Fukuoka - eighth day

I'm trainblogging live on the Shinkansen, on the way to Fukuoka to have ramen noodle soup for lunch with a new friend from SL. How cool is that? [This was written on Sunday, but I was too tired to post it when I got home.]

I'm actually using my laptop on my lap, for perhaps the first time ever: there is a tray at each seat, but the spacing between rows is so remarkably wide that it's too far away to use as a base for typing. The Shinkansen is a strange beast to European eyes: it feels like a hybrid cross between a train and a widebody aircraft. It's nearly a metre broader than the ICE, with five seats across (3+2) and an aisle that is also significantly wider than ours. All seats face in the direction of travel (like Amtrak and VIA Rail in Canada, they swivel so they can be reversed at the end of the line. That means that there are no facing groups of seats, as in the ICE: I guess people travel alone or in triads at most, or they simply sit apart.

I had an unusual and rather charming dream early this morning: I was giving sex lessons in mime to a pair of shy but enthusiastic Japanese teenagers. The richness of my gestural imagination amused me, I was chuckling as I woke. The chuckles faded when I realized that it was 3:30 am, but that's another story. (It occurs to me to wonder whether this observant meta-self enjoying the entertainment was "lucid dreaming" or just me slowly waking up. I've heard the term often but never really arrived at a definite understanding of it.)

The Bishonen phenomenon is something typically and strangely Japanese. It's not cross-dressing and certainly not transgender, they dress male and don't appear to be gay (insofar as I would be able to detect the local clues and cues which are probably quite different to Europe or America). It seems to be almost a kind of cosplay, a joy in playing at a particular style of looking good. As far as I can see they are treated as normal guys by society and by their almost-always-female companions (who are usually equally well made up); I probably wouldn't detect sneers or rude comments if they were expressed without gesture and in a polite tone of voice, but the fact is that I've never noticed any kind of reaction to them at all.

Hiroshima. A brand-new city, obviously and unusually. I suddenly feel very obviously Western, though nobody seems to care.

I'm figuring out a few things about the language, both spoken and written. One oddity is that although Japanese is read right-to-left (ads, posters, most signage) or in top-to-bottom columns from right-margin to left-margin (books, newspapers, magazines, handwritten menus), single-line electric signs scroll from left to right! It must be very hard to read. There's no good reason for it, the text could just as well be set to scroll rightwards. (Yes, most such signs are bilingual, but English and Japanese are never on-screen at the same time; it could easily be made to switch direction when it switches language.)

I'm amused to note that there are exceptions to the linguistic rules here too, for all the claims of simplicity and straightforwardness of pronunciation. It is said that n is the only consonant that can exist on its own without a vowel (it has a conceptual silent vowel: Shinjuku is a four-syllable word); but the ts pairing is common and not intervowelled (e.g. Fujitsu). Actually, having written that I now wonder whether that is perhaps just an artefact of transliteration: whether there is in Japanese phonetic script a specific character for that pair. This is perhaps my long-awaited "Lost in translation" moment: not being unable to order food and drink, but being unable to satisfy my geeky curiosity.

Also, u is so clipped as to be almost silent unless it's a consonant-less syllable, e.g. Fukuoka is pronounced "F'k'oka." Ei and ai are barely distinguishable from plain "e" and "a:" the trailing "i" is just a grace-note, a barely-vocalized upward inflection. I confused everyone by making three syllables of the name "Eiko," when it's properly about two and an eighth. Another common mistake, from sheer linguistic habit, is to see ing as a single syllable, an English diphthong, whereas it is really the core of three syllables: Ji-n-gu.

Kokura, and we have reached the sea. Half an hour to go. The Shinkansen doesn't mess around, some of these station stops have been barely a minute long.

There is a conductor (who is evidently not a ticket examiner) who walks back and forth in search of something to do. When he walks from the front of the train to the rear (facing us) he enters the car without fuss; but when walking from rear to front (with his back to us) he pauses as he reaches the head of the car, turns around, and bows to us before proceeding.

(Later, homeward in the dark at 5:30 pm.)

Well, that was fun. The noodles lived up to their billing, and Fukuoka seems a nice enough place. Far fewer temples than in Kyoto, and fewer older buildings generally, probably because it was bombed and burned flat during the war. The city has something of an inferiority complex, apologising for not being as exciting as Tokyo or as historically-cultural as Kyoto, defensively proud of its (for Japan surprisingly high degree of) multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity. Being at the far end of the train line in a highly centralized country is probably plays a role in that.

The Tojoji shrine/temple (have to check which is which) surprised me: It was clearly buddhist, with golden statues of the Buddha and lotus blossoms etc; yet it also had what I thought of as Shinto elements, like an orange-painted pagoda and little guardian-stones (have to find out their proper name) wearing red bibs. Perhaps it's multi-denominational? or perhaps the divisions are less hard and fast than I thought.

I didn't get to see the famous thousand-armed Buddha (aka Kwan Yin), nor the statue of the reclining Buddha (one of only two in Japan, it says here). Next time.

A word of warning about JapanRail passes as I change trains in Shin-Osaka. The pass seems to be a steal: a week of non-Nozomi, non-Green carriage travel cost me 250€ plus 35€ handling fee, which I'm told is not much more than the cost of a single return trip from Kyoto to Tokyo. So if you plan to go farther than that or more often than once, it seems like a real bargain.

There are several kinds of passes, which let you on different types of train and classes of carriage. In my humble opinion the Green (first class) carriage pass is in itself unnecessary, "ordinary" carriages are good enough; however it does let you take the Nozomi trains. Given that these make up the great majority of intercity trains, the convenience of travelling whenever you like may be worth the difference in price. In the current case it would have meant two fewer changes and being home nearly an hour earlier.

