October 1, 2002

  • What is in a name?

    Specifically, how important is your surname to you?

    The reason I ask is because Ive been thinking lately about the fact that I am the last male in my family, have two daughters and am unlikely to have any more children (Id love to but mrs bln has had enough she says). Because of this, my surname, or at least the branch that ends with me, will be no more.

    To tell the truth, I feel a bit sad about that. Not because my family name is enormously rare or because I think its a name particularly worth saving but because it represents a line of ancestors going back, presumably, to Saxon times; a line which abruptly ends right here with me.

    A sense of my family history is important to me. I dont mean the tracing back through time of bloodlines and family trees but the personal history; stories that my parents and grandparents have told me and letters that I have read, found carefully stored for posterity. Those long dead people are part of who I am, part of who my children are and their children will be. And my name is intrinsic to that; it is what binds us all together.

    During my life I have met a few people with very unusual first names, I expect you have too. In my experience, they have tended to be pretty unusual people themselves, as though somehow the oddness of their name becomes just as much a part of them as their habits and appearance. For us less unusual folk too, our names are an important part of who we are and somehow we are our names.

    A common sentiment in Japan is that piercing, even of the ears, is wrong because your body is a gift from your parents; a gift that shouldnt be damaged so selfishly. In the same way, I think, a name is the parents gift to the child and it is a gift that deserves careful choosing. Parents who give their children outlandish names are to some extent, I think, giving them a a carelessly chosen gift.

    (As an aside, Ive never understood the custom, particularly popular in the States, it seems, of naming your child after yourself and your father and his father so that you end up with a John W. Codswallop III, for example. What, like King George III? What is that?)

    Well, I do have a slim hope, I suppose. If we stay in Japan one of my daughters might marry a man who would accept her family name and become a youshi ; an adopted son. And thereby ensuring that this fine old Anglo Saxon surname of mine would continue for the time being at least....in Japan..........

    Because women of course, at least in most societies, are obliged to give up their family name on getting married. Which is where the whole concept of the succession of surnames becomes rather complicated....

    So how important is your surname to you? Is it even something you care about?

    And for those of you who were wondering, my daughters names are Hannah Rhiannon and Maya Mireille and my surname is the Saxon word for a wood on top of a hill.....

    That's a 'wood', not a 'woody', Wally....

September 9, 2002

  • This last weekend has been, unusually for me, grog fuelled but I'm happy to report that I came through it all relatively unscathed.

    It started on Friday, as it always does. Now there are a number of reasons why I don't drink and drive and foremost among them is the $3000 fine if caught. No, actually, foremost among them is the fact that I'd lose my licence. No, actually, foremost among them is undoubtedly the fact that my wife would never, never ever ever in a thousand years ever, let me forget about it if I ever got caught.

    Putting aside the fact that it's a dumb thing to do anyway. (And, just as a sidenote, did you know that in Japan every passenger in the car (over 20) is automatically fined $1000 too, for allowing the driver to drive drunk...)

    Well anyway, because I don't have to worry about driving, I generously give myself free rein with the old amber nectar and, to coin a phrase, paint my toenails red. (This is what you can be said to do if your boisterousness is not quite up to painting the town red, or even the bar for that matter, but is noisy enough for other patrons to look over with a 'what's going on over there' kind of look)

    Friday was spent celebrating (although that's a wholly unsuitable word in this case) the imminent departure back to Canada of my friends Marcel and Lisa. I trundled off home at about 3am to find my wife doing the accounts. I'd like to have been able to say at this point that I came home to find my wife cavorting in something small and easily removed but sadly no; she was all done up in her no nonsense jimjams and it was early to bed with no dessert for bobsleftnut that night. This is a good opportunity to take a quick detour and make a proposal to you guys. I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but if you don't tell her, I certainly won't...my wife possesses but the one pair of what could charitably be called sexy undies. She tends to wear undergarments of a more functional nature and when I asked her about this she said that she thought it was a waste of money to buy expensive sexy stuff. "But," I said, "if you wear something sexy, you'll feel sexier yourself and besides, if I slide my hand inside your panties and find them coming up to my elbow, that sort of takes the tang out of things for me, somehow."
    She of course just gave me the sort of look that tells me that she won't be buying herself any in the immediate future.

