Birthday Barbecue

“Come early!” says Its-san to Herrn T and me. B-san has to work that Sunday, so he will be there a bit later. I somehow manage to at the same time prepare two birthday cakes and sit at my desk writing, when I get a call from Herrn T. I listen to him with the phone tucked under my chin, cutting strawberries, writing kanji with chocolate ink, spraying cream, typing away. “We’re ready to go. Are you?” My octopus arms start working faster. “Ten minutes!” I need to take a shower, get dressed, finish the cakes, and find the kind of ending to my writing that allows me to be happy with what I’ve done and look forward to what I’ll do next.
After that, I grab my Mary Poppins all purpose bag, pile the left-over beer that’s sitting in my fridge from the last Leopalace battling binge into a bag, balance the birthday cakes on my hands, and take the key from the holder with my teeth.
Its-san’s silver Mercedes is waiting in the usual spot: the bento-ya-san (lunch box shop) round the corner. I hop in and deposit beer, cakes, and bag, and we’re off to Its-san’s house.
It is a sunny day, perfect for planned barbecue. B-san has finished work early and arrives shortly after we do. He puts the barbecue together, then we all go inside to help Its-san prepare and put out the food. There is enough to feed the biblical 5000 without employing miracles. We spread thin cuts of meat on big platters, carry out bottles of sauce, pile jumbo sized Frankfurters onto plates, take apart hotspring-steamed chickens, and set the table outside, working away at the beer piled up in a tub of iced water. R-chan is running all over the place. She is excited, Its-san whispers in my ear, because the boy she fancies is coming too, today. There will be about ten people. Neighbour looks down from the balcony. “B-san, what shall we drink today? Or would you like a smoke?” “I only ever smoke cigars.” Neighbour comes out with a pack of cigarillos.“Or does anybody like wine?” he says. “Well,” I join the wine talk, “I lived in La Rioja for a while, and when I was there, I drank nothing BUT wine. The wine is Spain was so cheap and good…but since I left Spain…” but neighbour leaves no space for nos. “O yes, Spanish wine! I have some of that!” He disappears and promptly returns with a 1997 crianza from Castilla y Leon. It is more of a beer drinking day, but it would be rude to refuse his offer, especially because he says: “This is my hobby. I collect luxury things to relax.” But the wine has to warm up, it is too cool, so for now, we stick to the beer and the sun, and start putting meat on the barbie. Its-san brings out yaki-soba and big shiitake raised by her mother in the countryside. There is more hot spring chicken with mayonnaise and salt.

We have already made a small dent in the beer reserves when the rest of the guests arrive. In a big shiny family sized Porsche. And spilling out of the Porsche comes a petite woman with brown long hair and a lot of make up creating a natural look, wearing expensive clothes and accessories resulting in a professionally casual Sunday barbecue look. Then her children. A girl slightly older than R-chan. Herr T’s jaw drops when he sees her 13 year-old legs growing out of high-heeled shoes into tiny shorts, and drops further when he sees her 13 year-old face. Also, there is R-kun, the boy R-chan fancies, so she runs away embarrassed and opens a separate party at a small table nearer the house. When she comes over to give me one of her skilled massages, I recommend her skills to R-kun, but R-chan erupts into a shocked laugh and runs away again. The situation is further complicated by B-san telling her to come kiss him which makes her scream and run like a Porsche into the topmost corner of the house. Tentenki, says Its-san, the two of them are enemies.

Ravelling in Sunday afternoon sun, cool cans of beer, and idle conversation, the afternoon crawls ahead like a big tortoise, comfortably rocking us with each step, like the earthquake that has shaken me in the kitchen with my cakes this morning. Balloons get stuck in a cable high up, so somebody calls a squad of fire fighters to come and get them down. Bemused, we watch time, money, and effort put into something so unnecessary. You know you’re in a safe country if a fire engine has to roll up to save a bunch of kids’ balloons that have become entangled in a cable. Sunday afternoon entertainment. An opportunity to take pictures. We extend the picture taking session by modelling in front of the Porsche, and then posing a trios on a wooden barbecue bench.
