Eilthir

Launch and lunch

Generally, not a day goes by where I don’t thank my lucky stars for this gift (generously bestowed after much soul searching by both the other half and myself), of not working.  And, to balance that gratitude, not a day goes by that I don’t miss (with a gale force 10, or 7.8 on the richter scale of intensity) my former hectic world of work. The hilariously unmanageable quantity of tasks has gone but so too has the seemingly unending stream of energy, drive and hysterical bleak humour which made the task list bearable and an intriguing “challenge” rather than an interminable “chore”.

The side of the scales was down on the “thank” side with absolute certainty though, last Tuesday. K’s boat was launched and as Mrs K, I wasn’t just asked along to the official bit (enough of a treat) but joined in the pre-launch (nerves jangling) sociable dinner at our local Japanese restaurant and the post-launch (ties off, hair down) drink or two.  So, I got to join in all the craic and the banter and attend a lovely – indeed very swish – event with none of the stress or anxiety of the planning.

All work has its drawbacks, its factors which make the job a darn site more difficult than it needs to be and, apparently, its idiotic individuals who are supposed to be on your team but appear to be so busy waggling their oar about in the air, forcing the rest of you to constantly check and balance your own stroke to compensate or make up for their lack of pulling, that you end up expending an equal amount of effort muttering under your breath that really it would be much simpler to clonk them over the head with said oar and take them out of the equation.

I’ve always been impressed with K’s work practice of hiring and firing individuals with a consistent desire to reward and retain the hard working, capable individuals (who may need coaching) and get rid – as fast as possible – of any time wasting, work shirking eejits. Mistakes are allowed, but not many. Better to be one who is unsure and asks questions (so long as these questions don’t fall into the “daft” category) than one who believes – and continually shares the fact - that they know it all. The latter tend to reach their pay off day faster than the former.

However, climb the organisation tree and you still find a few who you’d probably not want to share a lifeboat with, unless you were taking them along as bait. I found it hilarious to listen in to the venting of spleens and boiling of blood of co-workers who would start every new tale of woe with, “God, I promised I wasn’t going to talk about him/her tonight, but the thing is …” It didn’t matter that I didn’t know who was who or what was what. I could empathise with the story.  It might be factors other than hugely constrained budgets, narrow-minded politicians/civil servants or the inability of resources to stretch to see that all that was needed was done (enough being well shy of a the feast that optimal might have been).  Villains in suits haunt every workplace making life more difficult than it needs to be, but they do create a bond for co-workers to pull together in the face of.

The next day rang more bells. An important event, carefully planned, over which you have maybe – at best – partial control.  At least four separate organisations involved, their contributions to the project needing to be accurately reflected. The correct individuals given pride of place on the podium, the speech makers carefully briefed.

The launching was a spectacular affair, efficiently organised and carefully planned to include pre-event coffees, buses to the boat, a red carpet to the podium, a covered podium in case it rained. This was all the surface. Beneath us, a specially trained and necessarily careful team of 10 alternated between concentrated activity and intense stillness in their rows of five, port and starboard. Their task was to undertake the removal of the last pins and blocks before, from a safe and sensible distance, a rope is broken and bottle is smashed.

The photographer’s lense might have been on the beautifully  kimono clad dignitary, but mine was firmly on the blue boiler-suited gents beneath the boat. My shoulders must have dropped at least an inch when I saw the foreman for each team raise his green flag. Then I was able to take in and enjoy the unfurling of streamers and showers of confetti that fell as the boat slipped bottom first into the water, with exactly the sort of splash you’d expect.

We were then photographed on the slipway, the boat – which I suppose I should really be calling a ship – being gently nudged into position by tugs behind us. Split into two groups, we were then taken on a tour of the machine factory – if anywhere ever called for Bond and a group of baddies to run through, this was it. Armed, or rather eared, with headsets so as we could hear our guide’s detailed description above the din we moved through two gigantic warehouses.  I couldn’t help but expect the 007 theme or maybe Mission Impossible to fade in, but it didn’t. Not even during our scary walk along 30 metre high gangway to look down on the chaps happily clambering over their big bits of metal and machinery, Daniel Craig could have put in an appearance, held my hand while my knees wobbled unhelpfully.

