About Matt Keighley

Recent Posts by Matt Keighley

The Eloquent Misuse of a Phrase

“How can I refuse, such an eloquent misuse of a phrase.” Idlewild

I always thought that it would creep up on me like a slightly balding panther, stealthily, sneaking, claws primed to strike and slash away a crop of young, thick hair from my growing brow. Growing brow, I prefer that phrase to gradually receding hairline. It proffers more of a sense of victory than the defeatist linguistic equivalents of retreat.

Yes, there was always going to be a point of no return when it came to turning into my father. I figured in my teenage years that it would be the day I finally received the sort of hairline that the Japanese playfully refer to as resembling Mt. Fuji. Inevitably the attack arrived, but as it turned out, my father’s influence on me has shorn through linguistically rather than in a follicle sense.

Well so far at least.

It is a phrase wielded with ease by parents everywhere when the exhaustion of offering yet another explanation is too much to bear. At other times it’s just the quickest way of stating that something ‘is’ and won’t be changing simply because your adolescent mind is unable to fathom that the logic at work isn’t about to shift at your request.

“Because.”

Children have daily experience with, “because,” adults; not so much. As such, explaining this concept to an adult requires a touch more finesse. Sometimes I can offer a reason for a way of phrasing something and other times the mind simply boggles and I have to um, ahh, well, etooo (Japanese for um) and anoooo (Japanese for ahh) my way through a thicket of hedging to reach my point.

That point being, that I’m afraid it’s just the way it is. We ride on a train, on a bus and in a car. I know how ridiculous it sounds to a foreign listener and I sympathize but even if I knew the etymology of every jumbled bit of English language I can’t always translate it into Japanese. Even if I could I probably can’t tell you why most of the time because even linguists haven’t the faintest.

Inevitably, the final roadblock is socialization. All those times that everyone is told “because” in his or her youth has only served to hardwire in a certain fashion of thinking. So when that hardwiring comes into contact with the ancient foundations of a language, itself a tangle of roots and branches long untouched by a gardener, well it has a little problem coping sometimes.

In practical terms there is such a thing as correct way to say something, yet the nebulous nature of language means that it may not always remain that way. The beauty of language is that it is alive, it evolves and adjusts to its surroundings, bends and flexes in delightful new ways that thrill the poet and leave the pedant aghast; often one and the same person.

Sadly, many of my students tend to fall into one category or the other when they are dealing with English. I have students of all levels who take great delight in the peculiar logic behind idioms. Others who question why they simply can’t lean on their stock phrases for every situation.

In these cases my decision to tell them “because” comes down to the degree to which their freedom with, or lack of interest in the nuance, of the English language is likely to lead them into trouble or embarrassment.

Now, English, unlike Japanese, is an international language. As much as it may pain me to say it, it does not belong to England. It left home long ago and has grown up perfectly fine without its parent leaning over its shoulder. So I try to tell my more advanced students not to worry, that their phrasing, so long as their meaning is clear is perfectly valid, it’s their English and they can use it generally speaking, however they like.

Then a different problem rears its head,

“But teacher, we want to say it like a native speaker!”

Colonial Viewpoint: Gokiburi — On Madness and Mushi

If only my first sightings of the little buggers had been the last. But alas, the first sighting was to be a sign of things to come. Two of the little blighters in short order. One scurrying across the top of my sink, in broad daylight no less! No sooner do I open the cupboard under said sink that I spot his fifth cousin twice removed, next to the can of bug spray designed to kill him. Impudent little git. Yes, yes, your kind may be able to survive a nuclear apocalypse but to set up camp next to the one thing that can kill you, aside from the bottom of my shoe that is, screams of an audacity that must soon be corrected.

You may not long lay in the cracks and corners of my home, amidst the damp and the dark, sipping Kirin and smoking Peace or Hope brand cigarettes like some long fermented salary man propping up the snack bar near my house (I bet you’re friends with the guy who sings Enka every Thursday!). No, this can mean only one thing… a trip to the supermarket… oh yes, the horror!

Indeed, they knew you were coming. With the thick, viscous humidity descending on the town as summer approached you knew your time was at hand and so did the lowly shelf stacker at my local supermarket. He had already brought forth the munitions, placed them in an aisle by the door, handily signposted it and offered weapons for all tastes. There’s the roach hotels for those with patience and those who underestimate your wit.