Another mother joins the mothers’ section of the party with her three-year-old son S-kun who impresses with his mohawk and silent cool. He is so cool that I let him sit on my lap for a while and teach him how to light a lighter. He chills out there for a while and then returns to his tricycle that takes him through to the other side of the table. And to B-san who lets him fly around the porch. Slowly, somehow, it gets dark. Herr T tries to talk to the mothers, and the mothers try to talk to Herrn T. Skilled conversation making, but at some point people leave, and we end up in the house. Somehow, a fight erupts between Herrn T and me, which goes on and on and ends in an exhausted draw. More fights follow. B-san vs Herrn T. Anna vs B-san, and finally, when we emerge from the sweet, blinding world of painful wrist and arm locks, bones piercing soft tissue, and suffocating strangles, gathering bruises along the way, we realise that only Its-san and R-chan are still there, everybody else has left. R-chan wants to take a bath, so whatever male is left in the house needs to leave. I’m welcome to stay whenever, but I decide to leave the battlefield, too. It’s never good to linger too long, especially when the enemy has left to disappear in unknown terrain. Better to know where and follow.
The usual three thank Its-san, who gives us a bag full of beer and hai-chu to drink at party number two, and we walk away through the mild night and the narrow roads of night-grey buildings.
Until we find some cherry trees on an island in the middle of it all. Sandwiched by houses and the shadows of industrial monsters, the glow of the blossoms creates an island of night light, and we sit down beneath the pink impermanence, drinking in the gold we have been given. But sitting down never lasts long between the three of us. We have a tree climbing contest, including bets who can and can’t make it from one tree to another, holding on for long enough to show he can hold on. And as we ravage the trees, swinging around their stable, supple branches, jumping from fork to fork, landing in the undergrowth trying to fly, it is raining blossoms. Hanafubuki. They land in my hair. Randomly. One of them is not so random. Source shining sweet, breeze blowing, surface rippling in shimmering shocks. It still lands in my tangled hair, but this will be remembered.
We walk to my house, a new old battleground re-discovered, where we keep on fighting, talking and drinking, and finally, battered, sinking into a deep new sleep.

Long Things

This is the second time B-san and I make it to the sand-paved park in Ishibashi to do some morning training before daily chores, such as work, take the rest of it away.
In the morning, before children and their mums hit the playground, the park belongs to the old people. Picking weeds, the few traces of green in the park. Wearing hats with big screens in the back to ward off the sun. Playing croquet on the big sandy space. Taking out their dogs. Their walking sticks. Or just themselves, to sit in the bright April sun, alone, or with one, two friends.
“Ah, I know you!” says one of them from a bench facing the playground when we walk past, in thick Osaka-ben. “You’re going to use those long things over there, aren’t you! Yes! I know! You’re the ones with the long things.”
The two aliens with jo and tsurugi (both aptly summed up under the description “long things”) must have made a memorable impression on him.
We return a greeting and proceed to the far side of the park where we deposit our rucksacks – B-san his bicycle – against the trees between play and free training ground.
We start stretching, doing our separate warm up routines, pushing our feet into the sand in low stances, looking at the sky backwards and upside down, through legs and leaves and branches. Stretching into the blues sky, into the sandy ground, and slowly, into spring. I manage two chin-ups. Not a great number but a considerable improvement from the expected zero. B-san hangs from a tree and does some upside down sit-ups.
We proceed to practise rows of kung-fu warm-up kicks, kicking our legs straight up at the sky, arms outstretched to both sides, finger tips pointing at the sky, up, always up, tensing the arms, aiding the intensity of the attack. We kick our hands from the inside and outside, from below, and, with difficulty, flying backwards. B-san is flying and kicking. I'm not. Not yet. I follow and try to put things into my muscles and brain. In that order. Muscles can do a lot of things when guided by another brain, much less when left with my own, still struggling with information overload.
We go through most of the juro, the ten streets of praying mantis kung fu, movements repeated again and again along a straight line. In some of them, martial purposes are clearly visible. Grab the man, pull him towards you and kick him in the balls. Once, twice. A different variant. Nice and simple. Natural. Other moves are beautiful and difficult, all of them tire the legs.
“That’s budo,” says N-Sensei. “Your legs get tired. Your legs get tired doing budo.”
We stand with our arms stretched out in front of us, sitting straight down as if on a chair. As straight as we manage. The Jackie-Chan-in-the-Drunken-Master pose. One and a half painful minutes. Legs start shaking, sweat starts dripping.
Long things. “It takes time,” says N-Sensei. “That’s the meaning of kung-fu. It takes time.”
