The pictures are from a train station near my apartment. I hate the way this blog posts my pictures. They never come out the way I lay them out or as they appear in the preview. Oh, well. I imagine you can sort them out.

The first one, well, one of them, is, I think, in a bank. My knowledge of kanji is pretty limited, but it looks like a bank to me and I think he’s holding a bankbook.

I like that this shows the way English is used in Japan, but my advice to this guy would be if you’re going to try to do something illegal, don’t wear a jacket that says Bad Man on it. What a give-away.

That’s a hanko falling out of his pocket. A hanko is a personalized stamp that every Japanese person carries. It’s required on all official paperwork. I had one made up with my initials, although foreigners are allowed to just sign or initial documents in the spot reserved for the hanko.

The second picture is similar to the earlier picture I posted of the signs that can be seen warning that perverts may be hanging around the area. This one, though, I think is warning the perverts (chikan). Basically, it’s reminding them that it’s illegal to grope the schoolgirls.

It reminds me of the 1940s and ‘50s noir art on magazines and paperbacks in the U.S.

I’m just reporting on the sociological import of the posters here and not making light of the problem itself. I think I mentioned earlier that groping is a big enough problem that many of the trains in Tokyo have ‘Women Only’ cars in use during the rush hours.

I understand that there are also plainclothes police on the trains on the lookout for gropers. The trains can get really unbelievably crowded (remember the guys with the white gloves who push people into the train cars if they can’t quite work their way in by themselves?) so there must be a lot of unintentional groping going on as well. I’ve never seen any confrontations between groper and gropee, but I’ve heard stories.

Speaking of crowded trains, I was in Tokyo last Saturday. I’ve tended to stay away from the city for the most part since the March 11 earthquake. I’m a bit paranoid of being stranded there in the event of another earthquake. I was planning to go up to the observation deck at the top of the Sunshine City building in Ikebukuro a while back and realized that I didn’t want to be up there if things started shaking again.

It’s kind of a phobia with me. Back in about 1980, I went to the top of the World Trade Center. Standing up there, I could feel the building move and I did not like it. I still have nightmares where I’m in a tall building and it’s swaying back and forth.

I live on the top floor of my apartment building and the frequent earthquakes - small ones, mind you - remind me of my nightmares. Of course, it’s only the fifth floor, but still...

At any rate, I was in Tokyo on Saturday. The possibility of earthquakes was offset by the reality of the heat. It was a very hot day and humid and sunny. People waiting to cross the streets all huddled into what shade they could find, even for the minute or two it takes for the lights to change. It wore me out and I was looking forward to getting home even to my hot, shaky, fifth floor apartment.

I went to a used book sale close to Ochanomizu (translation; Tea Water), where I’ve found some good books before, but there were no English books for me this time. I then went to Takadanobaba (translation: Takata’s Horse Riding Grounds) which is a good area for used bookstores. Unfortunately, there weren’t any English bookstores. Actually, there is one called Blue Parrot Books, but I’ve been there and I was looking for new places.

A friend of mine had told me about another English bookstore in the area, but, of course, I wasn’t able to find it.

I went into one bookstore and asked the person working there if they had any English books. The question was in Japanese - Eigo no hon ga arimasuka - but she asked me in English, “English books?”. I thought that was a little odd since our conversation was in Japanese, but I said yes and she said no and I just looked around the shop for a few minutes. Then it dawned on me that the shop specialized in movie books. ‘Movie’ in Japanese is Eiga, ‘English’ in Japanese is Eigo. She had just been clarifying in English whether I wanted English books or movie books.

She then gave me directions in Japanese to an English bookstore along with a map and I set off again on my quest. Not surprisingly, to me anyway, I never found the place.

I have a huge problem with maps in Japan. There’s some kind of cultural understanding of maps in this country that is foreign to, well, foreigners. Okay, it could just be me. I don’t think I have ever once been able to find a place on a map in Japan at one go. One time I remember, I followed a map trying to find a hotel and got hopelessly lost. I managed to find my way back to the train station where I’d started and got my bearings again. I looked at the map more closely and finally turned it upside down and was able to find the hotel that way.

