Coral Beaches

   I don't know how many beaches around the world I have had the pleasure of combing, but a number of them are unforgettable: the white sand beaches of the Caribbean, the black sand beaches of Hawaii, and the coral beaches in Okinawa.

   If only I were there now and not in my office, looking out at a gloomy sky.

Hifumi, the Little Diner That Could

   When I first came to Japan I taught at a small privately run English School which only by the grace of God remains in business to this day.

   I taught five to six lessons a day, five days a week, back then and earned about ¥250,000—the minimum wage for that kind of work—minus ¥40,000-plus for rent and utilities.[1] In addition to being my employer, the feckless Mr. “Bakayama” (a nickname I coined for the man meaning “Foolish Mountain”; his real name was Nakayama) was also my landlord, like a two-bit Milton Hersey. As I was F.O.B., fresh-off-the-boat, I didn’t have to pay any income or residence taxes.

   Located in a sleepy corner of Kitakyūshū City, the neighborhood where I worked had a few restaurants and diners that were alright. There was one place that did a pretty good kara’age karii (curry and rice with fried chicken). My two co-workers “Blad” (Bradley) and “Hoka” (Geoffrey) and I would have lunch there after our “teachers meeting” every Wednesday and bitch about Bakayama.

   Lots of good memories. Blad and Hoka would return to the States the following spring and when my contract was up I moved on to Fukuoka.

   I took a job at another small English school called Bell American School. Not a bad operation and a huge improvement over Bakayama’s Little School That Barely Could. Unfortunately, I was the token gaijin (foreigner) at Bell in an office staffed with psychopathic women. (For more on this, go here.)

   I worked six days a week at the new school, but only had two to three classes a day. I also made a bit more, and with all the free time I was able to take on private lessons to supplement my income.[2]

   There were not only more restaurants near my new workplace, but they were much better than those in Kitakyūshū. What’s more, the affluent women I was now teaching were something of gourmands and delighted in taking me to new restaurants.

   I was at Bell for about four years before striking out on my own. Life continued to improve: more money, more freedom, better restaurants. I was now living in Daimyō, an area of Fukuoka City which is said to have more restaurants and bars (and hair salons) per square kilometer than anywhere else in Japan. The money and eats were very, very good.

   Before the Internet became as widely used as it is today, people would call me up to ask what restaurant I recommended, or where such-and-such bar was located. Thanks to smartphones I rarely have to perform this service now. It’s just as well because I seldom go out anymore what with my being the father of a young child (who happens to be in my lap fiddling with the keys as I try to write this).

   Since last spring I have been teaching full-time at a private women’s college.

   The conditions at the college are very good. I teach a mere two to three one-hour classes a day, four days a week, and get paid considerably more for the “work” than I did as part-time instructor with a heavier class load. (Odd, the way that works.) Where I was once a grunt in the Eikaiwa trenches nearly two decades ago I am now a low-ranking commissioned officer of sorts.

   The only drawback of the change in employment, as I have mentioned before, is the fact that the college is located in the heart of a culinary desert. The only eatery that is within a reasonable walking distance is the Hifumi Shokudō (一二三食堂, lit. One, Two, Three Diner), a miserable little place that doesn’t appear to have changed a thing since it opened sometime in the late Shōwa Period (early 80s?).

   Every thing about the place is odd.

   For one, the servings at Hifumi are huge, the kind of servings growing boys fortify themselves with. Trouble is, there isn’t a boy to be seen anywhere near the diner. Come to think of it, in the dozen times I have been to Hifumi, I have yet to see any other customers. Makes you wonder how they have been able to stay in business all this time.

   What's more, most of the time when I pop into Hifumi, I find the place abandoned. Sometimes I can hear the distant sound of a television coming from another room. (Hifumi, like so many of these diners from olden days, is on the first floor of proprietor's home.) I often have to manufacture some racket—move the table about so that it grates against the concrete floor, or throw the sliding door open with a crash—before the goblins working in the Hifumi kitchen stir to life.

   The only item on the menu that I can safely recommend is the “Service Set” (☆☆☆) which includes two chicken cutlets, salad, rice, and soup for the low, low price of ¥450 ($4.50). With such rock-bottom prices, it’s no wonder Hifumi can’t afford to remodel.

   Part of me wants to advise them on how they might bring in some of the four-thousand-odd girls attending the local school, but then Hifumi has managed to survive the two Lost Decades since the end of the Shôwa Period. Perhaps, they know what their doing.