So we take time. Early morning time. I have never been on a train with so many school children before, blue uniforms everywhere, girls with grey V-neck jumpers, white blouses, red ribbons tied in front, short skirts, loose white socks. Boys with broad-shouldered navy jackets, stiff standing collars featuring their school crests. Salary men grabbing hasty meals on their way to work in the station’s soba shop, canned coffee and the paper from a kiosk. I find coffee without sugar. Coffee and milk. And enjoy the creamy aromatic purity of flavours, waking me up into the morning bustle. A new experience to an Eikaiwa teacher like myself who usually doesn’t go to work until mid-day to efficiently combine a few hours of daylight for kids, university students, and housewives with the evening hours for the salary men eager to learn English for work, or their sparse time spent abroad.
We put in another bit of stretching and talking, face trees on air chairs, sinking down into painful stances to forget the pain caused by slapping the rough bark, slapping the rough bark ever harder to forget the pain in the legs. When the pain somehow gets behind the cover of trickery and manages to get a good right hook in, B-san shows me his circuit, which consists of a running-jumping-climbing tour de force through the playground. But I don’t really get to see the details as I get stuck on the first obstacle, a 6 ft wooden pole, square shaped, to be jumped and walked around on the palms of the hands, which B-san achieves by walking two steps and jumping right up it. I finally manage to do it running and strenuously pulling myself on top of the rough wooden surface as it takes a few decorative shreds of skin out of my forearm, making it look like the wavy traces of a bear’s paw.
When I’ve mastered this once, B-san is back from his full circuit. Practice is practice, and I’m only starting.
With the big pole in front of me, I feel suddenly inspired by the old karate masters and start punching it. Hand conditioning. To burst the skin on the knuckes, make them turn black and grow the bones. It hurts. I’m not even punching it hard, just touching the rough wood with my knuckles, gradually increasing the force slightly. Until I see a red dot on the pole. First the middle joint of my middle finger starts bleeding. Not a good sign, as it should be the punching knuckles that bleed first. But I keep going and finally get one of them to bleed, too. I watch fascinated as my fists paint red dots on the light wood. I follow this initial bout of punching with some knuckle press-ups while B-san finishes his hanging from a tree for more sit-ups.
When he gets back down, another old man comes and talks to him, and I join them as he shows us a hammer he uses to make katana. His accent is thick, and it is difficult to get a grasp on the drift of his monologue. His sumo stomps help reveal that he used to be good at sumo once. He got into swordfighting. But then got smashed over the head. In Japan, you learn to kill in one blow. Now he makes katana. With this hammer. He came over to Osaka from Shikoku with his big family. They were priests before. No big families like that in Osaka. Only in Shikoku. A woman joins him, and we have to leave. B-san is off to work. I stroll through the Shotengai surrounging Ishibashi station. Fighting. A good start to the day. What is the next priority?
Bunburyodo. Fighting. And writing. I pick up a notebook at a 100 Yen shop that helps me decide to pick it saying “sensible notebook” among a madness of pink and blue starts and circles. Just like the insides of my head. Sensible. Right.
I find a café called “Dawlish” with wooden tables and chairs and latte for 350 Yen. Perfect.
Inspired by training and sun, I feel like getting more of both, and there is still about an hour left before work. Trying to find a spot to train near my house, I walk along the road behind it, and find a large field of grass to be reached through some wholes in the fence. Grass. That is a rare luxury in Japanese cities. I climb through the fence and try to piece together the juro. Failing miserably on most. The tsurugi and weaponless kata moves are starting to take root in my head, so I practise what I can, enjoying the grass beneath my feet and the sun in my face. Pieces of freedom. Fighting. Writing. A morning well used.
As work time approaches, however, I find myself increasingly sleepy, until I'm on the train with the housewives, students, foreigners on holidays, and old people that populate the twelve o'clock train to Juso. I'm the only one in a suit. The only salarywoman. Asleep on my feet, snoring "Gambarimasu!"

Nikon, Kansen, and Mushin

Its-san gives me an early lift to Shosenji. It is a beautiful Friday morning near the end of the cherry blossom season. Thunder and lightning are forecast for the night, but the mild morning hints nothing. T-sensei is standing by the pond in the middle of the garden when we arrive and waves hello through the sun. His little boy is sitting next to him, in the middle of this idyllic little paradise, watching the glittering surface of the dark green water.
We walk into the dojo’s little entry hall, take off our shoes and sit down in seiza to greet the dojo with a bow, our best greeting to anyone, always, says Shihan. B-san and Herr T are already engaged in bouts of tenchi-nage (Heaven and Earth throw) as we walk past to get to the changing rooms. I say Herzlichen Glückwunsch. Today, Friday the 13th, is young Herrn T’s 22nd birthday. He has brought me a little plant, considerate enough to notice the lack of greenery in my battlefield room and use some of his flying blossom life to change that. The round little plant is waiting for me on top of the fridge next to the changing rooms, and I say Danke to Herrn T for this surprising gift of green.
