.
Monday 6th April
I’ve lost all control of my Zen music player. It now has a mind all of its own, and all I can do is switch it on or off, and press ‘play’ or ‘pause’. But when cabled into the Kenwood hi-fi in my flat it randomly cranks out the 4 gigabytes of excellent sounds I copied into it last year.
This morning it decided to start gently with Louis Jordan’s “She liked to boogie real slow”, and then hammered straight into the Stones’ “Can’t you hear me knocking?” with that incredible riff that just grabs the attention by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let go for the next seven minutes of guitar, vocals and sax magic - classic Keith Richards. Music you just have to stop everything for and rock to.
And then to move things on even higher and wilder it threw at me “Rattlesnake Shake” - 24 minutes of brilliant electric blues recorded when Peter Green was at the very peak of his creative genius, way back in the mid to late sixties when Fleetwood Mac were the best blues band on the planet, bar none. This track still grabs me now like it did then. The Blues is timeless and beyond any dictates of fashion, fad and fly-by-night style.
-------------------------------------------------
Last night I was strolling around in the dark up at Osaka Castle, taking photos of its floodlit exterior, enjoying the atmosphere of fellow sightseers amid the flowering cherry trees, and suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of a National resonator steel guitar having its fretboard caressed with a bottleneck slide. I was drawn like a magnet to a bench in the pitch blackness under some trees, where the player turned out to be a youngish Japanese guy sitting with his girlfriend.
We got into a conversation, and he then played and sang “Sweet Home Chicago” with great expertise and feeling, the bottleneck shimmering and sliding up and down that beautiful chromium instrument. Another moment of pure Zen, to add to the many I’d already experienced on the day’s excursions around the Horyu-ji temple complex outside of Nara.
It then turned out that the girlfriend had with her a ukelele, which she played to accompany a beautifully sung version of “Loving You (has made my life so beautiful)” The guy joined in with his National. La la la la la.
We asked them for some ideas about where to go in Osaka to listen to good music played live in a bar or club, and will follow up later in the week.
------------------------------
Korean-style eating consists of sitting around a bowl of blazing hot charcoal lumps set within a table and cooking your own meat pieces to your own preferences - rare, medium or charred. The high-tech version of this cooker utilises a stainless steel bowl that somehow blasts the coals with air to get them up to red-hot temperature really quickly whilst sucking out the smoke and fumes through holes around the rim of the bowl, located just below the surface of the table.
Korean Town in Osaka has a number of narrow streets, little more than alleyways, that are lined with tiny restaurants. The most popular ones have queues outside that contain more people than are seated in the restaurant. The less popular ones employ people to stand outside and drag in the tourists and passers-by.
Japanese people out dining and drinking with colleagues and friends are quite funny. Within a few sips of beer they can go from self-contained and self-restrained ultra-quiet and polite beings to something approaching pie-eyed raucousness and wild laughter.
----------------------------------------------------------
I’m starting to get my bearings, now that I’ve realised that the map I’ve been given has south at the top and north at the bottom. Last night I made my way home from Mukogawa station to my flat without a hitch.
I could use a day or so just to sit quietly and take in all that’s been happening - to review photos and videos and do some writing. That was my basic plan yesterday till Yoko phoned in the morning and said that since she’d been up and working since 5.00am she’d completed the essential work she needed to do and was free to take me out for some more cherry blossom and temple sightseeing. She’s amazing.
This afternoon I’m due to meet a colleague of hers who’s arriving from Tokyo. It will be interesting to find out what his interests are, and how well he speaks English. I’m extremely fortunate that Yoko speaks English as well as she does, so that I can ask her everything I need to know about this fascinating country.
This time around I feel I’m learning much more about the impact of post-war ‘westernisation’ on Japan and its people. The British may feel that the second world war was a traumatic event that changed our national way of life forever, but in fact cultural life continued much as it had previously, with a class system and a political, religious and military elite firmly in place despite the Labour landslide and the creation of a welfare state after the war. We still had the House of Lords and a monarchy, and indeed still do.
We have no real concept of what the Japanese people must have experienced - having had so many of their young men needlessly killed by the recklessness and expansionism of their ruling and warrior classes, whose hubris led them to attack the USA in the belief that their mighty warships and airforce could put an end to American expansionism and influence in the western Pacific.
We have no idea what it must have been like to have experienced attack with atomic weapons, and to have had so many cities flattened with conventional bombing and firestorms. We have no idea of the damaged caused to the national psyche by post-war occupation and domination by people of a completely alien culture, who then set about imposing their own cultural norms as much as they possibly could.
-----------------------------------------------------
Actually there is one other control I have over the Zen player - I can fast-forward over tracks I don’t want to listen to, and I can flick back to the beginning of the current track for a repeat. I’ve thereby just converted the 24 minute howling monster blues-fest that is Rattlesnake Shake into a 48 minute wall-vibrating extravaganza. Which was nice.
The Kenwood machine has a kind of exaggerated bass sound, so I’m noticing more than ever John McVie - the man who put the Mac into the Mac - how chunky and funky his bass-playing always was.
And now the sky is blue and the sun is shining and I must get out there. One of the delights of the little Zen, of course, is that it’s highly portable and goes everywhere. Just like the real thing.
--------------------------------------------------------
Yoko talked about ‘westernisation’ leading to the Japanese ‘losing’ their religion, or religions. Especially Shinto, which seems to have become pretty much the scapegoat for the actions of the Japanese ruling classes. Post-war defeat and trauma must have led to a wholesale loss of self-esteem and self-confidence, as far as the nation was concerned.
