Now here’s a couple of pictures for those of you who may think tobacco companies are just typical businesses selling a simple product. [Sorry. The pictures are a bit out-of-line. I can't arrange them correctly with this posting system.]

I know what you’re thinking. First, nice shorts, guy, then, wow, he must have smoked a LOT of cigarettes to get those muscles.

This is what happens in a country with lax truth-in-advertising laws, not to mention lax tobacco advertising laws. Can you imagine this being used in the U.S.? Impossible.

I read somewhere that since people in North America and Europe have reduced their smoking so drastically, the tobacco companies have ramped up their overseas sales to people without the same awareness, or hyper-awareness, of the health effects of tobacco use. It sure seems like it in Japan.

There are more and more smoking areas in, say, train stations, now, but the concept is just a little off. If you want to smoke you have to go stand in an area marked off by white lines on the ground. Unfortunately, the smoke doesn’t respect the lines and goes whichever way the wind blows - in my face, most of the time.

Smoking in bars and restaurants and other public places is in about the same place as California was in the 80s. It’s very hit and miss as to whether the place you’re going to will be smoke-free or not. Once around that time, I went into a restaurant with a friend and the hostess said, “Smoking or non-smoking?” “Non-smoking,” we said, to which she replied, “I’m sorry we don’t have non-smoking.” We never quite figured that out...

Smoking at my university is arranged the same way as the train stations. There are quite a few designated, painted-line-enclosed smoking areas and a whole lot of smoking students. One of the duties of the teachers, university professors, mind you, is to tell students smoking out-of-bounds to move 20 feet to the left where the rest of the smokers are gathered. Quite a teacher/student relationship we’ve got going.

Anybody see the recent video on CNN of the two-year-old smoking baby from Indonesia? There was quite a bit of shock and outrage expressed in the comments section, of course, and cries of child abuse, but very little cultural awareness. The reason that can happen in a country like Indonesia is because of the lack of awareness that I mentioned earlier.

Blame the tobacco companies that think an ad campaign like the current Winston one shown here is somehow not deceitful and immoral.

Well, it’s finally warming up a bit today and seems more like spring. The picture here is of the same lake as in my fall foliage photos that you may have seen from the archives. It has a new character for each season. I tried to get up there for the cherry blossoms, too, but every time I set out for the mountains, it started to rain. I had to settle for just the cherry blossoms at the university this year.

If you look closely at the fishermen at the edge of the lake, you can see that they’re sitting crosslegged on small platforms set into the water. It doesn’t look too comfortable to me, but it’s a common way of sitting in Japan. Eating at a traditional low table also requires sitting crosslegged. I can manage it for about three minutes and then have to stretch and find a wall to lean back against.

It’s been unseasonably cold for the last couple of weeks, making me miss California weather all the more. Actually. it’s making me miss my idealized version of California weather. It’s been a little chilly and rainy there recently, too, I hear. The California weather is something I do miss, though, every time I go away.

I went with my friend Yoh to see James Taylor and Carole King at the Budokan last week. Great show. Everything was just excellent. I got chills from Jazz Man and Fire and Rain.

At some point, I realized that James Taylor is 62 now. His voice and his guitar playing were as strong as ever. I checked later and found out that Carole King is 68. She neither looked or acted her age. She seemed decades younger up there on stage.

It was raining when we left the Budokan and the street was extremely crowded and completely covered with umbrellas. I mean covered to the point where all I could see was backs and umbrellas. I had no idea where we were headed. I just moved along with the crowd until we got to the point where people split off for their cars or taxis or trains. Interesting feeling. Someone who was claustrophobic probably wouldn’t agree.

It seemed like one of those situations where if someone fell or panicked, it would be a disaster to be read about in the morning papers. It was the most crowded situation I had ever been in. Until 15 minutes later...

When we got to Ikebukuro and changed trains to catch the one back out to where we live, there was a problem somewhere and several trains had been canceled. We managed to get on the last express headed out into Saitama, but just barely.

When we got to the train, people were already bulging out of the doors. Yoh-san looked at me and dove in and all I could do was try to follow.

I mean, at this point, it looked like there could be absolutely no room at all in the cars. I’ve been in crowded rush hour trains in Tokyo before. One time I had my backpack and guitar with me and had to wait more than an hour for a train to come along with enough room for me to get on. Anther time, I was traveling with a bag and by the time the trip was over, I had been pushed to one end of the car and the bag was on the other. Luckily, a major characteristic of the Japanese is honesty and no one made off with my luggage.

But this one!

The way you get into a car like this is to back in, pushing until enough space somehow appears to accommodate you. It’s not an easy thing to do. I think Americans especially, maybe with the exception of New Yorkers, would always find this hard to do. You just do not push and shove your way into somewhere in the U.S.