   The Hifumi Fried Rice. ☆

   The Hifumi Omuraisu. Looks as if it's been stabbed. ☆☆

   The Hifumi Chicken Rice ☆☆

---

[1] The exchange rate at the time was about ¥130 to the dollar, so I made roughly $1,900 a month.

[2] With my salary and moonlighting, I was earning about ¥350,000 per month. The yen would rise as high as ¥80 to the dollar in a year’s time, meaning in dollar terms I was making over four grand a month. I was working half as much, yet making double.

Boys Be Ambitious!

   They say youth is wasted on the young and you need no further evidence of this than the dismal results of an impromptu poll I conducted in some of my classes recently.

   The above is a poll of 39 university sophomores, all boys, at a local national university dedicated to information technology. 28 of them were single at the time of the survey, and, well, when you take into account that the university is only about five percent girls (biologically speaking, that is), it's hard to blame the guys. While there is the occasional knock-out among the co-eds--scarce as hen's teeth, though--the vast majority of women studying at the university will not be winning any beauty contests.

   What surprised me the most was that more than a third (35.9%) had never in their 19-odd years on this planet dated. That's pretty sad.

   You'd think that the situation would be better with women studying English at the famous co-educational private university where I teach part-time, but no, the figures are equally dismal. Of the 18 freshmen girls surveyed, only three had boyfriends. Two met their sweethearts in high school; the third was introduced to hers only a few months ago by a friend. Two claimed to be "lovey-dovey" at the time of they survey.

   In this class and another freshman class there was a handful of boys, as rare a commodity as girls at the public engineering college mentioned above. Nevertheless, none of lads had a lassie they could warm themselves with in the coming months of autumn and winter.

   A year ago, I invited a Nepali student at the engineering school and now a good friend of mine named Adi to come down to Fukuoka to observe some of my classes at the private university. I had the girls ask him questions--where are you from, why are you in Japan, what is your hobby, and so on--first. Later it was Adi's turn to ask the questions. He pointed to one of the few boys among the third year English literature students and asked if he had a girlfriend. No was the answer.

   Adi came down on the guy like a ton of bricks: "Shame on you! Man, you're surrounded by women and you haven't got a girlfriend? Shame on you!"

   The boy hung his head in defeat.

   Adi was right, of course.

   Yesterday morning, I asked the three boys (English Lit. majors) in my freshman class at the private university if any of them had girlfriends. None did. When class ended, I took the boys aside and said, "You're all reasonably good-looking. I mean it. When you're surrounded by women like this, there is no reason why you shouldn't have two or three girlfriends each. Seriously. So, I'm giving you some homework: get a girl before next Monday's class."

   "Will we fail the class if we don't?"

   "No, of course not. You'll still get an A, but you'll fail in life."

   One of the services I provide these hopeless boys is to show them what women are looking for in a partner. In the above, I asked the boys what they thought girls wanted. Then, I asked the girls what they were hoping to find in a boyfriend. It's funny that so many of them said chose "kindness" but, as I told the boys, girls will run all over you if you're too kind. Be cold, distant, uninterested, aloof, and the girls will flock to you. Nothing turns a girl off more than a guy who's desperate.

   Oh, yeah, be sure to make them laugh.

   The above was a survey of about ten freshmen women studying English literature. Below is a survey of twenty freshmen girls, all English majors, who were told to choose the three most important aspects from a list they provided. "Kind", "taller than me", and "funny" were the most popular answers. I suspect that the first two garnered the most votes because they were at the top of the list. In every single one of these surveys that I have conducted over the years humor has been found to be one of the most sought after attributes in a prospective partner. 

   Make 'em laugh, and you're halfway up their leg.

   Note: sawayaka, near the bottom of the first column, means "fresh", "refreshing". I suppose it refers to someone who isn't stuffy, gloomy, or introverted. Sociable, but not overly so. Cheerful, but not gratingly optimistic.

   Good luck, lads!

Gettin' There

   No.6, my second novel, rose to fourth place last week among best-selling works related to Japan. Does this mean I can retire from my day job and hang out with topless super models in the Côte d'Azur?

   No, unfortunately, it does not.

   But, it was encouraging. Not only is No.6 the only work of fiction in a field dominated by non-fiction to consistently rank so high, sales of the novel have started to gain something resembling momentum. My hope is that the work will go viral--preferrably while I still have teeth in my head.