There’s air fresheners designed to lure you to your death and those to repel you. It is possible I bought both. Then finally there is the giant, whopping can of bug spray with a nozzle of death just for you dear Gokiburi-san. For you are no western cockroach dear foe. No, you live freely in these lands. One can keep a clean kitchen (as hard as that is in the land of endless recycling) and still you will crawl through the gaps of my ageing a-pa-to (apartment)!

Then you struck again, a different variety somehow. Not the small and brown kind that exist in their multitudes in the Izu Peninsula’s hazy August but a big, black beast; a true adversary. Yet, you were lazy in your hiding place, concealed beneath the plastic picture rail in my living room.

Perhaps you were mocking me, letting a single long leg dangle into sight while at first unawares I continued to talk on the phone. But see you I did and speechifying like a deceased crocodile hunter I soon was, my grammar and syntax slowly evolving into something more green and alien from a galaxy far, far away. Confusing it was.

So I chased you with phone still at my ear, a listener to our duel believing me suddenly (perhaps not so suddenly) mad, while in my left hand I held the can of aerosolized death.  You scurried down my wall after the initial strike. I caught you in my sights as you dashed beneath my desk. For a brief moment I feared I had lost you but soon enough I had you cornered… in the corner. One blast of spray was not enough, still you limped on weighed down by your impending doom. A second blast of poison proved insufficient still but with the third and final impact you were done for.

Still it was not enough for me, remaining in the throes of the hunt but lacking the taxidermy skills to stuff and mount your head to my wall I settled for the modern equivalent. Instagram.

You were a worthy opponent so I shall afford you due respect, you were here first after all. Yet, I am American born and British raised and I shall bring to bear all my worst colonial instincts upon your kind.

You have been warned.

And no amount of nineteen-eighties propaganda movies shall quell my wrath!

The fine artwork towards the top of this post was created by Max Joseph, he tweets here. Also, for those who are curious, ‘mushi’ is Japanese for insect.

Izu Peninsula With Mt. Fuji, Oceans, A Hint of Jamaica, Craft Ale and Coffee on Horizon

Moving to the Izu Peninsula, within sight of Mt. Fuji, beautiful oceans and fresh fish galore it would be fair to say I had certain expectations. Undoubtedly Izu can fulfill many of these dreamy thoughts. There have been days when Fuji-san has dominated the horizon (the finest and nearest view is from the local supermarket car park, not as romantic as you’d hope aye), evenings when I’ve supped a pint while staring out across a harbour and days when I simply pine to own a car again if only for a weekend so that I could spend it cruising the outline of the cape.

Yet, while Izu can offer all this, many of us spend our days earning a crust further inland, away from the salty sea air and the delightfully clichéd sound of the ocean. Far from the ageing tourist hotspots like Atami, otherwise known as Blackpool-on-the-Pacific, small town Izu is pretty much the same as small-town elsewhere. An assortment of franchises and chains designed to choke the individuality out of the popular, high rent areas of town.

A MaxValue, a Kimisawa Combo (McDonald’s inside), a KFC down the street and myriad high street brands Japan. I blogged about these places dominating the night’s sky in Nagano before I upped sticks from the cold to the swelteringly humid. Alas, the absence of planning permission, or seemingly any planning at all seems to have decimated a large part of what could be beautifully idyllic Japan. The contrast between bits of stunning nature, jutting up in the horizon against a backdrop of hastily constructed ephemera is all too painful at times.

Indeed, when I first found myself in my new town there was something of an initial, niggling worry. You see in my last town I’d been utterly spoiled. One of my former students and her husband run one of the nicest coffee shops you could ever hope to come across. A rich variety of blends from across the globe fill glass jars on shelf after shelf above the polished wooden counter, classical music plays in the background and whenever I visited, my two younger students, the children of said coffee shop owners would play a continual game of peek-a-boo with me from behind a door, bemused by the fact that their teacher existed outside of a classroom but too shy to come say hello.

However, when I walked around the place I now call home for the first time I was confronted by a raft of snack bars, pubs (the seedier Japanese variety, not the British version I know and love) and supermarkets. Few signs of originality or charm were visible. I even asked a passer by if there was a decent place I could get a cup of coffee while I sat and studied, preferably not at the Starbucks imitation snack bar. The response was a rather long, ‘ummmm, ahhh, sorry I haven’t a clue.’

But all was not lost, because I struck upon gold soon after. Specifically Jamaican, green, gold.

