js 38 early shots at Mukogaoka

Nadia found an old disc with the title, 'Japan Photos', the other day. Inside we found some photos taken on Stephanie's digital camera (very people had them in those days) dating back to September 2001. So when these were taken, we had really only recently arrived and were probably still settling in, having started work in July.

It's interesting (for us, anyway) how empty the house seemed back then. We hadn't yet bought the red futon sofa, the classroom was devoid of display and decoration, and we still had the old Daihatsu Mira. Nadia's dad's old laptop was our only PC. In fact everything seems eerily familiar yet unfamiliar, as if we hadn't yet put our stamp on the place. And of course, we hadn't, since we still had L-Plates on and the house remained setup much as Duncan and Barbara(the previous teachers) had left it. Things took time and it helped that we had a few '100 Yen' shops nearby.

The pics above include the kitchen (from the lounge room), Nadia and the car outside Stephanie's old house in Tomagaoka, and the classroom.

js 37 upcountry teaching

Fridays was always a busy one for me. The day started with an early morning trip to Nishiki, about 15 minutes down Route 176 after Sasayama. Or, if you like, about an hours drive from home in Sanda. Nishiki is country Japan, where pretty much everyone is or knows a farmer, where local crafts and traditions flourish and where things are a little slower. I really enjoyed my classes in Nishiki, which comprised people from all walks of life( I had a rice farmer and a shinto priests wife in one class)and I was terribly sad to leave them. The picture directly above shows us on our last Friday at the community centre, with three ladies from the advanced class in the background.

In the afternoon, I started more regular English classes with local kids from Yakami (just west of Sasayama) in the local church building. The church was at the end of a street of houses that literally sat in the middle of rice paddies, like a tiny suburban island. These were real country kids, still very Japanese in their courtesy and application, but a little rougher around the edges. They were also more relaxed. Nadia and I had shared these classes on our first trips to Japan. On the final occasion, Tom's presence meant I had to fly the mission solo, so to speak. It was a long day to be away from the family. A long day for Nadia too. Leaving Tom in the early morning with his little face pressed against the lounge room glass was heartbreaking.

The top shot shows some of the kids we taught outside the church in Yakami. The girls in the foreground (Fuka, Mayana and Eri) are three of the originals from back in 2001. Yes, we miss them. Truly.

temporary geek lapse

I am usually loath to discuss computers or software at this place(or anywhere for that matter) but I find it a little perplexing that Windows Vista recieves such constantly poor press. Since the new laptop arrived 4 months ago (with Vista as the OS), I have never had a single glitch, freeze or hiccup of any substance. I did note the large amount of disc space that gets eaten up (temporarily) by Vista's various underlying processes, though I quickly found a way of getting every kb back.

With the release of Service Pack 2, I noted a lot of discussion around forums (no, I spent a very short time being bored at them!)about how crappy Vista was in general and how the SP2 was making matters worse. Well, the latter is now installed, the Dell is purring along and I have 14gb of disc space back too.

I guess that you can't please everyone, especially those Mac fanatics. I like OS X as well but I really can't get that worked up about it. There are, surely, better things to do.

And that's the last thing you'll read about computers here. The patient has got it out of his system and is sleeping soundly.

more assessments

Tomorrow I have the third of my counselling practical assessments in Parramatta. To be honest, I quite enjoy them. They challenge me. It's interesting too to be with people who have a similar orientation, by which I mean, there is a kind of commonality of ideas and attitudes amongst those of us studying this course. There is a particular outlook towards society, towards others, which is probably shared across a number of professions that are engaged in helping people. Don't get me wrong - I'm not blowing a trumpet for bleeding hearts. It's just that we aren't Wall Street or Corporate in nature.

Just a few points I want to jot down from my last prac. Our assessor suggested that we get the paraphrase in early. That the last thing in a client's list of problems is often the most important one. And that, when in doubt(such as one of those times when you don't really know what to say next), throw the situation back onto the client, with a "Tell me more about..." kind of question. Good advice from an experienced practitioner.

js 36 Dr Takemoto

I seemed to get sick quite often in Japan. If it wasn't a new allergy, then it was a cold or a virus. And sometimes it was pneumonia. When the going got too tough, I always went to Dr Takemoto in the old shopping precinct, now adjacent the new Hankyu Kippy Mall(see above photo). Dr Takemoto's clinic is a model of efficiency and modernity. Unlike surgeries in Australia, a lot of medical equipment for analysing patient ailments is kept in-house, so you can have an x-ray or a blood test and the results are ready almost instantaneously.

On arrival, you get your temperature checked and a urine analysis, self-administered, of course. Then there's the mandatory wait in front of a TV screen, which always seemed to have a panel show blearing. Then you are moved into the inner sanctum (shoes off, pretty nurses smiling), where you are but a step or two from the good doctor's room. After the first dozen or so visits, I didn't make so many mistakes, such as the time when I put the thermometer in my mouth rather than under my arm. (Polite snuffles of laughter in the waiting room)

Let me tell you just one story about this wonderful doctor. In the winter of 2004/5 I got pneumonia, though I wasn't aware of that fact for a few days. The proper procedure once diagnosed was hospitalisation, especially as I was in pretty poor shape. Dr Takemoto insisted on treating me personally, meaning I had to present every day for a week to go on an anti-biotic drip. And of course I did so. Towards the middle of my treatment I turned up at the clinic and all was in darkness. Heavens, I thought, it must be shut today. But I was wrong. Inside the dim waiting room I could see two figures. It was Dr Takemoto and a nurse. The door opened and I was ushered in. I went on the drip. Still no-one else came into the clinic. What was going on, I wondered?