    Anyway, since that means that I don't get much excitement of that nature these days, my proposal is that each of you send me a photo of your underwear, I'll make up a mix and match game and you can all guess whose panties are whose. Needless to say, you don't actually have to be wearing the things, although I might award special prizes if you are. And also needless to say, this is an equal opportunity panty proposal, so all you guys out there join in too. (I think that means you Wally...)
    I will of course be adding my own pair to the pile. So get to it by sending your pics HERE

    OK, detour over, back to the boozing. On Saturday night there was a barbecue at my wife's folks' place. Now you should know that any 'do' there is not going to be the sort of event that I'd want you guys to come to. Not unless your idea of a fun filled social gathering revolves around the television and inter familial squabbling. By virtue of not being a blood relation (and a foreigner to boot), I get to excuse myself from any bickering going on and by virtue of having no interest in it, I get to excuse myself from watching the TV. So what I do is sort of take myself off into the darkest corner I can find with a large bottle of sake and do my level best to drink as much as I can before I fall asleep. From time to time someone will come over to check that my glass isn't empty, which it isn't, or to bring me another plate of whatever I need, which I probably do. Come to think of it, it'd be infinitely more fun with you guys there, so the next time, you're all invited. This party was pretty much as all the others; Aunt Naomi expressed amazement at my ability with chopsticks (which she's been doing every time we've met for the past 8 years, but which I forgive her for because she's usually the only one who comes over to drink with me and she likes to drink...), Uncle Hiroshi was drunk within about 30 minutes of arriving and, as he too has done every time we've met over the last eight years, expressed amazement that I was drinking sake. I find that I am able to adequately plumb the depths of my ability to grin inanely at people if the ratio of sake to grinning never falls below 3 to 1. This revelry continued until only my wife and her two younger brothers were still up. I (pretty much off my tits by this point) decided that now would be a good time to tell the brothers that although my wife never actually tells them (and in fact although she never does anything but complain about them), she really loves them both an awful lot and why couldn't they all get on and talk nicely to each other....
    Which in the event turned out to be a really cunning plan to become the only person still awake in the entire house, thus giving me the opportunity to slip into the garden for a quick somethingorother. Which in the event turned out not to be a really cunning plan, because I immediately remembered that I had to get up at 7am to go sweet potato digging....

    One of the misconceptions that the Japanese have of the English is that we are all keen gardeners. Personally, I like looking at gardens, but no one has ever accused me of being green fingered. However this doesn't prevent me from being invited to events of a horticultural nature from time to time and on Sunday (early on Sunday actually), my family and I were invited to help another family dig up the sweet potatoes in their vegetable garden.

    Over the years I have perfected the ability to stand around looking knowledgeable and businesslike, which is a useful ability in situations like these. Small children were assigned trowels and shown where to dig and soon a veritable stack of satsumaimon was unearthed. I appointed myself i/c putting potatoes into bags and am happy to report that I fulfilled this arduous task with great aplomb...

    Digging dispensed with, we repaired to our friends' house where ice cold cans of beer were soon produced. Then more cans appeared which we had to do away with and then more cans and so on until we found that mysteriously all the beer in the house had somehow managed to get itself drunk. Calamity was easily averted by a trip to the nearby convenience store and so the afternoon continued into the early evening, when dear old mrs bln decided that enough beer was enough and it was time to go home.

    And thusly did my weekend come to a close. Except that when I got home I remembered that I still had a couple of cans chilling happily at the back of the fridge, ready for just such an occasion. So while the missus and the young nuts were doing their ablutions, I sank back into my exceedingly comfortable armchair, popped open a can and let the world whirl on around me.....

August 28, 2002

  • There seem to be quite a few things that my wife doesn't understand about me.