No, not marijuana…

Somehow, amidst the sea of convenience stores, supermarkets and national brands there is a Jamaican style kitchen here. Not exactly what you expect to find in small town Japan but a welcome addition nonetheless. Evidently there is a small but burgeoning community of late twenty-somethings in this area, united by a shared love of reggae. Thanks to their passion for all things Jamaica, I get to wash away the day’s worries with a bottle of Red Stripe beer and Marley in my ears. On top of that, you couldn’t hope to meet a friendlier bunch of people. In an otherwise non-descript, off the conveyor belt small town in Japan, places like this make all the difference. It’s no longer identikit; it’s individual.

And what’s more, they seem to have friends, because every time I find another one of these gems, these little oases in a desert of family restaurants, the owner goes ahead and recommends yet another one to me. A small bar in Shizuoka City led me to the home of Baird Beer in Numazu. My local Jamaican place led me to the local Irish pub where I get to sip pints and watch the footy at two in the morning. While my local coffee shop, a beautiful, eighty-year-old café sells a guidebook to every single one of the independent restaurants, coffee shops, cafes and bookshops scattered around Shizuoka Prefecture.

When I find the coffee shop, microbrewery and bookshop on the edge of the bay, I’ll be sure to let you all know. If only so you know, I won’t be back for a while yet.

FAFQ: Frequently Asked Foolish Questions

It’s said that ignorance is bliss. Whoever said that clearly never lived in a foreign country because ignorance as an ex-pat is a downright, infuriating, maddening and frustrating thing.

I don’t even mean my own ignorance (which is itself, sizable). I mean the ridiculous stuff you are often asked as a foreigner in Japan.

I should really make this a touch more polite. Let’s say, daft questions and comments. As while these inquiries are never ill-intentioned, they are rather silly to ask nonetheless. For a while I thought this to be something only the Japanese really did in any great measure:

1. “Wow, you’re really good at using chopsticks!”

I live here, did you envisage me skewering sushi with a fork? Perhaps a spear? Gobbling it down, nose on the plate, one deep breath away from a head full of wasabi?

2. “Are you a foreigner?”

No, no, I’m just a remarkably pasty Japanese person who happens to be half a foot taller than everyone in this supermarket.

3. “Can you read katakana?”

Noooo, not at all. You caught me, I was merely pretending to read the menu. I just guessed that this place would have coffee and being the improv star I am, I just figured I’d make use of the prop to hand. Ta da…

The first and third comments are pretty common and I don’t take offence, mostly they just result in a slightly confused look across my brow, a raised eyebrow here or there. The second was from a rather rude old man in a supermarket car park. However, with my grandfather having come from Barnsley, that question would be considered to be the height of subtlety back in my house.

I honestly felt before that no one could really top this kind of foolish questioning.

Oh Europe, how you have let me down…

The Guardian’s Paolo Bandini offered this gem from Italy’s Serie A as his personal award for Worst Investigative Journalism in his round-up of the season, when Yuto Nagatomo, who after moving to Italy last summer to join Cesena and then swiftly transferring to Inter Milan in January, was asked by one particularly dumb journalist, “Do you like football?”

One stupid football journalist I can forgive, lord knows we tolerate more than that anyway.

Then I read the end of season Bundesliga round up courtesy of one Raphael Honigstein. When Shinji Kagawa has been one of the stars of the season, despite only playing half of it due to a broken foot, I don’t expect to read that he is deemed a problem by the tabloid Bild because of the following dilemma:

“How the hell are we supposed to tell him apart from [Schalke's Japanese player] Atsuto Uchida?”

I await the British tabloid response when Ryo Miyaichi makes his debut for Arsenal.

I should probably just apologise to my students now…

Japan Earthquake: An Appeal to Help

It is beyond comprehension. As often as one reaches for the news, for the specifics, the scientific and concrete it simply dissipates at the sight of footage of destruction beyond mortal means.

No words can do justice to the events that occurred here, not immediately. Nor right now, it’s still too close. I wasn’t in the heart of it, I was safe, my building swayed but it did not shudder.

The only real first hand experience I had of it was what many people felt; fear for a friend’s life. However, the people I know who were close to this disaster and continue to remain at the heart of it are safe.

I know this thanks to a global media that has both helped people survive this disaster and also created a perhaps greater impact still. It has multiplied the reach of this tragedy.

For the next weeks and months Japan will dominate every airwave the world over. The terror of tsunami and devastation will be repeated in such a way that this tragedy will long remain in the memory.

This can I hope do more than stun a world for however long the media focus remains on Japan.

Please let it compel you to help in the only way one really can. Give money to those that can help on the ground. Give blood if possible and then when the media cycle ends; remember the people.

