Norwegian Wood/ノルウェイの森

Rereading Norwegian Wood by Murakami (and on that note, why does WordPress never let me type in Japanese the first time I hit the IME key? I always have to open up another windows, switch between Japanese and English input, and then go back to WordPress and switch again. It makes no sense) 村上- it worked that time…

Anyway, rereading Murakami I remember first picking up the original Japanese, entitled ノルウェイの森, and thinking that the title makes no sense- It’s a reference to the Beatles song. The line the song takes its titles from is

“She showed me her room/isn’t it good?/Norwegian Wood”

It is obviously a reference to the timber decor of the girl’s room, but the word 森 means ‘wood’ in the (less common, I think) British sense, where it is a synonym for forest. Most English dictionaries list the primary definition of wood as ‘the hard fibrous substance under the bark of trees’ with ‘a small thicket of trees’ as the secondary meaning, while wwwjdic’s definition of 木 is “tree; wood; timber” and the word 木材　(which I’d conjecture is far less common, using the possibly flawed logic that I’ve never heard it before therefore it’s used less) means “lumber; timber; wood” closer to the Beatles meaning.

But it goes deeper- I may have mentioned before the characters that make up 木 (wood), 林 (woods) and 森 – which suggest a growing number of trees, culminating in the compound 森林, which means forest. 森　and 林 are both common surnames (like Wood and Forest in English) in fact one of them is the name of a woman in my office. I thought all this, all these possible meanings would have had to gone through 村上春樹’s mind (not forgetting he is quite a famous translator as well, fluent in English) as he chose the title of the novel. But then I was going through the songs I copied off 惠子’s iPod and there was a group of songs by a band called ビトルズ (ie. Beatles spelt out in Japanese), one of which was ノルウェイの森. I knew that it’s kind of wrong, and I thought there must be a better way to translate the title. Setting myself the task to work it out, I realised two things almost instantly:

1. ノルウェイの木 would be horribly incorrect, because the song is not about a tree from Norway, and neither is the book.

2. The song itself would be incredibly hard to translate- song lyrics always are but this one particularly. I’m not saying it can’t be done, I’m saying I can’t do it. Take the opening line, for instance

” I one had a girl, or should I say/She once had me”

How could I possibly translate that? I can’t even work out where the punctuation is meant to go in the English version.

So I’ll just go with what The wikipedia page on the book says, that the title is a reference to the most common Japanese translation of the song title, and that forest settings play a prominent part in the novel. But the original John Lennon song is not referring to a forest.

Oh well, oh well. I feel like listening to Rubber Soul.

 

More 漢字 study

Every now and then while studying I come across something that’s so insanely stupid I will always remember it- like people I’ve talked to who said the only Japanese they could ever remember is the counter for chickens （わ） or Tamara, who despite being vegetarian knows the international sign language symbol for abattoir. These things just seem so useless that you always remember them, mainly because of their uselessness.

I do this with characters in Japanese (by characters I mean letters). You see I tend to isolate seperate parts of characters to remember them individually. So I can remember older sister (姉) is the character for woman/female (女）and the character for city （市） Therefore an older sister lives in the city. Same with 妹　which means younger sister…although I remember that mainly because I remember older sister.

But then 女 pops up in some really weird characters. For instance 安 means cheap, 安全　means safe (there was a great moment in Tokyo when I saw a taxi from a company called 安全タクシー dart across three lanes of traffic and turn left through a red light without indicating. Really living up to its name) 

furthermore 好 means to like, or be fond of (the two characters smooshed together are woman and child) and the one that I just realised today (because I mustn’t have been looking before, or I just saw the characters together for the first time) is 始- which means begin. Its made of 女 and 台、which means very big, and is also the counter for cars and large pieces of machinery.

It makes no sense I know. This country is messing with my mind.