But also individuals. The nuclear bombs were the forerunner and the momma and poppa of ‘shock and awe’ - more a tactic for traumatising the enemy than any real wartime necessity, given that by the time those weapons were used, the Japanese navy and airforce were virtually destroyed.
It must be part of the Japanese psyche to show deference and obedience to rulers, regardless of whether they are legitimate, illegitimate or imposed by wartime defeat. But I still don’t understand the degree to which the American occupiers believed they had a right to treat the Japanese like a blank slate on which to write a new set of cultural norms, including the right to ban teaching and learning about Shinto and Buddhism in schools.
In my conversations with the post-grad students the other day I gathered they go along with the view that religion can’t even be mentioned in schools - even the basic precepts of, say, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.
Yoko tells me that her parents were Buddhists, but that she, as an adolescent, rejected their ‘religious’ beliefs, as adolescents are pretty much bound to do. We therefore have a situation whereby if religion can only be discussed and learnt about in homes, then we can expect ignorance of religion to become the norm. Yoko knows next to nothing about Zen because she never had the opportunity to hear about it in school, and she’s never been sufficiently interested to find out for herself.
Naturally I argued that Zen and Buddhism aren’t really religions, since their object is not to instil obedience to some supernatural ‘god’, but to develop techniques for human development with the ultimate goal of achieving Enlightenment, with each of us being responsible for our degrees of enlightenment and our own views of what enlightenment consists of.
Within certain branches of Buddhism there are rituals and key texts, which may or may not be learned within a temple. If we see Buddhist temples as essentially places that facilitate meditation, however, then Buddhism can legitimately be described as a philosophy rather than a religion. Zen masters and other Buddhist leaders are essentially teachers and practicing philosophers, and not priests or intermediaries.
One of the main paths connecting several of the temples in Kyoto is called the Path of the Philosophers. It’s the duty of each of us to become aware of our own philosophies, to the degree to which those philosophies are truly our own rather than indoctrination inculcated from our society and culture, and to become practicing philosophers - through meditation and the practice of inner reflection. We have to be able to identify our beliefs and our driving forces, and also be able to justify them to ourselves and others.
.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Layer 143 Lost In Mukogawa, Kyoto, Cherry Blossoms and Academia.
.
Wednesday April 1st and Thursday April 2nd
I saw an enormous curved ramp from the elevated motorway in the night sky, wending its way around a block of flats, several stories above my head, and I finally had to admit this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare - I was lost. Either the ramp shouldn’t be where it was, or I shouldn’t be where I was, and frankly I had no idea where I was.
It seemed sensible to assume that the ramp had every right to be where it was, whereas I had no business at all being somewhere I shouldn’t be, wherever it was. Being under that ramp was no part of my plans, back at the point of leaving Mukogawa station, looking to stroll the mile or so back to my apartment. Memorising the route and the general directions I’d need to take had seemed easy - or so I’d thought.
Still - there was no need to worry. I still had the map in my rucksack. I took it out and consulted it under a nearby streetlight. On this particular street there were no people. Back in London in the dead of night on an unknown street with no-one around I’d have been starting to feel slightly worried. No need for that here, though - surely Japan has no petty crime and no crazy street gangs, armed to the teeth and looking for easy pickings?
The map had seemed easy to read yesterday, at the point of knowing exactly where I was on it, and where I needed to get to. Now that I’d somehow departed from the straight and narrow, and no longer had a clue where I was, the map was useless, on account of the fact that it was entirely in Japanese, and so were the actual street signs -assuming I could eventually find one or two of them. Trying to memorise the look of the characters on the road signs and then scour the map for the exact same Japanese characters would be a nightmare, standing there in the chill wind of the Spring darkness.
After a couple of minutes pondering how on earth I’d gone away from the proper route, I noticed an old guy coming slowly along the street, for all I knew having had a few drinks at a nearby bar. Not feeling at all optimistic I held out the map and said in English, “Excuse me, I need to get back to this place and I don’t know where I am.”
He looked down at the map and muttered something in Japanese, and immediately shuffled off in the direction he’d been heading. I didn’t feel I could blame him - there was no way we were going to communicate, and I doubted that he could read or understand the cluttered little photocopy of a map that had on it only the names of the main roads, and in very small characters.
And then he was suddenly back again, standing next to me, holding a pair of reading glasses, having gone somewhere to collect them. So much for my intuition and my faith in humanity. Of course - he couldn’t read the map because he couldn’t focus on it properly! After a couple of moments he looked up and pointed in the general direction I’d need to go in.
And then he pulled on my arm, clearly saying, look - come here - I’ll show you. He not only walked with me to the next intersection where I’d need to turn left - he came with me for several blocks till we reached a main road, from where it was obvious where I should go to complete the journey. Then he shook my hand, bowed, and went off home.
--------------------------------------
The Temples
It had been a fitting and affirmative ending to what had been an excellent day. Yoko had phoned early and asked whether we could meet at 9.00 instead of 10.00, as it was a beautiful, bright day and we should make the most of it. We agreed it should be possible for me to catch the two trains I’d need to take to get to central Osaka station, assuming I had my wits about me, and in the event I caught one that went all the way through.
Kayo was waiting for us when we arrived at Kyoto, two more trains later. And then it was down into the underground for a train that took us from north to south, and out into a windy street to wait for the ‘community bus’ that was in effect a shuttle bus to the Daigo temple complex we intended to explore - a bus that was about the size of an average American taxi but able to contain about forty tightly-packed humans, obviously with most of them standing and strap-hanging..
Yoko said she could tell from the accents that a great many of the people who were flocking to the temples this cherry-blossom time were from the Tokyo area. It was interesting that there were virtually no Euros or North Americans.