A large part of Japan is still standing for two reasons; it planned for this and it was far enough away. The people that were at the heart of this will need more than that. They will need the generosity and kindness of the world. They will need the best we have to offer.

Please give it. You can donate directly to the Japanese Red Cross here. For a more sizable list of charities you can donate to see here.

That Camera Pose: Mind the Flash

Japanese people have mastered the camera pose. Crafted it into a fine art and bequeathed it unto their young in such a fashion that one might even begin to think it genetic, a biological imperative perhaps, an evolutionary tweak that has emerged along with the technology it is bonded to.  Because in the mere instant one has to pose correctly for a photograph, the Japanese are already there, two fingers held aloft in a peace sign yelling, “cheezu!” Meanwhile, I’m blinking like a deer in headlights, stunned by the blast of camera flash.

One photographic incident in particular got me thinking. I was at Fuji Q Highland, an Amusement Park that resides at the base of; you’ve guessed it, Mt. Fuji. Inside are three particularly amazing rides: Eejyanaika (translated to, ‘isn’t it good?’ Ok, not everything translates in a cool way), FujiYama and the mind bogglingly fast Dodonpa.

I was waiting to ride the incredibly fast Dodonpa with a friend whom, repeatedly terrified by announcements over the tannoy as to just how fast this machine is, responded with yelps of, ‘muri!’ or in English, ‘impossible, I can’t do it, argh!’ Once aboard the ride she continued to yell this phrase except for one brief moment that I realized had been the camera flash, only to continue on with her cries afterwards. Instinctively, during an experience otherwise dominated by the excitement and fear of the ride she had twisted, smiled and posed for the camera. I on the other hand was more concerned that my cheeks not tear from my face due to the g-force.

Photography is everywhere in Japan. From high quality camera phones to the ever-present purikura. Photography is incorporated into life here in a way that goes beyond any other nation. The stereotype of a Japanese travel group abroad, all wielding state of the art cameras, endlessly pointing and snapping photographs is a well earned and thoroughly deserved one. While the teenage love of purikura, essentially photo booths with a variety of special effects that can be applied to your group photos are so popular that they can be found with ease almost everywhere you go.

That photography is such a significant part of life here is at times hard to believe, particularly when one considers that the camera industry only began to emerge in Japan in the 1930’s. When of course it was beyond the reach of even the comparatively wealthy as,

“In those days, the average starting salary of a graduate of an elite university in Japan who was hired by bank, the best-paying job, was around 70 yen per month. In contrast, the price of the Leica camera was 420 yen.”[1]

Yet, from those early days has sprung an enormous industry fuelled by a love of technology that is visible in all walks of life and among all ages in Japan. At arcades I have seen young people with staggering coordination in pursuit of the high score on a dance machine and a vast number of people with a mind numbing addiction to Pachinko (a low stakes gambling machine with a resemblance to pinball, without any of the skill). While undoubtedly gaming technologies such as these have had and will continue to have such an affect on us, I still believe that the camera and its simple yet beautiful power to capture a moment will continue to be of greater significance. At least until the day that Wii bowling is entered into the Olympics.

However, the truth is, I can’t help but feel that here in Japan is where technology and society meet first. Through computer games, mobile phones, 3D TVs the Japanese people engage with technology faster and with an aplomb that perhaps only South Korea can beat. As such, if technology and biology are going to crash into one another it’ll happen here long before reaching foreign shores.

While visiting home this summer I met a friend of a friend, a Japanese Doctor no less and I took the opportunity to pitch this very theory to him. Essentially I believe that the response to the camera has become so ingrained at a biological level, that just as one can tell the sex of a child from an ultrasound, that one could also tell the child’s ethnicity… well, in one particular case.

Note: This picture is the fine work of Max Joseph, find his blog here. This blog post was originally featured on travelblogs.com as a guest article. The original post can be found here.

Adults Onry in Japan

The other day, while I was dashing around between lessons, running a few errands and the like, I stopped by the local convenience store, otherwise known here as a konbini. While there, I saw a most unusual sight; a Japanese man, that busiest of breeds, finding time for a moment of relaxation in his otherwise busy schedule… to peruse the porn.

For a country with a declining population, a youth apparently less and less interested in sex and a general lack of privacy Japan is surprisingly open about its pornography.

