Humongous wasps of hell

I had been to bed late the night before but despite this I was wide awake at 5:30 am.

This was because there was a two inch wasp in my room.

The size of my thumb and then some, the creature's loud buzz alerted me to its arrival, causing me to spring from my sheets before it landed on them and squashed me flat. Its body was covered with dark fur but beneath the hairs I could see the yellow and black stripes.

Those stripes did not say harmless cutie pie.

They said you are going to die.

... right after I've mated with your coat.

Not wishing my bedroom to be the breeding ground for humongous wasp / Gore-Tex hybrids I picked up my umbrella... which promptly broke. I gulped and prodded my coat with the broken end of the brolly, getting ready to run. Fortunately, even Satan's own insects succumb to the common male problem that size isn't everything and --done with my coat-- it left out the window. I swiftly barricaded all the entrances.

Later that day I was describing this horrifying, death defying experience to a friend at work.

"Ah," she said nodding. "If those wasps sting you more than once, you can die."

We're all doomed. Someone bury me under an apple tree.

--
(Note: for the record, I'm pretty sure what we're talking about it one of these, even though the body seemed less brightly coloured.)

Dark dealings

The fact that public restrooms do not usually have western style toilets is not normally a problem. After all, even the best facility in a park has people traipsing wet and muddy feet throughout its tiled interior, while its open door policy and au naturale location means the majority of its guests have six legs and do not use toilet paper. As a result, I'm usually less than enthused to place my shiny-clean bare backside down on any surface.

The traditional squat toilet takes away that problem by being specifically designed for non skin to porcelain contact. In fact, one might even describe it as ideal... if I could see.

It was 5:30pm when I wandered into Nakajima park and the daylight was just starting to drop. The restroom actually did have lights --short fluorescent strips above the two wash basins-- there was just no way of turning these on. There were only two buttons in this side of the building and both controlled the water for the taps. Either this was an automatic detection systems that failed to note my stealthy restroom usage or someone had forgotten a key design feature.

Once I had closed the door of a cubicle, I couldn't see much. With no substantial ceramic object to grip, it was a question of crouch ... and hope. Fortunately the lack of light also prevented from knowing whether I was successful.

Bright orange lunches

Sapporo fish market is small. Well, let me clarify the scale: Sapporo fish market is tiny compared to Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market but since that is the largest in the world, perhaps that is setting the bar rather high. Compared to the fresh fish counter at Sainsbury's, Sapporo's market is humongous. It is also largely filled with crabs. A Hokkaido speciality, there were huge crabs swimming around in glass tanks, crabs sitting on ice with their legs neatly tucked under them in a crab package and crabs being served up in the restaurants nestled between the stores. It was into one of these that I stopped for lunch.

My guide book particularly recommended not the crab, but the fresh sea urchin and salmon roe. I picked one of the restaurants in the centre of the fish market that had a steady stream of visitors. By trying my usual trick of looking hungry yet solvent, I was guided to a seat and handed a menu with a lot of pictures. After I'd pointed out my selection (a rice bowl with salmon, roe and sea urchin), I sipped my iced tea and looked around. My choice of establishment was one of the larger options with maybe three large tables that could sit about six, another three smaller tables for two and the counter area where I was seated. Many traditional Japanese restaurants are very small, with sometimes just half-a-dozen tall stools pulled up the counter. Somewhat incongruously, this restaurant had Indian music playing continuously through the speakers above my head.

My meal arrived in a spread of florescent orange goodness. Sea urchin in particular looks the opposite of what it is; appearing to be highly processed and faintly radioactive rather than freshly caught that day. It was all excellent. The salmon roe popped in your mouth and the sea urchin had a salty tang.

I left and accidentally walked straight into one of the crab stores opposite. A particularly large specimen snapped a claw at me. I narrowed my eyes; next time buddy, you're mine.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit.... and his wife

Today, I was accosted by a crazy Christian group. This was surprising for three reason:

(1) Firstly, the majority of Japan is not Christian but Buddhist with a Shinto flavouring.

(2) Secondly they kept asking me about Passover which, being a Jewish festival that occurred in April, didn't seem to have an obvious connection to the topic in hand. I tried to explain this, they looked astonished and it was only with the later help of wikipedia that any of this started to make sense^[*].

(3) Thirdly, they asked if I knew Obama... I admitted I might have heard of him.

Nevertheless, it was an unmistakably Japanese experience as proved when one girl went looking in her bag for a Bible and produced her iPhone with the appropriate religious text App. Two of the others were also carrying open netbooks. The group consisted of four women; one older lady and three girls who looked to be students. Despite their enthusiasm for evangelising to random foreigners walking across Hokkaido University's campus, the small group's English was only slightly better than my Japanese. This meant than indepth philosophical discussions were even less likely to be successful than with your average megaphone wielding street preacher. To their credit though, they tried hard.

While they spoke Japanese and their iPhone Bible App appeared to be in Korean, the literature they had about their church was in English. Various parts of this were thrust under my nose from which I learnt that this was a Korean-based denomination and one of their main concepts was "God the Mother" as opposed to the more usual, "God the Father". They also held their religious day on Saturdays and were somehow involved with the United Nations and had donated to Haiti. Then I was shown a picture of millions of people all holding up their right hand.