    She doesn't understand my wish to shave my head, for example. She doesn't understand my penchant for certain combustibles. She doesn't understand my ability to say, "Fuck it, I'll do it tomorrow" and then say exactly the same thing again when tomorrow arrives.

    But I think that the part of me that leaves her the most bewildered and frustrated is my attitude towards money.

    Simply put, I'm just not interested in the stuff.

    That's not to say that I don't appreciate money and what it can do; it's essentially that I seem to have a whole host of other things I consider more important.

    Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy many of the things that money buys me and I know that without it life would be miserable. I just can't work up any enthusiasm for the pursuit of it.

    I have no interest in matters financial; it bores me to distraction to have to think about savings plans and pensions and balancing checkbooks. My wife on the other hand, loves it all. The thought of it; how much we have, how much we're going to have and the facilitating thereof.

    And all that is OK; she can do her thing and I can let her, comfortable in the knowledge that she's doing a much better job of things than I ever would. The problem arises when it comes to my business.

    As I think you're probably aware, I am a teacher. I have my own school where I teach English to a total of about 120 students; adults and kids. I employ 2 part time teachers to help me and business is pretty good. Best of all, I really enjoy what I do, something I know that not everyone can say.

    But I like things as they are. If I expand the business as my wife believes I should, more and more I will have to take off my teacher's cap and replace it with a businessman's hat. I will have to give up the part of my job that I love and devote myself to business plans and bank managers, which I would hate. And all this because my wife feels we need more money.

    It's not that she's greedy; far from it, she's the most frugal person I know. She simply wants to safeguard our family's future. But I'm a terrible businessman. If you want to succeed in business, you have to want to build on your success, to want to grow and most importantly, to be good with money....

    But success can be measured in other ways, at least in my mind. I'd rather be known as the best than the biggest and I truly get a kick out of knowing that I'm helping people to overcome the challenge of learning a language, while at the same time being reasonably priced. It makes me happy when people tell me how cheap my prices are! Too much of English teaching here is about money; schools charge huge amounts for classes with native speakers and often native speakers without any formal teaching qualifications. To give you an idea, one of the biggest schools in Japan charges students $3000 a year for a once a week 50 minute long group class and they have to pay the full amount in advance... I charge my students because we need to live; to have a roof over our heads, be fed and clothed and have enough left over to save, have a yearly holiday and go out for a meal from time to time....and they provide that. I'd honestly do it for free if I was able...OK, maybe we could do with a little more, (who couldn't?) but I just can't summon up any enthusiasm for the task of making that happen...

    And like I said, my wife finds that hard to understand.

August 22, 2002

  • Most likely, the name Amina Lawal will, I am sure, mean nothing to you.

    She is a 30 year old Nigerian woman with an 8 month old baby. Nothing so special about that.

    What is special about her though, is that her baby, Wasila, was born out of wedlock and a court in the Islamic state of Katsina, where she lives, have decreed that she must pay for her 'crime' by being stoned to death.

    She gave birth in January and, when charged with 'adultery', told the authorities the father was Yahaya Mahmud, her boyfriend of 11 months. She said he seduced her with an offer of marriage. This fellow has denied being the father, even though he does admit to being her boyfriend.

    Under Sharia, the Islamic Law, four witnesses are required to convict a man of adultery while an unmarried woman may be condemned simply for becoming pregnant. The court have ruled that the sentence shall be carried out when she weans her child, probably in about 2 years' time....

    Being tolerant of other cultures is a Good Thing. We cannot and should not condemn other cultures because our own perspective on life differs from theirs. Likewise, tolerance of others' religious beliefs is to be encouraged. We do things one way and they do things another way. So be it.

    And yet.....

    However tolerant I believe myself to be, I am sickened and saddened by this news. Human rights groups internationally are doing what they can but how successful their efforts will be remains to be seen.