It was cold in the shipyard, especially when you are wandering around in posh trousers rather than the climatically more appropriate three layers of thermal, normal and boiler suit. The organisers had thought of that too, though, and as well as being handed a small bottle of water for our transfer up to Okayama to the celebratory lunch, we were handed hand warmers to take the chill off our frozen fingers.

What with the various organisations involved in the project, there were a number of speeches, made slightly longer by the necessity to translate. At arms length from it all, and not being worried about whether or not the carefully briefed individuals kept to their brief, I was able to just watch and listen.

There are as vast a range of styles and abilities when it comes to public speaking as there are languages in the world, but some things are universal. Before barely the first sentence had passed, even before it has been translated, you can tell who is worth listening to and who is not. It has, I think as much to do with how the speaker holds him or herself as it does anything else, combined to their approach to the task at hand I suppose their manner.

You can tell that the less confident speaker has something more interesting to say than some of the bold ones. You can tell quickly whether the speaker is going to go over or stick to his/her allotted time. You can tell even before the translation, that you are going to want to hang on to every word that this person is saying. You can wonder how on earth this person got to the top of their organisation or you can see instantly why they have arrived at the position they hold. And you can be mightily impressed at the individual who delivers his entire speech in perfect English.

This one gentleman excelled all others – talking not in platitudes and generalities and hopes of continued good working relationships, not about the surface of things, he spoke of the things underneath. The risks for their sector, the demands the public will make, and should make, of their industry and the necessity to maintain a professional awareness that alternatives must continue to be examined. His speech stood out, for its clarity and desire for understanding, embracing and accepting that they, in their wee bit of Japan, would work - that we all must work – very hard to solve this one, tricky but necessary part of the world’s worries.

The serious bit over, the speakers donned ceremonial jackets, lifted mallets and broke the saki cask. We were each presented with a wooden drinking vessel and toasted the ship. The saki tasted of wood to me, but that might be a harsh judgement, given that the glass of champagne clutched in my other hand was the first bit of alcohol to cross my lips in two weeks. It, needless to say, tasted lovely.

We were then treated to a wonderful buffet – and when I say treated, I mean treated. It was a stand up affair, with carefully placed tables round which you could gather to rest your glass or plate, or saki cup. And you could opt for self service, only you didn’t need to. Around six impeccably dressed and made-up ladies would come and ask if you would like to try some sushi or sashimi, maybe some beef or some chicken … I said yes to just about everything and sampled about six dishes of fish which looked so beautiful it almost seemed a crime to eat them.

After the first two, I realised that on the whole, raw fish is lovely. There was I think only one mouthful that I would gladly of deposited back on to the plate rather than swallowed, but being in such a well mannered country I nodded, made big eyes and swallowed, following it with a speedy champagne chaser that probably looked a bit like I’d not seen alcohol, oooh, in two weeks.

The eyes and the tastebuds having been treated and surprised by the sushi and sashimi bearing geisha/waitressess, the next act only came to notice with a dimming of the lights and the first few beats by a traditional Japanese drummer. I was so intent on wondering how he could get such a wide range of sounds from the three drums before him, I didn’t notice the two dancing lion/dragons who had, at some point, joined him on stage until their writhing blocked the drummer’s arms from view. The dance was amazing, rhythmic and beautifully untamed, only hinting at the control that must go into its production.

The surface actions of manoeuvring the lion’s head, co-ordinating turns and twists made it tricky to believe there was just one person within the mask and gown that made up the lion’s garb. And before I knew it, the lions were somehow – with no visible suggestion that they could see out – negotiating the transfer from stage to floor and winding their way through the audience.