Right on time, as usual, B-san takes us through our warm-up routine, and Shihan enters to lead us through the next 80 minutes. Today’s training begins with a speech:
“The objective of aikido,” he announces the title of today’s lecture.
“One objective people usually have in mind when they train aikido is that they want to turn their aikido into good budo. Really good budo. It is an objective like going to the shop to do your shopping. But as for the shopping, when you come back and have bought whatever items were on your list, the objective is achieved. So in aikido, there is another kind of objective. It is called ‘nikon’.”
A detailed explanation of how to write the kanji “ni” follows, and the result in my slow mind looks somewhat like the “ni” used in “baggage”, but a conversation with Its-san after training reveals that it is likely to be less known, as apparently she, too, was unable to follow the mental calligraphy. Both word processor and mobile phone yield nothing but hiragana and katakana renderings. It must be another one, then, of the obscure words taken from the world of Zen and budō that Shihan teaches us, together with their obscure writings, and deep meanings.
This problem will be researched in more depth and published at a later stage. Today, the explanation of the word’s meaning must suffice. Enter Shihan’s speech.
“’kon’ is now. So it is about now. Not about some future thing we are trying to reach but about what we are doing at this very moment. If you are sitting there like that, then sit, for sitting’s sake, and just sit. Here. Now. This is not about training things to form them in a certain way, not training to aspire to a certain kind of posture or shape, but training to train well here and now. So keep that in mind.
Also,”
Enter the second concept of the day,
“there is kansen. This has the ‘kan’ from sightseeing. And the ‘sen’ from arrow. This means,”
Shihan makes a sudden jab at his own throat and mimes a face troubled by impending death.
“You have an arrow at your throat. You have the point of an arrow at your throat! If you are in that situation, you don’t think about anything else. You are either going to get out of it, or you’re going to die! That’s all you think.”
He leads us to the dojo entrance and points at the inscription on a large wooden board above the door. “Kansen”, it says in old writing order, read from right to left. “I carved out this word and coloured in the carved out characters to put this over the dojo entrance. And actually, I didn’t want it to be there just for decoration. When you enter the dojo, this is what I want you to think.”
Again, his hand turns into an arrow at his throat, his face into fear of death.
“You have an arrow at your throat. At all times. Try to train with this in mind.”
Respectfully, we re-enter the dojo and throw open-handed arrows at each other’s throats, diverted by swift taisabaki and flowing bodies moving from moment to moment, arrows at their throats in their minds.
When we sit down to finish with seated kokyūnage, we are introduced to yet another concept.
“When you do this, be mushin.” Says Shihan. No heart. No thought. “But mushin does not mean you are letting yourself disintegrate into useless idleness of the mind, carelessness, or unattentiveness. Mushin is simply a combination of pure kansen and pure nikon. Feel the arrow at your throat. Right here, right now.”
So sitting down, we have difficulty breathing with the arrows at our throats, trying to carry out kokyūnage, the breathing throw.
We finish our session and clean the dojo, followed by bouts of walking on hands, in which Herr T excels, and other experiments. When Its-san and I walk out, as she has kindly agreed to take me to the Midosuji line so I can reach Shinsaibashi for today’s Big Jump Training session number two, B-san and Herr T are on the mat again, putting things into practice. Its-san preserves it on video. To study. And learn.
Mushin. Kansen. Nikon.

Blossoms and Beer

“Today,” says our Shihan with the blue eyes, “we have a new arrival. A guest from Germany. T-san. His mother is German, and his father Japanese. His father has a Zen temple near Munich. He will be here for a couple months to study and train with us. Translate. Ask questions. Welcome him.”
So, of course, after training I am sought out by and welcome the young Herrn T, named in Japanese after the Eastern sun, and in German after a certain Wagner hero with the same initial. What a truly cultural cross.
Our initial introduction is brief. As usual, I have something to hurry to after training. Work on a Friday, rare weekend excesses on Monday night. But we talk again. And train. And drink. And ask questions. And translate. And I humbly partake in bits of his wandering life on what can be counted as yet another rare weekend excess, letting myself get swept away and off the daily path of bread and butter, or rather, the more troublesome path of rice and miso soup, and into whatever next adventure awaits us by the roadside. Like pink blossoms taken by the wind. Dancing. Beautiful.