I only found out the next time I went (and from another nurse) that Dr Takemoto had opened the clinic just to treat me on her only day off! What can one say about such kindness? I am still lost for words and so deeply grateful. Domo arigatou Takemoto sensei.

this be the post

As a theist myself, I find any discussion of God or religion quite interesting. Popular culture also has at least a passing interest in matters theological, though its treatment is usually debased by the simplicity or egotism of the argument. References to God are scattered throughout popular song lyrics, replete with a heavy dose of moralising. "If there's a God in heaven/what's he waiting for/if he can't see the children/then he must see the war" writes one lyricist. They might just as well have said 'We got ourselves into this mess, so you get us out". Not especially fair, is it? This kind of appeal is to the God-who-must-keep-the-good-times-rolling.

On the other hand, another song goes, "I don't believe in an interventionist God', which, I think, is quite an ambitious line in the undemanding realm of pop culture. To his credit,the writer eschews the idea that God has a role in human history, an honest appraisal which throws responsibility back onto, just us, apparently.

Poets have taken a slightly more serious approach, as poets do. Still they can be just as visceral, such as the bard who opines "That'll be the life/No God any more or sweating in the dark/Or having to hide what you think of the priest". Will the older, once God-fearing generation really have such envious thoughts of the young? I wonder. Surely there is a ledger for these kinds of profits and losses. In fairness, the same poet does express doubts himself, for he writes of churches, that, despite their fall into relative disuse, "..someone will forever be surprising/a hunger in himself to be more serious/ and gravatating with it to this ground" perhaps with the view to gaining wisdom.

Here in the Blue Mountains we have a thick stew of religious beliefs, particularly of the New Age variety. So God, or a variant of God, comes up quite often, though this God tends to have a smorgasboard of user-friendly rules and conventions. Acolytes can have a relatively pain-free, and deeply self-centred experience should they wish to, though I don't doubt that growing to self-awareness, if that is the goal, carries it's own backback of pain. It's not that I don't think these modern takes on old ideas and practices don't have value, they do, it's just that they are generally incoherent and too easily bought into and out of.

Me, I'm a bit of an old-fashioned theist - somewhat at the liberal end, but happily anchored to a more traditional way of seeing God.I don't mind what people believe really, so long as it does no harm.

undeniable facts

I read today about an elderly gunman, a white supremacist who went on a shooting rampage in the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum. I'm not sure what gets into people's heads sometimes, but for this man, who shall not be graced with a name here, a lifetime of being just being plain, and dangerously, wrong, culminated in this moment. I briefly attended his blog site, comprising a series of lengthy, unsubstantiated and frankly nonsensical rants against Jewish people. Naturally there were 'facts', 'undeniable facts', from memory, to support these outlandish denials and allegations.

Way back in primary school, and then again throughout high school, the difference between a fact and an opinion was drummed into me. I don't think that I could mistake the two, even in a coma. The idea of facts gets bandied about a lot in conversation. Facts are brandished as incontrovertable evidence of a point of view, and often as not when the 'fact' cannot be checked. 'I say it's a fact so it is', pretty much sums up the attitude.

When enough of these slices of hearsay, or deliberately misleading opinions, or just plain lies, get tallied up, then a prejudice starts to form. It doesn't take a lot for the haze to shape into a firmer outline, the outline into an object. The object is the now hated 'other'.

Enter the man in the opening paragraph, and many others like him. I don't see an answer in sight, I'm afraid. The high water-mark of human civilisation has passed, in my unfactual opinion. And perhaps a huge unravelling, to come.

bondi respite

We spent the long weekend with Nadia's relatives in North Bondi, though we essentially had the place to ourselves. It was a case of transferring the sick from one hospital to another, as Tom and Nadia were ill and I got a terrible cold on the Saturday. Uncontrollable sneezing, sore throat and a cough. Oh well.

I summoned the energy though to walk each day to the Sun Cafe at the Seven Ways in North Bondi, a mecca of trendiness if ever there was one. Beautiful people everywhere. No matter how hard they tried to look grungy, these folks were just too well formed to look anything other than, um, well formed. And so much pouted and pushed flesh. A complete ambience of flesh, all on a winter's morning.

And good coffee, too.

crumbs

Just at the moment, everyone at my place is sick. Nadia has the flu (though not of the swine variety) and Tom probably has whooping cough. We await test results on the latter. It is a house pervaded by the smells of ointments and unctions, and its somewhat steamy too, as I bought a vaporizer to help sooth Tom's machine-gun cough. There's also the sense of tissues jammed in every cranny, of food left uneaten and plans for the long weekend dashed.

But it is winter, after all. Wouldn't it be worse in the summer?