While Listening to "Robots" by Dan Mangan...

I've got the stereo going and as I started writing this blog post the song "Robots" by Dan Mangan was flowing out from the speakers.  I have the volume set at a notch below the middle mark so I can still hear the occasional cry of a cicada from outside.  I think I had commented last year on Plurk in mid-September saying "That must be the last cicada I'll be listening to this year" only to have another fire up and pierce the air with its "Miiinn miiiin" cry the next week.  So I'm not going to go so far to repeat that and say "I can hear the last cicada of the year" here.

Yesterday was a somewhat busy day at work.  I had a mid-afternoon lesson cancellation so I was asked to do a demo lesson for a 3 year old boy and 4 year old girl in the morning.  The manager had written down their names on the memo she gave me advising me of the lesson...she got the girl's name wrong ("Rie" not "Risa").  The kids were a bit perplexed when I had them join me in going through the actions for the song "Ring Around the Rosie".  When I rolled onto my side when the song reached "We all fall down!" the little boy giggled and quipped "What's wrong with this teacher?".  Okay.  I should've worked more on getting the idea behind "fall down" across to them.

I strolled out to a nearby cafe for lunch.  It's located on the main floor of the Kyoritsu Building, an eight or nine story structure with commercial space occupying its lower three floors and a hotel occupying the upper floors.  The cafe is accessible via its rear door that opens into a corridor, a side door or its front door.  I chose the rear door entrance.  To get to it one has to pass through two sets of doors that lead to the shopping area corridor.  The inner doors are automated but the outside ones are hinged and have to be opened manually.  Ahead of me was a middle aged couple.  The man was a couple of steps ahead of the woman.  I hadn't noticed them until the point where I saw the outside door swing somewhat heavily on the woman's right arm and shoulder.  She was a smaller woman so the weight and force of the door pushed her off by half a step.  I glanced at the man and noted his gaze was straight ahead.  He had charged through the door without appearing to have given a single thought to his partner walking behind him on his heels.  That little scene caught me an iota off guard.  It was minor incident but it stirred me.  It reminded me of a remark by a then regional manager at our company who is close to my age but probably a few years my senior.  She once remarked that she felt justified in her choice to not seek marriage when she once heard a man introduce his wife as "the thing" (or something along those lines).  Oh.

In the evening I went out for dinner.  After eating I sat around and chatted with the cafe owner and a couple of customers.  Following that I wandered off in search of a place to get a nightcap drink.  Strolling by the cafe I had had lunch at I spied a couple of friends at a table by the window.  So I made a quick turn and headed in to join them.  Sometime later we were joined by a gentleman who, if I'm not mistaken, is the owner of a pair of local ramen shops which are quite well known.  Apparently his business has a presence in the ramen museum down in Yokohama.

One story the ramen shop owner told was worth noting:  He recounted when he had first started in the restaurant business many long years ago with a place that employed 40 staff members in the kitchen.  He started off as a dish washer and slowly worked his way up the ranks.  As a junior staff member he was subjected to a form of hazing which, if I recall correctly, came in the form of him receiving a blow from a pan or pot directed at his lower leg area and a sharp admonishment that he wasn't doing his job right.

He eventually rose to the upper ranks of this kitchen but then took up a job in another line of work which paid more.  It was a simple case of necessity.  He had gotten married and started a family so his financial responsibilities had grown.  But years later he was approached by a former senior in the restaurant.  His acquaintance had started a ramen shop and he was on the hunt for good people to work in it.  That was the start of a chain of events which saw the story teller end up as the owner/master of the establishment.

The end of the story was the ramen shop owner saying that he did away with hazings in his kitchen once he was the head of the business.  His reason for doing so was a simple "I chose to do so because it (the practice of hazing) had to stop somewhere".  Aye.  In spite of what I witnessed earlier that day, the times they are indeed a changing.

Some More or Less Random Thoughts...

...on tissue paper:

Last week I paid a visit to my local post office to post a card and package addressed to my sister back in Canada (her birthday is coming up soon).  After going through the process of filling out an EMS package form and answering questions about the contents of the package I paid for the postage and was handed my change, a receipt, and two packages of tissues.  Each package of tissues contains 10 sheets of tissue paper and carries the Japan Post Office Bank logo and name in Japanese text on its clear plastic exterior.  They're a very unassuming and simple token of appreciation.