Kung fu training in Osaka Castle Park. A spontaneous tour through the Kyobashi shōtengai, shopping sreet, and strange little alleyways where people queue for fresh tuna. Red light establishments cast a soft glow on neighbouring ramen and sushi shops. The tour is kindly guided by N-Sensei. We pick up six-packs of beer and some appropriately salty snacks for a spontaneous cherry blossom viewing party on the way back to Umeda. We cannot resist the sweet baking smell of oban-yaki, warm, filled cakes, either. Six with white, four with red anko, sweet bean paste, land in a paper bag, and we make our way to Sakuranomya, a famous cherry blossom spot.
We lose B-san, however, or rather, he loses himself, this time not in a fight with the subway minotaur, but in the big maze that is Osaka outside the train lines, and respecting the impossibility of finding Sakuranomya from wherever he is lost, we cut our hanami short to meet in Sone, and continue the drinking and merry making, eating and fighting in my humble Leopalace flat.
Sensei and our new kung-fu addition M-san leave, and the three of us brave each other and the beer, contemplating different missions that could be started from the balcony, talking, drinking, talking. At some point we have to go for more beer at the combini round the corner. And some whiskey, while we’re at it. It is a night of flowing sake. The cherry blossoms conjure up nights like this by the dozen. Well, one dozen or only slightly more. People leave the office. The pachinko parlours. The hostess and ramen bars. The kaiten sushi restaurants. People get drunk. Are happy. The world remembers that this is where the sun rises, and its soul gets absorbed in a passing dream of beauty too beautiful to be passed. Then, after the blossoms have wreaked this brief spell of magic, they sail down in gradual bouts of pink, gentle rain. Hanafubuki. And people sober up with sore heads. And return to the office, the pachinko parlours, the kaiten sushi restaurants, the hostess and ramen bars.
But tonight, we are in the middle of the cherry blossom dream. It is everywhere, even where you can’t see the blossoms. Beer keeps flowing until sleep calls. In the morning, from the loft, my room is a battlefield on which the dust has not quite settled yet. But waking up, gradually, we start stirring, moving, fighting again, tidying up. We count 23 empty cans of beer and clear the battlefield to embark on a new adventure.
Namely Its-san who is waiting for me by the bento-shop next to my beautiful highway motel home in her Mercedes. This afternoon I will provide some interesting foreign company to her daughter R-chan. B-san cycles away towards the highway horizon, and Herr T is swept up into the car with us by another bout of spontaneity. So we spend some pleasant hours at Its-san and R-chan’s, slurping banana milk shake, studying kanji, speaking English, and Japanese, and German, making plans for the next occasion we might all enjoy together.
Its-san’s and Herr T’s birthdays are next week. Friday and Saturday will be birthdays. Sunday will be my day off, the perfect day on which all three happy occasions can be combined into a barbecue party outside this very house. Agreed.
And finally, in the evening, we all meet at the temple dojo once again, drawing the circle, dancing the dance, living the dream. Training aikido.

Baseball and Beer

Today Miy-san picks me up in the morning for a spontaneous shopping stroll around “Diamond City”, a big shopping mall next to Itami Station, another part of Osaka I have never set foot upon and probably never would, if it wasn’t for all those nice people who know their way around and, bit by bit, help me expand my mental map of the city.
We both love tea, and Diamond City is the place to get it. The tea shop is small but has teas of all types and flavours under the sun, displayed in small round tins you can pick up, to let their tempting aromas tickle the insides of your nose and decide which one most suits your palate. Inspired by the quiet Monday morning shopping mall atmosphere, bathed in shades of vanilla milkshake and Hello Kitty, I go for black tea that smells of chocolate chip cookies and green tea that smells of vanilla and strawberry.
Our tea mission accomplished, we explore the rest of the mall, combing through a sophisticated 100 ¥ shop that sells kitchen paraphernalia and stationery, walking past the pet shop where Miy-san has bought Happy, and, of course, a pet clothes shop where I see dummies wearing the same clothes I have seen on the wan-wans (woofs) in Inōkashira Park the other day. Miy-san walks into a jewellery shop, something I would never do on my own, but as I’m with her, I have a look and promptly find a crocodile shaped hairclip I cannot help buying. As soon as I see it I start thinking about a name for it.
Finally, we land on the top floor in front of the cinema, and Miy-san tells me she wants to see “Dream Girls” again. A wonderful film, she says, that makes you want to sing. So we decide to watch it in the evening. Then we go for a bowl of katsudon, deep fried pork, egg, cabbage, and brown sauce topping a big bowl of sticky white rice, and it is as satisfying as a seal.
