Greetings from Chez Sparks. Last night was a very merry occasion, here in Ichigaya. 44 different Japanese beers, were tasted and adjudicated upon, taste test competitions held and (particularly enjoyable) quizzes were quizzed. And the elected favorite beer for 2007 (drum-roll please)…
Harvest Moon Brown Ale !!
That`s a very tasty micro-brew from Chiba prefecture which Paul and I will be renewing our aquaintance with a little later at Mayumi’s bar where she has it (wonder of wonders!) on tap.
Here is a very intense Clash performing I Fought The Law. Almost as good as Beretta.
This is my nephew Joseph who as it turns out is a brilliant poet.
The following verses (which form part of a collaborative work he has been working on with some other young poets) are all his own work:
Poor broken trees in the distance live no more
Twigs fallen from the shattered branch are scattered on the ground
And the trunk cut into small pieces.
The tremendous oak stands there proud
Drawing up water through its roots
Time goes by, twigs fall off in the winter winds
No leaves, just a lonely tree.
Not bad for a lad of ten, eh? “The background to the poem” writes my sister “is that we had a very bad storm in England in January with very severe winds. Several trees came down in the school playground and the surrounding area. The first verse refers to the remains of the trees, workmen had been and chopped up the branches/trunk. If you remember Fingringhoe, Michael, the school is next to a green and a pond which is dominated by the “tremendous oak” of the second verse. I’ve just been to Joseph’s Class 3 assembly which was very enjoyable… …Joseph also read his poem and I was a very proud mum. I could also hear every word he said which was very impressive as the assembly was in the church which is big and has lots of echoes.”
A performance poet no less. And it’s no small thing to make your mum proud, eh Joseph?
Good stuff. I await more in eager anticipation.
I’m off to Tokyo for Mr. Sparks’s Annual Beer Tasting Party this weekend, so may not get a chance to blog for a couple of days. Here’s another Joe Strummer song, this one called “Burning Lights” (apparently some members of the Pogues had a hand in the writing of this one…):
Whales. You gotta love ‘em.
Dancing precariously on the sofa to “Johnny Appleseed” last night I tried to show off my strength by picking up something a bit heavy (Hyon Ju) and promptly pulled a calf muscle. What a berk. I’m quite quite hurty now. Anyway here’s a classic from the Clash. Very good sound on this:
There’s a good article up on Z-Net about the Prime Minister’s denial of responsibility for the mass rape of women during WW2. Here’s why you should read it:
Looked at in starkest relief, the democratically elected leader of the world’s second richest nation — one that currently aspires to international leadership in the UN Security Council — committed an act of open violence. He denied the few remaining survivors of a well-documented history the right to claim the dignity that has come as a result of telling their story since 1993 when the Government of Japan first publicly accepted responsibility.
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It’s Wednesday, but if feels like the weekend already. I’ve only got one more day of work, a bit of marking and planning for the next school year and then I’m on Spring vacation until April 6th.
Wahoo! Also, I don’t have to teach Junior High from next term, only Senior High, so hopefully it will be a quieter, more stress-free 12 months. Jules (my co-worker) is very very jealous indeed.
Hehehehe.
Here’s another nice Joe Strummer video. I think I might make this Joe Strummer Week, and put one up each day. Enjoy!
Last Christmas John and Christina gave me “Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer.” and since then I’ve been slowly reading through it’s 646 pages while listening to my “Clash on Broadway” and Mescaleros CDs. Putting it all in context. Now I’ve finally finished it, and I want to recommend it. The book is a great tribute to the man, covering his early life, the days with the Clash, the “wilderness years” and his final comeback with the Mescaleros. The writer was a friend of Joe Strummer and the way the same reminiscences get repeated in different contexts makes it seem very much like a chat with one of your mates (over a few pints) would. The writer doesn’t shy away from Joe Strummer’s personal quirks, his depression or his alcoholism, but overarching all that is a sense of deep love and respect for the man. It seems he inspired these feelings in a lot of people.
Those who knew Joe Strummer… knew he wasn’t Saint Joe. No he was much more interesting than that. If you knew him you’d love him. But you’d be mad not to recognize he could be a piece of work.