 

How Now, Brown Bureaucrat…

I’m going to start a post that is mostly perplexed ‘what is wrong with this country?’ rants by saying the rainy season has its awesome points, like the light mist over the mountains, the angry sea, the solid sheet of rain, the crabs on the street or the fact that I don’t have to water my herbs.
Now onto the real point of this post- Japanese bureaucracy.
Today was phase two of operation make-a-Japanese-driver’s-license. Phase one was translate-my-Australian-license. This is pretty easy, especially coming from an English speaking country with relatively few states. Americans, on the other hand, have difficulties. The translation part isn’t too hard, but the test is the difficult, no, improbably impossible part. Now, here having an American colleague going through a far worse ordeal than me made me feel better. I just sit an interview where they ask when I got my license, and what kind of test I had to do, and then in a couple of weeks I make the three hour each way drive again to have my eyes tested (because they couldn’t possibly test my eyes while they have me there to do the interview, no, that’d just be too easy…), so they can mail me a license a week later. But no, Americans have the joy of sitting a Japanese Practical driving test. And here I use practical in the most loose sense possible- it is as far removed from any situation one would ever encounter, anytime while driving. Here’s a run down of the test:
- It’s on a closed course, with no other cars
- there’s one traffic light, but that doesn’t matter. It’s always red and just there for practice
- you’re expected to take the course fast, without thinking
- you’re not told what to do, you’re not told what you’re doing right and, if you fail, you’re not told what you’ve done wrong.
- there are three possible courses you can remember. You turn up an hour before your test and you’re told which course you’ll be doing, and you have that hour to commit the course to memory
- there is a section where, coming out of a turn, you have a space of about 30m to speed up to 45km/h, which in a manual involves over-revving the engine.
- the test is undertaken in huge black taxi-like Toyota Crown saloons, even though the emblem of Kochi is the tiny Kei-car, which everyone drives. They’re the tiny cars that Japan is famous for, which are really starting to make sense with petrol pushing ¥200/l
Yes, you’re expected to get behind the wheel of a car, no, practically a tank, that you’ve never driven (unless, like many people, you’ve failed the test many times) navigate an absurd course entirely by memory, and then somehow divine what it was you did wrong if you have to attempt it again.

And here is essentially what is wrong with Japanese education. An intricate system of silly hurdles to jump through, insane and inane tests based entirely on memorisation, with absolutely no practical application whatsoever. This is why Japanese drivers are so bad, they’re never actually taught how to drive. On a road. They learn how to follow a course.

And this is why I’m here, because it used to be the same with English education- kids could pass university entrance exams in English and not be able to communicate with an English speaker.

But anyway, I don’t have to sit the practical test. Thankfully.

 

Sometimes I have long days at the office with no work…

And this is one of those days. I should make a category on my blog entitled ‘long days at the office’

In fact I just did.

 

This is the product of one of those long days. My first translation into Japanese. Now, keep in mind its difficult enough for me to express myself in Japanese, let alone someone else, but I try. And I can only get better. Really, this isn’t very good…

 

First Day of my Life by Bright Eyes

 

This is the first day of my life

今日は僕の人生の最初の日
I swear I was born right in the doorway

このドアで生まれたを誓う
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed

雨に出て俄かに全部変わった
They’re spreading blankets on the beach

浜で毛布を床を伸べる
Yours is the first face that I saw

あなたのは最初見たの顔
I think I was blind before I met you

会った前ではブラインドと思う
Now I don’t know where I am

今どこですかと
I don’t know where I’ve been

どこ行った知らんけど
But I know where I want to go

どこに行きたいか分かる

And so I thought I’d let you know

そして知させると思った
That these things take forever

こんな物は千代
I especially am slow

特に僕は遅い
But I realize that I need you

けどあなたを要るの気づく
And I wondered if I could come home

と帰られる考えた

Remember the time you drove all night

夜中運転したの時覚えてる？
Just to meet me in the morning

朝で会うばかりなのに
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed

変なと思ったあなたは「全部変わった」と言った
You felt as if you’d just woke up

しばらく前起きたの感じそう
And you said “this is the first day of my life

と言った「今日は私の人生の最初の日
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

会った前死ななかったから嬉しい
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you

けど心配しなってどこか行けって
And I’d probably be happy”

幸せかも知らない」

So if you want to be with me

だから一緒にしたたら
With these things there’s no telling

こんな物卜えない
We just have to wait and see

見送れいけない
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck

しかし宝くじの勝ち待った
Than waiting to win the lottery

働いて報を食むほうが好き
Besides maybe this time is different

と多分今度は違う
I mean I really think you like me

あなたは僕に本当に好きと思う

 

I have a dirty mind…

but it is interesting how secondary meanings become primary meanings through specific use…

 