It’s very cultural, I know. The Japanese do this because they have to. There is sometimes really just no choice if you want to get where you’re going. I think it’s odd because there is also the cultural norm of not upsetting the social system. For any even minor mistake a Japanese person makes, there are always profuse apologies. Then the next time they see you, they’ll apologize all over again. My theory is that in this case complaining is what upsets the social order, not pushing and shoving.

Yoh-san made it in, as I said, but when I turned around and tried to back in, it was like pushing into a brick wall. There seemed to be no give at all. What could I do? I wasn’t about to spend the night on the train platform. I pushed harder and slowly enough room opened up for me to get inside the doors. I thought as soon as the doors opened again, people would pop out like the Marx Brothers in their ship stateroom in A Night at the Opera. (I know that may be an obscure reference for a lot of you. Look it up.)

Wow, I thought. There isn’t an inch of extra space in here. It’s absolutely, completely, totally full. Not one more person could possibly get on this train. Well, if that was Ed McMahon talking, then Johnny Carson would be saying, “Not so, commuter breath.” (Still maybe a bit obscure.)

As the doors started to close, a guy came running up and backed his way into the car. I was astounded. I was even more astounded as another guy did the same thing and then two more and then two more after that.

The next hour was not one of my most enjoyable cultural experiences, but it was one of the most memorable. It was so crowded in there... How crowded was it? (another Johnny Carson reference)... it was so crowded in there that if I had gotten any closer to the woman in front of me, I would have been behind her. (And there’s Groucho. Full circle.)

When I finally got home, it was 12:30 and starting to snow.

It’s a good thing it was such a good concert. Otherwise it might have been a bad day.

Yep, the cherry blossoms are out. It seems to me they’re earlier this year, but a lot of April and May of last year is a blur to me. I had kind of a tough time getting adjusted.

One thing for sure, it’s darker and colder this year. I took some nice sakura pictures on campus on days with bright blue skies this time last year. Recently, we’ve had a few nice days, but generally it’s gray and rainy. The blossoms still look nice, but it’s not the same.

The Japanese have cherry-blossom-viewing parties/picnics every spring and they’re still taking place this year, but I just saw one just the other day where the participants looked more like they were ready to go skiing.

Along with the cherry blossoms, new classes are springing up at the university. The school year here starts in April and last week was the first week of the new semester. I have a new experience to get used to. One of my Oral English classes has 90 students. 90 students! At my former school, the University of California, Riverside Extension Center, 17 students was considered a big class.

The students are now shopping for electives so there’s a possibility that the numbers will go down. There’s also the possibility that they’ll go up. Oh, well. After the first 40 or 50, it doesn’t matter much... at least not until it comes to grading. I usually give a quiz every week. I may have to rethink that. I have about 160 students so far with three classes yet to meet for the first time. We won’t know exactly how many students per class we’ll have for a couple of weeks yet.

I got a little of the gaijin treatment from the big class. After the first lesson, several of the students wanted to have their pictures taken with me. It seems to me that that’s usually reserved for the last class, not the first one. This particular class is for freshmen, ichinensei, so I guess I may be something of a novelty for them. Actually, a lot of people, Japanese or not, say I’m a novelty or words to that effect, but that’s another subject.

We had the graduation ceremony for last year’s seniors, yonensei, a couple of weeks ago. What I’ll remember most about it is all of the girls in kimono (no plurals in Japanese). Very, very colorful. Very, very pretty. Of course, I’ve seen women in kimono before, but not that many at one time. It was very Japanese. Nice experience.

Every once in a while, there’ll be a woman wearing a kimono on the train or walking down the street, but mostly, of course, it’s western-style clothing, although often with a Japanese style to it. The hooker-look of last April is back - short skirts and black stockings - and there’s always the logo/slogan clothes. My new favorite is one that I saw on a young mother with two small children at McDonald’s. Yes, I go to McDonald’s in Japan occasionally, which is weird because I never do when I’m in the U.S. I’ll have to think about that. Anyway, she was wearing a mommy sweatshirt with cute little fuzzy teddy bears all over it. Then she turned around and on the back it said, “Everybody must get stoned.”

So, anyway, I’m now looking forward to a new year of classes, for the most part, and cultural experiences, also for the most part.

I just tried to order an exercise bike from a department store in Tokyo and after filling out all the forms and arranging for delivery, I was informed that the company won’t deliver to the fifth floor. Can’t blame them a bit for that. I don't want to go up to the fifth floor, either.

I had to cancel the order until I can arrange for help in getting the machine up to my apartment. Of course, I could just get my exercise walking up and down the stairs and I wouldn’t need the exercise bike in the first place. The thing is, I've been doing that for a year now and will be doing it for at least another year and I really hate those stairs.

Here’s another picture of a sign telling people to clean up after their dogs. As with many of the unusual types of signs you can see in Japan, there are different versions in different places. The chikan sign from the last post has many different depictions of the bad guy - most of them monster-like.