    Now I'm not a religious person myself, certainly not in the Christian sense, although I was brought up to believe. I don't go to church and I don't pray. Normally. But I'm praying now. I'm praying that somehow sense will prevail and that this unfortunate woman will be allowed to live. Her name is Amina Lawal. Spare a thought for her, please.....


    And while we're thinking about cultural differences....

    There are times when I wonder whether bringing up my children in Japan is a good idea. Generally, Japanese society caters well to children and certainly it's a safe place for little ones. Children walk to school alone (or with friends) from the first year of elementary school; I've become quite accustomed to seeing 6 year olds walking home alone along busy roads...
    There are plenty of family restaurants and parks and a host of places which cater to kids and generally speaking, Japanese people dote on kids.

    My concern comes from the less obvious, the parts of the Japanese psyche which I am not altogether sure about and which my own kids are exposed to. Specifically, today I'm in a bit of a lather about the Japanese obsession with poo....

    Now poo of course, is an important part of a small child's life. Toilet training and the freedom that success in that field brings is an important step in a child's development. Different people, even within the same culture, will have different opinions about how this should be achieved and all that is fine and good. What I'm not so sure about is the need for the glorification of poo.

    In my early years in Japan, I was constantly amazed by how often kids here draw pictures of poop. Always a little steaming pile, drawn in their notebooks, on the whiteboard, in my notebook...wherever. They were at it constantly. Kids don't do that in England and as far as I'm aware, North American children too seem to find other things to draw. Often that little steaming pile will have a face too; they anthropomorphize their fecal matter...

    Now, all of this might be considered to be but a childish phase, something they will soon grow out of and no cause for concern. Maybe so, but I wonder....

    Pause for thought : why is scatological porn so popular in Japan? Why do children's comics contain such a high proportion of poop and are the two connected?

    This morning I took my elder daughter, Hannah, to see a kids' drama at the local community center. I didn't know what the play was going to be, just that going seemed like a good idea and something she might enjoy.

    When we got there I discovered that I had brought my daughter to see

    "Who Pooped on Mr Mole?"

    This charming piece centered on the unfortunate Mr Mole, who, popping his head above ground one day, found himself being dumped upon by person or persons unknown. Having washed himself off, he set out on a journey to discover the identity of the phantom crapper, his quest taking him around the garden in search of the culprit. The set was tastefully decorated with pictures of poop, just in case any of us in the audience had missed the point.

    Now, OK, I have to admit, I actually quite enjoyed the play and Hannah too. But I was left wondering whether the same story might not have been told with a different emphasis had it been in a Western culture. "Who Sat on Mr Mole?" or "Who Stole Mr Mole's Sunglasses?", something along those lines...

    Now don't get me wrong; I'm all in favour of promoting a healthy interest in the human body and its various functions. The question is where to draw the line; when does a healthy interest become an unhealthy obsession?

    I don't know about you guys, but I'm off to have a dump and think about it....

July 24, 2002





  • My maternal grandparents met in Palestine. He was a policeman there at the time it was still a British colony. She was a Polish Jewess who had gone out to stay with her aunt in Jerusalem. One day her aunt's home was burgled and the police were called. My grandfather arrived to take the report but spent more time looking at the young girl in the background than listening to her aunt's story, by all accounts. At any rate, he later returned to ask her out and that was that.

    Having decided to marry, they travelled to Poland in January 1939 to meet her parents, who gave their blessing. My grandfather was given a gold Omega watch by his future father in law as a wedding present. It is inscribed "To Bob, from Father, Krakow 1939". They returned to Palestine and were married. In September of that year, of course, the Germans invaded Poland....Sadly not a single member of my Grandmother's family survived the war. The watch he had been given became a treasured heirloom and memento of my grandmother's Polish life, since everything else had been lost.

    After the war, they moved to Cyprus, where they lived for the next 25 years. My mother grew up there and spoke Greek before she spoke English, she says.

