seanfogarty

First, I need mention Shoko Aramaki who volunteers at the Kitakyushu Municipal Art Museum as a tour guide because she treats me to lunch every year at a Japanese-style restaurant with a Zen-style garden of rocks which nobody sits on sand amidst ivy-like vines on fences bordering the parking lot. Before we have gone to restaurants in Kokura South but this time we visited one closer to where she resides in Yahata East. Some tall blonde lady passed by us when we came out.
Today, the eve of my birthday this twenty-fifth of August, I went to Iwaya Beach for the 24/7 English School near Kurosaki Station’s annual party. Details were here: http://www.247englishschool.com/news.php or through Tim Kibila who runs the school. I arrived late after my voluntary lecture/reading which was more than full – the most ears I’ve ever had, and hard to reach while not disturbing the earnest students of Korean language on the other side of the screen/partition. Parking cost 500 yen which along with not car-pooling because I came by myself was a bit of a waste. Zee who was famous at OWLS amongst the ALTs hailed me with “Jambo mama” but unfortunately my Swahili isn’t so great. We chatted in “English” because his Japanese is better than mine. He said nobody knows him in Kitakyushu. I guess everyone went back to their various countries. Then paid the 2000 yen admission (rather than 2500 which I had expected) and 400 for some mango juice as I was driving. None of the Fijian curry this time around, though.
They were doing capoeira. The teacher is an Australian who came all the way from Osaka. He was apparently a stunt double for Universal Studios Japan and with the Sydney Olympics somehow, at heart from Brazil. Es(u)peto-sensei in Japanese on the poster. They did more traditional mock-fighting, and a newer style which inspired breakdancing.
Then they broke into African drumming. Tim Kibila who’s originally from Senegal, another fellow from Fiji (“Fiji’s in the house”) played tall bongo-like instruments with their hands and another fellow joined in using sticks after Tim anounced he’d start an African Faiyah (as opposed to fire) maybe like the Spanish or Catalan for the fe(a)st of St. Joseph the foster-father of Jesus and betrothed (but not quite husband) of the Virgin Mary? A DJ from Fukuoka was also there. It is quite a riot with all the people there who dwarf me by comparison or rather contrast.
Anyway, tomorrow there’s some “do” for my birthday to which I’m invited and expected to take my jumbo wife. Maybe Patrick from Australia and his Shie (which sometimes I mishear as “she is”) will go, and many volunteer students so I’m somewhat nervous or embarrassed as to how it will all turn out.

Lately I’ve run into a hefty firefighter from Honduras several times at JICA, as well as at the Wasshoi Hyakuman Summer Festival.

We left on Wednesday, 15 August 2007 by one of the Beetle jet ferry boats. My wife's father asked me before we left if I recalled that one had hit a whale. It was in the local news here. If I recall correctly, there were many casualties. We had a smooth ride and watched Japanese high-school baseball both ways. We had several forms to complete before going through customs. The baggage was put through the scanner, and I was scanned by a metal detector. As I didn’t empty my pockets, it beeped but they didn’t seem concerned at all and let it pass. They did this for all of the travellers as near as I could tell. My students back in Japan said maybe they thought I seemed trustworthy “like a priest”.

We got out at the station and hopped on a bus for the guided tour my wife procured for us. The tour guide said she was from Busan after checking very carefully that no one else had been there, all in Japanese. She made a ‘chi’ sound instead of the ‘tsu’ sound. She used expressions like “shinseki” (“blood” relatives/relations, subjects of a lord, authentic writings of an author, new barrier, dipped) while pointing to accessories like her wristwatch and jewelry. I think she meant “honmono” which means authentic/genuine articles. Her Japanese was a bit unfamiliar to me, amusing to one mother. While walking down the crowded streets of Busan, which is several times larger than Fukuoka and South Korea’s second-largest city (like Osaka in Japan or Vancouver in Canada), I felt a sense of dejavu as if I were in a Lonely Planet video clip.

On the subway, or underground, people routinely move between the cars, plop down a bag in the middle, and announce the goods which they are selling including food sealed in plastic bags and electronic devices. Nobody seems to mind very much because there’s not much else to do in the subway other than wait. I didn’t see anyone buying, though.

We went to Gyeongju and saw the tumuli park with twenty-three grave mounds of the Silla period (600-1000 A.D.), one of them excavated and named Cheonmacheong or the Flying Horse for a picture somehow preserved on a mudguard of a horse suspended in the air amongst all the jewels and utilitarian implements. The sun was very bright.