And finally we had confirmation that this was the very peak of the 2009 cherry blossom season - the vast majority of the blossom on the trees in the temple gardens was in full bloom, and there was absolutely none of it down on the ground. Neither had the new green leaves burst from their buds.
There’s no point trying to describe the cumulative effect of the blossoms in the gardens and the temple walkways - it was just sensational. The atmosphere was festival-like, but quiet and respectful, and suitably in awe of nature’s amazing display. New wonders came into sight with every turn and with each fresh vantage point. Thousands of photos were being snapped, and hopefully some of them will do justice to the spectacle, and bring back some of the feeling of the day.
We went from one meditation hall to the next, higher and higher up the mountain, past streams and ponds, over bridges that looked down on slow-swimming Koi carp, past raked pebble gardens and waterfalls and a huge pagoda, past pine trees and leafless Japanese maples.
Truly a memorable and incredible experience, never again to be repeated. I can’t imagine ever again being able to coincide a trip to Japan with the very peak of the cherry blossom season.
Next week I’ll go back and take photos of the blossom scattered like a carpet of snow on the ground, and floating in the ponds and streams, having drifted down like snowflakes.
--------------------------------------------
Flashbacks
I keep getting flashbacks of the journey to Japan. I guess I’m still recovering from it.
Last night I had a very sharp memory of the shiver of dread that ran through me at Heathrow when I suddenly had a thought- is Emirates a DRY airline? Holy fuck! Was that the reason it was the only airline that still had seats available to Japan in the cherry-blossom season? How bad would that be! More than 16 hours flying time via Dubai - without any free booze! Aaaarrrggghhhh!
Calm. Calm. Worst case scenario. The best case scenario was that there was unlimited quantities of top-class beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs to help pass the hours in a haze of well-being and olfactory delights.
When I asked the steward for a second can of Heineken he said, “I’ll give you two more.” Now that’s what I CALL an airline.
So - three cans before dinner, wine with it, and a generous glass of Hennessey to follow.
The spicy chicken and basmati rice, salad, bread, cheesecake and coffee weren’t bad either.
The double-decker Airbus 380 - 800, the biggest damn passenger plane in the world, and in the entire history of the world, sailed smoothly on at over 1,000kph, and every single man, woman and child in its massive cabins, and no doubt in its similar cabins upstairs, was sitting in front of an individual flat screen on which was playing a UNIQUE image.
No two images or programmes the same. It was unbelievable. The plane had more channels and films on tap than my home cable TV service. Plus a constantly updated map of where we were on our journey, and exactly which bit of which country we were flying over. Plus a constantly updated notification of airspeed, groundspeed, outside temperature, time at destination, time at point of departure, etc. Incredible.
Plus - the ability to touch the screen to change from a video image of what’s directly ahead of the plane to what’s immediately beneath it, to what the entire plane looks like from a video camera mounted at the top of the tailplane.
------------------------------------
Academia
Yesterday I went to look around the university and to attend a seminar that involved a colleague of Yoko plus three of Yoko’s post-grad students - Kayo, Tomoko and Megumi. The subject was the history of education and the progressive movement in Europe the late 19th and early 20th Century. These guys know a damn sight more about it than I do - Dewey, Montessori, etc.
At the end of the session I asked if I could do a video interview with them as a group. I had four questions. Why are there so many women-only universities in Japan and what do they feel are the advantages? What did they think were the main benefits of the Montessori approach to early years learning? What could they tell me about wabi sabi? Why do most Japanese people seem to know very little about (and care even less about) Zen?
When I find the time I’ll try to transcribe the discussion from the tape. Interesting.
In the afternoon I managed to set up my laptop for Internet access in Yoko’s office via the uni’s network, with the help of one of Yoko’s very pleasant colleagues. No sign of anyone having a guitar to lend me as yet!
We then went back to her new house, which I was visiting for the first time, and made dinner whilst trying to get the gist of what was at that very moment happening live in London - the G20 demonstrations. Felt very annoyed to be missing such events in my adopted city. Oh well . . .
-------------------------------------------------------
I have to write a speech for the start of year faculty meeting at the university tomorrow, so here goes.
Good morning everyone. Ohayo Gozaimas. I’m sorry I don’t speak any more Japanese, but I’m going to try hard to learn some in the next three weeks. Professor Yamasaki has very kindly bought me this Instant Japanese book - so I hope it will be instant!
I’ve only been back in Japan for a few days, but I’ve already decided I don’t want to go home to London. Being in Japan at cherry blossom time is very exciting and a huge thrill for me. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Yesterday in Kyoto was wonderful beyond description. I wish I could show you the two thousand photos and one hour of video I took! I guess you have lots of photos of your own at home!
I’m missing the G20 meetings and demonstrations in London this week. My generation of students grew up in the 1960’s, so I have a fondness for political demonstrations. I haven’t lost my belief that by working together, people like us can help to make a better planet.
My home is in east London, which is where the next Olympics will take place in 2012. The main stadium’s construction is now reaching its full height. You can see it on internet webcams. Or feel free to come and see the games in 2012. I’m not sure I’ll be there myself though. I may have to escape to Japan for a more peaceful life.
I was a Primary teacher in London, and was then a headteacher of a Primary school for 20 years. My school was well known as a place where progressive child-centred education was pioneered in a State Primary school in the 1960’s, and onward.
I have now been happily retired from headship for two years, and these days I’m running my own educational consultancy, working with associates who are able to offer to schools, universities and local authorities advice and support on children’s wellbeing, personal, social and emotional intelligence, creativity, and pedagogy for child-centred education. I can give you a web site reference if you’re interested in knowing more.
I look forward to meeting some more of you and getting to know you better in these next three weeks. I’d like to thank those of you who have already been so welcoming and helpful. And I’d especially like to thank Professor Yamasaki, who wrote an academic paper with me and published it in Japan a few years ago.
