through one’s nose; to smell

to droop – to fall or hang down

a thief (plural, thieves) – someone who steals

fetch – bring; go and get

to trot – of a four legged animal, to slowly run

a loch – a Scottish word for a lake

still - unmoving

to yelp – to make a short, sharp cry

The wisdom of rats －ネズミの知恵－

“If Brexit is a disaster, I’ll go and live abroad.”

Brexit supporting politician, Nigel Farage in March 2017

Some important figures in the European Union have said this week that they are getting closer to making a deal with Britain about how it will leave the EU.  Britain will probably have to accept a deal which causes extra difficulties for businesses in Britain.  We will have to pay a huge divorce bill to the EU.  And we will have to accept most of the rules of the EU, without any longer being able to influence or change them.

I have been thinking back to the politicians who promised that doing business in Britain would be easier, that we would get extra money back from the EU, and that we would no longer have to accept any rules we didn’t like.  Why did politicians such as Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Michael Gove make predictions about Brexit which were so wrong?  Did they lack wisdom?

The following essay might provide an answer, even though it was written in 1612.  I have slightly edited this essay by Francis Bacon to make it easier for non-native speakers to understand.

 “Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self,” by Francis Bacon

An ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden.  And certainly men who are great lovers of themselves do not help the public.

Divide yourself between self love and society.  Be true to yourself, but do not be false to others, especially your country.  It is a poor centre of a man’s actions – himself.  All things which are like the Heavens move around another, which they benefit.

The judging of all things by how they affect yourself is more understandable in a great ruler, because if you are a ruler, good and evil for yourself can also affect the public.  But it is a terrible evil in a servant to a ruler, or a citizen in a republic.  For whatever decisions pass through such a man’s hands, he bends them to suit himself.  This may of course then damage his ruler or his country.  Therefor let rulers and countries choose servants who are not like this.

Something which makes the effect of this behaviour worse is the tendency for all proportion to be lost.  It is bad enough for the servant’s good to be preferred before the master’s.  But it is a greater extreme when a little good of the servant is chosen over a great good of the master.  Yet that is often the case for bad politicians, generals and servants.  The good these servants cause benefits themselves, and the hurt they cause they pass onto their masters.

It is the nature of extreme self lovers that they will set a house on fire just to roast their eggs.  And yet it is often the case that these bad servants are very popular with their masters, since they study hard how best to please their masters, and profit themselves.

Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many ways, an immoral thing.  It is the wisdom of rats, who will be sure to leave a house before it falls.

Vocabulary:

Brexit – Britain’s exit from the European Union

a figure – a person

a bill – a sum of money to be paid

shrewd – having or showing sharp powers of judgement

a tendency - something which happens mor often than not; a habit

proportion – the relative size or amount of two things when compared

hurt – injury or damage

Welcome to the world of wellness workshops－ようこそ、ウエルネスのワークショップの世界へ－

How many of you have been on a diet?  Have you ever tried to eat only a banana for breakfast, and one more for lunch?  Have you ever suffered with cabbage soup for dinner while your friends were munching on take-away fried chicken?  Have you ever stood on a set of scales and looked fearfully down, praying that your weight will have fallen?

Well you don’t need to worry any more.  The concept of dieting is officially dead.

The company which is probably best known in Western countries for helping people to lose weight has changed its name from “Weight Watchers” to “WW”.  According to their new advertising slogan, “WW” now stands for “Wellness that works”.  The company offers regular face to face meetings with customers.  Along with getting advice on foods to eat and foods to avoid, customers are weighed at these meetings.  Instead of being called “weigh-ins”, they will now be called “wellness workshops”.  The CEO explained that the changes were “to reflect that we are becoming the world’s partner in wellness.”

The problem seems to be the politically correct nature of modern life.  Companies are now scared to offer dieting or weight-loss, in case they are accused of “fat-phobia”, or discrimination against fat people.  After all, if you offer a product designed to help people lose weight, doesn’t that mean that you are disrespecting fat people?  Doesn’t the idea of going on a diet unfairly suggest that one body shape is better than another?  So to avoid criticism, the weight loss companies have to pretend that they are offering “wellness” instead.

I find the name change and the worry about “fat-pｆhobia” all a little silly.  Being fat has been clearly shown to lead to early deaths.  There’s nothing wrong with a doctor encouraging fat people to lose weight to improve their health, or with companies offering products to help people follow their doctor’s advice.

What change will come next?  Will products designed to help people quit smoking be banned because they discriminate against smokers?  Is it wrong to suggest that not smoking is better than smoking?

I have never been on a diet, but I have put on a little weight in the last few years.  I shall try to use the Weight Watchers/ WW name change positively.  It is a great incentive to lose weight by myself.  I would hate to go to something called a “wellness workshop”.  It sounds like an awful office training course.

Vocabulary:

to munch on something – to eat something loudly, or slowly and with enjoyment

a set of scales – a device which measures the weight of something placed on it

a concept – an idea or thought

a weigh-in – often used before a boxing match, an event at which people’s weight is measured

politically correct – of a person or group, tending to avoid using language which could be offensive to others, especially minority groups

discrimination  - unequal and unfair treatment

an incentive – a motivation; a reason or encouragement to do something