Rant of the week: Japanese TV news

In general, I love the quirky rubbishness of Japanese TV, but the news is absolutely atrocious. Apart from NHK (the BBC equivalent), every channel presents the news in a manner similar to The Sun. If a bad guy (e.g. a representative of North Korea, or somebody accused of a serious crime) is shown on screen, it's invariably in slow-motion grayscale, with scary music and their name superimposed in an evil, flaming font. We're regularly shown scenes of victims' families weeping uncontrollablly and at length. Sometimes this weeping is due to the fact that the TV crew has tracked down the relatives of a murdered child, shoved a camera in their faces and started asking them horrifically insensitive questions until they start crying.

The other day I saw a story about a junior high school teacher who'd bullied one of his students and driven the kid to suicide. A pretty harrowing story, but then it really took a turn for the twisted. The parents of the child tricked the teacher into coming to their house, where the TV crew was lying in wait. The parents then forced him to assume the 'super-duper-apology' bowing position (knees and head on floor, arms outstretched) in front of a photo of their dead son, while they circled around him, mocking and humiliating him. "Why did you bully our child? Did it make you feel like a big man? Why did you kill him?".... ad nauseam.



God bless Huw Edwards and proper news.

Day out with Uncle Takizawa

I had quite a strange day out on Sunday. You may remember that a few weeks ago I went to Fubou school, a primary school with 4 kids and 3 teachers. The head of that school, Takizawa-sensei invited Karen, Mai and me to the local Autumn festival. So off we went to frolic with lambs, make butter, watch people fishing, eat yakisoba, and generally enjoy the fresh air and goodness of nature. Takizawa-sensei is a hilarious little man. He's small and bald, never stops talking, smokes like a chimney, chuckles endlessly and is generally a bit of a legend. Karen spotted him in the supermarket with his wife and apparently they're very cute together.

All morning Takizawa-sensei had been telling us about his new favourite film, hura gaaru. Apparently it was so good that he'd been to the cinema to see it 3 times, and was thinking about going for a fourth. When I expressed polite agreement that it probably was a rather good film, he pounced on the opportunity and invited us to go and see it straight after the Autumn festival. With nothing else to do, and not wishing to offend, we agreed. (In fact, poor Karen agreed because she can't speak Japanese and thought he was taking us home.)

So we hopped in the car and drove for over an hour, into a whole other county (cinemas are a bit scarce 'round these parts). It turned out that hura gaaru was a transliteration of 'Hula Girls' and the film was a massive rip-off of The Full Monty. Synopsis: 40 years ago, mine about to close down, all the miners and their families need new jobs. They randomly decide to set up a Hawaiian centre as a tourist attraction, and hire some hot-shot dance teacher from Tokyo to teach them how to hula dance. Whole film is about them learning how to dance, with hilarious consequences. Verdict: all-round splendid family fun. And now I know that I can pretty much understand films in Japanese, a whole new world of cinema-going has opened up for me.

Sonarsound Tokyo

This weekend I went down to Tokyo to catch up with some friends and to go to Sonarsound festival. I spent the whole of Saturday in Yokohama with Natsuko, her friend Yosshi, my Miyagi friend Ewan (who happened to be going to Yokohama the same day as me) and his friend Naoko. We went for lunch and wandered around the town all afternoon. It's a beautiful place, and the weather was amazing. I'm pretty sure it never rains in Yokohama. We stumbled across the 'Yokohama Oktoberfest' and had a beer there, and also found an international food festival, where loads of different countries had stalls selling their national dishes. I had a Nepalese curry and a Peruvian burito. Then I headed into Tokyo to meet my friend Sakiko and find the festival.

So, the artists. First up was Softpad. Oh my jesus bloody god hell buggeration, Japanese VJs are incredible!! I had to remember to close my mouth because it kept hanging open while I was watching. They made music as well, which wasn't bad and sounded quite like Autechre, but it was really just a backdrop to their epic visuals. If you ever get a chance to see these guys live, do it!

Optrum. This guy was playing a freakin' light bulb. Enough said. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_v9RqLCmqI

DJ Baku. The most hectic thing I saw all night. Played mostly ridiculous drum n bass, jungle and breakcore. Made sure that even if there was a slight pause or breakdown on one of his decks, the other one would be going at full pelt to make up for it. If it still wasn't hectic enough, he also had a KaossPad and all kinds of other gadgetry going on, to ensure an absolutely relentless set.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5YH4uElJddE

Tucker. DJ/pianist/guitarist/bassist/drummer/hardcore punk screamer extraordinaire. 'Energetic' doesn't begin to describe this guy. He was constantly running around the stage, trying to play all his instruments at once, doing handstands on his piano (while still playing a pretty decent tune), stage diving, etc. Musical mayhem.

Afra & Incredible Beatbox Band. 3 guys, who were really, really good at beatboxing. Not much else to say about them, but they were amazing.

De La Soul. Lived up to all expectations. Legends.

DJ Kentaro. Maybe the best act all night. Was scratching the visuals as well as DJing like a motherbitch. His set was so complex that he had to have another guy on stage with a whole bunch of laptops and stuff, who I assume was feeding samples to Kentaro's various exciting gadgets. Just watch him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgD9dPeVXG8

After that, there were a couple more DJs, but they paled in comparison to Kentaro. Also, I was incredibly tired by that point. I'd come to Tokyo by night bus, so I'd snatched about 3 hours of sleep, and I had got off the bus at 6am. By the time I got to bed, it was nearly 7am.

Good times.

Insensitive gaijin

Oh, the perils of sending text messages in Japanese.

Yesterday I was supposed to meet someone in Tokyo, but they didn't show up. I txted (txt'd?) her to ask what happened, and she sent a huge long reply. I couldn't be bothered translating the whole thing at the time, but the gist was that she was very sorry she hadn't turned up or contacted me. I replied with a simple "Never mind, let's meet up next time I'm in Tokyo."

Later, I got round to translating the message, and it turned out that the reason she hadn't come was because her best friend had had an accident, and she had had to take care of her. I felt really bad, and sent a message saying "I'm sorry, I just read your message properly. I hope your friend gets well soon."

Her reply: "Sorry, maybe I didn't explain properly. My friend died yesterday. I don't think she'll get well soon."

Hmm.

Opening ceremony

Today I went to my school's autumn term opening ceremony. It was a fascinating microcosm of all the aspects of the Japanese education system, and the nation as a whole, that seem most twisted and alien to a western observer.

First, 3 students (a 1st year, a 2nd year and a 3rd year student) gave short speeches. They were all pretty much identical, and the gist was as follows:

"I have failed at pretty much everything I tried in the last school term. In maths, I tried hard but I just couldn't understand it. In English I didn't try at all, and am consequently rubbish. When I played baseball I let down the whole team with my poor skills and work ethic. I won the running competition but I could have run faster. In Japanese class, I .............. In conclusion, I should try harder next term but I probably won't. If I don't try harder, please punish me."

Then the headmaster got on stage and said, "Thank you for those speeches. I didn't think much of the 1st or 2nd year students' speeches, but the 3rd year's was good. All 1st and 2nd years take note: in the future you should write speeches like her."

Then they had the prize-giving ceremony.

Note: this is all based on my rather shaky translation, and of course I was exaggerating. Also I hope it doesn't sound too bitter - I just thought it was interesting.

Cows and mountains

Just to say that I had such a fun-packed day that it warranted 2 new albums on Picasa Web. The link's on the right hand side of this page.