I had, for reason of a shaky hand blurring my flash free photos, knelt down beside the buffet table to watch. Before I knew it, one of the lions was circling or rather semi-circling me and then came to a dead stop behind me and bit my head. What can you do when everyone is smiling and clapping at you? Blush. Then notice that the other lion on the other side of the room is getting a slightly different reception from your other half. K, not one to take things quietly had thrown his arms around the other lion and kissed it as it tried to bite him.

One of the geisha/waitresses came up to me and explained that it is believed to be great luck if the lion chooses to bite you, they might dance round one or two people, but will rarely bestow their good fortune with a bite. How remarkable with around 100 in the audience that the lions had chosen on their opposite sides of the room – port and starboard - to bite us both. Maybe we shouldn’t read too much into these things, but on the surface, it seems a pretty an unlikely coincidence …

Omisoka/Hogmanay & Oshogatsu/New Year

New year, in comparison to Christmas, is a definite holiday in Japan. At the shipyard, every single member of staff was out contributing to a big tidy up (known as osouji) to end the year well. Whether your work apparel was a boiler suit or smart suit, no difference. Gloves were donned, brooms were lifted and a close to fastidious tidy was undertaken.  I made a similar effort at home, but no doubt without the efficient attention to detail which the Japanese seem to display at every turn.

Tamano began to take on even more of a ghost town appearance than usual, as most people left to travel home to celebrate New Year with their families. The shipyard covers  20 square kilometres and employs close to 3000 people. Mostly the employees reside in dormitories in the town, leading to a mass exodus for this special holiday. It had the effect of making us seem very far from our own home in the Highlands, where I suppose not so long ago (in fact throughout Scotland) New Year was the big celebration, Christmas not really registering on the calendar at all. Nowadays, they have equall-ish pegging and I’m certain it would rest happier with me if I was sure that change had been motivated by our wish to celebrate and share during the dark months, as opposed to the desire of shops and their owners, marketing departments and trend analysts to make as much money as possible.

Still, though there are some things which change or are lost with time, Hogmanay and New Year do seem to have held on to many traditions and practices where ever you are in the world – without interference from the world of commerce.  The beliefs and actions we undertake on the 31^st and 1^st bring a sense of ritual and reverence to the night, along with a genuine charm and affection for the customs believed to be worth doing on this special night, just once a year.

In an odd bit of synchronisity, or perhaps it is just such an exceedingly good plan, folk here throw wild drink fueled parties, not on, but in the run up to December 31^st. These parties are known as bonenkai, literally meaning “forget the year” parties, where the aim is to lose all the unpleasant memories of the passing year and enter the new year with a fresh and serene mind. Well that’s the theory, anyway. I wonder if that’s what we are doing in Scotland, too? Just that we’ve made such a good job of it, we’ve forgotten that we were supposed to be forgetting … and by leaving it to the 31^st don’t manage the “fresh head” on the 1^st.

At the office or work related bonenkai, managers encourage their staff to relax from the formal modes of address and use the more familiar terms of expression. I’d love to have enough of an understanding of the language to really get to grips with this. I’ve often been annoyed that we don’t have a plural “you” in English (I don’t think the Glasweigan “yous” counts) and that it does seem odd that we don’t have a sibh, as in Gaelic or vous as in French if we want to, well, I suppose show someone more respect … but I think here it is even more complex than just personal pronouns.

So how wise, to have a night where all of that is relaxed and people get to let their hair down a bit  … after all, the hierarchy is there to maintain a sense of order, an indication of where the buck stops and who is in charge in the work place, but away from it, as I fondly remember of one former employer saying you are just “a man in a pub”. I reckon though, that even in their relaxed language mode, the Japanese are still more polite and well spoken than we are and it seems a shame that we’ve lost some of the respect and consideration people used to show one another. I’m not advocating we all go back to having pokers in our derrieres (see, that’s me trying to be polite), but a little formality can be a good thing and can aid or ease the progress of a relationship, working or otherwise.