Then we leave, and Miy-san takes me to Itami Station from where I embark on my next adventure. B-san has kindly invited me to join him for some free high school baseball at the huge Kōshien baseball stadium. This week, he tells me, there are games every day, with all the best high school teams of Japan competing against each other. All games are televised, and people across Japan watch as high school students pitch, bat, run, and sweat on Ōsaka’s Kōshien diamond.
I take the JR line to Kōshien-guchi, but when I arrive and try to find B-san, it turns out that Kōshien-guchi Station is about 30 minutes from the Hanshin line Kōshien Station, which is right next to the Stadium. As the bus has just left, and I don’t want to wait another twenty minutes, I decadently take a taxi and, five minutes and ¥ 900 later, arrive at the McDonalds next to Kōshien Station to meet B-san, who has only just emerged victoriously from a fight with the fearful minotaur of the Ōsaka underground. But he appears unscathed, wearing sunglasses and a big rucksack. We walk across to the Stadium and find some seats from where we don’t only get to watch the Narita vs Kōryo game but also the cheering teams on either side, which seem to be conducting a separate kind of tournament. A whole block on the right is all purple, with a brass band and intricate cheerleaders’ formations jumping and waving rhythmically. There is a similarly impressive turnout on the left, colouring the opposite block red. Both sides take turns clapping, singing, moving in patterns through various formations, playing boisterous brass music to keep their teams going, and breaking into spontaneous bouts of cheering whenever their teams score. As I am completely baseball illiterate, I have to ask B-san and watch the score to see which team is winning. Both teams are very close, and they have to go into second innings before the game finally ends 2:1 for Kōryo.
After the game, B-san tells me, everybody in the losing team always cries. Tender dreams of being spotted and becoming famous baseball players may be crushed as we watch the teams line up and shake hands to the sound of a male voice booming the national anthem through the speakers. Next, Hokuyo from Osaka are playing Kagoshima-sho who have travelled a long way from Kyūshū.
But I know nothing about baseball, and the great thing about sitting in a big stadium on a sunny free Monday with professional cheers all around is mainly that it provides the perfect chill out spot. In wise foresight, B-san has brought beer and sun screen, and as the sun screen dries into white residue on our faces, we sit slurping beer, occasionally applauding the players, enjoying bouts of idleness and exchanging stories. A skunk caught in the garage and shot at with a pellet gun, spraying everything as its muscles relax, spontaneous real estate tours in Osaka, religion, aikido, English conversation sharks, yakuza, smoking, drinking, and quitting, the red pill, and the blue pill feature in our conversation across this pleasant stretch of afternoon idleness. But idleness seldom lasts, especially in this country of short weekends and long working hours, so we leave for another fight with the minotaur, as I have to make my way back to practise kata. Karate competitions and gradings are coming up, and I have to drill the moves into my body - my mind will forget them under pressure.
So after an hour of kata training next to the baseball field behind my house (it is locked, and the fence is much too high to be climbed), I’m off for Monday night aikido training, where everybody sweats practising flowing bouts of open-handed strikes to the side of the head, averted by circular counter-movements which in fast repetition turn into a dance, equally nerve-wrecking and relaxing as blade-shaped hands drop like swords only inches away from faces, and bodies move into and out of line, drawing semi-circles into the air and onto the white mats. I get my timing right once, which is a success to be elaborated on in the future.
After training, Miy-san picks us up in her car, and we arrive slightly late for Dream Girls which, featuring the amazing voice of Jennifer Hudson, does indeed make you want to sing. After the film, we pop into a McDonalds for a coke, and to translate Diana Krall’s “Devil May Care” into Japanese for Miy-san, who loves singing this song but doesn’t know what she is singing.
“No cares or woes, whatever comes later goes, that’s how I’ll take and I’ll give, Devil may care.” Now she knows and comments: "What a cool song!"
I voice my concern over the issue of what to call my new crocodile while I take him out of my hair and look him in the eyes as he opens and closes his mouth. “Pacman!” Miy-san aptly suggests, but although the way he moves his mouth undeniably resembles Pacman’s, I still have a feeling he looks more like something else, something I know but can’t quite put into a name yet.
When Miy-san drops me off next to my house, I can’t believe I will be facing another week of 10 hour days. But the next weekend will surely come, and the red pill is still sitting in my pocket, waiting to be swallowed.