With her help and support I’ve been able to develop my 3 Dimensional model of human intelligences, and it’s thanks to her generosity and continuing friendship that I’ve been able to return this year to Japan, a country I really love, yet again.
I wish you all a very happy and productive new academic year. Take care of one another, and enjoy life together.
Thank you all. Arigato gozaimas.
.
Wednesday April 1st and Thursday April 2nd
I saw an enormous curved ramp from the elevated motorway in the night sky, wending its way around a block of flats, several stories above my head, and I finally had to admit this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare - I was lost. Either the ramp shouldn’t be where it was, or I shouldn’t be where I was, and frankly I had no idea where I was.
It seemed sensible to assume that the ramp had every right to be where it was, whereas I had no business at all being somewhere I shouldn’t be, wherever it was. Being under that ramp was no part of my plans, back at the point of leaving Mukogawa station, looking to stroll the mile or so back to my apartment. Memorising the route and the general directions I’d need to take had seemed easy - or so I’d thought.
Still - there was no need to worry. I still had the map in my rucksack. I took it out and consulted it under a nearby streetlight. On this particular street there were no people. Back in London in the dead of night on an unknown street with no-one around I’d have been starting to feel slightly worried. No need for that here, though - surely Japan has no petty crime and no crazy street gangs, armed to the teeth and looking for easy pickings?
The map had seemed easy to read yesterday, at the point of knowing exactly where I was on it, and where I needed to get to. Now that I’d somehow departed from the straight and narrow, and no longer had a clue where I was, the map was useless, on account of the fact that it was entirely in Japanese, and so were the actual street signs -assuming I could eventually find one or two of them. Trying to memorise the look of the characters on the road signs and then scour the map for the exact same Japanese characters would be a nightmare, standing there in the chill wind of the Spring darkness.
After a couple of minutes pondering how on earth I’d gone away from the proper route, I noticed an old guy coming slowly along the street, for all I knew having had a few drinks at a nearby bar. Not feeling at all optimistic I held out the map and said in English, “Excuse me, I need to get back to this place and I don’t know where I am.”
He looked down at the map and muttered something in Japanese, and immediately shuffled off in the direction he’d been heading. I didn’t feel I could blame him - there was no way we were going to communicate, and I doubted that he could read or understand the cluttered little photocopy of a map that had on it only the names of the main roads, and in very small characters.
And then he was suddenly back again, standing next to me, holding a pair of reading glasses, having gone somewhere to collect them. So much for my intuition and my faith in humanity. Of course - he couldn’t read the map because he couldn’t focus on it properly! After a couple of moments he looked up and pointed in the general direction I’d need to go in.
And then he pulled on my arm, clearly saying, look - come here - I’ll show you. He not only walked with me to the next intersection where I’d need to turn left - he came with me for several blocks till we reached a main road, from where it was obvious where I should go to complete the journey. Then he shook my hand, bowed, and went off home.
--------------------------------------
The Temples
It had been a fitting and affirmative ending to what had been an excellent day. Yoko had phoned early and asked whether we could meet at 9.00 instead of 10.00, as it was a beautiful, bright day and we should make the most of it. We agreed it should be possible for me to catch the two trains I’d need to take to get to central Osaka station, assuming I had my wits about me, and in the event I caught one that went all the way through.
Kayo was waiting for us when we arrived at Kyoto, two more trains later. And then it was down into the underground for a train that took us from north to south, and out into a windy street to wait for the ‘community bus’ that was in effect a shuttle bus to the Daigo temple complex we intended to explore - a bus that was about the size of an average American taxi but able to contain about forty tightly-packed humans, obviously with most of them standing and strap-hanging..
Yoko said she could tell from the accents that a great many of the people who were flocking to the temples this cherry-blossom time were from the Tokyo area. It was interesting that there were virtually no Euros or North Americans.
And finally we had confirmation that this was the very peak of the 2009 cherry blossom season - the vast majority of the blossom on the trees in the temple gardens was in full bloom, and there was absolutely none of it down on the ground. Neither had the new green leaves burst from their buds.
There’s no point trying to describe the cumulative effect of the blossoms in the gardens and the temple walkways - it was just sensational. The atmosphere was festival-like, but quiet and respectful, and suitably in awe of nature’s amazing display. New wonders came into sight with every turn and with each fresh vantage point. Thousands of photos were being snapped, and hopefully some of them will do justice to the spectacle, and bring back some of the feeling of the day.
We went from one meditation hall to the next, higher and higher up the mountain, past streams and ponds, over bridges that looked down on slow-swimming Koi carp, past raked pebble gardens and waterfalls and a huge pagoda, past pine trees and leafless Japanese maples.
Truly a memorable and incredible experience, never again to be repeated. I can’t imagine ever again being able to coincide a trip to Japan with the very peak of the cherry blossom season.
Next week I’ll go back and take photos of the blossom scattered like a carpet of snow on the ground, and floating in the ponds and streams, having drifted down like snowflakes.
--------------------------------------------
Flashbacks
I keep getting flashbacks of the journey to Japan. I guess I’m still recovering from it.
Last night I had a very sharp memory of the shiver of dread that ran through me at Heathrow when I suddenly had a thought- is Emirates a DRY airline? Holy fuck! Was that the reason it was the only airline that still had seats available to Japan in the cherry-blossom season? How bad would that be! More than 16 hours flying time via Dubai - without any free booze! Aaaarrrggghhhh!
Calm. Calm. Worst case scenario. The best case scenario was that there was unlimited quantities of top-class beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs to help pass the hours in a haze of well-being and olfactory delights.