   An earlier and free version of the novel can be read here.

Goddamn you, Sedaris!

   For the second time in a week, David Sedaris caused me to miss my train stop.

   I was reading the final chapter, if you can call it one, of his collection of essays and diary entries titled When you are Engulfed in Flames (2008).

   I've been a big fan of Sedaris ever since one of my brothers gave me his copy of Naked (1997). There was a "chapter" in that book, called "Something for Everyone", in which Sedaris describes finding money the day he graduated from college:

   "I found fifty dollars in the foyer of my Chicago apartment building. The single bill had been folded into eighths and was packed with cocaine. It occurred to me then that if I played my cards right, I might never have to find a job. People lost things all the time . . .

   "The following afternoon, hung over from cocaine, I found twelve cents and an unopened tin of breath mints. Figuring in my previous fifty dollars, that amounted to an average of twenty-five dolars and six cents per day which was still a decent wage. 

   "The next morning i discovered two pennies and a comb matted with short curly hairs. The day after that I found a peanut. It was then that I started to worry."

   I had already been grinning from ear to ear when I finished the previous chapter, something the Japanese passengers on the train found unsettling enough, but when I came to the line about the peanut I was convulsed by a bout of sniggering. I tried to hold it in, but I couldn't. The compulsion to laugh was too strong. My body rocked, my mouth sputtered, tears fell from my eyes.

   Passengers looked at me warily. Mothers placed protective arms around their children. Young women moved away.

   When the train arrived at the next station, I jumped from my seat and dashed out of the car to the platform where I burst out laughing. Oh, how good it felt!

   Sedaris did it to me again. 

   In the final chapter of When You are Engulfed in Flames, Sedaris first describes how he started smoking, how he found "his brand" of cigarettes, and how he came to his decision to "be finished with his smoking". The second half of the chapter is comprised of a three-month long journal he kept while in Japan where he went to kick the habit. Let me tell you, it's hillarious, a must-read for anyone who has lived or visited this country. 

   What's nice about reading a work like Sedaris's is that it allows you to see Japan with fresh eyes. When you've been here as long as I have, you stop getting gobsmacked by the things you encounter every day.

   The garbled and enigmatic English sentences found on nearly everything no longer attract your attention the way they once did, the removing of shoes at sometimes arbitrary locations and prancing around in dainty slippers doesn't quite bother you anymore, and the formerly unfathomable mindset of the Japanese around you gradually becomes common sense, so much so that when you return to your home country you can no longer understand why people there do things the way they do.

   I have a box of old letters. Yes, letters. We used to write things down on paper. We'd fold the paper up and stuff it into an envelope which we would then take to a post office where we'd have it weighed. After buying the proper postage, the letter would then be dropped into a mail box or the postman's mail bag where it would be taken to a distribution center and sorted by hand. Eventually, the letter would make it onto a flight bound for the United States, and if you were lucky it would arrive at its destination within a week's time. The reply would take about two to three months to come.

   So, if you wrote in your letter that you were feeling depressed, you're friend might reply six to twelve weeks later: "I'm sorry you're not happy." By then, of course, you would have probably forgotten what had been depressing you at the time. 

   It's tempting to crack open that old box--actually it's a large plastic container jam-packed with correspondence--and start posting them. Then again, it's probably better to sleeping dogs lie.

Questions for the Mayor

   In November of 2010 Sôichirô Takashima was elected mayor of Fukuoka with a 13-point lead over the incumbent. At only 36 years of age, the former TV presenter became the city's youngest, and perhaps most photogenic, mayor the city has ever had.

   Several months into his first term, the editor-in-chief of Fukuoka Now, a local foreign language monthly magazine, sat down with the mayor for an interview. Prior to the interview, a call for questions was put out, and I came up with the following twelve. Many of these remain unanswered.

1. Far too often, Edô, Meiij, and Taishô era residences and buildings are torn down only to be replaced with parking lots or shabby, prefab buildings. What can the city do to better protect its architectural and cultural heritage?

2. In most western cities, and in many of the better Asian cities as well, the waterfront area is one of the more beautiful parts of a city. In Fukuoka, however, the waterfront is a jumble of ugly warehouses and shipyards. As visitors from China and Korea arrive at the city's ports they are greeted with an eyesore. What can be done to make the "face" of the city more beautiful?

