GLORIOUS

The past week has delivered many wonders, including the vision of my dream car: the Toyota Crown Grand Royale. In what may been the inspiration for the classic Toyota Vienta Grande (my first car, a leather-trimmed-electronicallycontrolled-lovemobile that at times resembled a large, petrol powered Esky) this car as far back as the late '70s featured a rear mounted fridge. Did somebody say pimpin'? If had to describe this car as a dish, first of all I'd question why, and then I would respond with 'dancing shrimp, served with a garnish of deep fried prawn head accompanied by a lather of garlic mayonnaise', delivered in an immaculate french accent. The ole dancing shrimp is something of a delicacy round these parts (and is not, as I originally assumed, an imaginative sexual manouevre) - check it below:

Currenty, however, Emma and I get around town in the Mitsubishi Toppo, which while perfectly adequate and is even fitted with a rear spoiler, does not quite suit my 'urban' tastes.

In other news, we had a karaoke session, where in a doubly cruel blow I was unable to perform my signature song and pay a little respect to Nate Dogg (may he rest in peace), as 'Regulators' was not on the playlist. In homage to our fallen homie I considered pouring a little of my zero-percent beer on the ground, but given the state of hygiene of our karaoke room, which looked like you could DELIVER BABIES in there, I thought that it may be offending our Japanese host's sensibilities somewhat. Also, not entirely sure if 0% alcohol beer was the appropriate tribute drink for a member of Snoop Dogg's posse. Notorious B.I.G was not on the playlist either, and there was scant love for Tupac, Nas or the aforementioned Doggfather, so I was forced to expand my repertoire to some Jay-Z and Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone'. I gotta question though, who decides that tATu and Nick Carter get karaoke love, while The King of NY and some of the greatest MCs of all time languish in the reserves?

However the above was soon forgotten when I rediscovered the can of coffee that had deserted me for so long. Thats right baby, the coffee was back and so was I. Nothing like a couple of cans of hot coffee punched into the cakehole to right the wrong and give me the strength to continue my noble tirade against such crimes as mediocrity in sport, namely that regularly practised by my favourite football team.

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

In a week where my world has been turned upside down (no, not by the Tebow rise and fall) there are numerous contributions by the field of commerce that have eased my transition into this new and unseemly environment. While many of my worries could have been resolved by simply rolling down to my local Family Mart and grabbing a convenient cup or cup and a half of sake, and then kicking back at the local hot springs footspa, as ably demonstrated by my lovely wife below, I needed something that would really calm my nerves.

I tried going to the place below, which I thought would offer something to calm me down somewhat, but either a) they dont offer what they advertise or b) they don't serve foreigners. Either way I'm calling Consumer Affairs.

So the search continued for the product of the week. I checked vending machines everywhere, I bought a cheap neckwarmer from Taiyo (quite good, thanks), some sugru, yet still at night sleep eluded me. I had that feeling of loss similar to when deconstructing a Mint Slice, and then you forget to eat the biscuit base, which while less glamourous is the substantial part of the experience.
 

At 11.18am on Friday the 13th, I finally found what I was looking for (and no, it was not contained within Tim Tebow's favourite bible passage). It was precisely 51.5 cm long and 3450 grams. Its presentation was a little unusual by Japanese standards, being covered in goo, and it made a sound that to the outsider sounded like perhaps one of the multiple warning sounds on the aforementioned Toyota luxury vehicles, but sounded to me like glory*

Plaxico had arrived.

JAPANESE EXTREME COURTESY OF THE WEEK

They say Imelda Marcos had a few pairs of shoes. Indeed, at one point during the 80's, with the average Filipino surviving on a few shekels (or local equivalents) per day, she was moved to quell the vicious rumours surrounding her penchant for shoe shopping and declared 'I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.' So there, you communist hippie pinko scum.

Anyway, were she japanese, she would have needed a few slippers to add to the collection. Like around 50. In a country of tatami mats and low tables, you take your shoes off in the designated area, and grab yourself a pair of (ill-fitting, if you're packing size 12s like me) slippers to traipse around in. Generally, you provide some for guests that are obviously not as good as your own, so that they are well aware of the pecking order. For most peoples homes and restaurants, just the one pair is sufficient. However, in the Amakusa Women's Hospital, I've worn 3. One for general carpeted areas, another for the toilet, and another for the surgery room. After about 34 hours of labour, as the doctor rushed into the room to aid Emma, he quickly deposited his slippers at the door and chucked on a pair of nike slip-ons (i'd grabbed the cooler looking reebok ones), that would be more suited to accompanying a pair of shaka shaka pantsu at the local pachinko/pokies parlour.

Makes me wonder though, what would've happened if no surgery slippers were available for the Doc?
Would the birth have been called off? Would there have been a stand off with me over the sports slippers? The mind boggles.