    One day my grandfather went out for a ride in the Troodos mountains. Along the way a snake crossed his path, causing his horse to rear up in fright and my grandfather was thrown off. Luckily, he wasn't hurt and was able to remount and continue on his way. Some time later he looked down at his wrist to check the time and realised that his watch, THE watch, was missing. He realised that it must have come off when he had fallen. Desperately, he retraced his route and searched and searched but to no avail. The watch was gone. Both he and my grandmother were devastated by the loss; it was, after all, the only link to her past.

    Still, they reported the loss to the local police, knowing it was futile but hoping against hope that somebody might find the watch and hand it in. In their hearts they knew it was gone. The chances of anyone finding a watch in the mountains were slim, to say the least.....

    However....one morning TEN YEARS LATER my grandmother received a telephone call....
    "Hello, this is Constable Nikarios from the police station. Er...I'm looking at a report that you made 10 years ago about a missing watch..."
    "Yes?" (You can imagine how drawn out and incredulous that one word must have been..)
    "Well, we recently arrested a certain individual and found, among a number of apparently stolen articles, a watch that seems to resemble that which you reported missing all those years ago. I wonder if you'd mind coming down to the station to identify it?"

    So they did and of course, it was. How it came to be in the thief's possession we'll never know, but after 10 years, the watch came home to its rightful owners. And when my grandfather died in 1985, the watch was passed on to me. I'm wearing it now, this beautiful, sixty odd year old watch that even to this day has a dent from when it fell from my grandfather's wrist in the mountains of Cyprus; this beautiful old watch that was given to him by my great grandfather, less than a year before he and the rest of his family were to be murdered....This wonderful watch that came from Switzerland to Poland to Palestine and from there to Cyprus before going on to England and finally here to Japan...

    Remember the watch story in Pulp Fiction? The one which Christopher Walken tells to the young Butch? It's the same kind of thing. A watch can have a history and a story attached to it ; a piece of time as much as a timepiece....

    Do you have a watch story to share?

July 17, 2002



  • I'm going to make an assumption.

    I'm going to assume that most of the people reading this (I'm not sure I can use the nipples on chest analogy anymore) have never been to Japan and might be interested to hear a little about what life is like for me over here.

    So what I'll do is sort of swing down that alley from time to time as the fancy takes me.

    Like it has tonight.

    Tonight I thought I'd tell you about my night time stroll.

    I live in the suburbs of a city with a population of about 250000. Well they call it a city anyway.

    These particular suburbs consist of the usual conglomeration of rice fields, temples, convenience stores, shrines, apartment blocks, drink vending machines (including beer), private houses, schools and more drink vending machines.

    I am fortunate though, to also have a river (the Sakai Gawa) which runs through it. Don't get too excited; it's a very small river but actually quite picturesque and has koi carp swimming along in it.

    My walk takes in three main points, each with a specific purpose and the whole stroll has its own purpose other than simple exercise.

    Leaving my house, I head down the road (no pavements here and the road is barely big enough for two cars to pass) towards the river and towards the first of the main points, a bridge.

    But the first main point is actually the third main point so we'll come back to that in a moment. What I do is walk on a little further and cross over a small white bridge instead.

    It is at about this juncture that I delve into my pocket for the doobie I prepared earlier. This is what gives the extra purpose to the endeavour. You CAN do the walk without but it's really not the same thing....

    By the time that doobie and I have done our thing, we have arrived at the second of the main points, which as you know, is going to be the first.

    the fumikiri

    This is a level crossing, as we say in England; probably a railroad crossing to those Stateside. And the thing about this fumikiri is that you can walk UNDER it. You have to kind of duck your head down a little as you go under but before you know it, you're standing there with train tracks about 2 foot above your head.

    Now, I know that none of you have any stress in your lives because none of you are married to my wife, but I am and I do.

    And I have found absolutely no better form of stress relief than a doobie and the fumikiri. Doobie hits in just as I get there and (because I know the best times to get there) I get to scream everything out of me like a banshee while two express trains thunder past each other in opposite directions two feet above my head.

    And I let it out. As long as I can. And it feels good.