3. Traveling from Tenjin to Dazaifu, a trip of only 20 km, one passes through four different cities. Four different cities with four mayors, four city halls, four different manhole cover designs, four different civic and cultural halls, four assemblies, and so on, all spending money on unnecessary projects, tearing down what should be registered as cultural assests and replacing them with eyesores. How would you feel about merging Fukuoka City with neighboring mini-cities to cut wasteful spending, increase the tax base, and coordinate planning?

4. Several years ago, the Nanakuma Line opened to much fanfare. Ridership, however, never met expectations. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is the inconvenience of both ends of the line: Minami Tenjin Station and Hashimoto Station. If the Nanakuma Line were extended to connect with Meinohama (and later Atagohama/Momochihama) on the western end and Hakata station and the International airport on the eastern end, I am certain that the number of passengers will increase. What are your plans for making the subway system more relevant?

5. Throughout Japan, and in Fukuoka too, many historical spots are indicated by little more than concrete posts stating that this is the location that such and such happened. This is a missed opportunity to make the history live, to build authentic sightseeing spots. How can Fukuoka better highlight its historical heritage?

6. There was talk some years ago of making Tenjin a free wifi area. As far as I can tell, this has not yet happened. With the growth of the smartphone market, having a free wifi area in the busiest parts of the city would help foster an environment that benefits creators of software and content for these devices. What do you think?

7. Daimyô and other areas would benefit greatly by having many of the streets turned into one-way roads, with small parks or green areas throughout. This would smooth traffic flow and enhance the quality of living for residents and visitors alike. What do you think?

8. What is the city doing to protect some of its older trees and green areas?

9. Many of the parks are poorly maintained. Gardeners come in only once every few months, hack at the weeds, trim limbs, and then leave the parks to be overrun with weeds, garbage, and the homeless once again. What can the city do to better maintain these areas, to make them places people would be happy to visit?

10. Nishitestu buses often cause more congestion than they solve. A better system would be to have zones, with a few dedicated bus lines that transect the city and transfer points where passengers could catch their connecting busses. Instead we now have twenty or more different bus lines that all go down, for example, Meij or Showa Dôri. The current system is wasteful, polluting, and inconvenient. What do you think?

11. Fukuoka is the hometown of many of Japan's most popular celebrities and entertainers. How can the city better use their fame to promote the city? Of course, these people should not expect to be paid, but should do it out of love and pride for their hometown.

12. The city, as you surely know, has a lot of debt, much of it caused by poorly planned projects, such as Island City, Super Brand City, and so on. How can those who make bad decisions with public money be held more accountable for their mistakes?

Not much music, not much life

   One of many impromptu (and not very scientific) surveys of my students' consumption habits. As someone who has been a voracious buyer of music since elementary school, I find it hard to believe that young people today purchase so few albums. 

   By the time I was in college, I had already amassed a very nice collection of vinyl L.P.s.

   Yes, vinyl. L.P.s were large, circular black things that had had grooves in them. You would place a stylus, which was a kind of needle, into the outermost groove of the record which spun at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute. The grooves would make the needle vibrate, producing sound that was then amplified electronically. These audio systems, called record players or turntables, were not very portable, so when you listened to music, you generally had to stay in one room if you wanted to listen to music.

   Seriously.

Those who can - Yôyôkaku

   There’s a saying I don’t care for much. I first heard it when I was in high school, spoken by a person who considered himself a self-made man. Like many self-made men, he held education in contempt.

   “I didn’t go to college, and look at me!”

   I think he expected me to be impressed, but I wasn’t. I thought of him a buffoon. Successful in his own—albeit limited—way, yes; but a buffoon, nonetheless. 

   “University is a waste of time,” he said. “I’d much rather be out in the world getting my hands dirty, making money.”

   People like him tend to also have a deep-rooted disdain for teachers. “Those who can, do,” they’ll tell you. “Those who can’t, teach.”

   I heard that a lot growing up and let me tell you if you ever want to undermine someone’s enthusiasm for education just keep whispering that into his ear.

   Having spent almost all of my life in education, first as a student and later as a teacher, I can say with some confidence that such a glib denunciation of educators is not without merit.

   The other day I was talking to a new member of my soccer team. A Canadian, he is working at one of the largest universities in western Japan. Let me just add that Canadians are to expat teachers what the Irish once were to Catholic priests who were dispatched to the four corners of the earth to convert the heathens. Despite Canada's modest population, you’ll find a Canuck teaching at pretty much every institution of higher learning in Japan. That, at least, has been my experience at the seven-odd Japanese universities I’ve worked at so far.

