js30 Yes School

Of course, our main business for being in Japan in the first place was teaching English, and particularly English conversation. The little eikaiwa in Mukogaoka developed a very good reputation, and but for the emergence of the McEnglish giants like Nova, would undoubtedly have had a waiting list But we were happy to get by with a (seasonally-adjusted) average of about 60 students of all ages, which paid the bills and kept everyone in o-sake.

On Tuesdays I went upcountry to Kaibara to take some business English and juku classes and Nadia held the fort in Sanda. On arriving home about 9pm, I was invariably greeted by the sound of laughter wafting from the classroom. The last class of the evening was in full swing. This was Nadia's favourite class, comprising four young woman who were friends and who, over the course of years, became our friends. They enjoyed studying but were, well, funny, and a lightness pervaded the house. I would go in and say hello and bring in a bowl of crisps, CC Lemon or cold tea.

Occasionally the class swelled to five or six, but the core remained consistent- Rika, Akiko, Naoko and Chihiro. The shot above is a bit of a fake really, since we were essentially posing 'in action' for the camera. And Nadia is taking the shot, maybe for publicity. I can't remember.

not black and white

I have a sharp tongue that comes from, well, I'm not quite sure. But the seeds of that sharpness certainly come out of my teens, that period of restless uncertainty, a place of shadows and fitful growth. The taunts and scrapes can have a lifetime impact.

So discovering that you are good at something (in my case, words) means that you have a compensation for all the fears, real or imagined. Or for the circumstances in which you find yourself at the time. A problem emerges when an inferiority complex flips into extroversion. A shy person can appear to be an arrogant egotist, though the truth is really quite different.

I don't mean to use sharp words or sarcasm but it's out of my mouth before the mind has comprehended the deed. That's not an excuse and never can be. Of course, this tendency gets me into trouble fairly regularly and sometimes quite seriously.

There really is no place for hard words when they are directed at the people you love most. I'm sorry that I spoke harshly to Nadia recently and upset her so. It's just not good enough and I have more work to do. A lot more.

from the past

Recently, while going through some old boxes, I found a single sheet of paper with a short typed poem. I thought that it was worth the effort to write it up here, though, as for that, you should be the judge.

I sit, reading again a letter
from you, the lines of black spent
on an old envelope,
reading too, the long passage of absences
between us.

Of course, I understood. Returns are often
harder than goodbyes,
And I, well, I hunch by book and phone,
unable to scan or think, willing your eye,
your hand, your breath.

Long perspectives, no doubt, heal
and bind, balm to those
hurts; heedless actions, thoughts,
seeds of unlived life, ramifying,
unkind.

my hope

Today my dear friend Elaine starts chemotherapy. This is the unhappy moment Nadia and I have waited for, or put to the back of our minds. for 4 years now. That was when Elaine told us she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph glands. A few weeks ago tests showed that it had started to grow, and chemo was required to shrink it.

Elaine is a wonderful woman. She is pretty much the epitome of all those values that I really cherish. Honesty, selflessness, generosity, kindness, loyalty and forgiveness are rarely all found together in any one person, though I wouldn't baulk from saying that they are found in their entirety in her.

So now she lies with a drip in her arm, and we wait to see the outcome. The prognosis is good even if the treatment is slow.

Get well sweet friend. More than words can say, we love you.

this gentle dawn

Part of me is very excited about the election of Barrack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. That part (it's actually quite a large part really), is idealistic, enthusiastic about the human project, happy to be swept up and carried along by noble-minded, high sounding rhetoric and energized by the call to action on behalf of the future.

The other part, that small, intellectualised compartment that comprises experience and considered opinion, whispers that the resultant actions will never match the words, no matter how hard the effort. That's not always the case, but often.

Obama has a mountain of goodwill, majorities in both houses in Congress and an obvious ability to motivate. Those are huge plusses. I believe him to be sincere also. The other mountains, those requiring the slow climbing, the hardest effort, the worst obstacles, are hoving into view. Global Warming, economic crisis, nuclear proliferation, two difficult to resolve wars, are just the front runners.

It's in all our interests that the new adminintration seriously takes on these challenges. Yes, it is about our children and grandchildren. Yes, it's probably about human survival. Yes, it's certainly worth it.

So good luck to President Obama and his team. I know that I'd prefer to see a gentle dawn, rather than 'the shining daffodil dead/and Orion low in his grave.'

and another thing

This month is the first anniversary of the demise of the Howard Government. My views on that are well known, so I wont bore readers (oh, you have readers?? ed) with further barbs. I only note that the sky hasn't fallen in. Nor have any apocalyptical horsemen ridden into town.

Tuesday, I hope, sees the demise of Republican control of the White House and any other house, for that matter. Now I don't mind John McCain and more's the pity that he didn't win the GOP nomination against Bush a decade ago. He was the worthier of the two by a long shot. But I think that Obama has a real opportunity to break some of the political molds that are holding back real American leadership on the planet, whether it be on climate change, or proliferation or solving the multiple crisis's that dog us all. The US is an important player.

Other than politics, I should explain or perhaps even apologize for the terribly prosaic nature of my scribblings about Japan. My idea, such as it was, was to document in the simplest terms possible my sense of attachment to place, that place being the physical environment of my life in Japan. So details like train lines and parks and shopping centres, often pedantically rendered here, loomed quite large in my daily scheme of things, then. They help me to remember.

It's also partly a grieving process. The years spent in Japan were amongst the happiest and most productive of my life, and they are unlikely to be revisited. The school is sold. We now have a young family. And that's that.

So if I bore you with trivial detail, I will make amends later. And perhaps you will understand.