Tel Aviv: first impressions

… and we all know how often these are false and/or incomplete. Google tells me I have an hour before I have to walk to Savtadotty's weekly soup salon, so I will jot down my thoughts without any pretense at putting them into a sensible framework.

It is really odd being in a place where I cannot read the alphabet. This was brought home when I was texting with Savtadotty, trying to describe where I was. How to tell someone the name of a cafe, when you cannot even begin to pronounce that name let alone repeat the letters that your keyboard doesn't possess? Fortunately, all service-industry people speak at least one European language. I am obviously foreign here, twice I have been addressed in English before I had spoken a word. (My pale-as-the-belly-of-a-dead-fish skin might just be a clue.)

This is a marvellously exciting and active city, I haven't seen this much bustle anywhere but midtown Manhattan. I was quite lucky to get a hotel right in the middle of downtown. (My first impression of the hotel was deeply negative, but I am coming to terms with it. Is it acceptable? eh, sure. Would I recommend it? no.)

Pedestrians and drivers are impatient, pushing and honking at the slightest perceived delay, but they are also surprisingly law-abiding. Almost nobody jaywalks, and absolutely nobody crosses a street in the middle of the block rather than at a corner.

Very dry air, at first surprising given the presence of the sea less than six hundred metres away as the crow flies; but then again, this is the Middle East, and just a few kilometres in the other direction is what I would not hesitate to call "desert."

Rules about societality and communication are subtly and not-so-subtly different to Europe. Israelis love their cellphones, you see people cycling along with a phone jammed between cheek and shoulder. It's common and apparently accepted for two people to sit together at a cafe, both talking on their cellphones and occasionally speaking to each other. Internet access seems paradoxically to be both omnipresent and difficult, one often sees people standing on the street or in malls* with their laptops precariously balanced on one splayed hand, doing e-mail or some such thing. Why don't they sit in a cafe or do it at home? A mystery.

I sat outdoors last night at a cafe in Dizengoff, eating an endive and avocado salad with sweetish lime dressing and carraway/cumin/seasalt/whole-wheat bread, and did an hour or so of peoplewatching. There was a nearly-all-male celebration (birthday party?) happening indoors at the cafe, at a pair of very long tables; since smoking appears to be prohibited in every cafe I've seen (coincidence or a general ban?) the guests kept walking out to the curb in half-dozens, to stand and smoke. One of them spoke for a good dozen minutes to the male of a couple who were sitting near me — without either of them acknowledging the female other half in any way! He stood right beside her, his thigh nearly rubbing her elbow (Israelis don't seem to need much social space), and did not even glance at her. She played along, apparently content to be silent and still all that time. What to make of this? In Germany, for me to speak to a friend for so long without introducing you, would be understood as an insult.

There seems to be little consumption of alcohol here. I asked in the cafe for a local beer, and was told that they didn't have any (ambiguous: is there no local beer, or do they not stock it?)**, and looking around the only alcohol I could see was the champagne that the celebrants were consuming (they typically drank one glass and then switched to cola or water). The club-type place across the street, next to the walk-in botox clinic that was open for business at 10:30 pm, was probably serving alcohol, but I didn't bother to go and find out.

Weather is marvellous, high twenties (mid-eighties to the Americans) and clear skies.

Time to go. Shabbat shalom, my dears — and fancy my being in Israel to say that!

* I went to the Dizengoff Center to look for the Friday food court thingy that Lisa wrote about in her Tel Aviv City Guide (great book, I would recommend it even if she weren't a friend.)

** Savtadotty pointed out that this was probably a misunderstanding, as there are several breweries in Israel: the waiter probably thought I wanted a particular brand of beer named "Local."

Fellow travellers

Being a belated entry in yesterday's Sunday Scribblings blogmemethingy, prompted by Pacian's utterly brilliant story.

On a longish subway journey recently, I sat across the aisle from a deaf-mute pair who were holding an animated conversation in sign language. Being the irrepressibly curious person that I am, I watched them for most of the journey (covertly, being the unalterably polite and shy person that I am).

I found their conversation quite fascinating to watch, even as I had no idea what it was about. If I had to guess, I would say that they were a relatively fresh pair and were discussing mutual friends; but who knows?

Several things in particular interested me. Firstly, the deaf are not silent! Both of them moved their lips frequently while speaking (i.e. gesturing) and often made odd, quiet little vocalizations, not unlike a baby's first attempts at speech, while doing so.

Secondly, I was astonished to see that they did not actually watch each other's hands while communicating, as I had expected. They maintained eye contact almost all of the time, with their hands in their laps fluttering like birds, well out of their field of view. I'm trying it right now, looking up above the monitor while I type, seeing how well I can judge what my fingers do on the keyboard. It works better than I thought: I can't see the details of what happens, obviously, but the shape of what my fingers are doing is quite clear.

Still: I was very surprised. I would love to know how they understood each other. Did they get the content of their conversation from lipreading and micro-expressions, using the gestures as almost subconscious reinforcement? A mystery.

Thirdly, I was amused to note a difference in conversational style just as profound as between the voices of speaking persons. His gestures were clipped, short, abrupt, inwardly-directed, linear; hers were soft, flowing, opening, outwards-directed, circular.

I was fascinated and curious, and had we been seated comfortably in a train rather than packed like sardines into a rattling subway car, I would have found a way to strike up a conversation—or would at least have attempted it.