    I duck back under and out into the normal night time world again. I'm always slightly fearful that someone else might be out at that time and see this wild eyed, shaven headed foreigner appearing like that but no one ever is.

    Heart still going boomboomboom, I head off to the next main point; the local temple. In through the large wooden main gate which is closed but never locked, I come in to the temple garden and find what I have come for.

    the rock

    This temple garden is a moss garden. It's very beautiful and is magically lit at night by lights that never shine directly, it seems, but bathe the area in soft light. To the left hand side is the rock; about one and a half metres around and about one metre at its highest point. I have absolutely no idea where the rock came from but it a fantastic rock. Striated with age, it seems to me almost a living thing and I love it dearly. Feeling like I have disgorged all the negativity inside me at the fumikiri, I now purify myself with the rock. I even hug it if I'm feeling particularly ambient that night.

    Next to the rock is a stone bench, placed there I am convinced, for my convenience . I sit there in the semi silence, my music the frogs' croaking chorus in the rice field nearby, as I contemplatively smoke a cigarette and get all spiritual on my ass.

    Smoke done, I haul myself up and head on. Into the return straight now. Along the riverside, occasionally peering over garden walls to look at the ornate and beautiful gardens inside. Past the big old cypress tree where the miserable looking monkey sits chained during the daytime. Past the big house with the white walls and the gekkos scrambling into crevices as I walk by. Past all that and on to

    the bridge

    OK, now the bridge is a bridge, but it's also a musical instrument. It is an old, hollow, metal bridge that gives off different sounds according to the type of footwear you have on, how heavily you walk and what walking style you choose to cross it with. Of course, it's not ideal doing it alone. Three people is best, each doing things differently; a percussive extravaganza every time you go over the river. And at night it's great. Alone, I get a simple, deep booom booom as I cross but by shuffling a bit at times and doing a bit of nifty footwork I still get to feel that I have created something special and possibly woken a few of the neighbours up as well.

    So that essentially, is my night time stroll.

    I hope that one day I can take you on it with me.

  • Shortly after arriving in Japan in '92, I found myself one lunchtime in a Tokyo McDonalds. If you've never been to a McDonalds in Japan, don't worry; you'd feel quite at home. Except they have have things on the menu like Teriyaki McBurger and Chicken Tatsuta. But that's not what I want to tell you about.

    So as I say, I'm waiting in line to get my junk food and I spy a trio of young hotties sitting just a short hop away. I'm looking at them and they're looking at me and I'm smiling at them and they're smiling back at me. I mean, they're REALLY smiling back at me.

    Now even in the short amount of time I'd been in Japan at that point, I'd become used to girls staring at me but there was something special about the looks I was getting from this bevy of beauties.

    Anyway, I collected my tray of whateveritwas and mosied myself over in their direction, figuring that if the smiles I'd been getting were any indicator, with any luck....well, you know the way guys minds work...

    Providence found me a table right next to them. I sat down, turned to them and smiled again. My best full watt donchawannagettoknowme beam.

    Result : paroxysms of laughter. I mean it; these girls were actully spitting bits of food out they were laughing so hard.

    Then they looked at me and I caught the direction of their gaze....

    And in that moment, before I'd even followed that gaze to look down at myself, realisation hit me; cold, clammy and unequivocal.

    And then I looked down.
    And saw.
    A gaping hole.

    I would like to be able to say that I just nonchalantly zipped myself up, grinned at them again and got on with my food but that wasn't exactly the way things went.

    Well, I did the business of course, but with nothing even close to nonchalance, managed a sort of sickly grin and then busied myself in a close inspection of my Teriyaki McBurger wrapping....

July 15, 2002

  • †µ†µ†µ†µ†µ†µ†µ Qu'il mangent de la brioche †µ†µ†µ†µ†µ†µ†µ


    Many moons ago, when I was going through what people like to call The Formative Years, there was a tv show called 'Butterflies' on in England, which, incidentally, is where I was busy being Formed.

    The programme was about a middled aged married mother with two grown up sons (who lived at home) and who also had a secret lover.

