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Japan

Neither here nor there

8 June, 2009

in at home,in Aotearoa,teaching & learning,traveller's fragments

My exchange students and I had our last class together today, although they will be around town on internships until the end of August.  We watched Eagle vs. Shark.

I suspect my end to the session was a bit perfunctory (pretty much “thank you and goodbye”) but I did not want any emotions to run too high.  This is the fourth year in which I have contributed to this programme and regular readers know a little of what it means to me, particularly in terms of the friendships and experiences it has brought me abroad.

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In lieu of holiday anecdotes

4 May, 2009

in the social round,traveller's fragments

My recent visit to Japan was my third.  On all of these three I have made many mental and pen-to-paper notes, with the intention of writing up everything later, and on each occasion I have felt–what?–not so much stymied as muted upon my return.  Increasingly I shy from the conventional “on this day I did this” touring narratives, and yet don’t seem to be able to come up with an alternative.

When it comes to Japan, I think that part of this is something like travellers’ superstition.  I love that place, and hope to be able to continue to return in future, perhaps even with the señor in tow.  These emotions leave me feeling in part that if I say too much about my adventures, I’ll break their spell, that I’ll be able to return to them only in print, rather than in the storehouse of memory.

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There is a slideshow and it’s [beat] so slow

27 April, 2009

in O internet,traveller's fragments

Embedded below the cut is a slideshow of my holiday photos from Tokyo, Yokohama and around the Kantō region. These images form an incomplete record of my trip, since several of my friends worked on the “best camera takes the pictures” principle, and mine was never the best. Let the achronological record begin!

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The orientalising dream of the returned traveller

21 April, 2009

in traveller's fragments

I wafted in, on the scent of the last of the cherry blossoms.

Everywhere were tiny elegances.

Even the urging toward civic-minded behaviour was done with grace, albeit an authoritarian grace.

These TwitPic images are ripped from my phone. I hope to assemble a wider composite of my adventures with a certain amount of help from from my flickry (which I’m still editing) and my friends’ lovely photos in the next few days.

ETA: looks like you can’t hotlink to TwitPics.





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KY: reading the air

12 April, 2009

in the social round,traveller's fragments

In Japan, said one of the misses Y. on the train back to Yokohama, it is necessary to read the air. This is the name for the art of perceiving the atmosphere in any situation and of understanding the appropriate manner in which to speak as a result.

The problem is, she explained, a lot of people can’t do this very well, either by temperament, inexperience or lack of intuitive abilities. So the expression for them is “can’t read the air”.

In a country where people–especially the young–love to abbreviate things, the expression “can’t read the air” shrinks down further to its component romaji initials: KY. Therefore, someone who lacks the ability to intuitively interpret the communicative demands of a situation is KY.

Even a politician has used the phrase, said Miss Y., and you know it’s widespread when it gets to parliament.





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