I love wandering around Tokyo with my Ox Hammer (see above) and do try to speak as much Japanese as my fluency level permits. Of course my cockney accent is a bonus as it helps with with some of the technicalities of this relatively easy language to pick up. True, the fact it uses three different sets of characters, Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, rather than one simple alphabet does provide a bit of a challenge but for a seasoned man of culture like myself this presents no obvious challenge.
A seasoned man of culture in Mushashi Koyama
Take for example the word for wife, 奥さん ; okusan, which when used with the more formal ending sama produces the appropriate word oxhammer with cockney pronunciation. I often wonder if this word is the finest example of the subtlety of Japanese humour or actually a statement of their literalism! There are other ways of saying "wife" such as 妻 ; tsuma but I have a preference for 山の悪魔 ; yama no kami, which refers to the fact that your wife will grow horns if you make her angry!
The hat of the traditional wedding dress of Japan also makes a cautionary point of naming itself appropriately. Japanese language is for me, a wonderful journey of discovery. What it is I am actually discovering though is anyone's guess!
Poster on the wall
For example, this poster on the wall in the tube (metro) caught my eye today. The graphic style is just so Japanese and carries a really charming naive quality but tells it like it is. If you see a little green man jump onto the track and turn orange with bubbles coming out of his head as he lays before an oncoming train then scream and press the emergency button. One could wonder why it is we don't have such buttons every three meters (like they do in Tokyo) on the London Underground. Such an obvious and useful aid to civilised life, you would have thought, would be an essential of station safety furniture. No doubt there is a good reason for their absence!
Boris to ban yobs on grounds of intellectual copyright
Next up from Tokyo will be a journey around the Fox Shrine and some more hospital adventures with dramatic photographic evidence. Wishing you all a Happy Christmas. J & A
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