Anyway, I wandered around Takadanobaba, hot and tired, for a while, but the only English book I found was a copy of Porky’s II. I gave it a pass.

Dragging my feet, among other body parts, back to the train station, I saw a sign that said, in English, ‘Used Books - Second Floor’. I was so beat at that point that I almost passed it by because I didn’t want to walk up the stairs. I talked myself into it, though, and climbed up to the second floor and asked the bookstore guy, in Japanese, if he had any English books. He told me, in Japanese, no. It was faintly reminiscent of a Monty Python skit.

Okay. Why would someone advertise ‘Used Books’ in English and not have any used books in English? What customers is he trying to attract? Japanese customers don’t need the English. English speakers looking for Japanese books don’t need the English. The only people who need the English are people like me who are looking for English books... and there aren’t any.

I think he just liked the way it looked on the sign. Ah, the power of English...

Well, it's been a long time since I added to this blog.

It’s Easter Sunday in Japan. I went back to Kamakitako today. These pictures are from the lake. I'm sorry about the layout, but I seem to be limited in what I can do with this blog format.

I go to the lake every season and it always has a new personality. The cherry blossoms are almost all gone now, lying in pink and white lines along the streets and in small piles on the spring ground, but there are other blossoms and trees to be seen.

I said Kamakitako and not Lake Kamakitako because ‘ko’ means lake and it would be like saying Lake Kamakita Lake.

That kind of language glitch pops up every once in a while. One of the bridges across the Sumida River in Tokyo is often listed in English guidebooks as the Nihonbashi Bridge. ‘Bashi’(or hashi) means bridge in Japanese, though, so they’re actually saying The Nihon Bridge Bridge. Then, too, a lot of times you’ll hear or see the river itself called the Sumidagawa River, but ‘gawa’ is river, so...

This little trick isn’t just found when going from language to language. Have you ever heard ‘ATM machine’ or ‘PIN number.’? Think about it.

I’m starting up again on my return to Japan after the March 11 earthquake. I was on break and in California when it hit.

Let me say at the start that it was and continues to be a tremendous tragedy for those in the tsunami area and for those around Fukushima. I, and everyone, I’m sure, hope and pray for progress in the recovery of the northeast coast.

My personal experience revolved around attempting to piece together information on the situation in order to determine when - and for a while, if - I would return to Japan. It took a month for me to feel it was all right to return.

I learned a lot about how news is reported.

What was supposed to be happening varied according to whom you were listening. CNN got on it right away, of course, and people like Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta headed for Japan. There was a while when it seemed we were really being informed about what was going on.

Then CNN came on with a story about radiation hitting Tokyo and made it so alarming that I emailed all of my friends in Japan and asked if they were going to be able to evacuate.

One of my colleagues at the university emailed me back immediately and asked what I was talking about. There was no mention of the radiation hitting Tokyo IN Tokyo. Soon another wrote back and said that he had just sent his kids off to school and his wife was outside hanging out the laundry. A third replied that his family had not even thought of evacuating.

I started checking out NHK, Japanese news, online. For every sensational story CNN ran, NHK seemed to have a quieter analysis. Of course, TEPCO tended to minimize the danger. I began to realize that the truth was somewhere in between the fear-mongering of American news outlets and the downplaying of the situation being reported in Japan.

Then, when Libya hit the headlines, CNN seemed to leave Japan entirely. They had put up a page for the earthquake, but went for days at a time without updating it. The CNN ‘This Just In’ blog’s newest stories were always a week or more outdated. The U.S. Embassy called for voluntary evacuation and then seldom posted anything new on their earthquake page.

Most news sites have links at the bottom of their articles. CNN titles the section “We Recommend’. The stories are not dated at the link. I would read something like ‘Another Explosion at Fukushima Reactor’ and click on the link to find out it was a story about the explosion from the week before. One link was titled something like ‘Massive Earthquake Off the Coast of the Philippines’ and when I clicked on it, it was dated last October.