Big Jump

The Tokyo Bay Hilton is the most impressive hotel I have ever stayed in, and my girl colleagues agree. It is luxurious. But we are here to work. To learn, so we can contribute better to the company that is so generously granting us this opportunity. More and more suited GEOS employees stream into the lobby and climb the broad staircase up to the first floor, some familiar faces from previous training days, one person I met in my London interview session. Many of them assemble in the smoking area in front of the big room that is at this very minute being prepared for our training. Smoke clouds the entrance while inside, handouts are being laid out on tables, name cards put up and organised by shishas. Waiters are polishing a big, silver hot water dispenser and lining up jugs of iced water on a table in the back.
We talk and get to know each other. There must be over a hundred people, maybe more, don’t quote me on numbers, but we are a big group, and we are only an infinitesimal part of the whole ginormous company. The cream of the crop, we will be told several times today. As our small talk evolves into conversations, however, it is nice to notice that the cream of the crop consists of people just as normal and open and unblemished by corporate pressure as me. Everybody is young, from different backgrounds, with different ambitions, but everybody shares the wish to do something special with their lives and the world, and some pleasant qualities like the gift of the gob, a willingness and skill to communicate and be friendly, and a hopeful smile that, beaming through yawns, displays professionalism, and, occasionally, shining through eyes from somewhere higher up and deeper down the soul, reveals interesting and radiant personalities behind the suits.
We are finally told to sit down at the long rows of tables, behind our assigned name cards. First, we are greeted by M, whom I know from my initial Tokyo training session. She quickly passes on the word to P from Urawa School, who takes over the lectern and asks us all to rise as we quote the “Shaze Shakun”, that encapsulates our company principles to guide everybody’s daily efforts and provide a corporate culture to live in and adapt to.
“Through our global network of language centres, we shall promote international understanding and cross-cultural communication,” intones P. Then, we all tune in with our half-awake Thursday-morning voices and mumble: “Meet the Challenge.”
The next part makes us all the more credible. Like an encouraging military marching chant, P starts every phrase with the word “Credibility.” Then we finish together:
“Credibility – comes not only from what we say but also from our appearance and attitude.
Credibility – comes not only from what we say about our lessons, but also by providing a friendly, enjoyable and academic atmosphere.
Credibility – comes not only from words but also by a cheerful, friendly smile: be sincere, look sincere.”
Sincerely, we all drop back down onto our chairs.
And there we sit, listening to speech after speech, with short 5 to 15 minute breaks in which we hurry down to the Starbucks in the lobby for more shots of coffee as it becomes more and more difficult to stay awake through this all too sedentary stretch of a day. There is of course some interesting information we get to hear. A lot of it, we already know. Some of it is new. GEOS has over 500 schools in Japan, and about 50 abroad. If we make an effort, we can become teacher trainers, managers, sub teachers, or textbook researchers, or we can go to one of the overseas schools and become teachers or managers there. We are the cream of the crop. We are the future. And if we reach our monthly targets straight through, we might even get to go on an overseas trip to get to know one of the GEOS overseas schools, in Vancouver, or Oceania.
The centre piece of the day is our Kaichō’s speech. He arrives with a little entourage, a bald wardrobe of a man watching over him from the right side of the room as Kaichō adjusts the microphone and speaks. His bodyguard? He is important and rich, our Kaichō. We are all lucky to be in the same room as him and hear his valuable speech. A completely different experience from watching it on video in the lobby of our schools while hastily preparing for our next lessons. Not the content, of course, just the atmosphere, and the fact that here we have the luxury of devoting our full attention to it. Although some of it goes into nursing our coffees to spread them over the duration of this stretch of afternoon.
Kaichō speaks good English. He is a very serious man. No jokes. No laughs. In order to sell the apple, it must be delicious. So he prefers spending money on employees’ training to spending millions on TV commercials. We must improve our teamwork. He draws a dot on the whiteboard. This is our goal. Then he draws a horizontal line underneath the dot and lots of arrows pointing away from it into different directions, none of them reaching the dot. If everybody works without looking at the goal, we cannot achieve what we want. He then draws a second dot and a second horizontal line underneath it. This time, all the arrows are pointing from the line towards the dot. The result looks like a volcano. “This,” says Kaichō,” is teamwork. We must reach our goal. You are young. You just started. You take up information like a sponge. So please make an effort.
