The Beach Boy
There is a photo I look at from time to time. It’s of a little boy, perhaps 3 or 4 years old, with golden hair and a cheery fireside complexion; a little chubby perhaps, but impossibly cute.
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Empty Vessels
It’s 100 years since the Titanic set out on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, a voyage which, as you may well be aware, did not go according to plan.
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Happy Anniversaries!
It’s always the same, wait ages for a decent anniversary and then three come at once. 2012 is set to be a bumper year for those who believe there is a special significance, and cause to celebrate,..........
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Coe-production
It comes as a shock when your heroes grow old, when the titans of one’s youth succumb to the passing years, lose their hair, grow flabby and weak, and reveal themselves to be the mere mortals we’d always, irrationally, hoped they weren’t.
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Warts and All
There is a treat in store for lovers of British Cinema this month when the British Film Institute holds a major retrospective of films by the much admired - but not quite as well known as he should be – British director, Ken Loach.
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Festival Frolics
My first visit to the Edinburgh festival had nothing whatsoever to with art though it did have a little to do with aesthetics; I was young and suffering from a lingering infatuation with an exotic dark-eyed….well, let’s just call her the girl.
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Light, seeking light…….
‘Gloaming’ is one of my favourite words in the English language. It means twilight and is used in Scotland to describe that soft, gentle and faintly mysterious part of the day - also known as the blue hour or fairy time,
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A Private Function
On January 19th the BBC breathlessly announced the start of their ‘100 day countdown’ to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in Westminster Abbey. 100 days?
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The World’s Worst Golfer
I remember once playing on the putting green which lies next to the world famous St. Andrews Old Course in Scotland. It was just me and a friend and a party of about a dozen blue rinsed pensioners enjoying a pleasant, if unspectacular, afternoon of modest sporting recreation.
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Get your skates on!
‘This isn’t sport, its circus!’. This was my father’s irate reaction every time figure skating came on the telly. As a rugby man I think he was a bit offended by the sequins, the make up and men wearing blouses and tight trousers. I think he found it all a bit naff (inferior or cheap).
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Blissful Browsing
In my apartment I have arranged all the books I have read in the last two years into three neat piles, just to the right of my battered old sofa. As I finish a book, I add it to one of the piles, and gradually, and satisfyingly, the little towers have grown.
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New Year's Revolution
Let me tell you a secret; for most of my life, I hated New Year. I could never really saw the point of it - what exactly are we celebrating again? And I found that countdown (to nothing in particular) more sinister than exciting.
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Child's Play
I am an impatient gift buyer usually, but last week I spent about two solid hours in one particular shop, looking for a present for my four-year-old niece. She’s actually quite easily pleased so the reason I took my time was simply that I was enjoying myself so much.
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The Cheese Counter
I found a great book the other day while indulging in a bit of tachiyomi in Roppongi. It’s called ‘The World Cheese Book’, and it’s an atlas of the best cheese in the world. Flicking through to the UK section I was delighted to see page after page of British cheese featured, from Lanark Blue in the north of Scotland Yarg in the south west of England.
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Points of View
The Japanese love lists! Whether it’s the 20 most beautiful waterfalls, the 10 loveliest gardens or 5 things you must do on a rainy afternoon in Saitama, the superior judgments of the list makers are hugely popular and avidly followed.
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Pick Your Own
I am not sure we can always trust our childhood memories. I spent part of my early life in the enchanting Hampshire town of Alresford. The memories I have of it are all suspiciously idyllic. I went to a school called Sun Hill and thinking back the sun does seems to be shining constantly.
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Back seat drivers and petrosexuals
These days you could probably drive from London to Glasgow in about 6 hours, traffic permitting. When I was a child it used to take about 12 or more. At least it used to take my Mum and Dad that amount of time. Perhaps due to carelessness or overly imaginative driving they were always getting lost.