Back to Japan and the 31^st. After all the tidying and parties, people here tend to gather at home perhaps  sharing a special meal of toshi-koshi soba – extra long noodles that are said to symbolize longevity. Most folk will visit a shrine, and our own neighbourhood was resonating with the sound of the large Buddhist bell being struck – 108 times to represent the 108 human weaknesses. I’m yet to find a list and discover how many of them we were committing as we polished off our curry, played cards and drank in the new year. No doubt lack of perseverance into what those 108 human weaknesses were will be in there somewhere …

We didn’t have a late night. With only two of the bungalows occupied, first footing was pretty easily accomplished and so we were tucked in I think before 1 am. Now, I am not one for sharing dreams, fascinating as I find my own, I know they tend not to make a great deal of sense to anyone else. A bit like arty movies, the only explanation is that the sequence of events must make sense or have made sense to someone, somewhere, sometime. Here in Japan though, the “firsts” of the new year are considered particularly important – the first visit to a shrine, the first food you eat, the first bit of work you do and particularly your first dream, which - what with visits to a shrine, possibly staying up to watch the first sunrise - normally doesn’t come around until the night of January 1^st.

The first dream is called hatsuyume, and is supposed to foretell the luck you will have in the ensuing year. Apparently, it is thought to be particularly auspicious to dream of Mount Fuji, a hawk and an aubergine. That’s not what I dreamt of and I genuinely amn’t going to share what was in my hatsuyume. I don’t think there is anywhere in the world it would make sense and even if someone could decipher its meaning, I’m not sure I would want to know what it meant. And I definitely don’t want an interpretation of what it might mean for my fortune (or lack thereof) in the year ahead.

I’m just hoping that my desire to deal with whatever comes up in 2010 as it arrives, rather than with forewarning, is considered a good thing by the Buddhists and isn’t on their list of human weaknesses.  And I hope that my belief that some things – or at least some dreams – should be kept to oneself, isn’t thought impolite.

Our far flung festive frolics

Christmas was pretty much a day like any other in Tamano. People went to work, shops were open, cars were on the road in usual numbers, cyclists pedalled their way to wherever they were going. Our numbers were swelled though, by the arrival of Yvette (the Project Manager’s wife) and her two daughters. The first female company for four weeks!

The ladies are all well seasoned travellers, even Siobhan (10) and Chantelle (12) having travelled more in their years than I imagine I will in my three score and ten … or whatever our allotted time is these days. They’ve travelled with Richard to Korea, Romania, Singapore … and were a massive help in terms of making sense of some of the more difficult to discern items in the supermarket. The brightly coloured packets were pickled vegetables. You can buy flour if you know where to look. You almost need not make a purchase if you time your visit for when free samples are on offer. If it is something ghastly, you spit it out, discreetly.

Intake of coffee went up, tidiness of our bungalow went down – taking a holiday while on holiday is really the height of indulgence. And they do say a tidy house is the sign of an empty life, yes.  A slightly messy one is a sign that there are girls to chat to and jaunts to go on.

We did have a lovely little Christmas tree, thanks to colleague Owen, which was  beautifully dwarfed by the few presents we had. Scarf, pencil case, jumper, diary and gloves exchanged we decided that definitely the best present by far was the bag of oats Yvette had brought out for us from the UK. Strange, for neither of us had put “porridge” on the list of things we might miss.

We also received a lovely cake and bottle of champagne from the shipyard. The cake, decorated with a marzipan santa, candles and holly was a cream affair and, in preparation for dining en masse that night next door, we rested the table in the garden and demolished the cake. Passersby nearly drove into the fence, but at 15oC it genuinely was warm enough. We weren’t actually trying to maintain the eccentric Brits abroad stereotype. That was just a by-product of our al fresco afternoon tea.

The table eventually made its way around to Richard and Yvette’s, as did we a couple of hours later. It was fitting for how far flung and foreign we felt, that we didn’t dine on the traditional fare. We had the most delicious curry I have had in an awfully long time. Bahumbug’s adage that the turkey and trimmings meal is the one part of the Christmas that makes it bearable (though the presents don’t tend to be rejected … ) was swept aside. Our hosts’ modesty that it was just a curry really didn’t wash. It was a feast – of onion bhajis, potato curry, pork curry, aubergine curry, cucumber salad, rice, nan bread … and some mango chutney which they had somehow managed to source, rightly rationed owing to the premium paid for this additional delicacy.