    Except that towards the end of the series he wasn't really secret; her husband had a pretty good idea something was afoot. And he wasn't really her lover either. Not in the way that you're imagining, anyway.

    The thing was, she was bored and facing a mid life crisis; she needed SOMETHING to bring life back into her humdrum dutiful existence. But throughout the series she never became quite convinced that Leonard (nice guy who rather spoiled it by being too keen to get her into bed) was what that SOMETHING was.

    Her slightly depressing but otherwise nice guy too husband eventually senses that undercurrents are a-swirling and tries to win her back.

    Her two sons leave large piles of washing for her to do but are rarely in the house. And when they ARE in the house the older one, who's about 20, with tousled hair and cheeky grin and always has girl troubles, just takes her for granted even though he's a nice guy too. And the younger one who's a bit skinny and doesn't have tousled hair or a cheeky smile OR a girl, which troubles him as well, he's doing pretty much the same thing while all the while being a nice guy too.

    Did I tell you that she was nice too? She was, you know. Everyone in the show was nice. Troubled but nice.

    Well apart from Leonard. He wasn't exactly troubled. He was rich and just wanted to get his end away.

    But Rhia (that was her name), apart from being awfully nice and long suffering and all that, had another quality which became a recurrent theme.


    She was a terrible cook.

    Just about everything she tried her hand at came a cropper. Every episode. However hard she tried to follow the recipe, the end result bore little resemblance to what was promised in the book.
    At first apologetic, she gradually became more defiant; daring them to say anything...

    But the point was, her family never complained. Oh yes, looks were exchanged, there were close ups of faces trying to disguise incredulity, but they never said a word. They all loved her.

    And I loved them for loving her. For being nice.

    Which allows me to segue somewhat lopsidedly into tonight's topic.




    My Wife's Cooking


    Now before you say a word about me having a word, I have two words for you :

    Don't.

    It's me that's alone out here in the trenches, not you. It's all right for you lot and I'll tell you why it's all right for you lot; it's because you lot don't have to eat it.

    It goes like this.

    Because of my job I don't get home until between 9:30 and 10:00pm most nights. By which time my wife has gone to bed with the kids. Having left what's left of the family supper on the table for me to return to 3 and a half hours later.

    Now I don't know how many among you are familiar with the concept of congealed spaghetti carbonara. Let me just assure you that it's not a very pretty sight. Or coagulated vegetable stir fry? That's my personal fave. How many of you have to come home from a hard day's work to that, I wonder? And have you ever noticed how deep fried fish sort of loses its gastronomic appeal after being left on the table for a few hours? And regains absolutely none of it by being reheated in a microwave?

    If I'm extraordinarily lucky, my wife might come downstairs and carry the plate over to the microwave for me (Look! I'm cooking your supper!); otherwise it's left to me to do the honours.

    But the issue at play in my mind is this. Why can't I be more like Rhia's family?

    I complain an awful lot to myself. Many's the night you'll catch me muttering grumpily under my breath, but I rarely actually complain. Because I know exactly what will happen.

    †µ?@Another typical conversation where Bob's Left Nut resides.... †µ

    She : You didn't eat much. Didn't you like it?

    He : Well,...

    She : Oh. So you're complaining about my cooking are you?

    He : All I want to say is, some food is meant to be eaten right when it's cooked. It doesn't stay tasty long and you know that I prefer not to have food like that for my one proper meal of the day. (Notice how I didn't add '...although I know how hard you work preparing my supper'?)

    She : So I have to cook something different just for you? I'm too busy.

    He : Well then I guess I won't be eating too much at night then.

    At which point she goes off in a huff to watch her variety show on tv and I come in here to write to you.

    Is it like this in your homes too?

July 6, 2002

  • If you've read any of my previous entries, you will probably have realised that I am a teacher.

    And that a lot of the people I know have Japanese names.


    Well..... I'm an English teacher in Japan.

    Have been for 10 years now.