   Anyways, this Canadian and I had met once several years earlier when the two of us were teaching part-time at a dental college here in town. Like me, he had also worked at the college’s sister school for dental hygienists. The girls might not have been the sharpest tools in the shed, but some of them were damn cute.

   “I was interviewing the students one-on-one, and asked a girl what color her shirt was,” the Canadian told me, “but she didn’t understand the question. So, I tugged on my shirt and asked her again. And what does she do? She grabs her tits and says, ’Momo?’”

   If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. It didn’t make sense to me, either.

   Thinking about it a minute, I realized the Canadian had probably meant to say oppai, which is Japanese for “boobs” or “breasts”, rather than momo, which is the Japanese word for “thigh”. I’m also guessing that the girl in her confusion was asking her teacher if he was inquiring about the color of her nipples. Stranger misunderstandings have happened.

   I laughed politely, and then went back to lacing up my cleats.

   Now, the reason I bring this conversation up is that a few minutes later I overheard him telling another person on our team that his masters was in education, education with an emphasis on vocabulary acquisition.

   I almost cracked up. The guy’s been in Japan for a decade and a half, immersed, as they say, in the language, and despite being an expert in "vocabulary acquisition" is so utterly hopeless at speaking Japanese that he doesn’t know his tits from his arses. (Being quite the boob man myself, I picked up the word oppai within weeks of my coming to Japan.)

   Those who can’t, teach, indeed.

   Let me tell you, I have lost count of the number of people I’ve come across over the years—all with advanced degrees in TEFL or TESL—who cannot speak a foreign language themselves if their lives depended upon it. There are also multitudes of English teachers, native speakers mind you, whose own children struggle to utter even the simplest of English phrases, meaning they haven’t done much of a job teaching the very people you’d think they would be most motivated to teach: their own children.

   Those who can, don’t.

   And then there are the Japanese professors of English. The older they are, the worse. Their command of English is so tenuous I find it highly dubious that they are able to understand the very literature they claim to be so familiar with.

   At the very beginning of the school year, the freshmen girls were corralled into busses and taken to the city of Karatsu in Saga Prefecture for a two-day orientation. Since I was not an advisor, I was able to skip out and explore the town for a couple of hours.

   During my walk, I came upon an old ryokan called Yôyôkaku. A member of the Exquisite 12 Ryokans of Japan, Yôyôkaku is “the quintessential Japanese-style inn” with “distinct reminders of traditional Japanese-style inns of yesteryear . . . there is nothing that the Inn’s unlimited relaxing hospitality highlights more than the delectable joy of seafood cuisine from the Genkai-nada Sea.” (Who writes this crap?)

   Verbose brochures aside, Yôyôkaku was a real find, a place I would quickly recommend to anyone not traveling on a tight budget. (Rooms go for 15~30,000 yen per person.) One of the charms of the inn was the okami (女将), or proprietress, who showed me around the inn. The woman had such grace and dignity. What’s more, she spoke beautiful English, far better than, and with none of the arrogance of, most of the professors of English I have come across all these years.

   Those who can, do indeed.

Daimyô-henge

Shisa: Holding the Fort

The Balls Giveth, the Balls Taketh Away

   Earlier last month, the results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. (what a mouthful) caused quite a stir in the media. The longitudinal study of 600 men in the Philippines found that, one, men with higher testosterone levels in the morning (known as "waking T") were likely to be partnered fathers four and half years later when a follow-up study was conducted, and, two, those who had become fathers experienced large declines in their waking T. Fathers who engaged in three or more hours of childcare were found to have even lower levels of testosterone.

   Well now, I could have told you so much.

   Although surrounded by young women, day in and day out, thanks to the salubrious nature of my work at a women’s college, sex has been one of the last things on my mind ever since the birth of my son. Until I read the report, I had just assumed it was the lack of sleep that was putting the damper on my libido. (If given the choice, I would much rather have a long afternoon nap than a moonlight tryst.)

   According to an article in the New York Times, “Scientists say this suggests a biological trade-off, with high testosterone helping secure a mate, but reduced testosterone better for sustaining family life. ‘A dad with lower testosterone is maybe a little more sensitive to cues from his child, and maybe he’s a little less sensitive to cues from a woman he meets at a restaurant,’ said Peter Gray, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has conducted unrelated research on testosterone in fathers.”

   Makes perfect sense to me, but them I’m a little woozy after yet another fitful night’s sleep.