It looks like I was wrong + Tokyo highlights

Regarding my earlier posts on Japanese words for ‘please’, and another planned post on Japanese words for ‘I/me’ I guess I was wrong. It turns out English is just as weird with its paradigms. If you ask for a translation of どういたしましてany Japanese-English dictionary will say ‘You’re Welcome.’ But I’m meant to teach English as it’s spoken, so I was asked to provide a few more examples. Japanese only has one or two because gratitude is pretty much ingrained in formality (this means a conversation at a cash register with a Japanese person is always the same, on the plus side this means no fake ‘how are you?’, that’s saved for English class) Yet we could think of eight synonyms in English, ranging from ‘any time’ (it always gets a laugh when I say that in Japanese…) to ‘no, thank you‘

 Which brings me to another topic: me digging holes for myself. I should learn not to do things like try to explain the difference in pronunciation between ‘no thank you’ (いいえ、けっこうです） and ‘no, thank you’ 　（いいえ、こちらこそう)

And I should never, ever, ever again try to explain the difference between American and Australian pronunciations of the English for 出来ない. This is because ‘a’, ‘ar,’ and ‘u’ are all pretty much translated as あ. It is amusing, however, in that I had a teenage Japanese girl repeating the dirtiest word in the English language, over and over again, in a crowded Tokyo metro train.

I think from now on I’ll just let my students stick to the American pronunciation. I can live with ‘can’t' rhyming with ‘ant’ 

 Others include ’sit’ and ’shit’, and ’clap’ and ‘crap.’ And I swear I’m not being immature, Japanese people honestly have a hard time distinguishing between these. I’m here to fight that with the Queen’s English.

Yesterday I had an experience a lot of JETs complain about; it’s in the interview, in the journals and the general information handbook, it’s one of those things we’re taught to deal with, That is, being told to mark correct English incorrect because it’s not what’s in the book. My example is unbelievably unbelievable because of a multiple choice question, three answers were correct. It was a ‘finish this sentence’ question, that went like this:

“Complete this sentence: a mountain covered ________ snow”

And the choices were ‘in,’ ‘by,’ ‘with’ and ‘to’

All the English speakers reading this blog try to answer that question. And while you’re there, try to help me with other synonyms for ‘you’re welcome’

That wasn’t the only one, merely the worst because there was not one but two acceptable answers I was asked to mark wrong. On the same page there was another similar one, but most kids got it ‘right’ because there was a hint that gave it away. On the next page there was a passive activity, asking students to convert passive statements into questions. The sentence was ‘he had some balls in his hands’

OK, that time it was just me being immature…

Also on Monday I’m refereeing a Sumo tournament for fifth and sixth graders, in the name of English education. Why? I don’t really know…

 

Oh oh oh, and next weeks face-to-face interview test with Junior High School second year students, one of the questions is ’shall we dance’

If any kid says yes I am so spending the whole rest of their allocated minute dancing with them. Or maybe that’s a bad idea…

 

Anyway, onto Tokyo highlights:

-vegetarian food (and another vegetarian to eat it with)

-Risa’s bout of swearing on the Metro

-people-watching and generally relaxing

-chocolate croissants

-bookstores

-picnics

- wandering/wondering around Omote-sando

-public transport adventures (during the best day I accidentally ended up at 東京タワー, then　東京ミドタゥン, 渋谷、表三度 and finally 下北沢)  

 

Showa Day

Yesterday was Showa Day. Now, celebrating a dead emperor’s birthday makes as much sense to me as the fact that boys’ day is a holiday and girls’ day isn’t (well, this is Japan, so that kind of makes sense) But it did mean kicking back on a Tuesday, and making up for the fact that I was working on ANZAC day. It also gave me the chance to appreciate the newly fine weather, plant some more herbs, and read. And in the evening, for reasons I am powerless to explain, Sam and I drove an hour to a wedding celebration for people we’d never met.

Two weird things happened: I remember wondering when the shaken (compulsory insurance, without which I can’t drive) runs out on my car- it turns out it was yesterday. So we had to get home by midnight. I also forgot my International Driver’s Permit. Which is a bit of a problem, as I have no idea where it is.

Secondly, the father of the groom was incredibly drunk, he would hit me to get my attention, and once he touched me inappropriately. He also tried to set me up with every women who walked past. Most of whom were married, one was his wife, one was one of my students.

One of my elementary school students.

One of my male elementary school students.

So I can now say I’ve been to a hippy wedding party in Japan and heard Beach Boys covers in Japanese. So many things I never thought I would be able to say.

Leaving for Tokyo on Friday, I’m going to try to blog from my iPod, using free wireless at McDonalds. Wish me luck.

