Many years ago I was watching a documentary about China. One of the facts I learnt about that beautiful country was that Chinese people like to spit. Apparently they spit while walking around, spit while on their bicycles and even spit in restaurants. I was not sure if this spitting epidemic had spread to Japan but now I have found out.

Most of the time all I notice is just the odd salaryman spitting as covertly as possible onto the train tracks but recently on one short walk to my local train station no less that three old men coughed up some phlegm. Now when old Japanese men spit they do it properly. The throat/nose clearing noise is loud and true, followed by the saliva creation swish-swish sound and finally the brash “patooie” of the spit itself.

Sorry about the graphic description but I really want to give you a feeling of the whole disgusting process. Despite the fact I was listening to AC/DC loudly on my ipod I could still hear the spine chilling sound of stage one as the first spitter walked past me that night. My first reaction was to wonder if he gets all the girls that way. No sooner had this happened however, a second man on a bicycle, barely visible in the distance made a noise that could wake the dead before he let fly his slobber. The third man was just odd, sitting outside in the damn cold for no apparent reason other than to gob on his garden. The less said about him, the better.

I am wondering if it is just an old man thing, have they reached the kind of age that they just don’t care any more? I find it amazing that in a country which considers it rude to blow your nose in public that this kind of thing is ok. How can relieving yourself of a runny nose be a terrible act but making disgusting loud noises and then spitting on the ground be just peachy?

The other day, while my head was deep in my Japanese for Busy People book I came across a very interesting Japanese word: shitsureishimasu.

It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

In general usage there is nothing particularly exciting about this word. It is used to say goodbye when you have to leave somewhere early or as a greeting when you enter a room. When I found out the literal meaning however it tickled me pink. Literally it means “I’m going to be rude”. How great is that? One of the things I love about the Japanese language is how it goes out of it’s way to be polite.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that this phase was used in an English setting.

Picture the scene: You are at a party, you’ve met a nice young lady and things are going swimmingly. So swimmingly, in fact, that you decide to leave early together. So, you then tell your friends “I’m going to be rude tonight, lads” and walk out the door. In English, it almost sounds as if you are boasting and may even put unwanted images into your friends heads.

And THATS the difference between Japanese and English.

Maybe.

I may be a little late with this but what the hey.

Two weeks ago millions of Colombians took part in protest marches against the Marxist Farc rebel movement which were held in many cities around the world. It was quite astounding that these events took place, apparently the idea began when a group of students started a group on Facebook. This speaks volumes about the world today and shows that stuff that starts small in a social networking site like Facebook really can balloon into something amazing. The message was load and clear: “Stop the fighting, we want peace”.

I only heard about about it the day after it happened by reading the report on the BBC news website and was kind of disappointed in myself not to have known about it. Especially as there was even a march here in Tokyo and I would have really liked to have joined it. As there don’t seem to be too many Colombian expats in Japan, another body really would have made a difference.

On a lighter note, all this talk of Colombians in Japan reminds me of perhaps the only Colombian character ever to regularly appear in an anime: Pedro from the downright bizarre Excel Saga. In this anime, Pedro comes to Japan alone and gets a job as a manual labourer to support his unnamed (yet sexy) wife and child back home in Colombia. However he is the unluckiest man alive and a series of catastrophes leads him to return home only to find that his (sexy) wife is having an affair with another man, the evil Gomez. What follows would be considered too crazy for just about every TV show ever made except for Excel Saga, where it is just par for the course. I can’t remember if Pedro’s story ends happily or not but here is video dedicated to him.

One question I often get asked is whether or not I can use chopsticks. Well I can, kind of, I seem to have developed my own Shaun Hold Technique which is an unorthodox style but appears to be mostly successful.

As I come from a country where Chinese food is so popular it has it’s own noun (a “Chinese”, sure that may not be a very original word for it but it’s there never the less), this allowed me to develop my style before coming to Japan for the “acid test”. Another thing that helped my training is the feeling that you must use the chopsticks while eating at a Chinese resturant otherwise you are some sort of failure. This peer pressure from my youth definitely spurred on the development of my chopstick usage.

In Japan, every time you buy some food that could possibly been eaten with chopsticks from a combini or takeaway, you will find a pair at the bottom of the plastic bag. I started thinking about the millions of trees must be sacrificed in order to keep up with the demand for these disposable wooden chopsticks and felt guilty. So recently I bought myself a pair of plastic chopsticks at the 100 yen shop to use again and again and probably save the rainforests in the process.

Unfortunately these chopsticks, like my hair gel, do not seem to provide lasting hold which has resulted in much food dropage. So I am currently in the middle of an big dilemma: should I go back to destroying the environment or go the whole hog and buy a pair that costs more than 100 yen.

Well, one of my mottoes has always been: “You get what you pay for.”

Living in Tokyo, as I do, I find that there are not many places where you can just stop and think. To have a good thinking area you need something to look at which inspires you. So far I have found two such places.

The more obvious one is the Zen Garden at Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto. This garden is one of the most famous Zen dry gardens in Japan and is a place that tourists flock to.

The tourist leaflet said something along the lines of:

Most visitors to the garden will agree that it seems to have a mysterious and almost hypnotic effect upon those who first sit upon the abbot’s veranda and contemplate what might be called the complex simplicity of its design. One need not interpret the work in order to experience the remarkable serenity it seems to generate, yet much has been written about the “meaning” of the garden, including the speculation that it represents islands in a sea, or a tigress leading her cubs across a river….. blah, blah, blah.

This may be true but when I went there and sat on the veranda I found it odd that the rocks couldn’t really provoke a response in me. Well, it did incite a small bet asking quite how many big rocks there were. I was wrong, but in my defence my view was obscured by other big rocks.

So as far as musing goes that garden was a huge disappointment, one place that isn’t though is the polar opposite, Starbucks in Shibuya, Tokyo. Shibuya is one of the busiest places in the world. If you google “Busiest pedestrian crossing in the world” you will find Hachiko crossing in Shibuya. If you google “Busiest Starbucks in the world” you will find the Shibuya branch of Starbucks.

It’s busy, but buy a coffee (hot chocolate in my case, I don’t like coffee) and a banana muffin and get a window seat on the first floor (which is difficult, because it’s so busy) overlooking Hachiko crossing. If you are there at dusk you will see the crossing in all its glory and then your pupils may well dilate and you will begin to cogitate….

Where did all those people come from?
Where are they going?
Are they enjoying themselves?
Are they going to be doing the same thing tomorrow?
What am I doing here?
Why am I here?
Am I enjoying myself?
Why is my hot chocolate in a takeaway paper cup and not a nice mug?