Somehow, I gradually put together enough to decide to return, but my belief in a connected world is badly shaken.

When I got to Narita, it seemed a lot quieter than usual. It was a quick trip through immigration and customs. (We still had a long wait for our luggage, though.) My flight on Korean Air had been full, but it was a smaller plane with only two seats on the window sides of the aisles. It was headed for Seoul, so I don’t know how many passengers actually disembarked at Narita. I also heard that KAL’s daily service to Japan from LAX has been cut back to four or five days a week.

The trains seemed to be running normally. I got right on the Skyliner bound for Ueno. The train was more crowded than usual, but I don’t know if that was because of cutbacks in service or not. Since fewer people are coming in to the airport, more crowded trains would seem to indicate fewer trains running, I would think.

In Tokyo, many electric signs had been turned off. Many escalators were also shut down. There’s still an effort to reduce use of electricity, but in my area, anyway, the rolling blackouts have been discontinued. The nights seem darker from my apartment window, though.

I was able to get gas for my scooter with no problem. Well, I didn’t have a problem with the gas actually being available, but I ran into trouble at the pump. It was my first time at a self-service pump in Japan and using the pump involved choosing gas type, choosing payment type, entering blood-type and clicking your heels together three times. Luckily, self-serve in Japan means having an attendant close by to help if necessary. It was.

The store shelves still have some bare spots. Several brands and flavors of bottled water are not available. For some reason, a few varieties of canned coffee, of which Japan has a whole lot, have disappeared. And yogurt is being rationed.

I found that out by coming up to the check-out counter with four containers of yogurt and being told two was the limit. The clerk was very apologetic in explaining the situation to me, but I’m sure that the word has gotten around that the foreign guy is hoarding yogurt. It didn’t help when I went back two days later and brought up two containers of yogurt and two small bottles of a probiotic yogurt drink and found out that the same thing applied. Once again, the clerk politely informed me of the rule and confiscated one of each of my yogurts. I must really be getting a reputation around here.

When people get together, everyone asks each other where they were when the quake hit. There are lots of stories of spending that night in the office or walking for hours to get home after the trains stopped. One guy I know confessed that he stole a bicycle to ride home. Actually, he said ‘borrowed’ so he might have returned it. I, of course, have to say I was out of the country.

There’s a little bit of guilt involved in not having been here for the shaking. Everyone I know has this shared experience and I feel left out. Yeah, well, all the same, I’m glad I missed it. I’ll deal with the guilt somehow.

I’ve had a similar experience. I was in Japan on 9/11 and only knew of that day on the day from what I could gather from Japanese TV. I still hear new things about it now ten years after the fact. Living through September 11 was a shared experience that I did not participate in and it occasionally sets me apart from other Americans.

In Japan, there’s still the occasional aftershock to deal with. There have been four or five noticeable shakes since I got back - more than we experience in a few years time in California - but they’re always over before I have time to react. The day after I got back, there was an announcement over the town’s loudspeaker system and a few seconds later, there was an earthquake. I thought that the Japanese had perfected an early warning system on seismic activity, but my friend, Yoh-san, said it was just a coincidence. The announcements are just public service-type information and the one I heard had nothing to do with predicting an earthquake.

The fact is, though, that Japan is well-prepared for earthquakes. Think about it. A 9 magnitude quake hits the country and there is very little damage done. All of the high-rises in Tokyo withstood it well. The deaths and destruction were mainly due to the terrible tragedy of the tsunami.

The current problem, of course, has to do with the nuclear plant. TEPCO should have been, but, unfortunately, wasn’t prepared for the double event of a huge quake and following tsunami. If the company had done what they should have done in the way of safety systems for any eventuality, Japan wouldn’t be dealing with this on-going crisis.

I’m back in Japan and continuing with my job, with my life, as is everyone around me. It’s a strange feeling, though, walking around and really expecting the earth to move at any time. I’m sure that all of the people who actually went through the great shake feel that way a lot more than I do.

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.