If I come back as a man, I’m totally marrying a stupid Japanese woman.  *snort*

Yeah.  I don’t ever want to hear you guys complaining about my octo-sausage attempts ever again.

This morning, as I do at least once a month, I took an express train to a neighbouring city, and then transferred to a tiny spur line to a mountainside destination.  That is how I get to my beloved massage therapist Murata-san.  As usual she came to meet me at the station and walked with me the five minutes that it takes to get to her private salon.  I’ve told her repeatedly that she needn’t come and meet me, that I can easily find my own way to her place (it’s a very pleasant walk through tree-lined avenues that have large houses with boxy German/Swedish cars parked in the driveways) but she refuses.  Today, I discovered the reason why. 

Apparently, when we are walking to her salon, she is surreptitiously studying my posture and my gait to decide the best course of treatment for me.  She can even tell the state of my health by doing so!  Many’s the time that I’ve been amazed to hear from her “your eyes are tired, aren’t they?” or “you’ve been using the whiteboard at work more than usual” or even “you’ve been constipated recently, haven’t you?”  It doesn’t end there: when we get to her place, she even asks to inspect my shoes, so that she can see which side of the heel is being worn down first, in order to make her pronouncements about my overall condition.

I don’t know how she does it, but somehow, she manages to nail the story of my life with scary 100% accuracy.  And all this by a mere five-minute walk and chat every few weeks.  If I were only half as perceptive as her, I think I’d be a brilliant teacher.  But guess that that kind of perceptiveness is one of the things that you either have, or you don’t.

Anyway, I feel really mellow right now, especially around the foot region.

The devotion and dedication that Japanese mothers show towards their children (especially sons) is legendary, and I thought that I’d heard all the stories until today, when I met a new JJs customer – a sweet-faced and plain woman in her fifties, and a shy and retiring type at first glance – and got her talking about her own son, who is around the same age as the Sonbeam.  

Her boy was a sickly baby, and turned out to be riddled with all sorts of food allergies (which are becoming increasingly common in Japan, just as they are in the West). 

Unfortunately his allergies meant that he couldn’t eat any of the school meals – which are so important here that they are considered an important rite of passage – as his classmates.  This was a big deal.  Generally speaking, in Japan if you don’t eat what other people eat, you risk being ostracised or bullied by your peers.  However, he never suffered from being marked out as special or different by his classmates, because by all appearances, the food he ate was identical to theirs.  You see, his determined mother would get ahold of  the school menus in advance, and prepared identical meals with non-allergenic ingredients,  delivering them daily to the school in person.  And when it came to school trips – another extremely important rite of passage - she would call the hotels and request copies of all their meal plans, so that she could prepare his meals in advance (looking exactly the same as the hotel restaurant meals) and have them delivered daily by refrigerator service.  She lovingly did this every day of his school life, without a word of complaint. 

Her son suffered greatly from weeping sores and rashes.  When he was at junior high school his mother heard of a dermatologist who was very highly regarded for his work with allergy sufferers.  Unfortunately this doctor lived in a rural area, was very busy and very particular, and only saw “outside” patients at his own clinic on certain days of the month.  She banded together with several other parents of allergic kids, and chartered a bus to drive them all the way across Japan, at great personal expense.  The doctor was so pressed for time that he only spent half an hour with each patient, and in her case, gave her some foul-smelling medicine and a special herbal cream to rub on her son’s skin every day. 

The day after the boy started using the ointment, his rash started to disappear.  Thanks to the nasty syrup, he slept through the night for the first time since infancy.  He gained several much-needed pounds in the next few weeks.  Gradually, his food allergies were eliminated, and he was able to function as a normal high-schooler, much to the relief of his parents. 

And now?  That young man is a med student at the most prestigious school in Japan, and he plans to become a specialist in allergies.  (The only food that he still can’t tolerate is raw cream, which is easy to avoid here.)   I think it’s safe to say that he is one of the true elites of Japanese society, destined for a life of success, and guess who he owes it all to?  Why, one of the unsung heroines of Japan, that’s who!

P.S.  When she finished telling me her story, I couldn’t help blurting out sulkily “well …  my cat’s pretty smart too, he can open doors with one paw!”  She was gracious enough to acknowledge this, and ask me a lot of questions about Ben.  Truly a remarkable woman.  I like her, and I hope she comes again!

Last weekend I attended an annual arts and crafts fair near my home.  As usual it was an odd blend of bagpipes, hula dancing, pandas, and rock singers dressed like Minnie Mouse, as you can see from the photos.  I bought a huge plate of excellent curry and rice for two bucks, wandered around for a while, examined some hand-knitted scarves and home-made portraits, watched some Chinese drumming, and then went home without spending any money, like I do every year.  Most of the people I saw were doing exactly the same thing. How do the organisers ever make a profit on these things?  It’s a mystery to me.

This story is being widely circulated on various news sites and in various forms, but I can assure you that paying for companionship is nothing new in Japan, or in other countries for that matter.  About half of my private students are paying for me to hear out their problems, in lieu of professional counselling which is still not widely accepted in Japan.  The other half just like the prestige and status of being able to say that they have a private English tutor.   Guess which ones I get along with best.

I’m still not going there unless I really have to.

This morning I had an utterly baffling conversation with one of my ladies after she suddenly asked me, apropos of nothing, “You have clam chowder tonight?”

“Um … no, actually,” I replied.

“Ah.  How about tomorrow?”

“No … no, I’m not planning to have it tomorrow, either.”

“Oh, I thought you have clam chowder every night.  You said you have it every night.”

“What?  No, I don’t have it every night!  I hardly ever have it at all.”  I was genuinely puzzled by now. 

“So, you quit that job, then?” 

“What job?”

“The clam chowder job, working with the kids.”

“Oh!” Hand hit forehead as I suddenly realised that she had been talking about cram school, not clam chowder!

All in a day’s work.

A very popular Japanese actress (pictured) with a near-saintly image was recently arrested on drugs charges, and the whole nation was shocked to the core (it was pretty bad for Japan, the equivalent of say, Angelina being fingered for snorting cocaine in front of her kids, although frankly most gaijins here were wondering what all the fuss was about – that’s what famous people do, after all).  A couple of weeks ago she gave a press conference to offer her whole-hearted apologies to the general public.  I was impressed with her humble attitude.  In Japan, public apologies are very important: it’s not uncommon to see politicians on their knees, apologising for some indiscretion or other, usually involving taxpayers’ money.  Many of them are swiftly forgiven.  However, drugs are a different thing all together; the actress in question has been dropped by her agency and abandoned by all her friends and associates, and I wonder if her career will ever revive.  Personally I’d be happy if she wrote a book blowing the lid on the whole showbiz scam.   In fact, I hope she does exactly that!

Ten hours in an isolation tank?  Are you shitting me?  I would probably pay good money for that, and I bet you would too!  (What d’ya think my spa weekends are all about, immersed in water, with nobody bothering me.)