When I asked the steward for a second can of Heineken he said, “I’ll give you two more.” Now that’s what I CALL an airline.
So - three cans before dinner, wine with it, and a generous glass of Hennessey to follow.
The spicy chicken and basmati rice, salad, bread, cheesecake and coffee weren’t bad either.
The double-decker Airbus 380 - 800, the biggest damn passenger plane in the world, and in the entire history of the world, sailed smoothly on at over 1,000kph, and every single man, woman and child in its massive cabins, and no doubt in its similar cabins upstairs, was sitting in front of an individual flat screen on which was playing a UNIQUE image.
No two images or programmes the same. It was unbelievable. The plane had more channels and films on tap than my home cable TV service. Plus a constantly updated map of where we were on our journey, and exactly which bit of which country we were flying over. Plus a constantly updated notification of airspeed, groundspeed, outside temperature, time at destination, time at point of departure, etc. Incredible.
Plus - the ability to touch the screen to change from a video image of what’s directly ahead of the plane to what’s immediately beneath it, to what the entire plane looks like from a video camera mounted at the top of the tailplane.
------------------------------------
Academia
Yesterday I went to look around the university and to attend a seminar that involved a colleague of Yoko plus three of Yoko’s post-grad students - Kayo, Tomoko and Megumi. The subject was the history of education and the progressive movement in Europe the late 19th and early 20th Century. These guys know a damn sight more about it than I do - Dewey, Montessori, etc.
At the end of the session I asked if I could do a video interview with them as a group. I had four questions. Why are there so many women-only universities in Japan and what do they feel are the advantages? What did they think were the main benefits of the Montessori approach to early years learning? What could they tell me about wabi sabi? Why do most Japanese people seem to know very little about (and care even less about) Zen?
When I find the time I’ll try to transcribe the discussion from the tape. Interesting.
In the afternoon I managed to set up my laptop for Internet access in Yoko’s office via the uni’s network, with the help of one of Yoko’s very pleasant colleagues. No sign of anyone having a guitar to lend me as yet!
We then went back to her new house, which I was visiting for the first time, and made dinner whilst trying to get the gist of what was at that very moment happening live in London - the G20 demonstrations. Felt very annoyed to be missing such events in my adopted city. Oh well . . .
-------------------------------------------------------
I have to write a speech for the start of year faculty meeting at the university tomorrow, so here goes.
Good morning everyone. Ohayo Gozaimas. I’m sorry I don’t speak any more Japanese, but I’m going to try hard to learn some in the next three weeks. Professor Yamasaki has very kindly bought me this Instant Japanese book - so I hope it will be instant!
I’ve only been back in Japan for a few days, but I’ve already decided I don’t want to go home to London. Being in Japan at cherry blossom time is very exciting and a huge thrill for me. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Yesterday in Kyoto was wonderful beyond description. I wish I could show you the two thousand photos and one hour of video I took! I guess you have lots of photos of your own at home!
I’m missing the G20 meetings and demonstrations in London this week. My generation of students grew up in the 1960’s, so I have a fondness for political demonstrations. I haven’t lost my belief that by working together, people like us can help to make a better planet.
My home is in east London, which is where the next Olympics will take place in 2012. The main stadium’s construction is now reaching its full height. You can see it on internet webcams. Or feel free to come and see the games in 2012. I’m not sure I’ll be there myself though. I may have to escape to Japan for a more peaceful life.
I was a Primary teacher in London, and was then a headteacher of a Primary school for 20 years. My school was well known as a place where progressive child-centred education was pioneered in a State Primary school in the 1960’s, and onward.
I have now been happily retired from headship for two years, and these days I’m running my own educational consultancy, working with associates who are able to offer to schools, universities and local authorities advice and support on children’s wellbeing, personal, social and emotional intelligence, creativity, and pedagogy for child-centred education. I can give you a web site reference if you’re interested in knowing more.
I look forward to meeting some more of you and getting to know you better in these next three weeks. I’d like to thank those of you who have already been so welcoming and helpful. And I’d especially like to thank Professor Yamasaki, who wrote an academic paper with me and published it in Japan a few years ago.
With her help and support I’ve been able to develop my 3 Dimensional model of human intelligences, and it’s thanks to her generosity and continuing friendship that I’ve been able to return this year to Japan, a country I really love, yet again.
I wish you all a very happy and productive new academic year. Take care of one another, and enjoy life together.
Thank you all. Arigato gozaimas.
.
Layer 142 Cherry Blossoms, The Iron & Steel Coast, the Concrete Coast, the G20 and the Soul of a Nation.
Oxzen - The Movie. The Video Diaries. The Cherry Blossom Journal.
Monday 30th March and Tuesday March 31st., etc.
This is the soundtrack for Act One. The commentary. Cue speech track, immediately after music track fades to low volume, having faded in and up initially while the point of view of the camera was still a mile up in the sky.
And . . . Action!
“I’m back in time-warp and jet-lag territory - mentally, physically and spiritually.
On Tuesday I awoke at 3.30am local time, feeling part-refreshed and semi-human again, after a blissful 3 hours sleep in a proper bed, in a proper flat. This is consciousness turned upside down; consciousness bent and reconfigured, fast-forwarded and truncated through the planet’s darkness zone, having reduced the zone’s dark duration by several hours of jet-streamed travel.
With darkness still outside the curtains and blinds, I set about settling into this most excellent apartment, allocated to me by the owner of the property, the university. The only thing it lacks is a really decent bed and a decent duvet. I unpack.
I ask myself, when was the last time I slept under blankets? No doubt the first of many odd experiences I’ll have this cherry-blossom season.
