Section 40 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 May 02 Friday.
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Although the cherry blossom season is over in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, I saw cherry blossom yesterday at Hakone.

This was at the Hakone Open-Air Museum just a couple of minutes on foot from Choukoku No Mori station. (The "ou" in "Chou" is being used to indicate a long "o" sound.)

I don't know if cherry blossom is still in flower anywhere else in the Hakone region, but there were a number of cherry trees in blossom at the Open-Air Museum, pink petals drifting down to settle on sculptures by Henry Moore and the like ....

A while ago I was wondering what color the branches of cherry trees are, so yesterday I made a special point of taking a close look, which was unsatisfactory, as I found I didn't have a word for the kind of olivish barkish color I was seeing ... I thought the bark of cherry trees looked similar to the bark of peach trees, but it's been quite some time since I last saw a peach tree, so I'm not certain that this comparison is valid.

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Section 40 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 May 04 Sunday.
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Yesterday, Tsukiji Fish Market, arriving just before 0700, too late for the tuna market - my idea was to get up at 0400 and come in on the first train, but I was vetoed.

Huge place. Cavernous. Overhead lights. Polystyrene heaven - mountains of packaging heaped up outside. Busy. Got pushed a few times, and one guy said "Jama!" meaning "Nuisance!" or (alternatively translated) "Get out of my way, you bloody idiot!" However, all things considered, people were generally fairly tolerant, considering that we were intruding into their workspace, which is complicated, confusing and dangerous, with a lot of motorized trolleys trundling up and down the larger aisles.

The motorized trolleys run on gasoline - we asked - but there is no smell of exhaust fumes. (There are also larger vehicles, forklift trucks, which seem to run on natural gas - they have gas tanks of some kind providing fuel.) How the exhaust fumes are reduced to zero is one of the mysteries of the fish market. Another is why there are no flies. In the outer market, a retail sales area in the same locality as the main fish market, we did ultimately see one fly, but only one.

The inner market, the main fish market, was busy, as indicated above, and it's a work environment, not a theme park. However, nobody was actively hostile, and some people were in fact quite friendly, although it's not their job to be so - one guy held up a crab that I was trying to photograph so I could get a better shot, and another guy was amusing himself by feeding bits of ultra-fresh tuna sashimi to visiting tourists.

Quite wet underfoot. The flooring some kind of tiles in what is almost a cobblestone pattern, giving what felt to me like fairly secure footing. Band-saws being used to cut up the tuna. Lots of knives in evidence, also the occasional axe. One guy was scraping tuna meat off tuna bones, and the implement that he was using was, of all things, a shell. Polystyrene boxes of sushi toppings - it seems one topping will cost forty yen if you're buying in bulk, and the cheaper sushi goes for about 100 yen a piece.

All kinds of stuff from the sea, including live fish in plastic bags, things which looked like sea squirts, huge horse mussels, and also some raw and bloody bits of murdered whale, although it was not labeled "murdered whale" - it was labeled "kujira" instead.

After the inner market, we had coffee then wandered around the outer market, and went inside the neighboring Honganji temple.

The Honganji temple does not look as if it belongs in Japan. Rather, it looks as if it belongs on the cover of a science fiction novel about some alien planet - the stone architecture is quite alien. Inside, a woman greeted us, and from what she said I gather that the exterior is in some architectural style from India.

The Tsukiji Honganji Temple is, if I followed what the woman said correctly, a branch of a temple established in Kyoto by Shinran. Shinran was a Buddhist monk who, apparently, broke the tradition that Buddhist monks should not marry, and ended up having eight children and living until the age of ninety.

We asked if we could sit down - yes - and we sat while some ceremony proceeded up near the altar, with a lot of sonorous chanting. This, apparently, was a ritual being conducted by a priest for a family (all dressed in black) who were commemorating the passing away of some deceased ancestor.

After the Honganji temple, we walked to the Kabuki-za in the nearby Ginza area and saw three kabuki pieces, starting at 1100 and finishing after 1500, with a break for lunch.

We rented earsets (the English-language ones came in bathroom pink) which provided commentary.

The downside of the Kabuki-za are that the seats are decidedly on the small side. The upside is that you can take a can of drink inside and drink it at your seat. Also, during the lunchtime interview, you can eat a boxed lunch while sitting at your seat - there are big trash receptacles in the foyer into which you can dump the garbage afterwards.

This, apparently, is the 400th year of kabuki - kabuki actually got going 400 years ago.