... After which I concluded this was a Feminist cult with plans to take over the world who was not above political bribes and possibly had enough people to be successful.

Later investigations on wikipedia didn't immediately suggest world domination plans but explained that this church believes that there is both a Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother which exist as two facets of the same God. Their current leader is a woman who is considered to be the one promised in the Bible. They also believe that the second coming of Christ has occurred but before you get too excited, you've missed it; he died in 1985. Additionally, they keep Passover which their interpretation of the Bible states is essential for salvation.

After many minutes of strained conversation, the group attempted to lead me to their church. I declined, explaining that I had to teach. The fact they believed me on a Saturday afternoon says much for the Japanese work ethic. They did try and persuade me to come back and then asked about what I was doing tomorrow... or next week ... or ... I evasively suggested I taught continuously; morning, noon and night. My commitment to education knew no bounds! In the end, I touched my eyes and told them I would look out for them in the future.

"毎日! We here everyday!" They assured me.

I must find an alternative way to work.

--
[*] This term is used lightly.
[Author note: I should add that I have a huge amount of respect for all religions and the denominations within them and have a strong set of personal believes, but I'm slightly perturbed by street recruitment.]

Knowing where one's towel is

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is completely clear on the subject of towels:

"...Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it,
slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows
where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

As opposed to a random western foreigner with sticky, butter covered fingers who just looks plain incompetent. In truth, I did know exactly where my small towel was... it just wasn't in my pocket. Currently, that was particularly unfortunate.

Walking through Sapporo's Odori Park on a Sunday afternoon, I had stopped at a stall to buy a corn on the cob. I sat eating it while I watched a group of teenagers rock out to a jpop dance routine they seem to have prepared especially for the group of girls perched watching them on the lip of a fountain. As I finished and dropped my devoured cob into a trash can, I looked down at my hands. No napkin had been provided with my purchase because Japanese people tend to carry small square flannels (wash cloths) with them for just such occasions. These towel-like accessories were thicker than a normal handkerchief and normally brightly decorated. I had two .... but one was in my desk at work and the other was floating around my bedroom. Sighing, I rubbed my fingers together and turned away.

"Ah...?" The inquiry came from a Japanese lady who had been sitting close by and had bought her own corn shortly after me. She was now holding out a disposable wet wipe.

I stammered out my thanks in Japanese as I accepted it, ducking in the customary bow. "Arigatou gozaimasu!"

She smiled and stood up, "Bye," she said as she walked away.

".... Bye."

Perhaps if I bought another 20 cloths and shoved them into all my pockets, I'd be good for the streets.

Flower power

"You can eat that flower."

I examined the serving dish in the centre of our table. It contained the sashimi starter for the night, including tuna, shrimp and scallops laid out on a bed of leaves and flowers.

As far as I could see, the yellow flower was quite blatantly a marigold.

"In Japan, it is normal to be able to eat everything on the plate," another person at our table explained. "Although, it is worth taking care. Sometimes, the flowers are plastic."

Potentially crunchy. Got it.

I picked up the flower with my chopsticks and examined it closer. Still a marigold.

"The taste is very bitter." The first person who told me that the flower was edible was our head of group. "I don't really recommend you try it."

You just told me it was edible. It's totally getting eaten.

I nibbled off a handful of leaves. The taste was slightly tangy but not particularly strong. Clearly these people just had weak taste buds! I popped the whole thing in my mouth.

Hell, the centre was bitter!

Wincing, I swallowed and took a swig of coke. It didn't help, so I followed it with a scallop. It marginally softened the taste.

Our head of group touched his chopsticks at a large green leave with a sharp point. "These are less strong," he assured me.

.... For the record, that proved to be only marginally true.

More than words

The problem with language --apart from it not always being English-- is that it is more than just words. This means that even the best non-native speaker can sometimes convey a meaning quite contradictory to the one meant.

One such example occurred in my first research meeting with my new group at Hokkaido University. We were discussing a project to model a small spiral galaxy with the astrophysics simulation code I had been using in my work and had now brought to Hokkaido.

"We would like to use a rotating reference frame," our head of group told me.

Yeah? Well, I'd like a pony.

The desired numerical jiggery-pokery which would allow the galaxy to remain stationary during the simulation while retaining the same properties as if it were rotating, was no minor task. It was especially difficult for this particular type of code. To implement it would take months of coding, testings, more coding and frankly, I'd probably screw it up.

However, what was really being asked of me was:

"Is it possible to use a rotating reference frame?"

Which has quite a different tone to it. In the first case, it sounded like a politely phrased demand for the project; the equivalent of telling an architect you wanted a revolving restaurant on the 43rd floor of your new building when he had been drawing up plans for a log cabin. By contrast, the second option is simply a request for information, with no implication that a negative answer will result in the project being unsatisfactory.

So far, I have been able to remember this likely translation error in time to stall voicing my equine desires. Answering the inquiry as if it had been phrased in the second way produced an entirely satisfactory response.

Hopefully, time will allow this to be the automatic understanding so that I don't have to mentally go through selecting breed, coat colour and wing span for my new steed. Not least because Japan might just produce such a mount and then I'd have an awful lot of computer coding to do.