I reviewed the video I shot yesterday from the window seats in the aeroplane and in the airport coach, and I like it. I think Ike’s going to be pleased with it when we get down to reviewing and editing. He’d mentioned specifically he wanted footage of the plane landing in Japan, when he handed over the camcorder. Well he’s certainly getting plenty of it.
I felt even better when I discovered a Jean-Michel Jarre CD on the Zen music player, one from Brother B’s collection that I’ve never got round to listening to, and one that’s going to make an excellent soundtrack for the edited film. I’ll post the name of it in due course.
I need to get serious now with Yoko and Kayo about making a film about them, as well as a film about the broader picture of Japan in the cherry blossom time.”
Cut!
-------------------------------------------------------------
The name I propose to give to this part of central Honshu, one that no doubt others have already given it, doesn’t exactly sound wealthy or exclusive like the Ivory Coast or the Gold Coast, let alone evocative of warmth and beauty like the Costa Tropicale, or the Costa del Sol.
But Iron and Steel is the reality of the part of the coastal strip of modern Honshu that lies between Kansai airport and Osaka City, which constitutes Japan’s second metropolis, second only to imperial Tokyo/Yokahama - Honshu’s mega-metropolis that sprawls in full view of Mount Fuji . . . the mighty Fuji-san, which looks down on it, and gazes upon it Zen-like - inscrutably and without comment.
No comment necessary. This is the final outcome of Big Business and Big Finance, the final tangible and physical outcome, that is, because banks and hedge funds and tax havens don’t really need a physical existence. They are as much virtual as they are real nowadays, and they reside mainly in the circuits of computers - zillions of dollars, euros and yen no longer need to physically exist or to physically change hands.
This coastline is an unbroken stretch of heavy metal and heavy industry for mile after mile - factories, refineries, warehouses, docks, ships, cranes and chimneys. It’s the mighty workshop of the nation, and these days, along with similar and even grimmer and dirtier places in China, it’s also the workshop of the planet.
This is the birthplace of modern digital industry, and it’s to the planet’s 20th Century what the coalfields and steel mills of Britain were to the 18th and 19th Centuries. In its turn the 20th Century provided the seed corn money for, and gave birth to, the fledgling organisation, or conspiracy, that became the busted casino of the 21st Century. The G20. The capitalist club. The conspiracy against human kind.
Here in Honshu, where the iron and the steel and the industry peters out, and the urban sprawl takes over, then you can also call it the Concrete Coast, which, let’s face it, is little, if any, improvement on Iron and Steel, depending on your taste and point of view.
Gliding past it and through it in the near-silence of the airport-to-city coach, the ‘Limousine’ - on the way to Nishinomiya, the view through the front and side windows looked incredible against a backdrop of a sky changing from blue to orange and purple in the dying embers of a late evening of a sunny and warm day in the cherry blossom season of these powerful and strangely spiritual islands, these birthplaces of Zen.
Electric lights gradually and imperceptibly came on everywhere to give added interest - studding the stark steel shapes of this technological and industrial hell-hole with pinpoints and glares of bright light. Steam and smoke completed a picture of what is by any standards an overkill of industrial crassness.
You have no real sense of all this industrial sprawl from a vantage point in an aircraft descending in the light of a red setting sun towards the Land of the Rising Sun, down through blueness towards Japan’s second international airport, Kansai, laid out on its own artificial island in a deep blue sea, created by intrepid engineers, architects, and an army of construction workers, in the beautiful and so-called Inland Sea.
As it happens the airport terminal’s architects were British, but they’re not really nation-specific people any more . . . . any more than money and glitz and technology and heavy metals are nation-specific any more . . .
It’s time for some more of Jarre’s glorious techno-reggae . . .
--------------------------------------------
I’m desperate for some news of the G20 - this week’s meeting of the leaders of, quote, “The Group of the world’s most powerful industrial nations”. It used to be the G7 or G8. Changing times. Along came Russia, and then China . . .
Ah, yes, indeed . . . . China. The crouching tiger. The hidden dragon. The incubator and mother of Buddhism, whose father was India, which begat Zen in Japan, etc.
So who else is in this exclusive, though somewhat enlarged, club? (Insert here. DIY. By the end of this week we should all have the names of all 20 of this Rich List on the tips of our tongues.)
Why care so much about these bastards? On one level, we shouldn’t. At the personal level, they ARE an irrelevance. Life’s too short, and we have much more important, much more fundamental things to do with out time.
We have our individual well-being and enlightenment to take care of. We have the needs of our families and our friends to take care of. And so little time every day. So little time. With each new time-saving electronic device, each new time-compressing technological miracle, we have less time. We’re time-poor, we all say. It’s ALL about time . . .
And it’s about time . . . for a change.
Today’s the day for people to get together and not so much “protest” . . . as “demonstrate” what we feel, and to say what we want from our governments, and the “G20”. And if you don’t yet know what you want, then PLEASE find out! If WE don’t know what it is we want to change then how the hell can we let our governments know? The past 30 years should have taught is that we can’t rely on our governments to do the right thing.
I say “today” is the day because I’ve just remembered to go into “Control Panel” and change my computer’s time to “Osaka and Tokyo” time, which means that for me it’s suddenly Wednesday April 1st! April Fools. The day of demonstrations.
That’s how controlled we are by computers and abstract ideas. Back ‘home’ it’s still Tuesday 31st March, but where I sit it’s 2.30am on the morning of Wednesday April 1st. Mad. So little time. So much to think about. Time to think about time, and time to act.
It’s 2.30 in the morning and I’m drinking red wine, brought to Japan by unknown persons, all the way from the Herault. I’m drinking wine because I need some more sleep so that I can function when Kayo comes to collect me at 8.30, to take me to the university and to her seminar on the history of education.