Over the next few days, I tended to time my visits for when Yvette was in the kitchen, hoping to learn a few of her recipes. I’d watch as she chucked ingredients in a pan, no measuring, no scales, no recipe book, just cook. This has become a theme with those whose culinary skills I admire – they can’t tell you really how much of this or how much of that or for how long– they just know. It’s an instinct, born either of a culinary super gene, a seventh sense of what works or practise.

Much as I found with Effie, my Hebridean mother-in-law, there is no secret ingredient, in fact it is the opposite – simple good ingredients combined skilfully and cooked really well. I suppose it’s  “the knowledge”, gained either at another’s side or through trial and error, bitter experience (along with sweet, salt and that odd savoury one – umami which sounds and is a Japanese word, the fifth taste having been identified in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University while researching the strong flavour in seaweed broth). Still my scones don’t turn out as perfectly as Effie’s (unless she is standing beside me while I do them) and I don’t suppose my curry will be anywhere near as delicious as Yvette’s.

So when did we start to learn things from a soulless set of instructions rather than from family, a friend or trusting ourselves? Measuring things carefully, panicking over consistency and method? No wonder the chatty, friendly style of Nigella and Jamie’s books and TV shows have been so successful. Cooking is something we have to do, need to do, but I think the best ingredient might be company and the most important skill is confidence. Yet somehow, we have gone from cooking and eating as a family to rush meals through the week then making a big elaborate effort to dine with friends.

Cooking and eating are social activities, they are about fuel for living, our health and well being, not a performance. Little wonder plonking something in the microwave and gobbling it down before the tv is so unsatisfactory, but in the hectic 21^st century it’s regrettably a necessary evil. Those of us on an extended holiday though, are now planning to try and gain that confidence trick … and while I’m only vaguely certain about what pre-packs might contain, it’s the safer option. So I’m grateful for the gift of time to experiment in the kitchen and for the willing guinea pig who is happy enough to stomach the good and the bad.

A shared language

I am far from mastering Japanese, my mouth is merely nibbling at its edges. But thanks to the super Collins Gem, I can – when I know what I want to say - prepare a sentence and deliver it. Successfully – thanks to the wee book. There is instant understanding from the other party, but then a stream of words in response, like a line being cast out and I have no idea how to unravel it. What are sounds, what are words what are umms and ahhs?

It does tend to dawn on the other party pretty fast that I am no linguist, but somehow it doesn’t prevent conversation. Crikey, I was even upsold a knife. I had my eyes set on a nice pale handled one, around the 3000 yen mark, but the canny lady manning the stall managed to convince me to buy one almost double the price. Language was no barrier as she demonstrated the knife’s superior ability to cut through paper, how nicely it handled, how well it was made. Maybe she was a terrific sales lady and maybe I am an easy mark.

We had two assistants helping us to choose a wallet. Their descriptions of the finer attributes of each make were easily understood, as was the other half’s protestations that this one was too bulky, this one too bling and this one too complicated. It wasn’t like Goldilocks trying all the options before settling on the one that was just right – there was understanding and a very speedy (thank goodness, given the rows and rows of possible purchases) narrowing down of the options.

Our attempts at Japanese – I think- are appreciated, even although we stumble after one sentence. The most commonly asked question to us is where are you from and then with our response, usually a five-minute pronunciation master class as they are so keen to be sure they are saying “Scotland” accurately. I’m ashamed that my own attempts with the Japanese language are so lackadaisical. So long as I am getting close to the mark, I’m happy. The Japanese sales assistant repeating Scotland twelve times to be sure she had the emphasis right is an example to me and my slovenly ways with the spoken word.