We sat "Saya Ate" ("The Fight in the Pleasure Quarters"), "Sanemori Monogatari" ("The Tale of Sanemori," which involves, amongst other things, an amputated human arm), a "kojo" or "stage announcement" (certain kabuki actors were taking new names) and then "Kiwametsuki Banzui Chobei" ("The End of Banzui Chobei").

The last was the most interesting, beginning with a play inside a play which gets disrupted by an actor who emerges from the audience - this reminded me of the kind of metatheatrical effects sometimes used by the dramatists of the age of Shakespeare.

If I remember correctly (and I don't guarantee that I do) then the earpiece told me that "Kiwametsuki Banzui Chobei" dates from 1881 (that year may be well off - I was not taking notes and my memory is of the mutagenic kind.) However, the events of the play deal with Edo in earlier years (which years, exactly, I'm not sure).

"Kiwametsuki Banzui Chobei" deals with a conflict between a samurai gang and a townsman gang.

Historically, what happened in Japan in the Edo period is pretty much what happened in Shakespeare's England. A mercantile class was becoming dominant, in practical terms, but political power still remained with a parasitic upper class which really wasn't performing any useful function - in England the aristocrats, in Japan the samurai.

In England, this tension was resolved through a civil war which led to the king getting his head chopped off, and then (after a period of military dictatorship) to the gradual evolution of modern parliamentary dictatorship.

In Japan I don't really know what happened, because my grasp of Japanese history is exceedingly weak, but I have a vague idea that the classes managed to rub along until the Meiji period, the period which began with the Americans arriving with a bunch of guns and saying "Hey, guys, open up your markets - our weapons technology is superior to yours." (This kind of sounds familiar, right?) At which point the samurai class got dissolved (by the Japanese, not by the Americans) ... and the Japanese, fearing (reasonably) that they were in danger of being invaded and colonized, started building their nation into a world-class power ....

Anyway ... after kabuki, we wandered through the streets of the elite Ginza area, doing window shopping ... in my opinion, the shops in Ginza are not worth seeing, since one classy shopping street is pretty much like any other classy shopping street anywhere in the world, and if you've seen one then you've seen them all, and I personally am not in the market for a cute little handbag retailing at 30,000 yen, even if it is handmade, and made of leather at that.

The day finished with a meal at a French restaurant at Ebisu. This had a trilingual menu (English, Japanese and French) but the only part that the waiter understood was the Japanese part.

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Section 40 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 May 10 Saturday.
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SARS update Japan: 2003 May 10 Saturday. Today's issue of The Japan Times reports (in an editorial on page 18) that "No case of severe acute respiratory syndrome has been reported in Japan so far".

I have just returned to Yokohama after a three-night four-day visit to Kyoto, and I can personally report that no member of our party died from SARS. Also, none of us died from cholera, ebola fever, malaria or bubonic plague.

I got the impression that foreign tourists might perhaps be a little thin on the ground in Kyoto right now, but it's hard to be sure. My impression is based on very scanty evidence, this being as follows:-

(i) In Kyoto, I only heard American accents once.

(ii) When we went to apply for a (free) tour of the imperial palace, we were told we could join the very next tour, starting in half an hour, althought the guide book said that it is generally necessary to book at least a day in advance.

(iii) When we visited a kimono-selling place and watched a kimono fashion show, there was a taped welcome, part of which was in Chinese, but there was not a single Chinese tourist in evidence - just us and a few Japanese junior high school kids.

That's it on SARS. More on Kyoto later, maybe, but probably not just yet - I have a busy week in front of me.

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Section 40 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 May 11 Sunday.
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Early evening, Sunday, and I'm on the train returning from Narita airport - I've just been to Terminal 2 to see off my parents at the end of their holiday in Japan. The SARS situation? Don't ask me. I haven't watched TV today and I've been too busy to read a newspaper, so I'm out of touch.

I can report that Narita airport was calm - in fact, to me it felt calm to the point of being serene. It also looked vastly empty, but perhaps that was just my subjectivity playing tricks on me - I don't go there often enough to know for certain what's normal.

None of the ground staff in the departure area seemed to be wearing face masks. (Here "departure area" means the area where you exchange your airline ticket for a boarding pass.) Ditto for the restaurant and cafeteria staff. I did see an occasional masked passenger in the departure area, but they constituted a small minority.