The wine’s not bad, and the music’s good. Set to random play, it’s the unsurpassable blues of JJ Cale, and his self-written “The Sensitive Kind”.
-----------------------------------------
As I was saying - why care so much about these bastards?
Because that’s part of our Social Intelligence. Because as a species, at best, we’re the sensitive kind.
Because Zen recognises that there’s no such thing as purely individual well-being, and the more connected we become as a planet and as a species, the more we need a highly-developed and evolved Social Intelligence. We need to become empathetic. We need to know that we are our brother’s keeper. And our sister’s. And everybody’s brother and sister. Everybody’s wellbeing and happiness depends on everybody else’s.
Which is a philosophy that stands in some contrast to the bankers’ ethos of individual enrichment and gated ‘communities’ - i.e. fragmentation, and envy, and conflict, and dog eat dog mentality. Which is not what I call enlightenment.
Enlightenment? Don’t know what it is!
It keeps changing. Rearranging. (Thank you Van)
But we know it’s not THAT!
This is not a hippie or even ex-hippie point of view. This is not even a utilitarian point of view. Nor a Utopian point of view. It’s an enlightened point of view.
Maybe if a few of the bankers were now made to seriously suffer - thrown into prison for their greed and their crimes against humanity, for example, MAYBE they might start to consider such things as brotherhood, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence. DUH! they might say to themselves.
So were they criminals, or sociopaths, or both? Did they know what they were doing - i.e. fucking up the planet - but went ahead and did it anyway? Psychopaths - indifferent to the suffering of others. Responsible, indeed, for the suffering of others. Those whom they’d call the sub-primes. The plebs. The masses. The morons. Deserving of ripping-off and exploitation. Within the rules of the game, of course. The rules of the casino.
Rules that were a little lax, maybe, but still - those bankers weren’t responsible for the rules, the poor loves. They just played by the completely inadequate rules, and worked damned hard to make sure they weren’t altered in ways they didn’t like. In my book that makes them culpable. To not speak out about the uselessness of the rules as inhibitors of exploitation made them culpable, to my way of thinking.
And all the while they were making damn sure they stuffed their ill-gotten gains into offshore accounts in tax havens before the music finally stopped, and everything went shit-shaped. Of course they did. Of course they were culpable.
Clever people, in their own nasty, disgusting, stupid way.
.
Monday 30th March and Tuesday March 31st., etc.
This is the soundtrack for Act One. The commentary. Cue speech track, immediately after music track fades to low volume, having faded in and up initially while the point of view of the camera was still a mile up in the sky.
And . . . Action!
“I’m back in time-warp and jet-lag territory - mentally, physically and spiritually.
On Tuesday I awoke at 3.30am local time, feeling part-refreshed and semi-human again, after a blissful 3 hours sleep in a proper bed, in a proper flat. This is consciousness turned upside down; consciousness bent and reconfigured, fast-forwarded and truncated through the planet’s darkness zone, having reduced the zone’s dark duration by several hours of jet-streamed travel.
With darkness still outside the curtains and blinds, I set about settling into this most excellent apartment, allocated to me by the owner of the property, the university. The only thing it lacks is a really decent bed and a decent duvet. I unpack.
I ask myself, when was the last time I slept under blankets? No doubt the first of many odd experiences I’ll have this cherry-blossom season.
I reviewed the video I shot yesterday from the window seats in the aeroplane and in the airport coach, and I like it. I think Ike’s going to be pleased with it when we get down to reviewing and editing. He’d mentioned specifically he wanted footage of the plane landing in Japan, when he handed over the camcorder. Well he’s certainly getting plenty of it.
I felt even better when I discovered a Jean-Michel Jarre CD on the Zen music player, one from Brother B’s collection that I’ve never got round to listening to, and one that’s going to make an excellent soundtrack for the edited film. I’ll post the name of it in due course.
I need to get serious now with Yoko and Kayo about making a film about them, as well as a film about the broader picture of Japan in the cherry blossom time.”
Cut!
-------------------------------------------------------------
The name I propose to give to this part of central Honshu, one that no doubt others have already given it, doesn’t exactly sound wealthy or exclusive like the Ivory Coast or the Gold Coast, let alone evocative of warmth and beauty like the Costa Tropicale, or the Costa del Sol.
But Iron and Steel is the reality of the part of the coastal strip of modern Honshu that lies between Kansai airport and Osaka City, which constitutes Japan’s second metropolis, second only to imperial Tokyo/Yokahama - Honshu’s mega-metropolis that sprawls in full view of Mount Fuji . . . the mighty Fuji-san, which looks down on it, and gazes upon it Zen-like - inscrutably and without comment.
No comment necessary. This is the final outcome of Big Business and Big Finance, the final tangible and physical outcome, that is, because banks and hedge funds and tax havens don’t really need a physical existence. They are as much virtual as they are real nowadays, and they reside mainly in the circuits of computers - zillions of dollars, euros and yen no longer need to physically exist or to physically change hands.
This coastline is an unbroken stretch of heavy metal and heavy industry for mile after mile - factories, refineries, warehouses, docks, ships, cranes and chimneys. It’s the mighty workshop of the nation, and these days, along with similar and even grimmer and dirtier places in China, it’s also the workshop of the planet.
This is the birthplace of modern digital industry, and it’s to the planet’s 20th Century what the coalfields and steel mills of Britain were to the 18th and 19th Centuries. In its turn the 20th Century provided the seed corn money for, and gave birth to, the fledgling organisation, or conspiracy, that became the busted casino of the 21st Century. The G20. The capitalist club. The conspiracy against human kind.