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Hothouse Flowers
Are you a sun worshipper or a hothouse flower? To put it another way, do you run madly from the house in a frenzy of solar powered excitement at the first hint of warm weather or shy away from the sunshine and stay safely indoors until the danger has passed? As a child I was definitely a hothouse flower and needed some serious coaxing to tempt me outside however fine the day.
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Whodunit?
Currently showing in cinemas worldwide is the latest appearance of one of Britain’s most iconic figures – legendary, pipe smoking detective genius Sherlock Holmes, played this time by Robert Downey Junior. The actor is the 75th to assume the role in the 211th cinematic outing of Conan Doyle’s creation.
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Only joking!
An English friend of mine once worked for a company in Germany. He was taken aside by his manager one day and told that his behaviour in the office would have to change. To his great surprise he was told quite firmly that he had to stop telling so many jokes.
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Chick flicks and Shoot em ups!
Like many people perhaps, I think I got my first glimpse of Japan from films. I can well remember, as a child, watching in fascination as James Bond visited Tokyo and elsewhere in the 007 adventure You Only Live Twice.
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A Sweet Tooth - ‘Rice? for dessert?’
My Japanese friends never fail to express their shock, even horror, when I tell them that one of my favourite British desserts is a concoction of creamy rice, baked in the oven, slightly burned on top and flavoured with jam, cinnamon, vanilla or nutmeg.
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A New Leaf
It’s the same every New Year. I unearth my dusty old kanji book from its resting place at the bottom of my closet and promise that this will be the year, definitely! I solemnly swear to learn 20 new kanji a week for 52 weeks and.....by the first week of February the book is where I found it, gathering dust again.....
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Quintessential Christmas
They say there are three stages in a man’s life – first you believe in Father Christmas, then you don’t believe in Father Christmas, and finally, you are Father Christmas.
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The Gravy Train
I like nothing better in my free time in Tokyo than sitting in the roof top garden that faces Yurakucho station, with a hot can of Royal Milk Tea in my hand, and watch the Shinkansen go by. It is hard to belive these engineering marvels may be even older than no I am but they still manage to retain a modern look with elegance and even beauty (more than can be said for me).
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A rush hour of ghosts
Ever seen a ghost? Perhaps not, but your next trip to the UK could be the best chance you will ever have. According to the British Tourist Board there are 10,000 haunted places in the UK, serving as homes to a spooky selection of ghosts, ghouls and all manner of unearthly manifestations.
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Green Fingers
My first home in Japan was a 1 room apartment in the unlovely Tokyo suburb of Minami Gyotoku. It was tiny but, in its way, charming. The building was painted green and had a French name. It was peaceful at night, apart from the occasional bosozoku drive by and I was only 5 minutes walk from the station, so I was happy enough. Only one thing was missing – a garden. Minami Gyotoku is made entirely of concrete, even the parks.
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Starstruck
One of the more interesting things about living in London’s fashionable and arty Notting Hill, as I did for about a year, was the number of famous people I used to see going about their business. Hardly a day would go by without my catching sight of some celebrity or other. One day it was a famous pop star taking his dog for a walk, the next a top politician browsing in a bookshop.
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Are you a ‘Culture Vulture’?
Last year, as part of the UK/Japan 2008 festival, Tokyo received a very unusual visitor, or perhaps two visitors. A calf split in two and preserved in a pair of glass cases filled with formaldehyde was part of a retrospective featuring winners of Britain’s Turner prize (awarded annually to British visual artists aged 50 and under). The prize has become notorious for it’s daring and often shocking winners.
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What are you ‘into’?
It’s hard to believe that if you delve back into history you will find that for about a hundred and fifty years Britain was considered the least musical country in Europe.‘The British don’t enjoy music, they just love the sound it makes’ remarked one of our most famous conductors, summing up the general malaise quite succinctly.
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A Little Pampering
I was lost in Onsenland. I had left my companion at the entrance to the changing rooms (agreeing to meet up at the rosewater bath 20 minutes later) but quickly became disorientated amid the throng of customers in their garish Hawaiian style pyjamas. By the time I’d made my way past the locker room, sauna, hot and cold baths, treatment rooms with their frightening looking vibrating armchairs, relaxation spaces and finally, to the rosewater bath itself I was seriously late and my companion seriously cross.