 

Summer Comes

So the weather’s heating up and occasionally, after school or during a quiet Sunday at home, I decide to hop on my bike and look for some little spot around the town I haven’t seen yet. Sometimes I’ll go to a place that looks interesting on google maps, sometimes I will have driven past a place and always wondered what was actually there, and sometimes I’ll just go in a direction I haven’t really explored. The results range from me fearing for my life as I reach the end of a dirt track, long since past what could be called a road (thankfully I’m always driving when this happens. Although it tends to happen at twilight, the scariest time) to finding a little beach protected on three sides by cliffs, with streams of water trickling down the faces of the cliffs- a perfect place to watch the sunset. I wanted to claim one of these as my own, to have my own place I could cycle to and read, and be alone. And I thought I’d found it- the beach out on the cape, surrounded on three sides by cliffs and only accessible by a steep road down from a gap in the bamboo. It was nice, I thought, I’d clean up some of the junk that has obviously washed up during typhoons, left there because no-one uses the beach, and I’d find a good place to read, and when it gets a bit warmer I’d pitch a tent on the thin strip where there’s sand instead of fist-sized rocks. I’d swim when it gets a little warmer (the water looks perfect) and maybe one day I’d even have someone to be romantic with, who I can take there to watch the sunset.

But the I went back there, and found a hole had been cleared in the bamboo, steps made out of rocks where the path was before, and even a handrail made of rope. Evidently someone else goes there, and either someone in city hall or a fisherman thought people go there often enough to build a reasonable staircase down there. So no fortress of solitude for me. Ah well, you win some you lose some.

And yesterday a student pointed to a word in a dictionary, part of a longer translation, and asked me what it means. The word was ‘the’- I was powerless to explain, in Japanese or English. The best I could do was tell her that, in that particular context, you don’t need it.

There are so many questions I can’t answer.

 

Abandonment

Yesterday I was driving to the next town to help out at (ie. sit in on) a community English conversation class the English teacher in the next down gives, and I passed through a small village just before the city border, one of many small villages around the area that are being abandoned as the population declines. The town has an elementary school with five students, due to close next year (when two of those students will graduate) and a Junior High School that closed last year. Set into a valley, below the level of the road in front, all that is visible of the junior high school is the crumbling gym. There are at least six schools (that I know of) like this around Shimizu that are closed, three of them completely abandoned, and only one in regular use (as an old people’s home) I couldn’t resist stopping to take photos.

It’s strange seeing how nature is re-consuming these old buildings, when you think about the students who, for three to nine years went to these buildings almost every day.  At the entrance and in the staff room of all the schools are aerial photos taken following major construction, like a new gym or a new pool. In the case of the combined elementary school/junior high school deep in the forest, at the intersection where one windy road goes inland to the mountains, and the other back to the coast to join the major tourist road, the only such photo I’ve been able to find is from 1978 (昭和 52 年）and hangs in the genkan of the nearest school, which if I remember correctly is due to close in a year’s time (along with four others) The frame contains two photos, one of three students doing star-jumps with a teacher on a fine day- the shot captures the moment perfectly. The other is an aerial shot showing all the students (about 10-15 of them) spelling out the school’s name on the small field outside, with the year written underneath. I can think of no more perfect metaphor for the loss of the rural way of life. I want to go out to all of these schools before cherry-blossom season is over and photograph the way the fresh new life is taking over the old dead buildings. I’ve somehow developed a nostalgia for a time I never knew.

The photos are of the entrance, a clock stuck at ten to ten and an old swing hanging from a cherry blossom tree.

Click on the images for bigger and better views.

 

More 漢字

I’m spending my morning catching up with online news and trying to write down a few things that came to me during my eight hour transport epic yesterday. These include recipes using Vegemite, a less-flawed, systematic way of learning 漢字, and this quote from Spaced about toasted-cheese sandwiches

Daisy: In the end, our relationship was just like a sandwich toaster. You know, you just forget you’ve got one. And it just sits there on the top of the cupboard collecting a layer of greasy fudge. And even if you do see it you just assume it’s broken, you think if it’s working I’d be using it all the time, but you don’t and it just sits there. Then one day, you get an overwhelming desire for toasted sandwiches, you know? And you get it down and it works, and you can’t believe it, you know? And then you make every kind of toasted sandwich there is, you have toasted sandwich parties. You make Marmite and cheese, chocolate and…
Tim: Pilchards.
Daisy: Banana and…
Bilbo: Acorns.
Daisy: Acorns. And then as quickly as the desire comes, it just goes. And then you put the toaster sandwich maker away. And, you know what?
Tim: What?
Daisy: You don’t miss it.
Bilbo: So what you’re saying is ‘Don’t hide the toasted sandwich maker away, use him regularly and you’ll get the most out of him’.
Tim: No, she’s saying ‘Chuck your boyfriend, have a sandwich’.