We had no real language issues on our trip to Nao-shima this weekend. Though in Tamano very few folk speak English (and why would or should they) most of the people – or rather most of the staff at the Chichu Art Museum had either very good English or a card for us to read to keep us right. Nao-shima is about a twenty-minute ferry journey from Uno port. The vessel was a sleek wee passenger boat, with airline seating and two crew.  It would be ideal for all sorts of trips, anywhere in the world. A point that almost needed not to be made, but was with a sigh on both our parts. The cost of this boat trip - 280 yen. Not quite £2.

The quiet efficiency and good organisation of all aspects of the visit to Nao-shima nearly leave me speechless. The ferry dropped us off at Miyanoura port, where a very sleek glass and concrete bus station and information point allowed us to get our bearings. The young lady at the café kept us right about using the machine against the wall to make our selection (with me quickly copying down the characters or kanji for coffee for future occasions, when someone so helpful might not be too hand), gain a ticket and then present it to her to bring us our coffee.

We planned our trip. The brightly coloured buses whisk you to any of the places of interest on the island for just 100 yen. You don’t pay when you get on, you pay when you get off, once the bus has delivered you safely to your destination.  Oddly civil, but I suppose only really works in a place like this, where it is a flat fare wherever you are going.

We had settled on the Chichu Art Museum – a museum that considers the relationship between people and nature. The entire building, or more of a build-in, is underground – from above it looks like one of those toddlers’ toys, where you have to slot the correct shaped bit of plastic through the right opening. Inside, its sophistication and simplicity is so far from Fisher Price it seems silly to have made the analogy.

Designed by Tadao Ando (a self-taught architect from Osaka) the gallery houses five Claude Monet paintings, an installation by Walter De Maria and three spaces created by James Turrell. The Monet’s were no great driver for our visit here, we’re neither of us huge fans. His paintings are nice enough, but I never really understood what all the fuss was about, why he is such a big figure in the world of art … well, now I know. I had the opposite to the feeling I got when I saw the Mona Lisa (“Is that it?”). The Monet’s literally stopped me in my tracks, and I wasn’t moving fast seeing as we’d been kindly asked to take our shoes off, and had donned white slippers before entering the Monet space; a huge underground room designed in such a way as to somehow light the paintings with daylight. The floor, though I didn’t examine it too closely – my eyes being mainly on the walls - seemed to be made of tiny little white mosaic tiles that were somehow soft. So shoes off, we entered through a lobby and came from the dark into this beautiful white space and these five fabulous paintings. Awe inspiring. One of them two metres high by three metres long.

I’m no artist and only have the vaguest of understanding of why I subjectively like some things and dislike others but these were beyond beautiful. From a distance, calm and delicately coloured, close up the brush strokes had such energy and vibrancy it was unbelievable to think they produced such a serene and peaceful portrayal of water lilies, weeping willows, grass, water when viewed from afar. I found I couldn’t walk backwards in my slippers, so had to keep shuffling round like some sort of milk float. My lack of elegance and grace before these paintings only hit me later. Even in handmade, perfectly fitting delicate pumps I would have felt like a carthorse.

Eventually ready to leave I stood off to the side to let a Japanese lady gain the full effect – a screen shields the Monet’s from view while you’re busy with your shoes and slippers, and makes the space feel like a private safe place once you are inside – all without doors.  In her face, as east as mine is west, I saw the exact same expression, a mirror to my own wonder and amazement from half an hour ago. Our eyes met and we smiled. Language is so much more than words and sometimes you gain meaning and understanding with none at all.

I’ve probably gone on too much about the Monet’s. The other installations and spaces were as dramatic and clever and well conceived. The simple presentation of pale blue light in a corner, a flat square of light that presents as a cube or an opening, a lit and shaped room bathed in one light yet somehow presenting a whole array of colours and with no shadows, despite the eight of us that are inside it, exploring and experiencing its oddness. It was just that I had no prior expectation as to what they might be or what they might mean. As the gallery assistant at the Walter De Maria installation commented, what sort of gallery asks you to take your shoes off twice? The best, we decided, most definitely the best.