Here in Honshu, where the iron and the steel and the industry peters out, and the urban sprawl takes over, then you can also call it the Concrete Coast, which, let’s face it, is little, if any, improvement on Iron and Steel, depending on your taste and point of view.
Gliding past it and through it in the near-silence of the airport-to-city coach, the ‘Limousine’ - on the way to Nishinomiya, the view through the front and side windows looked incredible against a backdrop of a sky changing from blue to orange and purple in the dying embers of a late evening of a sunny and warm day in the cherry blossom season of these powerful and strangely spiritual islands, these birthplaces of Zen.
Electric lights gradually and imperceptibly came on everywhere to give added interest - studding the stark steel shapes of this technological and industrial hell-hole with pinpoints and glares of bright light. Steam and smoke completed a picture of what is by any standards an overkill of industrial crassness.
You have no real sense of all this industrial sprawl from a vantage point in an aircraft descending in the light of a red setting sun towards the Land of the Rising Sun, down through blueness towards Japan’s second international airport, Kansai, laid out on its own artificial island in a deep blue sea, created by intrepid engineers, architects, and an army of construction workers, in the beautiful and so-called Inland Sea.
As it happens the airport terminal’s architects were British, but they’re not really nation-specific people any more . . . . any more than money and glitz and technology and heavy metals are nation-specific any more . . .
It’s time for some more of Jarre’s glorious techno-reggae . . .
--------------------------------------------
I’m desperate for some news of the G20 - this week’s meeting of the leaders of, quote, “The Group of the world’s most powerful industrial nations”. It used to be the G7 or G8. Changing times. Along came Russia, and then China . . .
Ah, yes, indeed . . . . China. The crouching tiger. The hidden dragon. The incubator and mother of Buddhism, whose father was India, which begat Zen in Japan, etc.
So who else is in this exclusive, though somewhat enlarged, club? (Insert here. DIY. By the end of this week we should all have the names of all 20 of this Rich List on the tips of our tongues.)
Why care so much about these bastards? On one level, we shouldn’t. At the personal level, they ARE an irrelevance. Life’s too short, and we have much more important, much more fundamental things to do with out time.
We have our individual well-being and enlightenment to take care of. We have the needs of our families and our friends to take care of. And so little time every day. So little time. With each new time-saving electronic device, each new time-compressing technological miracle, we have less time. We’re time-poor, we all say. It’s ALL about time . . .
And it’s about time . . . for a change.
Today’s the day for people to get together and not so much “protest” . . . as “demonstrate” what we feel, and to say what we want from our governments, and the “G20”. And if you don’t yet know what you want, then PLEASE find out! If WE don’t know what it is we want to change then how the hell can we let our governments know? The past 30 years should have taught is that we can’t rely on our governments to do the right thing.
I say “today” is the day because I’ve just remembered to go into “Control Panel” and change my computer’s time to “Osaka and Tokyo” time, which means that for me it’s suddenly Wednesday April 1st! April Fools. The day of demonstrations.
That’s how controlled we are by computers and abstract ideas. Back ‘home’ it’s still Tuesday 31st March, but where I sit it’s 2.30am on the morning of Wednesday April 1st. Mad. So little time. So much to think about. Time to think about time, and time to act.
It’s 2.30 in the morning and I’m drinking red wine, brought to Japan by unknown persons, all the way from the Herault. I’m drinking wine because I need some more sleep so that I can function when Kayo comes to collect me at 8.30, to take me to the university and to her seminar on the history of education.
The wine’s not bad, and the music’s good. Set to random play, it’s the unsurpassable blues of JJ Cale, and his self-written “The Sensitive Kind”.
-----------------------------------------
As I was saying - why care so much about these bastards?
Because that’s part of our Social Intelligence. Because as a species, at best, we’re the sensitive kind.
Because Zen recognises that there’s no such thing as purely individual well-being, and the more connected we become as a planet and as a species, the more we need a highly-developed and evolved Social Intelligence. We need to become empathetic. We need to know that we are our brother’s keeper. And our sister’s. And everybody’s brother and sister. Everybody’s wellbeing and happiness depends on everybody else’s.
Which is a philosophy that stands in some contrast to the bankers’ ethos of individual enrichment and gated ‘communities’ - i.e. fragmentation, and envy, and conflict, and dog eat dog mentality. Which is not what I call enlightenment.
Enlightenment? Don’t know what it is!
It keeps changing. Rearranging. (Thank you Van)
But we know it’s not THAT!
This is not a hippie or even ex-hippie point of view. This is not even a utilitarian point of view. Nor a Utopian point of view. It’s an enlightened point of view.
Maybe if a few of the bankers were now made to seriously suffer - thrown into prison for their greed and their crimes against humanity, for example, MAYBE they might start to consider such things as brotherhood, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence. DUH! they might say to themselves.
So were they criminals, or sociopaths, or both? Did they know what they were doing - i.e. fucking up the planet - but went ahead and did it anyway? Psychopaths - indifferent to the suffering of others. Responsible, indeed, for the suffering of others. Those whom they’d call the sub-primes. The plebs. The masses. The morons. Deserving of ripping-off and exploitation. Within the rules of the game, of course. The rules of the casino.
Rules that were a little lax, maybe, but still - those bankers weren’t responsible for the rules, the poor loves. They just played by the completely inadequate rules, and worked damned hard to make sure they weren’t altered in ways they didn’t like. In my book that makes them culpable. To not speak out about the uselessness of the rules as inhibitors of exploitation made them culpable, to my way of thinking.
And all the while they were making damn sure they stuffed their ill-gotten gains into offshore accounts in tax havens before the music finally stopped, and everything went shit-shaped. Of course they did. Of course they were culpable.
Clever people, in their own nasty, disgusting, stupid way.
.
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