WORDS OF THE WEEK

Akachan = baby. This is a combination of the words for 'red' (aka) and 'little one' (chan). Thus, the term for babies is summed up by their complexion and size. However, the paucity of black children here, and for that matter little ginger children (commonly referred to in english as 'red devils') means that the versatility of this term 'akachan' is unknown. Would a little bloodnut be known as an extremely-red-little-devil? Or perhaps even just plain old fantapantsu? Would a little black child be described in such colour-specific ways?

SPORTING MOMENT OF THE WEEK

Oh, the contenders. One by one, eh:

• Tim Tebow and his epic game against the Steelers? The boy went pound for pound against the best defense in the league and dismantled them. Like our local enigma, Quade Cooper, he then rocked up the following week and didn't fire a shot. Unlike Quade Cooper, he didn't then break into someones house and steal their laptop as some sort of reimbursement for a drug dealing mate. Or then get on the cans and be 'banned from a popular southeast Queensland pub after an alleged altercation with a female patron'. Tebow also is a fervent Christian and probably a very good person. Therefore, he is completely unlike Quade Cooper, and I unreservedly apologise for any offence I may have caused him. Quade, I still love you, but please learn how to tackle. 

Tebow's effort was good, but ultimately undone by his poor showing the subsequent week, and the fact he wears a helmet and padding when he plays. I know, this ruling kinda rules out NFL ever providing a sporting moment of the week, but seriously, harden up.

• Michael Clarke and the Australian cricket team's dismantling of India. The boy knocked out an unbeaten 329. He batted for over 10 hours over 3 days. The team itself has smashed India to bits in a little over 8 days of cricket. Bowling as a wolfpack, the Aussie fast bowlers finally look like blokes who wouldn't a) bowl at least one shite ball per over, nor b) own a horribly coloured Ford V8 ute and have a highly questionable arm tattoo (yes, Mitchell Johnson, this is aimed squarely at you). But the boy, Michael Clarke aka Pup, probably had 2 pedicures and a gallon of body butter rubbed into his gleaming hairless chest every night. Probably skipped the ice bath and went for an exfoliating spa with real essential oils. Probably drinks fresh coconut juice with agave and chia seeds to quench his thirst. Probably shares his umbrella with other men. Probably cries when he has sex. 

So while the above is commendable, the sporting effort I'm talking about actually has more parallels with Australia versus India in 1986. You know, where Dean Jones, in his 3rd test was suffering from dehydration in rather hot and humid conditions, and kept vomiting on the pitch. He told Allan Border he was going to 'retire hurt' which led the Australian captain to say 'Fine, get them to send in a real Australian'. So Deano stayed out there. After he got to 170, which was a fair effort, he was being sick every over, and again wanted to leave the field. Border told him 'You weak Victorian. I want a real Australian. I want a Queenslander'. Deano stayed out there, scored 210 not out, and at the end of the day was rushed to hospital in an ambulance with heat stroke and dehydration. It took him 9 months to put on the weight that he'd lost.

But to this day, it is considered a defining moment for him, and by him.

Which brings me to the sporting moment of the week. 34 hours and 23 minutes in duration. Thats right, my wife's waters broke at 12.55am Thursday morning. She calmly told me this, so we has one last cuddle, woke up her parents, grabbed the carry-on suitcase that had been waiting for a month, got in the car, and trundled off to the hospital. She got settled into one of the delivery rooms at hospital, with contractions occurring about every 5-10 minutes. But 'minor ones', she said. In Emma's luxurious recovery room, Mamiko lay down on the couch as I valiantly opted for the double bed, gentleman that I am.
 

I woke up after one of the best sleeps I had had in a month. All nights previously I had worried about when the baby was going to come. Finally it seemed like it was going to happen, Emma was in a safe place, and it all seemed okay. Meanwhile, Emma had copped contractions ('minor' - her words, not mine) all night. From the time her waters broke, this kept going for 24 hours. 24 hours of your body doing things its never done before. Then, at 1am Friday morning, the contractions kicked in with a vengeance. So much so that when I arrived at hospital at 7.30am Friday morning, her first words to me were 'I need a caesarian. These bastards are not listening to me'.

From memory, Australian options for pain relief during birth go something like this: some sort of weird electronic pulsing device called a TENS machine, laughing gas, pethidine (an opiate), or an epidural, or a combination of all 4, called a 'junkie mix'. Just kidding, I would not pass judgement on any pain relief during birth as I am a renowned pea-heart.

If you are unfamiliar with the Japanese options for pain relief during birth, they go something like this: a nurse saying 'breath deeper' or a nurse saying 'don't forget it hurts worse for the baby'. Not a bit of opium in sight, nor for that matter the option of having fresh wasabi rubbed into your gums or a bit of whale meat to chew on. Disappointing huh.