I remember when I used to work in a petrol station mini-supermarket the elaborate dances people would go through in order to somehow, “stumble” across their chosen fare. First to the fridge at the back of the store, then a slow and meandering stroll past the pet food and then… “oh, how did I end up here?” Indeed one of the saddest sights I ever saw was a lorry driver whose basket was filled with a single can of extra strong beer, a pack of ten party sausages with dipping sauce and a Nuts magazine. I almost directed him to where we kept the man sized tissues.

In Britain the more risqué magazines are of course generally kept out the reach of the young and the unusually short by dint of their location on the top shelf. Yet, in Japan the magazines in convenience stores aren’t lined up against a wall in a tower of glossy mediocrity and z-list celebrity gossip. Instead they are kept on a rack just below the shop’s front window where passers by and those parking their cars out front can see who is reading them quite clearly.  Generally, these magazine racks are seen as a local library and it’s not unusual to see four or five people standing in front of them enjoying a leisurely leaf through the pages of a magazine. That they choose to do so even with porn continues to astound me, as I live in a country where the adjective most people would use to describe themselves is, ‘shy.’

Although, I should note that there is a place in my town to buy porn away from the prying eyes of children, a shop that the bus always passes on its way out of town that loudly declares itself as being for, ‘Adults Onry.’

However, this behaviour is not only confined to the konbini. When my father came to visit me last summer I’d mentioned in passing to him about how dirty Japanese men could be and in particular how flagrant they’d be about it. After his first few days in my sleepy little town we hopped on a bus bound for Tokyo. Some hours into the long journey he nudged me and said, ‘Matt I see what you mean, look over there.’ Across the aisle and a few seats ahead was an older Japanese man, admiring the centerfold in his porno mag, holding it vertically so as to fully appreciate the two-page spread.

A friend of mine while visiting Japan was rather stunned by just how visible pornography is here and asked me, “Why on earth don’t they have a top shelf like everywhere else?”

In a country with an average height of five foot seven, the more pertinent question might just be; how would they reach it?

Neon Nagano: Japan is Littered With Modernity

Japan is littered with modernity. Quite literally littered, as when one drives through Japan at night one gets the impression of a land where technology, bright flashes of light and commercialism were merely dropped along the edge of the road with little thought to the world they were creating here. Indeed planning permission would appear to most people to be an alien concept to the Japanese. While the biggest cities are full of impressive architectural accomplishments it’s hard not to feel that dragging Japan’s more rural cities were dragged into the blueprint for a modern Japan as something of an afterthought.

Last weekend, driving from my relatively quiet city, where the centre of town can charitably be said to be rather quiet, I drove along a major Nagano route heading for a neighbouring city where a friend of mine lives. In the daylight I know driving in Nagano to be a breathtaking thing. The countryside appears to endlessly stretch out to a horizon that is so beautiful that from time to time I wonder whether in truth I might be the victim of a Trumanesque hoax, that someone has in fact painted this skyline, a vast and beautiful deception where every winter armies of workers abseil down the face of a giant metal dome in order to paint the mountaintops white.

However, at night it’s a different story entirely. Where once fireflies and the stars were the only thing to light up the night sky, now an endless stream of neon runs alongside the rivers and roads in Nagano’s valleys. All the stores are the same wherever you go along this long stretch of road, Department store followed by McDonald’s, supermarket by pachinko parlour, glasses store (sporting a giant neon pair of spectacles of course) by the same shoe shop you saw 5km earlier. All marked at regular intervals by a Familymart, a Lawson’s or Seven/Eleven.

I’ve said before that Japan has managed to deal with globalization in a fascinating way, picking and choosing what aspects of culture and commerce that set up shop here. But when confronted by this long line of identikit construction and expansion it’s hard not to feel that in some places they let the flood barriers collapse.

While on that road returning home I might have been more saddened by the show of lights were it not for a few things. I had spent part of the previous evening at an open mic music night in a small town. The place was filled with a mix of Japanese and foreigners alike all enjoying the music, whether the lyrics were Japanese or English. My friend and I swiftly followed it up with a few beers in an Indian themed bar where the food was warm and the owners welcoming. Finally finishing our evening by devouring one of the best cheeseburgers I am ever likely to taste at a bar covered in Americana bric-a-brac.

These places were the product of globalization at its best, a place where two cultures can meet and get the best from one another. Do I wish these places were only a short walk from my own apartment? Yes, of course. But then they’d probably build it next to a department store and since you wouldn’t be able to see it behind that behemoth it’d need something bright and colourful so you wouldn’t miss it… maybe a splash of neon would do the trick.

Next Page »