Hitting the Roof

   One of the first things you may notice when traveling to Okinawa is how different the construction of traditional houses is from that in other parts of Japan. The red terra cotta roof tiles are particularly conspicuous.

   While the people of Okinawa today take pride in these red roof tiles, known as akagawara (赤瓦), the tiles were once considered embarrassingly provincial and deliberately painted black or gray in order to more closely resemble those found in other parts of Japan and Korea.

   In the 18^th century, as construction of buildings and houses accelerated in the Ryûkyûs, the red tiles made from locally mined clay called kucha were produced in order to save time and money. These were then painted over. An example of the gray tiles can be found here.

   Another distinctive feature of the Okinawan roof is the copious amount of cement or mortar used to fix the tiles in place. Because the islands deal with typhoons on a regular basis, the roofs have been designed with these strong winds in mind.

   The roofs often feature the crest of the family, known as a kamon, at the base of the roof. In the photo above, you can see the chrysthanemum crest.

Sign o' the Times

   The other evening the doorbell rang. When I went to go see who it was, I found a balding salesman with an awful set of teeth. He had come to my door before several months earlier trying to hawk a membership to a chain of restaurants and probably assumed that I didn’t remember him from all the other salesmen that come a-knocking at my door. Or, perhaps he just didn’t remember me.

  That happens a lot--my remembering people but not being remembered in return, so much so, it used to get me down.

   I long suspected that the reason I was being forgotten was that I was failing to leave an impression strong enough on the people I met. Obviously, what I needed to do was to assert myself more. I needed to be a go-getter, a hustler with a powerful handshake and a ready smile! That is, at least, what my father used to grumble to me about when I was growing up. A niggling doubt has remained with me ever since. (Let's call it my legacy.)

   But, then, my wife offered up an alternative theory: “The reason people don’t remember you is because they’re not very bright. They simply haven’t got as good a memory as you do.”

   She said to me this after I had finally gotten ‘round to meeting a new friend of hers named Laura.

   The two of them had met a few months earlier at a local park where they had brought their children to play. Before long, they were meeting for coffee and having lunch together. One day, my wife showed me a picture of Laura and all the things she had mentioned about the woman came together.

   “I know her,” I said. “We met about ten years ago and chatted briefly. We were never friends, but we knew many of the same people. She might even know me.”

   “She said she didn’t.”

   “Did you show her a picture of me?”

   “Yes, and she said she still didn’t know me.”

   Granted, as the sexy, vivacious and outgoing Filipina that she was, Laura was going to leave more of an impression on people than a brooding and quiet undiscovered author like me ever would. Still, there really weren’t that many foreigners living in Fukuoka at the time. Even if we hadn’t met and chatted all those years ago, she could have at least remembered my face. Not the most handsome one, I suppose, but certainly not a monstrosity.

   So, be it.

   It goes without saying that I felt much better after my wife paid me that compliment and I can stand a little taller now when I meet someone for the second time who says, not as a question, but as a statement of presumed fact: “We haven’t met, have we?”

   So, the salesman at the door says he’s sorry to disturb me, but do you have time?

   I tell him I don’t.

   He continues speaking all the same. What has he got to lose?

   To my surprise, he does not have anything to sell me today. He is, instead, willing to pay good money for old jewelry.

   “Have you got any gold or platinum lying, say, in the back of a drawer or in your closet?”

   “’Fraid not,” I say, closing the door.

   Gold. Now, if you want to see something (choose the adjective most appropriate to your emotional and financial circumstance: amazing, shocking, exciting, disgusting, frightening, etc.), go check the meteoric rise in the price of the spot gold over the past five to ten years. Up and up and up she goes, when she’ll drop nobody knows. Those in the business of selling gold will have you believe that the price will continue to climb indefinitely. Maybe they’re right. Personally, I believe that so long as the economic situation remains unpredictable, investors will continue to purchase gold in lieu of other investments as a store of value, meaning the price will probably rise further. Some argue the price will rise as high as $2,300 per ounce this year. (It hovered around $1,800 earlier this month.) That said, buying gold as an “investment” doesn’t make much sense. As the Economist wrote in 2010, “it pays neither a dividend, like a share, nor a coupon, like a bond, nor a rent, like property.”

   Contrary to what I told the gold buyer, I do own gold. Quite a bit of it, actually, in bullion and coin. I started purchasing gold regularly about five years ago when prices were half what they are today. My reason for doing so was not as an investment--although it has been mildly entertaining to watch the price shoot up over the years--but rather as insurance.