We stayed at the Tower Hotel with other Japanese-speaking visitors. It was quite well done. Though rather disoriented much of the time, I saw Yongdusan park nearby and up a flight of stairs and we went to the top of Busan tower for a view of the city with explanations. There’s a bell there, a statue of a military figure, and a nice dragon. The UN graveyard is on the map, though we didn’t go see it. We walked around, sampled kimchi (the Korean signature food; Chinese white cabbage in spicy sauce) or sundubu (like mabo tofu = tofu in sauce) jjigae (“Korean stew”), bibimbap (mixed rice, vegetables, meat, and sauce), various bowls of noodles and more. They’re all superb, much of it spicy. They eat on the floor but use silverware chopsticks called chokkara and spoons called sukkara as well as culinary scissors.

Hyang-Ran took me to a bookstore. I looked at textbooks in English about Korean, in Korean about Japanese, in Korean or English about English, and so on. Someone walked up to me who looked a bit like Solveig Manthey, the half-American half-dutch Coordinator for International Relations in Matsuyama, Ehime. She asked the lady at the bookstore if they had the book on Korea I got from a bookstore in Oxford, and she said no but it was probably at the store across the street which it wasn’t. Interestingly, there’s a hair salon there called Solveig (sole-vey-j) and another building had my initials on it. I ended up getting a book about Korean grammar at the store across the street. One of Ran’s cousins speaks English quite well. He took me to an electronics store and even PAID for the dictionary which I chose with care though little understanding the explanations in Korean script! It’s really excellent and came out to the equivalent of 20 000 Japanese yen, or two-hundred something Canadian dollars, though that’s less than what I paid for my first electronic dictionary back in Kochi six years ago.

Her mother had a bit of a scheduling problem as the jet ferry boat was fully booked on the way back and she hadn’t arranged for a ticket in advance. She should be back tonight.

August in Korea is hot. As the guide book notes, wait until the cooler weather before going if you ever do. A serious faux pas I made was to bring a red pen. There’s a superstition that if Koreans’ names are written in red ink that they will die.

Now, at half-past five the typhoon left this island of Kyushu in Miyazaki. Typhoon Man-Yi like most other storms missed us completely. So much for the strongest typhoon yet recorded in July. I couldn't help noticing that the reports of damage came in from the south of Kyushu before the typhoon even hit. Lately I get news articles from the bilingual paper at www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st a day before the date on them. There's something strange about how Japanese people set times and dates, methinks.

The first of Kitakyushu's regional festivals, called Kokura Gion (Matsuri) was to be held this year on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. That's right, it started on Friday the thirteenth, an ill omen for sure. Sure enough, that day Typhoon Man-Yi (Bebeng in the Philippines, Number Four for 2007 in Japan) hit Okinawa and came into Japan slotting it to arrive here at three o'clock today smack in the middle of the festival. It is being billed at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aPKPtUCDIk9w&refer=japan for example as a super-typhoon. It is unusually wide, but far from disperse it seems. The ferry boat between Wakamatsu and Tobata is stopped. I could go around by rail of course, all the way to Orio, but I cancelled my weekly voluntary lecture this week thinking it was most likely to bring injury to someone and sent my wife by car to work. We put down the shutters on the sliding-door windows on the first floor and are anticipating the storm. The sound of thunder began moments ago as I was writing this. . .

Dear folks,

Over the past few days I have not been feeling so well. Sheer tiredness, stomach cramps, diarrhea this morning -- I know not from whence it came. Worse, yesterday was Myeong-Hyang's wedding preliminaries. Japan still has the custom of exchanging dower and dowry. I found a good article about Japanese marriage customs in English at http://web-japan.org/trends01/article/020628soc_r.html for you to read also. Mrs. Doguchi asked if I duly observed the custom. I looked up yuino (ceremonial exchange of wedding gifts) and said, "A, sore wha moh owatte iru," which means, "Oh, that's now over." I looked it up, and though in Spanish-speaking countries they still have betrothal customs involving documentation, in English-speaking countries that has not been the case since the Reformation of the Church in the sixteenth-century. It declined with Salic Law which also said, according to my dictionary's example, that women could not claim the throne in France. Interestingly, they cannot do so in Japan.

This year yet another Japanese, oldest man to climb Mt. Everest set his record though it has yet to be documented. Someone from Shizuoka, Japan won the Miss Universe contest, though it did not make the BBC news last I checked. Mrs. Doguchi said she did not appear Japanese.

I saw some movies: Pirates of the Caribbean or Pirates of Caribbean in Japanese. At World's End was the third movie of that series, though I watched the first on television only afterwards and have not seen the second.

Any news from Canada?

Yours truly,

Sean

From http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20070515i3w7.htm

Endangered bird caught on camera

A male MIZOGOI (Japanese Night Heron, Gorsachius goisagi) was caught on camera while incubating eggs in a copse of trees. On the second last day of Bird Week, which runs from May tenth to the sixteenth, a male of the migratory species which is listed on the Ministry of the Environment red list as endangered was photographed while incubating eggs in a grove of mixed trees in Tama West, Tokyo by Takashi Ozaki.

