Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 8

Still life

Our Man just looked up from one of the myriad screens that stare at him through the course of a day and realised that March has come and gone.

You may already have been privy to that nugget of intel.

Our Man has been so adept at maintaining radio silence that he has actually begun to enjoy it. But he wouldn’t want his handlers thinking he was slacking. Far from it. So, a brief accounting of a month in the life of the bunker:

First trip back to Blighty for four years. The place is both familiar and strange. The swearing of the youths on the top deck of the bus, the boarded up shops, the obnoxious BMW drivers, these things are comfortingly familiar. The increase in the size of pub food portions are not, though are most welcome. But £3 a pint? ’zounds.Have written, edited and laid out three textbooks for the natives to learn the Queen’s English (even if she is a Hanoverian interloper). Since there’s no sterling left in the kitty for an artist, Our Man commandeered a 4B pencil, some paper and a YouTube instruction feed and illustrated them himself too. It’s amazing what you can do once you decide you’re not afraid of making mistakes. (I can see from your artwork, you are quite fearless – Ed.) There’s a new bunker in town. Our Man has moved the cover life business out of the existing bunker into a more accommodating residence. It even commands a perfect view of Abiko’s best ￥100 emporium. Though the new bunker does appear to be infested with lizards. Still, better than Hanoverians.Speaking of lizards, a number of Britishers (two in fact) said that the were getting intel for the first time in decades to invest in Japan. Well, what was Our Man to say? Abe’s the Man? Stop reading Murdoch papers? Our Man took the honest option and shrugged his shoulders. Can’t honestly see any change in Japan’s prospects, but maybe the rest of the world is in worse shape. Our Man doesn”t know. All he can see clearly is the 100-yen shop, so what would he know? 

The 30/70 rule

Yes, I’m still here. More or less. I actually have an hour or so unaccounted for and it’s not far from the truth to say it’s the first time this year to have the luxury of staring at a computer screen and not having to fill it with highly meaningful, important things like facts and numbers and things that people are waiting for and will be angry if they are not what they were expecting.

The offline cover life has exploded in importance recently. I find it hard to comprehend myself, so I can hardly explain it to you, but something has happened this year. Some cosmic disc that had slipped has finally righted itself and I find myself propelled forward with a momentum I can’t fathom, but can feel is pushing me on. I’m editing my novel. I’m writing and illustrating children’s English textbooks. I’m taking my first business trip that I actually want to go on. I’m reading more. I’m eating less. I’m working harder than I ever have in my life, but I’m self-employed and everything I do is coming right back to me and mine.

And I’m loving it.

Insufferable, isn’t it to hear? So very un-Our-Man-ish.

See, I think I had the proportions reversed. Before, I spouted off 70 percent of the time and did what needed to be done the remaining time. Somehow, I find I’ve inverted the formula. Sucks for this website, but is working out pretty darn good for me. Especially since the mother-in-law explained the 30-70 rule. It’s 30 percent tea and 70 percent shochu, not the other way round.

Very tasty with Earl Grey, by the way.

Naked ambition and bare necessities for 2014

“What religion is this?”
“It’s Shinto. It’s a kinda Japanese thing.”
“Right. What, er, what do we have to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”
“OK. But we want some of those lucky predictions for the year. Can you translate them for us?”
“Sure.”

I love bumping into people we know when we’re just out and about. I’m not sure My wife does so much because it invariably means hassle for her. I think that’s why she refuses to go to our local hot spring bath. By all accounts it’s the best onsen hot spring bath this side of Tokyo and it’s within walking distance of our house. I happened to cycle past it today on my customary New Year’s Day bike ride round the local Teganuma marsh (pictured above) and it was heaving. Even the overflow car park was full. But not of course with our car.

“I love having a hot steaming bath. You are not truly clean unless you have had a bath. And onsen are wonderful.”
“Then we really should go to the one just over the bridge in Teganuma…”
“There is no way I’m going to have a public bath so near our house…”
“Because…?”
“Because there is no way I’m going to discuss the weather with my neighbour or her daughter’s grades in English while my nipples are poking about and there’s nothing but a hand towel between us.”
“I thought Japanese don’t mind public nudity when bathing?”
“We don’t. As long as we don’t know who we’re having a bath with.”
“So, bathing with perfect strangers is preferable to bathing with friends?”
“Of course.”
“OK. I think I get it.”

But I don’t pretend I get it about Japanese and religion. Or at least, my wife and religion. As far as I can tell, you don’t have to do anything much except clap your hands at the shrine on January 1st, offer a wish for the new year and generally respect the idea that there are greater powers than you abroad in the world and you’d best be a little respectful of coincidence, chance and such because, well, you never know, right?

I can go along with that. As could the family of Hindus who asked my wife for spiritual advice at the local Shinto shrine. At least, I’m assuming they are Hindu. They run our local Nepalese restaurant and as I recall they have a calendar on the wall that features a half-woman-half-elephant so I figure they are Hindu, but I could well be wrong. One man’s deity is another man’s devil and all that.

Anyway, my wife dutifully translated their 300-yen predictions for 2014 (two excellents, one pretty good and four averages) for them and I, despite affirming my atheism, consented to offer a prayer for 2014, as pictured right.