So as my beloved lay there, contractions rippling through her and not a crackpipe/whale in sight, she took the opportunity to let the midwives know that I have a huge head, so much so that I have difficulty buying hats, and that this was genetic and that my sisters have had to deliver babies with similarly sized heads, and it definitely wasn't fun. While feeling oddly proud of my head size, I felt that this was a good point and given the pained expression on her face, they should give her whatever the hell she wanted. The midwives could see something needed to be done, and decided to entrust me with the job of cooling my wife with a small plastic hand held fan. Although I could see an electric one, unused, in the room, I put all my energy into waving that fan as I felt my manhood would be diminished even further if I refused even the most token of jobs. Given that at this point Emma's 86 year old grandma was leaping up on the bed, pushing Emma's legs, telling her to push back with all her strength and generally doing the job of 2 midwives, the fan-waving seemed the least I could do.

The doctor confidently strode in at 9 and said we would have a baby by lunchtime. After translating this for me, Johnny, Emma's dad, slipped away again from the doorway as nerves overtook him.

All of these conversations were taking place in Japanese. I didn't want to ask for constant translations from my wife, but nor did I want to venture down the business end to confirm that, yes, you could see the head. So I carried on waving my fan, oddly removed from it all, not knowing if we were 5 minutes away or 5 hours away.

Only once before have I felt like such a passenger at such a crucial juncture in my life, and paradoxically, it was when my mum died. With this swirl of emotions engulfing me, I started to feel really strange. I kept track of times as drips were changed over and contractions kept coming; the tension in the room stepped up when a drip of synthetic oxytocin to assist with contractions was plugged in at 10am. I actually laughed at one point as a fleeting comic moment flashed through my brain. I felt guilty and powerless as Emma bravely kept facing the oncoming waves of pain, and I kept waving that fan. I slipped out the room as the bright surgery lights were switched on, which seemed to illuminate the sense of a child being born, make it feel palpable, turning the air almost fluidlike.

I thought I'd catch my breath and then return.

But as it happened, Emma didn't let me back in. Even in her state of mindboggling pain, she was trying to protect her frail husband from the harsh realities of how children enter the world. I stood nervously at the door as the Doctor changed his slippers over. The nurses ushered me away. I felt awful.

The cry that resounded through the door was the best thing I have ever heard. Johnny and rest of the Akiyama family urged me through the door.

It was 11.18am. Our son was born.

And that was the beginning of the end of the greatest sporting moment I have ever witnessed. Or was it just the end of the beginning?

Well played, my darlings.

THE CASE OF THE COFFEE CAN AND THE VENDING MACHINE

Well as I sit here sipping my can of 0% alcohol beer*, on my electric carpet**, listening to Damian Marley, life is good.

As good as it can be when you have lost faith in your own, once discerning, set of taste buds, and are beginning to think you left part of your memory on a beach somewhere in the midst of a youthful drunken stupor. Involving sub-par, sub-legal women, Holden Gemenis (Gemenii?) and Midori served in test tubes. 

But I digress.

The past 3 weeks have been a great introduction to Japan. We've enjoyed all sorts of lovely food and quality time with Emma's family, and all in all we've spent the sort of quality time together that results in us wearing matching parachute pants *** and quality australian woollen jumpers that had their fashion nadir in the mid 90's east coast hip hop scene.

I've also had the chance to go fishing a couple of times with Emma's brother, Jerremy. He's a, ahem, 'keen fisherman'. Otherwise known as a knot tying ninja who has the ability to stand on slippery rocks, waves'a'crashing, flick a cast out, 70 metres away into a stiff breeze, targetting a fish he can see 10 metres below the surface, while you're busy trying a) not to slip over and drown, and b) to get the hook out of your now-bleeding hand that you somehow managed to entangle while getting the rod out of the car. That aside, it has been super to see how he goes at it, and also to show that not only can I fish for hours in Australia and not catch anything, not even a nibble, but I can also do it in Japan.

Anyway, during one of these dawn missions, that he calls 'fishing', and I call 'surviving' (at least so far), we chanced upon a vending machine. Which in Japan is akin to chancing upon a strip bar in King St. So I bought a coffee from the machine. Which was steaming hot, and delicious. Which in Japan, is common and miraculous, respectively. For a country that has the utmost respect for flavours and food, they hate on coffee like Ali did Smokin' Joe. (Hazelnut coffee y'all????).