   I am not so much a pessimist as I am wary. It is not inconceivable that Japan’s economy collapse one day under the weight of public debt and the yen loses much of its value, or that China decides to gain, by military force, access to the frozen methane or other natural gasses under the waters lying in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, or that a desperate North Korea lobs several Taepo Dong missiles at the country, or that Japan is incapacitated by another cataclysmic natural disaster. And, I don’t want to be stranded, unable to return to the States or wherever it is I would flee to, when that days comes. Hence the gold.

   Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.

   In Lebanon, it is not unusual for families of means to keep a horde of cash in a variety of currencies (as well as AK47s and ammunition) in case civil war breaks out again--always a possibility--or Israel with its itchy trigger finger--decides to bomb. (Few people in the west are unaware of the frequency of Israeli air strikes against, and incursions into, the country.) Seeing how my relatives there prepared for such possibilities impressed me the last time I visited and I started thinking more seriously about my own family’s security.

   Another sign of the times came via a fax--yes, a fax--that arrived the very same evening. (The only reason I have a fax machine is because people still insist on sending documents that way.) It was sent by the Recruit company, a classified, publishing, and human resource giant here in Japan. Recruit publishes a number of magazines, one of which is Keiko to Manabu. Literally meaning “Lessons and Learning”, the title of the magazine is a homonym of a woman’s name, Keiko, and a Man’s name, Manabu, lending it, I suppose, a friendly ring. The magazine is published regionally and features ads for all kinds of schools. If you want to learn, for example, how to put on a kimono (what the Japanese call kitsuke) you just thumb through the magazine to that section and look at the schools listed there and call one up.

   I used to advertise in Keiko to Manabu. The first time I placed an ad in the magazine was about ten years ago. At the time, the only schools advertising in it were the major nation-wide Eikaiwa chains, such as Aeon, Geos, and Nova. Considering the cost of an ad, I could understand why. The cheapest ad, a dinky 1/8-page rectangle, cost about 70-80,000 yen per month.

   But, my business at the time was suffering and I needed to do something different to get new students as the method I had been using was no longer effective. (Too many people were imitating me.) So, biting the bullet, I took out a series of ads with the magazine and crossed my fingers.

   To my delight, the ad was a huge success so I continued using K&T for the next several years. Eventually, I managed to get the price down to 50,000 yen a month, which was still kind of expensive for a small operation like mine, but I could generally recoup the cost through new enrollment within a few months.

   But then five years or so ago, the effectiveness of the ad started to peter out. One of the problems was the Nova bankruptcy, which put a damper on the entire English-learning market, another was the number of other small school owners who were once again following my modest lead. And so, I pulled my ads. (Incidentally, I have since eschewed print media entirely, sticking to the Internet where I seem to once again have the edge over my competition.)

   In the years that I stopped advertising in K&T and a number of other magazines, I have watched with interest how the price of advertising in print media has come down, down, down. They can’t give the space away anymore. And that is what some of them do. One saleswoman called to say they had a space that had to be filled by tonight. How much, I asked. Ten thousand yen. “Ten thousand yen?" I said. "Deal!” I got three students out of that, two of whom studied for over three years, meaning a ten-thousand yen gamble on the advertising roulette table paid out over 25:1. Not bad.

   Yesterday evening’s fax from Keiko to Manabu made a tempting offer and for the first time in years I seriously considered once again placing an ad in the magazine. One month’s advertising fee only cost five thousand yen. Five thousand yen! (I spend that much money on a bottle of rum.) In addition, they were throwing in advertising space on their online site for free. Such space used to go for about twenty-thousand a month.

   In the end, I crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the garbage. Obviously, at prices that low the magazine no longer had the pull it once had. I might gain a student or two, yes, but I would probably gain five salesmen who would hound me into placing further ads in their magazine. No thanks.

   Let me tell you, as much as I like watching the TV series Mad Men, advertising is not a business I would like to be in today.

Ukiha

   Ukiha is a small farming town (now designated a cityーうきは市ーthanks to its merger with neighboring Yoshii Machi) in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture. While the center of the town itself has a collection of traditional houses and buildings that it is trying to promote as a tourist destination, I'm afraid I haven't been there personally. (You'll have to take the city's HP's word that it's worth visiting.) I have, however, on a number of occasions been into the mountains to an area called Ukiha Machi Shinkawa (浮羽町新川) to see the terraced rice paddies--known as tanada (棚田) or dandan batake (段々畑)--and the higan bana (彼岸花, lycoris radiata or cluster amaryllis) which bloom, appropriately, around o-higan, that is, during the equinoctal week in autumn.