As for this photo, at least the dog has the decency to be embarrassed over the situation. He’s actually blushing. The one on my earlier post looked like he was enjoying the fact that his master had to follow him around with a plastic bag. Of course, the kid didn’t seem too disturbed by it, either.

So, let’s see...

Well, I just got back from the kerosene and rice shop. That’s a loaded cultural sentence right there, isn’t it?

The first thing is, of course, how do these two things fit together? I not really sure, but there’s a shop up the street and that’s all they sell. The rice is in packages from about five to 20 or more kilos and the kerosene is pumped into about five gallon plastic containers that are supplied by the customer.

The shop keeps kind of strange hours that seemed to be governed by when I need kerosene. That’s when they’re closed. I keep two containers in my apartment, just in case. When I run out of one I still have about three or four days to get it refilled before the other one is used up. That usually works, except when I forget or when they see me coming and put the closed sign on the door. Then I’m back to my electric space heater until I work things out.

When I was living here ten years ago, there was a truck that went around the neighborhoods filling containers that were left at the curb. To give you an idea of the difference between Japan and the U.S., the way you’d pay at that time was to just leave the money in a bag tied around the top of the container. You would come home at night and your change and your kerosene would be waiting at the curb for you. I may be cynical, but I don’t think that would be a wise system in my own country.

I’m not sure if the trucks are still being used elsewhere, but they certainly don’t deliver to the fifth floor here. That fifth floor thing is also why I only get one container at a time. I have to take a breather about floor three on my way back from kerosene shopping. Even my Japanese neighbors realize the difficulty of my situation. I ran into some third floorers on my way up and they kind of laughed and said, “Go-kai da ne.” (Fifth floor, right?)

The next thing I find a little strange is just the popularity of kerosene heaters. I imagine they do a good business selling kerosene at that store because everybody uses the heaters, even the smaller shops.

I have two kerosene heaters - one older one that works well and a newer one that will only work when it’s in the right mood. I couldn’t get either one to work at first, but Yoh-san came over and touched a couple buttons and they both started right up. I’m sure he thinks I’m a bit simple with all the things I can’t seem to do right... or at all. You all probably do, too, come to think of it, but you don’t get to judge me until you try it all for yourselves.

Anyway, in addition to the kerosene heaters, I have two electric space heaters that I use occasionally, but they’re too expensive to run all the time. Then there’s one room that has a combination heater-air conditioner built in. Unfortunately, it’s not in the room set up as an office and not in the bedroom, so it’s not much use to me. Oh, a little side note - to the Japanese, this built-in unit is just an air-conditioner, or ‘air-con’ in Japanese-English speak. What I mean is, in the west we refer to only the cooling unit as an air-conditioner, and the heating part is... a heater. To the Japanese, an air-con both heats and cools. An example of language adaptability - they have taken an English word and shortened it and then modified the meaning.

I should be switching to the cooling part of the air-con soon. It’s still cold and wet today, but they’re predicting the cherry blossoms will be in bloom in the next week or so and hot weather can’t be far behind. I don’t know, though. Last year it was the middle of April before the cherry blossoms came out. I seem to remember using a heavy blanket at night all the way to May.

Wow. That means I’ve been back in Japan for an entire year.

Each one goes faster.

We'll see what this one brings.

I haven’t had a lot to write about lately. It’s a little strange, but true, that what’s unusual becomes common after you live with it for a while. I don’t doubt that anyone visiting me would notice and find interesting a lot of little things that I overlook after seeing them on a daily basis for the last 10 months. Still, there are some things...

The security guards salute me when I arrive at the university in the morning. Makes me feel kind of special. I can imagine them whispering to each other as I walk by, “He’s an English teacher!” I think that’s actually a proper greeting and want to require it at my school when I go back to California. Now if I could just get the students to salute when I come into the classroom.

The picture on this page is pretty cultural. Take a look at it and see if you can figure it out before I tell you its meaning.

It’s actually a six-foot tall warning about flashers, molesters, perverts in general - chikan in Japanese. Somebody told me once that it meant that there had been trouble at the particular places where the signs are posted, but I think it may just be a general warning for certain areas. This sign, for example, is at the entrance to a walking path that goes off through some woods and is rather isolated.

Either way, yow! What can kids be imagining when they see signs like that? You’d think they wouldn’t even dare to come out of their houses. It certainly adds another level to not wanting to go to school. You have to go outside to do that.

Unfortunately, I suppose it’s necessary to educate children about unpleasant things just for their own safety. Still, I’ve never seen the equivalent in the U.S. so it makes me wonder about cultural differences more serious than driving on the left or saluting teachers..

I don’t know how effective the signs actually are, but you can believe you won’t be catching me walking up that path day or night.