It is in the family Ardeidae. Once, they were commonly seen on the eaves of people's homes, but with the abrupt decline of forested hills or plateaus reserved by villages for kindling and charcoal due to conversion to oil and fire prevention measures, an examination by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) estimated their current population worldwide to be less than a thousand.

The Night Heron found this time was fifty centimetres in length. From time to time, it shifted its position, using its beak to rotate the eggs under its wings.

Kunio Kawana (59 years) on the science committee of the incorporated, non-profit organisation (NPO) for bird conservation called "Birdlife Asia" has said, "We want to imperceptively watch over this remaining, precious, natural resource."

(Yomiuri Newspaper 23:37, 15 May 2007)

We left Kitakyushu on Thursday, 12 October 2006 and arrived in London that night. On Friday, 13 October 2006 in the morning we went to Big Ben near Westminster Abbey. The weather is cooler in England so I wore a jacket. According to Big Ben it was half past ten, or as many young people in Britain say, “half ten”. There was a statue across the street of Boadicea (no relation to the J-Pop singer BoA), the queen who defended Britain and stood up to Caesar. Friday the thirteenth is so unlucky that fear of it has a name: paraskavedekatriaphobia or some variation. In October of 1307 the Knights Templar (guardians of the Temple of Solomon) in every country of Europe were killed by followers of King Philip IV of France. That’s why it is unlucky. So I rushed around the bend in the river Thames to Temple Church. It is the church in London built by the Knights Templar (大阪のキシダン意外、世界の一番有名なキシダン). It has statues that show how the Knights died called effigies (お墓でもないねー像の一種だ). Solomon lived very long ago, before Christianity and Islam.
The photos above are from the movie The Da-Vinci Code. These below are what we took. This year had Friday the thirteenth twice -- in January and October -- and they add to 13: 1+3 + 1 + 2+0+0+6 = 13, 1+3 + 1+0 + 2+0+0+6 = 13!
London has many theatres. We saw Les Misérables which is French but also the longest-running musical ever – and this one was all-in-English. Even with the cheapest tickets we could see!
We got back on the subway and got off the train. Inside the city it is a subway, and outside it’s a train. It’s the London Underground! The slogan is “Mind the Gap” as you can see on the right. 意味は空いてる所に注意して下さい。
We went to Oxford University nearby, which is really a city. Oxford has many colleges including the oldest college in England, and indeed all of Great Britain including Ireland. There are many portraits including Queen Victoria in the centre at Jesus College. There was a pastry shop with cakes and pastries in elaborate Halloween designs. Below on the left is the lawn at All Souls where people from around the world are invited each year to receive honorary degrees in Latin at a party and ceremony.
Harry Potter features the dining hall at University college. . .
We came back to London for Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. India was once part of the British Empire, and there remains a strong Indian influence in London. There was a representation of Ganesh, the most popular of the Hindu gods.
From London we went to Wales. The castle was built there by the English. It is in a little town called Conwy on the northern shore. The signs are mostly in English, Welsh, French, German, two languages one of which was probably Spanish, and Japanese. I guess many tourists go there from Japan.
The best thing about Conwy was the Georgian house:
We visited the Beatrix Potter museum. Of no relation to Harry Potter of course, she is best known for her character Peter Rabbit. Also in the Lake District, where two of my grandparents came from, we saw the biggest lake and rode on a real steam engine.
The autumn colours were quite beautiful in October, and I think it was not so chilly, though colder than Japan.


The countryside in the lake district is superbly beautiful with kilometres and kilometres of fences of piled stones hemming in fields of mostly sheep, some cattle, and a few other types of animals. Then we went to Edinburgh.
In Scotland we saw Edinburgh Castle (wizard school?) and Rosslyn Church which was in The Da-Vinci Code.
Edinburgh was where my father was born, but not in the castle above. In three days, happy Hallowe’en, All Saints’ and All Souls’!

Typhoon Shanshan, from a girls' name in Hong Kong, was the strongest typhoon this decade, resulting in casualties and many injuries. It is the thirteenth typhoon this year in the Western Pacific (Southeast Asian) region. Refer to http://agora.ex.nii.ac.jp/digital-typhoon/news/2006/TC0613/index.html.en also.

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From Mainichi Newspaper, update at 9:19 PM 17 September JST (Japan Standard Time)

Kyushu has succession of electricity outages

In western Kyushu where the typhoon neared from the evening of the seventeenth sudden gusts blew violently, and there were a succession of electricity outages.

The Nagasaki branch of Kyushu Electric Power released its summary (now 5 PM) stating within Nagasaki prefecture 6.9 percent, i.e. 52 700 households, had electricity outages.

Traffic signals went out, roads including the national highway continue to be in confusion. Large business establishments etc. following the blackout continue to be closed to business.

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Taiwan which issued a warning for this typhoon is touched by a different type of havoc as the current leader is under investigation by the courts and tens of thousands of people hold rallies showing support or in protest. . .