I saw Joe Strummer play only once, in 2002 at The Liquid Room in Tokyo. I went with a couple of British work-mates who fondly remembered seeing the Clash back in the glory days of punk. I was really struck by how much of a hero Joe Strummer was to a lot of people at the gig, how much they loved him. And it was a great show. His band was really versatile (it seemed like they were changing instruments with every song), playing old stuff and new stuff, all different genres… And Joe Strummer’s performance was intense, his veins bulging, the sweat pouring off him, he was clearly loving it, and the crowd was loving it too. Two months later he died suddenly of a congenital heart defect that apparently could have taken his life at any time over the past 50 years. I was reall shocked back then. But how lucky I was to see that show. What a blessing it was to us that he lived so long. Here’s a nice video made by his friends.
Happy Saint Piran’s Day! Way back in the Dark Ages, when Ireland was overrun with saints working miracles, raising the dead, and generally showing off and making nuisances of themselves, the High King at Tara decided saintly standards were slipping and set up some quality controls. Saint Piran, was thrown (literally “thrown” mind you) out of Ireland for not having impressive enough miracles. “Change water into wine my Royal Irish Arse! You couldn’t even make a daycent cup of tay!” Ironically, however, having been tied to a massive block of stone and cast amongst the fishes, poor Piran finally cracked the whole miracle thing and proceeded to float like a cork all the way to Cornwall where he set up home amongst the pixies and and was warmly welcomed by the pasty-munching Cornish folk. He then discovered tin, invented the Cornish flag, became drinking buddies with King Arthur and lived to be 200 years old, SO WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HIM?
And no, I’m not making this up.
Click on this next link to see David Tennant’s video diary and a trailer for the next series of Doctor Who. Looks exciting!
These are a couple of photos I took today, which I’m not entirely satisfied with, but I think you can see what I’m stretching for…
Lovely day today. Perfect weather for a picnic in a park and kicking a ball around. So we went to an art exhibition. But we had good reason. It was the graduation exhibition for students of Kyoto University of Art & Design so our friend He Jun had an exhibit there too. The theme and title is “Ten Symbols of Longevity” or 十長生. I like the way she has combined Hangul (Korean) lettering with the Chinese characters and the pictorial representations. Very pretty. Here it is:
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Just double click on the pictures for a better look.
Generally, I try to keep this blog happy, positive and upbeat but I’m not happy today and if people don’t like it, that’s too bad. This news has made me very angry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s grandfather was a war criminal who got away with it. However, as Shinzo Abe claims that convicted Class A war criminals aren’t criminals at all (“under domestic law” – nice bureaucratic touch that) he probably doesn’t have a problem with that. Now he is carrying on his grandpappy’s legacy with his own nationalistic agenda. His attempts to bury history and to instill a nationalistic pride in the nation’s youth with his education “reforms” are causing much concern in Japan and abroad. And now he is denying that there is any evidence Korean and Chinese women were coerced into sexual slavery during World War 2. The truth is that hundreds of thousands of young women and children were abducted by the Japanese military in a government approved program and forcibly raped by up to fifty men a day. They were called “comfort women”. Not many survived and those that did were left with severe physical and psychological injuries. Today, you will sometimes see them on a news program or in a newspaper. What you will see is an old lady crying outside of a courthouse because the Japanese legal system has yet to award these women recognition or compensation of any kind. There has been no official apology. And now the Prime Minister has the gall to say it never happened. Haven’t these people been hurt and insulted enough?
I seriously worry about Japan’s future with such a despicable man at the helm. How many people support him? Who will speak out?
Here are some more links on this issue:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_japa.htm
http://taiwan.yam.org.tw/womenweb/conf_women/index_e.html
http://www.cmht.com/cases_comfortwomen.php
Sick of bad news? Well, here’s some possible good news from the Green My Apple campaign.
And here’s a short animation, you can watch and learn something interesting about cone snails.
Or you can just skip that and cut to the chase with some good advice here.
OK. That’s actually 3 links. Sorry.
Right, short post today. I’ve been searching for a poem by Brecht called “The Song of the Moldau” or “Das Lied Von Der Moldau”, which I had in my wallet for years and years (inspirational you see) but for some reason can no longer locate, despite really really wanting to share it with you all… So if you know it and have a copy mail it to me eh? おねがいします！
Here’s this week’s “Whale Love Wagon” video. Quite interesting actually; this nice old geezer was a whale harpoonist back in the 1950s but now in his 70s he has found a new career involving whales and he kindly shares his memories and feelings with us all. I do like nice old geezers.