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Not in a million years!
It was my first week in Japan. I was naive, innocent, full of enthusiasm for my new home and alive with a hunger to try out everything it had to offer. I was making my way out of the Olympic stadium in Gaienmae after watching an exciting game of football between Japan and Brazil when I spotted a brightly lit food stall offering what I imagined, in my untrained British mind’s eye, to be trays of mouth-watering roast potatoes..
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Can you put up with it?
Much as I love Japan, if I’m honest, I would have to say that it does have its occasional irritations. Chief among which for me must be the infuriating jingles that JR chooses to broadcast endlessly over its public address system at its larger stations for reasons best known to itself.
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Romantic Britain
Love is in the air this month with Valentine’s Day fast approaching which means an especially busy day for the residents of what must surely be the most romantic place in Britain – Gretna Green.
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As Cheap as Chips!
‘Cash’, ’bread’, ‘dosh’, ‘wedge’, ‘readies’- all these are words the British use for a subject they claim they would rather not talk about – money. Traditionally, we British have exercised a money talk taboo and yet have still managed to come up with any number of colourful, but for visitors, potentially confusing terms for this most vital of commodities.
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Festive fun in the office
Walk into any British office in the last week of December and you might be forgiven for thinking you had walked onto the set of a remake of Saturday Night Fever crossed with some low budget Disney Christmas film.
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Soap Addicts
Every night in homes all over Britain violent arguments break out, adultery is practiced, crimes committed and appalling secrets revealed. And all of this is done in the name of family entertainment. Britain’s TV dramas, or ‘soap operas’ have been supplying British households with a steady diet of tragedy and trauma for nearly 50 years and doing so in a uniquely British way.
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Top Dogs and Cool Cats
The British are renowned as a nation of animal lovers. We don’t so much keep pets as worship them. An Englishman’s home may be his castle but the king is likely to be a dog or a cat, granted the best seat in the house, lavished with praise, care and attention and treated as a full member of the family.
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The Beautiful Game
Every year all over Britain in the first week of August a huge sigh of relief can be heard. From Aberdeen in the far north of Scotland to Portsmouth in the south of England and in every major town or city in between, football (we never say soccer) fans will emerge from three months of painful hibernation to prepare for the start of the new football season.
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The Truth about British Food
For generations the British have had to endure jokes about their food. We have been accused of all manner of culinary crimes and misdemeanours, like boiling vegetables until they scream for mercy or drowning everything in unappetising gravy sauce so thick it can be cut with a knife.
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A Shopper’s paradise
The British and the Japanese share an abiding passion – shopping! And whether you are hunting for high or low fashion, the UK is fast developing into a clothes shopper’s paradise with an ever growing selection of upmarket boutiques and imposing department stores, jostling for space with quirky specialist outlets and inspiring street markets.
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Terms of Endearment
We have all experienced it – we arrive in a foreign country armed with a phrasebook and a few well practiced expressions hoping to explore the country and enjoy a little, basic communication with the natives only to find ourselves hopelessly lost when confronted with dialect words we have never encountered.
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Whose round is it anyway?
While a visit to the pub remains the cornerstone of British social life many of today’s bars and pubs bear little resemblance to the humble, spit and sawdust affairs of yesteryear. Where once patrons could expect no more appetising fare than crisps, nuts and mouldy sandwiches, gastro pubs now serve top quality cooking in pleasant, smoke free environments, while theme nights; karaoke and televised sport have supplanted the more traditional darts and dominoes.
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Tea 2 – “I’ll be back”
Until recently I’d always thought of afternoon tea as a quaint old ritual for tourists and grandmothers, but it seems that change is brewing. Recent reports tell of tea rooms booked out weeks in advance, not by hoards of tradition-hungry tourists but by leading lights of the London fashion world
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