What I did notice about Narita is that the signage leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently the Japanese authorities would like to boost tourist numbers, which currently are very low. (From memory, I think that each year Japan gets something like five million tourists a year, which is tiny for a country of 120 or so million people.)

If it is true that Japan really does desire more foreign tourists, then the first problem which has to be tackled is that of signposting not just the airport but the entire Japanese nation.

At the airport, for example, the signs on all the cakes were in Japanese only. This probably seems trivial, but "nameless gloop apparently encased in some kind of damp pastry" looks a lot more appealing once you know that it is actually apple pie.

On the Keisei Line coming from Ueno station to Narita airport, there was an LCD display screen above the door. Writing streaming across this display screen, alternating between English and Japanese, gave essential destination information. However, the loudspeaker announcements on the train were in Japanese only - this on a train which is one of the main routes for getting to the airport.

Travelling with my parents, I really noticed this. I also noticed that even when there are signs in English, they are not always well designed.

The one which really won the prize for brain-damaged design was in the tourist city of Kyoto, near the number one exit for Oike station.

The streets in Kyoto are laid out in a grid pattern, running alternately north-south and east-west. Emerging from exit one on an overcast day, we were unable to tell which way was north.

Fortunately, we had a map, on which the intersecting streets were marked in both English and Japanese. And, fortunately, near the subway exit there was a signpost giving the name of one of these two streets. The name was given in both English and Japanese. Unfortunately, the name was written vertically in both languages.

The problem should be obvious. If you emerge from underground and find yourself at the intersection of a north-south street and an east-west street, and if you find yourself confronted by a signboard in the form of a monolith on which the name is written vertically, there is no obvious way to tell whether the name applies to the north-south street or the east-west street.

What really amazed me about this totally useless monolith was that it had obviously been constructed at very considerable expense. In fact, it was complete with historical notes about whichever of the two streets it referred to, and presumably someone, somewhere, had been very pleased to have constructed it.

Nice monolith. But which way is north? The united brainpower of four people was incapable of making this sign yield up its secret. This sign, in fact, ranks as the most inscrutable artefact that I have yet encountered in Japan.

Fortunately, my getting-street-directions Japanese is reasonably good by now, since getting street directions is something I have to do on a reasonably regular basis. So I stopped a passer-by and asked "Excuse me, but which way is north?" Unfortunately, what came back was one of the typical replies that you usually get when you stop any passer-by in any city anywhere in the world.

In this case, the item selected from the Universal List of Unhelpful Replies was "Sorry, but I don't know. I don't know this area."

The alternative question - "What is the name of this street?" - also failed, and for the same reason.

When you're teaching English, it becomes obvious that, as a rule, using English in real life is usually simpler than using English in the classroom. The reasons is basic: if you walk into a hotel, the hotel staff automatically have a fair idea of what you want. They know you're probably not there looking for a haircut. And, if it turns out that you want a room (which you probably do) then they're trained to deliver that.

The exception to this rule, however, is asking and giving directions. A "giving directions" lesson generally goes very smoothly in the classroom. But try the same thing in the street and you're probably going to end up thinking that the universe is more perverse than you remember it as being.

I think it took us five passers-by before we finally got directions sufficient to allow us to orient our perfectly good map to the landscape which it represented.

At least in Kyoto a great many streets did actually have names, which is a start. Now what is needed is for someone to go signpost the entire city with proper Western-style street signs. That is, if Japan really wants more foreign tourists.

However, my own feeling is that in all probability nothing much will be done. And, in any case, Japan is unlikely to become a popular tourist destination in my lifetime - it's too cryptic, too expensive, too relentlessly busy, too spaghetti-heap confusing and, for the most part, too relentlessly urban.

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Section 40 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 May 11 Sunday.
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The blogger in Baghdad is back online, sort of. Salam Pax survived the George Bush war on Iraq and has managed to get sufficient internet access to post a big slab of interesting stuff, including the following:-

The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel. Heaps of cheap RAM (stolen of course) is being sold beside broken monitors beside falafel stands and weapons are all available. Fights break out justlikethat and knives come out from nowhere, knives just bought 5 minutes ago. There are army sighting thingys, Weird looking things with lenses. And people selling you computer cases who tell you these are electric warmers, never having seen a computer case before. Really truly surreal.

Keep up with the news from Baghdad with the Baghdad blog, Salam Pax blogging in Iraq, Iraqi blogger Salam Pax.