Anywho, it is now over a week later, I can't find the bloody same brand coffee anywhere, as there are millions and they all look similar, and the ones that I have found that I thought were it have tasted ordinary. So either a) the coffee was never that good in the first place, it was more a 'time and place' type situation or b) my memory is letting me down as to what it looks like and I will never find out whether it was delicious or ordinary. Or I could just hunt down that original vending machine and sample every drink from it. Which in Japan, is the equivalent of finding an All Blacks supporter that doesn't claim to have a cousin who once played for the All Black Under 21s.

Deflating, huh.

But I did find a machine that sold mello yello, so I was pretty chuffed with that and took a photo for your viewing pleasure.

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

In the land where new problems are quickly invented in order to keep the population employed solving them, this is an extremely tight contest. 

*From delicious tasting 0% alcohol beers, invented and widely sold so that the outgoing Japanese can have a few cans before driving home under the legal limit of 0.00, to **electric carpets that you can lie down on to warm up after a few cans of zero, there has been much here that has taken my fancy so far. 

But I'll return to my first second Japanese love (er, sorry honey), the humble Electric Toilet. Or Washlet, whatever it wants to be called. I'm indebted to this mighty invention for both getting my nether regions to a level of cleanliness once only dreamed of by men as hairy as myself, and inadvertently giving me a refreshing full body cold shower during a sweaty number two session in a Tokyo KFC. While difficult to manage at times, (see bit about KFC), mainly due to the use of Japanese kanji and confusing icons, the services provided by these toilets include, in order of use;

• Automatic lid and seat lifter. No touching of the seat here. That is for cretins.
• Pre-heated seat. This is individual preference, sure, but I can advise it only takes one week of a Japanese winter to anticipate, and then look forward to a warm seat.
• Music, so that you can keep the beat while you get down to business, and to disguise those tell tale sounds that are inevitably produced when least appropriate
• A water stream of variable temperature and force to help the primates amongst us revisit the cleanliness only experienced as young child
• A hair dryer, for post-water cleansing
• Steriliser involving de-ionised air spray
• Automatic flush

The set-up (note that the lid had not lifted up when I took the photo, as the proximity sensor had not been triggered. For the blokes, the button on the control panel, top left, activates the seat lift)

The control panel. The workings of this is somewhat of a mystery, still, but in mystery lies intrigue. And surprise jets of water.

JAPANESE EXTREME COURTESY OF THE WEEK

Also a competitive category. From the endless bowing to complementary hot towels in every restaurant, the level of sophistication in thoughtfulness knows no bounds. 

For this week, we'll leave out the many lovely things that people have done for us since arriving, the apology I received from an old lady after I almost killed her while longboarding down her street, and the stories I've heard about some neighbours who had an ongoing kindness fight, which started with a simple gift of some excess produce from the vege garden and escalated up from there, with each trying to outdo the other. 

We'll also leave out the bit where I am officially registered as an 'alien' here, as that sort of doesn't fit the theme. (I have a card to prove it though)

We'll settle for the Japanese custom of sending out a NY greeting card to all and sundry. No 'reply all' on the email here to 'save the environment'. A real card, sent by mail, each year. There are 15 sent for every man, woman and child. Thats 1.9 billion cards sent. Yep, by mail. So while Australia Post is busy delivering last minute gifts bought for your mother in law from ebay or some utterly shit coupon site (overriding thought when purchasing inevitably being "that'll do"), the Japanese post are quietly (and courteously) delivering 1.9 billion bits of card. Not all of it personalised, no, but a reminder that even the most technology obsessed society still thinks a card is better than a soon to be deleted email.

 A small selection is shown below.

And finally, we go to my favourite category under the broad guise of 'education'

WORDS OF THE WEEK

Alliteration and onomatopoeic phrases, like myself, is a big thing over here. And I love it. 

The term (I think) is 'giongo', and used to describe repeated words such as 'shabu shabu', which describes a dish involving bits of meat or fish quickly dipped and swirled in hot soup. The shabu shabu bit is derived from the sound that said pieces of meat are believed to make when swished through the soup. So an entire dish is described by the sound of cooking it. We have nothing that I know of in english that is similar to this phenomenon, except perhaps things like 'miaowing'. 

This brings us to most awesome phrase of the week: shaka shaka pantsu. Which are so named because of the sound the material makes when the legs, er, rub together. Which are parachute pants, in English, and otherwise known as Gold Coast Chinos. 

Anyway, we bought some from Uniqlo. Thats right, we. My wife and I wear matching shaka shaka pantsu. From Uniqlo.

#winning.

SPORTING MOMENT OF THE WEEK

Michael Clarke? The Teebow meltdown? The NBA back on? 

Nope. The sporting pinnacle was reached this week by a kick of the sherrin in the park with a few local kids. 

'why is it so good?' Emma asked as we played kick to kick. 

Couldn't tell ya, but if it feels right, then it is right. Sometimes when it feels wrong it still is right.

But I digress......