    For the last 6 years, I've had my own school. It's small and the building it's in is a little old but it has still proved to be modestly successful. I employ 2 part time teachers and enjoy my work, although the hours I work prevent me spending as much time as I'd like with my two daughters.

    But then again, those long hours do mean that I get to spend less time with my wife. So things aren't ALL that bad...


    Another benefit of my job is that I am surrounded by women most of the time.

    Far and away, women make up the majority of my students. Of course, I teach children as well, but my focus is on the sixty or so women who come to see me each week. Aged between 16 and 60, they come to the school for a variety of reasons. Some come to practise for their holidays abroad, others simply as a hobby, squeezed in between roles as busy housewives, mothers and dutiful neighbours. A few come to prepare for exams, but perhaps surprisingly, not many. And then there are others who come simply to see me.


    yeah.


    Naturally, such situations soon evolve into Moral Dilemmas.

    However, Moral Dilemmas deserve an entry all of their own; I'll go into greater details at some later date. As soon as I find myself in such frame of mind you'll be the first to know. I Promise.


    So, where were we?


    Women.


    ah yes....


    My wife is a woman.


    But she isn't MY woman and I'm not her MAN, in the Tammy Wynette sense. I mean, she doesn't think of herself in that way. I am her husband. A different thing entirely. For her, our relationship is that of Husband and Wife; the titles are more important than the people they represent. She began our marriage with a volte face of stunning speed.
    I didn't expect her to quite so suddenly turn into my judge, jury and executioner. She had decided there were faults with her husband and she was going to sort them out. She 'd known about them before we got married of course, but now that I was her husband, she could do something.


    She genuinely believed (and still does...) that her role as a wife required this of her. Everything in her garden must be perfect and perfectly to her liking. Right now or there's going to be a scene.

    And although as you know , I am Buddha now, I do still have trouble getting her to understand the concept that if you want your husband to do things, ordering him about is not the most effective way of going about it.

    But sadly, if I try to talk to her about it she dismisses my feelings.

    Tonight we had a fairly typical conversation in my house.

    She: Turn down the volume!

    Me : OK, but why do you have to use THAT tone of voice?

    She : What tone of voice? This is a perfectly normal tone of voice between husband and wife. Don't be so argumentative. You'll give me a neurosis.

    Me: Knowing exactly where any reply other than agreement with her will lead us, say nothing.

    End of conversation.


    Is it like this in YOUR homes too?


    Anyway, as I said earlier, one of the benefits of my job is that the hours give me the chance to spend a lot of time without the pleasure of her company.

    And another is that I get to spend a lot of those hours with lots of lovely ladies.


    Which is where I started.

     


     




June 27, 2002

  • You won't know this but I am Buddha.
    OK, I'd better explain...
    I'm married to a Japanese woman called M and it's more or less a disaster. Of course it always takes two to tango and I cannot say that the way things are between us is any more her fault than mine....but dammit, it IS, it IS!
    For example :
    She complains all the time.
    Everything is too difficult for her.
    She is unable to say anything without it sounding like an order.
    But probably especially especially because....
    She has NO interest in sex. We're currently fast approaching the 2 and a half years without mark...
    Which is pretty daft for a married couple in their thirties.

    I could go on but it'd only depress you and me both.
    "So why don't I leave?" I hear you ask....
    Well, good question and there are 2 very good reasons. One is 4 and the other is a bit over1 and a half .
    So how do I deal with it?
    That's the hard part. Of course I used to get frustrated, upset and angry but I've found that all of those emotions are ultimately counter productive; she doesn't care about my frustration or sadness and my anger only serves to make her MORE unbearable.
    I have found that the only way is to let everything wash over me; to remain calm and to try to help her even when I want to scream with the injustice of the way I am treated. I reach down into an inner well of patience and offer her my love.

    You couldn't know it, but I am Buddha.

    But in the meantime, if you know of a nice young lady who'd be prepared to go in for a bit of no strings slap and tickle with me, don't hesitate to let me know....
    This Buddha has needs.