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Section 40 Entry 0006. Date: 2003 May 13 Tuesday.
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Are airport SARS quarantine procedures in Japan good enough? This is a big question, because it seems that quarantine is the best way to stop the spread of SARS.

On TV here in Japan, we have seen scenes of airports in some other nations where passengers are being checked, one by one, for a tell-tale fever, as a temperature exceeding 38 degrees centigrade is one of the symptoms of SARS.

This checking is done with high-tech thermometers which measure the temperature inside the ear. Judging by what one can see on TV, this is a very swift procedure and allows a lot of people to be checked very quickly.

So what is happening in Japan? Well, today's English-language edition of The Asahi Shimbun carries, on page 21, a story called "SARS: Airports try mass screening to stop the virus from 'landing'".

Apparently passengers arriving at Narita, the main international airport serving Tokyo, are now given the option of using thermometers to check themselves. The article tells us how "about 300 travelers arrived at Narita last Thursday on a flight that originated in Hong Kong" and how "Not a single passenger picked up the three thermometers set out on a side table."

Everyone knows that Japan's weak point is crisis management. This is no secret. The most telling example of this weakness is the way in which, a few years back, the authorities made a real hash out of managing the aftermath of the big earthquake which destroyed a large chunk of the city of Kobe.

Even so, I was both surprised and dismayed by the pathetic image of three lonely thermometers sitting on a side table.

To be fair, the Japanese authorities have installed some thermography cameras to scan arriving passengers at airports. Theoretically, this heat-detecting cameras can permit the detection of fever cases. However, speaking of the 300 travelers who arrived at Narita from Hong Kong last Thursday, the Asahi reports that:-

A thermography camera set up in front of quarantine could not handle the influx of visitors. Simply put, there were too many flights arriving from countless points of origin. Officials were hard-pressed to judge the effectiveness of the mass screening.

All in all, the picture in Japan does not seem to be encouraging. On the one hand, it seems that, so far, SARS has not yet reached Japanese shores. On the other hand, the response of the authorities seems to leave a lot to be desired.

What is very clear from overseas experience is that, leaving aside the medical implications of SARS, this disease is capable of inflicting enormous economic damage on a nation.

Consequently, it seems reasonable to think that at this stage, having had some weeks to think about the problem, the Japanese authorities should have put together a package of measures which meet the needs of the present situation.

However, the impression that I get from following the news is that, really, more needs to be done.

At this stage, thinking of the economic damage that an outbreak of SARS would or will do to Japan, I find myself both disappointed and disturbed.

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Section 40 Entry 0007. Date: 2003 May 13 Tuesday.
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What is the Bush regime's plan for dealing with any possible SARS outbreak in Iraq? Does it even have one? These thoughts went through my head today as I read a couple of articles about how America is managing (or failing to manage) the chaotic situation in Iraq.

One of these articles is on the front page of today's International Herald Tribune, as published in Japan. It is clear from the article that, having trashed the Saddam regime in order to take over Iraq, the Bush regime is still failing at the basic task of maintaining law and order.

The article is headlined "New administrator takes over in Iraq" and includes, amongst other details, this little snippet:-

On Monday, black smoke billowed over Iraq's skyline as looters set fire to the city's former telephone communications center, apparently as a distraction for others who tried to steal cars nearby.

On page three of today's IHT is an article headlined "At a Baghdad hospital, only despair remains". It has a subheading saying "Mental patients fled after looters came".

The article details how the American Marines smashed their way into the Al Rashad mental hospital, liberating the mentally ill people inside and leaving the hospital vulnerable to looters, who subsequently stripped it while the Marines stood by and did nothing.

The hospital appears to be a reasonably enlightened institution which catered for people who were genuinely mentally ill. The patients included 120 people who were apparently criminally insane, and it seems that of these 120 only one remains in the hospital.

Of a total of 1,400 patients, some 300 remain, including six women who were raped by looters.

My guess is that the Bush administration's view is that there's nothing wrong with Iraq that can't be sorted out by the passage of twenty or thirty years and the gradual application of billions of dollars in oil revenues.

The problem with such an attitude is that people get raped and murdered in real time.

Which brings me back to the opening question: what does the Bush administration plan to do if SARS breaks out in Iraq? My guess is that this is item 45,276 on the long list of things which the White House has not even begun to think about.

In context, of course, this question sounds a little surreal, and I think that - as much as anything - is an index of just how bad things are in Iraq, the nation which America has liberated into a state of experimental anarchy.

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