Over the past three years I have mailed a number of packages back to Canada.  I believe each time I've mailed a package I've received at least one package of tissues.  I think I've received packages of tissues when I've purchased commemorative postage stamps too.  If I'm not mistaken, that happens when I purchase two or more sheets of stamps.  So I've managed to accumulate a small stack of Japan Post tissue packages.  Some have plain labeling.  Others have text promoting the sale of year end cards, mid summer cards, or other postal items.

Packages of tissues often serve as the medium to promote businesses here in Japan.  A quick scan of my apartment turns up sources such as Japan Rail, the Yamagata prefecture Orange Ribbon Campaign, NOTTV (I think it's a TV service), Yamagata Bank, and, of course, the Japan Post Office.  I've used up the packages I got from a couple of insurance companies, Docomo (a cellular phone carrier), and a buy and sell store for second hand jewelry.  And...on top of that I have received boxes of tissues from the auto dealership where I purchased my car.  I think they gave me a box of tissues when I took my car there for its annual government mandated vehicle inspection too.

The bottom line is that I've never had to purchase tissue paper for use at home.  I used to purchase boxes of Scottie tissue paper for use in the office at an out of town company where I work offsite.  But I haven't done that recently because I've stocked up there with the boxes I got from the auto dealership.


...on cicadas:

The ubiquitous cicada is an unmistakeable sign that summer has arrived.  Once the weather warms up sufficiently they come out in great numbers to find mates and as part of that process they let out an almost brain numbing torrent of sound.  Well, more or less.  The variety which make that brain numbing sound is colloquially known as "mimmin zemi".  The other varieties, "higurashi", "tsukutsukuboshi" and "kuma zemi" are simply loud without going to that extreme.  But they are distinctly loud.  Two years ago I mistook the sound of a higurashi cicada for a bird.  The mimmin zemi don't have quite that lyrical a quality.  Their cry sounds like an amplified miniature chain saw on a repetitive wind-up and wind-down cycle.  I can only presume it was that variety which the acclaimed haiku poet Basho was referring to when he wrote "The sound of a cicada/ penetrates a rock".

I don't find the cicadas' cries to be annoying...most of the time.  The individual insects which awaken me in the early hours of the morning are the exception.  Usually they're a source of calmness, in spite of the racket they make.  In one instance they were collectively, and unintentionally, funny.

The moment of cicada humour came up when I was riding a bus back to Yonezawa from Sendai.  The bus route goes from Sendai down southward to Fukushima city by express highway and then swings back north to Yonezawa by a local highway.  On that journey I chose a seat on the left side of the bus as that side would be opposite from the sun on the longer southbound leg of the journey.  At one point in southern Miyagi prefecture the bus went speeding by a long grove of trees which were populated by large numbers of crying mimmin zemi.  As the bus passed them, their crying could be heard in perfect unison.  Perhaps it's just me but I found it funny that I could be listening to cicadas crying in unison over a stretch of 50m while passing them on a speeding bus traveling at about 80kmh.  The improbability of it all tickled my funny bone.


...on dairy products:

A few weeks ago I was working my way through a module titled "Broccoli is Good for You!" with one of my beginner classes.  The grammatical points for that module are the use of "any" and "some" plus a drill on count and non-count nouns.  Those are introduced by an illustration of a food pyramid with the "Not good for you" foods at the top and "Good for you" foods at the bottom.  The aforementioned broccoli is in the second tier from the bottom.  Above it is a tier that has dairy products in it.

I don't know how I got there but I found myself telling my students about the importance of eating dairy products and vegetables.  Especially in regards to calcium.  I pointed out a link between calcium intake and osteoporosis.  Of course the word "osteoporosis" was way beyond the comprehension level of my beginner students.  So I used my hand to represent a person's back and curled it slightly to demonstrate the effect of the disease.  My students weren't quite sure what to make of that.  Then I curved my back to represent the stooped posture of a person with the disease.  That must of worked because one female student let out a loud exclamatory "Oh no!".  Ah...that did the trick in that case.  Not sure about to what effect though....