And that was my first day of 2014 in Abiko.

I sincerely wish you a happy new year, wherever you find yourself.

Year of the Ass

The card was spotted in the Maruzen bookstore in one of the shiny buildings next to Tokyo Station a couple of days ago. These links Our Man spotted this week and thought just as worthy of reposting. Asses are kinda like horses, btw. Happy New Year.

Yasukuni is no Arlington 

We don’t know what power is anymore, nor do we care

The criminalisation of everyday life

One should, despite everything, make new year’s resolutions

Merry Whatever The Hell It Is We Celebrate

Our Man is not going to moan about the commercialisation of Winter Solstice, the proliferation of Top Tens at this time of year, North Korean Family Reunions, Japanese mother-in-law end-of-year cleaning rituals or the lack of Our Man’s second novel that he should have finished and be watching zoom up the Amazon charts from 315,305 to 315,304 by about now.

No.

Instead, he’ll offer these three links as worthwhile reads should you be in need of something to kill time rather than relatives at this special time of year.

Peace, man.

Inose’s fall and after

“ Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. ”

“ Take this town and shove it. ”

Now, leave Our Man be. The kids have gone to bed and he secured the last copy of World War Z from the DVD emporium.

Merry Whatever, and a Happy You Know.

Nelson Mandela

I missed the memorial. But I read Obama’s well-crafted, no doubt heartfelt and excellently delivered speech . Now would be the perfect time, Mr President, to close your own island prison and send home your state’s political prisoners, don’t you think, if the world is really to believe that your words mean anything? But perhaps Our Man’s being petty. Today isn’t about Obama. Our Man is happy to pass the floor to folk better qualified to comment, in order of personal preference, on the death of Mandela.

He will never, ever be your dancing Minstrel Tributes have flooded in: Mark Steel’s spot-on piece Mandela writes his own epitaph: the trial that defined him Fleet Street Fox’s Pygmies on the shoulder of a giant piece In the Economist, life and times and all that

Back to the future…

Bullets have been out of fashion for a while now, but Our Man reckons it’s about time to bring ’em back. Fourth Amendment and all that. Or Fifth. Or First? Damned if he can remember.

Let’s see now. Where was he? Oh yeah. Bullets.

The Japanese government is about to pass a law to gag the press. The press is already gagged here and at the best of times can’t do much more than doorstep some fatuous celeb whose time is up. But then, is the West any better? Discuss. Or…I mean, wtf is going on with Wendi ex-Murdoch and Tony Blair? Actually, Our Man doesn’t care. No, he really doesn’t.The Chinese are getting all cocky, Uncle Sam is eager to prove he can still cut the mustard and Old Man Japan does the same old shit over and over again expecting different results. Well, Our Man has had enough.

He tried being reasonable this last year or so, tried being open, but it’s time to re-engage the cloaking device. Time to return to the shadows. That may not be possible in the NSA-Universal Studios of America world to return to anonymity, but Our Man can at least revert to third person and an avatar that he can hide behind with pride.

The past is the new future! Backward to Progress!

You can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can yourself pretty much forever. Or something.

Any questions?

Japan Prime Minister Abe’s secrecy bill to gag whistleblowers has passed the lower house and is almost certain to pass the upper house and become law. As far as I can tell , it establishes the right of Japanese ministers to classify anything they do as extra-special-super-secret if they deem it relevant to defence, diplomacy, counter-terrorism or counter-espionage. And it’s nothing to do with covering up government cock-ups. Any journalist (blogger? Tweeter?) who defies the gag by publishing anything the ministers don’t like will face five years confinement at his majesty’s pleasure.

So that would make illegal, oh for argument’s sake, tweeting revealing testimony of nuclear cock-ups at Fukushima, or anyone stating anything with any knowledge that is not the official line on, let’s say, those rocks in the ocean that China, Japan and Taiwan keep threatening war over. Stands to reason. Democracy can’t handle a free press going off message, can it?

Because terrorists.

Nothing to do with government cock-ups. Or NSA protocols. We’re safer if we trust the authorities to keep us safe and we won’t worry our pretty little heads about things we don’t know about. Because very soon now, it will actually be illegal to know anything about stuff that the higher-ups know about. If it isn’t already.

Best not to ask any questions. Questions only get you into trouble. Best to trust our leaders. Oh look, that nice Caroline Kennedy is here. Everything is fine. Everything is wonderful. We can trust the higher ups. When have they ever led us wrong? The less the authorities show us, the more we will trust them and the more in touch with the national interests they will be. Because that’s always how it works out when dissent becomes illegal, doesn’t it? Leaders govern more magnanimously, don’t they?

Monkey business

The problem with reading psychology books is the more you do, the more you realise what an unreconstructed ape you really are. And I’m really talking about me when I say you. We can’t remember worth a damn, judge statistics worth a damn, argue logically worth a damn, or pretty much do anything very well beyond picking virtual fleas off the alpha male, apparently. And by we I mean me.

Anyway, the point is this: Read You are not so Smart by David McRaney. It’s really good. No link, because Our Man doesn’t do affiliate links, or missing ones. But follow your instincts, you’ll know where to go.

Carry on.

It’s started

It’s started here . And will continue into the New Year.

Details here .

Carry on.