   Although there is a bus that dawdles its way up the winding mountain road, the best way to get there is by car. You take route 210 to route 105 and follow it all the way up, past the dam, and on up into the mountains until you start seeing the terraced rice paddies. Keep going on up as far as you can, then get out and hike up the rest of the way. Trust me, it's worth the trip.

   The best time to go is in early September, just before the rice is harvested or shortly after the rice harvesting has begun as the contrast between fields of rice that have already been cleared and those waiting to be is quite beautiful.

   Along the borders of the rice fields you'll find a curious looking flower called the higan bana. The generally come in two colors: red and white. According to Mr. Wiki:

  "The bulbs of Lycoris radiata are very poisonous. These are mostly used in Japan, and they are used to surround their paddies and houses to keep the pest and mice away. That is why most of them grow close to rivers now. In Japan the Red Spider Lily signals the arrival of fall. Many Buddhist will use it to celebrate the arrival of fall with a ceremony at the tomb of one of their ancestors. They plant them on graves because it shows a tribute to the dead. People believe that since the Red Spider Lily is mostly associated with death that one should never give a bouquet of these flowers."

No Nukes!

   There was a rather large anti-nuclear power demonstration in Fukuoka last Sunday, six months to the day that the earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tôhoku region of Japan and set into motion a chain of events that would lead to a core meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

   I’ve been watching the anti-nuke movement with great interest, not only because I have completely lost faith in the safety of Japan’s nuclear power plants, but because it has in recent decades been quite unusual for young Japanese to take an active interest in politics.

   The demonstrators’ main demand that day was for the nuclear power plants at Genkai which are operated by Kyûshu Electric (Kyûden) to be closed down.

   Three months ago, on the third anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami, a similar demonstration was held. One of the most striking posters I saw that day featured a map of Japan with the Genkai nuclear power plants in the southwest, a radioactive cloud billowing from the plant, and arrows indicating the northeasterly direction of the prevailing winds. A sentence below claimed that if Genkai were to suffer a fate similar to that of Fukushima, all of Japan would be destroyed. A bit hyperbolic, perhaps, but it did get me thinking. 

   Last night there was a special on TV Tôkyô called Akira Ikegami’s Special: Thinking about Energy (池上彰のエネルギーを考えるSP). Ikegami, a veteran journalist and TV presenter most famous for a weekly news program he used to host (そうだったのか!池上彰の学べるニュース), has a remarkable talent for tackling difficult issues and making them accessible to ordinary TV audiences. (Hell, even I can understand what he’s usually trying to say.)

   In last night’s special, he first introduced the problem facing today, namely that Japan needs energy and it’s current method of producing it is flawed. Since the Tôhoku earthquake all but eleven of Japan’s 54 nuclear power reactors have stopped producing electricity as they undergo safety reviews. According to Ikegami, it is highly unlikely that any of the nuclear power plants will be allowed to go back on-line. What is more, the remaining 11 nukes still producing electricity today, including two of the four at Genkai, will probably be shut down by next spring.

   Meaning?

   The demonstrators will soon have their demands met. Of course, there is still the problem of the fuel rods, which are so hot that it will take a minimum of ten years to cool them down. (This alone is pure madness to me. And, don’t get me started on nuclear waste.)

   In terms of energy production, Ikegami offered another interesting statistic: where 33% of the nation’s energy production had been nuclear before the Fukushima accident, today that figure stands at only 14%. (Thermal power production has gone from 62% to 77%, hydropower from 5% to 9%) This was another demand of anti-nuke demonstrators. Instead of using nuclear power plants to supply the base electricity demand, they wanted nuclear energy to be used to produce supplemental electricity only at times when demand exceeded what could be produced by other means.

   After highlighting the problem of Japan’s energy needs, Ikegami went on to discuss some of the more commonly proposed alternatives--wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy--and their advantages and disadvantages. In short, he argued that high costs and other limitations would mean that none of these would be viable sources of power for at least the next ten years. In the long term, however, shale gas, high-tech coal-burning plants like one in Yokohama which produces very little emission-wise, and frozen methane should provide cheap, clean, and plentiful energy for the next century. Knock on wood.