We all clap. By the time we leave the sponges in our heads are so full that their content starts trickling out of both ears. We go for dinner in a big room fitted with round tables. Again, we are organised by shishas. “Higashi Kansai”, says the sign on our table. I get to sit together with my new friends D, a very funny Kansas City man, T, an extremely pretty, pleasant Vancouver girl originally from Vietnam, with a special touch of unassuming professionalism about her, and P, a beautiful West-London girl with Indian roots that radiantly shine through her name and smile. We eat salads, bread rolls, broccoli soup, croquets, meat, fish, gratin, and a yoghurty cheese cake garnished with fresh fruit for dessert, served one after another on a big, turning plate in the middle of the table. D, who has assumed a leading role to make our shisha feel like a real team, asks us all to tell some funny or embarrassing stories. I tell everybody about Hoover, my talking seal hero from Boston. S, my gentleman fellow trainee tells us he went out with his students and toasted to them, fatally using “Chin-chin!” instead of “Cheers!” which, in Japanese, denotes a certain male organ that is better left unmentioned in the company of one’s students.
Then, in a Tokyo Bay Hilton pub quiz, we are asked questions like “What does the GEOS acronym GSI stand for?”, “Murasaki Shikibu wrote which famous book that may well be the first novel ever written?”, and “Who was president of the United States when Neill Armstrong first set foot on the moon?”
Under the name “The fearless Talking Seals”, we enjoy the wonders of teamwork, as our knowledge pours into the empty boxes on our quiz sheet, and finish second, together with two other teams.
Finally, we have to clear the room, and spill into the corridor, exchanging more anecdotes, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. P and I throw our bags into our room and celebrate our stay at the Hilton by jumping up and down and across the three beds we share with C, another lovely English girl.
Then, sadly, the group splits as scattered group movements break it into a Hard Rock Café group and a group that can’t be bothered going so far and ends up in the Hilton Hotel bar. So we sit in the dimly lit hotel bar, little waterfalls making the wood glitter, large glass bottles and a giant bowl full of lemons, elegant lights creeping out behind flat, wooden pillars – the place exudes elegance. We are led to a table and borrow a few more chairs from a neighbouring table to accommodate us all. Then, we take a look at the menu and try not to run straight out again as we see the drink prices, which go up to just under ¥ 4000 (£17/€ 25) for a single drink. The cheapest drinks are coke, sprite, fanta, and oulong tea at ¥ 700 (£ 3/€ 4) a glass. Oulong tea it is. Other people order the relatively cheap Guinness at ¥ 1200 (£ 5/€ 7,60), but it turns out to be about half a pint. Undisturbed by the slight drawbacks suffered as a simple GEOS teacher when socialising at the Tokyo Bay Hilton Hotel Bar, however, we continue our round of stories, mirth, and merrymaking, and nurse our drinks, making the drinking less and the talking more intoxicating as we give each other advice on how to become better servants to the divine company who has honoured us by taking us in and giving us a never-ending array of fascinating opportunities.
S suggests reciting the Shaze Shakun in front of the mirror in the bathroom every morning and evening, N, an eloquent American girl who will soon become a “split” and work in two schools, suggests removing all male plants from the office, as they disturb the fruitful development of ideas, and ruin the creative atmosphere in the school. I feel tempted to pull out my notebook, but my brain willingly agrees to take notes for me this time.
We are an exciting mix. Former Chicago bartenders, Haruki Murakami fans and aspiring writers, psychologists, law firm employees, farmers, and marathon runners. I sit next to J who is from Alaska and now works in a school in Okinawa – what a change! At least in climate. As for population numbers, the two places seem to be similar. She has about 20 students and lives by the beach. It sounds appealing, compared to our school, which has about 80 students, out of which I teach about 60. Other schools have many more than that, still. Also, there is affectionate, smiley, utterly amiable P, who reckons god is a gas, which leads to a round of follow-up jokes, bringing the deep conversation about god and belief back to a level more typical for a light post-training drinking session. But both the deep and the shallow end are pleasant to swim in. We leisurely paddle about in the hotel bar light-lit water, cooling our heads and warming our hearts, learning more about people with similar and very different experiences, learning, growing, dreaming. Until finally, it is time for last orders, and we are forced upstairs and into bed. But I am not too angry, much as I love conversing with my wonderful fellow teachers. The very best part about work are the interesting acquaintances made along the way, and there is no shortage of them. But at some point, the idea of a nice, clean, warm bed opening up its quilted arms to take me in becomes more and more attractive, and it is a special kind of ecstasy sinking into the Hilton hotel bed after last night’s short, light sleep at the Asakusa capsule hotel. Capsule one night, Hilton the next. Big Jump. Living the dream. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.