(and the Google search keywords I went through to find that! Oh, auto-complete will be full of the most interesting nonsense)

It occured to me that the toasted cheese sandwich maker, which sits in somewhere deep in the cupboard of western-houses (like a more prevalent version of the waffle-iron), with a crusty layer of melted cheese from its last use, months before, doesn’t really exist in Japan- and the alternatives are things like rice cookers (although rice cookers here get used- a lot) and Takoyaki thingies. Cooking impliments with a very specific use. Any recipe I offered for toasted cheese and vegemite sandwiches would have to take into account that a Japanese household does not contain this indispensible, yet rarely used, kitchen tool. Bread here, too, is different (far too thick) and the cheese is not really Cheddary enough, and doesn’t have the fantastic meltiness of Coon, or the sharpness of a good Mt Barker or Watsonia block of Cheddar. Vegemite isn’t too hard to find, but it does present a bit of a challenge for anyone living outside of a big city, although I think there are a few stores in Kochi city that sell it.

So, here’s a recipe for Cheesymite Scrolls instead (ignoring the fact that most Japanese households lack an oven)

2 cups self raising flour
30gr butter, chilled, chopped
3/4 cup milk

preheat oven to 200c. line a large baking tray with baking paper.
sift flour into a large bowl.
add butter. using your fingertips, rub butter into flour until combined. make a well in the centre and add milk. using a flat bladed knife, stir until mixture is almost combined. using your hands kneed out on a floured surface. use a rolling pin to roll out dough and top with cheese and vegemite roll up dough firmly ike a swiss roll. cut into 12 slices and arrange scrolls close together
bake for 18 to 20 minutes

 And the 漢字, I worked this out

子 means ‘Child’, easy enough

学 means ‘learn’, a child with some kind of learning hat on

見　means ’see’

覚　means ‘remember’, seeing and learning!

The trouble is I knew those four already. Aside from remembering that 複雑　is complicated (that’s what it means. Also it is complicated) I need a better way to learn this. I think that better way is by reading lots and lots.

But, if you’re ever in Australia, get yourself a loaf of white bread, a tub of margarine, a jar of vegemite, a 1kg block of any semi-matured or matured cheddar cheese, and a sandwich toaster. Ingredients and impliments are both available from all big supermarkets. Spread the bread thick with the margarine, and put it margarine-side down on the sandwich toaster (to stop it sticking), spread a thin layer of vegemite over the side facing up (the spread should be TRANSLUCENT- not opaque. The bread should be entirely visible) and place half-centimetre slices of cheese over the vegemite. Finally, place another slice of margarine-spread bread on top to complete the sandwich, with the margarine side facing up. Close the sandwich toaster and turn the power on. It might take a little effort to close. Wait five to ten minutes, when you come back the sandwiches should be toasted to a golden colour. Turn the power off and remove the sandwiches using a butter knife, and consume while hot and delicious.

(These sandwiches, eaten cold the morning after a drunken sandwich-making party, are a good remedy for a hangover. Seriously! And almost anything you can think of can be put in them)

 Lastly, I bought a new ten megapixel Olympus camera, with a ridiculous amount of zoom and manual focus. The focus is great, the super macro shots I took of the Cherry Blossoms in Fukuoka look great on my desktop, a 22″ screen, meaning a single blossom takes up about 14 inches! I didn’t buy it from Yodobashi Camera, for two reasons, one is that they didn’t have an affordable digital camera with manual focus, and the second is that I can’t stand the voice of the girl who does the English ‘Welcome to Yodobashi Camera’ recording, especially the way she says ‘Canon’

Although the French one is super-sexy. ‘Bonjour et bienvenue a Yodobashi Camera…’

Fantastic!

Edit: I was in the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum on Thursday, and a cameraman from NHK interviewed me! He said I’d be on TV on Saturday morning, and if there was a report I missed it. I doubt I would’ve made it anyway, when I have a camera pointed at me I tend to forget any language.

So If anyone was watching NHK in Fukuoka on Saturday morning, the bumbling gaijin was me!