The Gobi Rolls Over
Feb. 24th, 2008 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blacklillyOne thing I used to find irritating about the Japanese was their constant obsession with having colds and 'allergies'. It seems that every month of the year brings something that a large number of people seem to be unable to deal with. This irritated me because my students would come to class hiding behind their face masks. These things give the serious creeps, not only because they hide most of a person's face, but also because they advertise the fact that you are ill.*
These past two days we've been battered by strong winds that thump against the apartment building, and actually make it shake. Yesterday at work (I have an 8th floor classroom with windows all down one side), as I was starting a private lesson, the clouds started to take on a rather bruise-like colour which quickly became a dirty yellow-smoggy shade. Then suddenly, I could no longer see up the road that runs away from the center of Yokohama. Something like a yellow smoke was marching towards the building. It moved quickly and was gone within about 20 minutes of my first noticing it, leaving behind bright, cloudy skies. It turns out that what I witnessed may have been a cloud of dirt and sand from the Gobi desert blowing through. I recall one of my students mentioning this last year as a reason for his wearing a mask. If the dust coming through is that thick, so far from its original home, I guess that's a pretty good reason to wear one.
A student later in the day commented upon the wind, pointing out that as the wind was from China there was bound to be dirty and polluted dust coming through. Which brings me to another thing - the fact that a lot of people feel the same way about the Chinese as the English and French traditionally do about each other. Products made in China are generally disliked (but cheap, ne) in a lot of places, but I've never been warned so many times to steer clear of Chinese ebi gyoza, Chinese garlic and, in fact, anything Chinese.
Hmmm, my thoughts today are a little muddled as I didn't get home until 7am. I was out karaokeing until 6am with some teachers and students from school. How did we manage to spend 6 hours in a karaoke box? Copious amounts of beer, Haribo Gold Bears and various munchies. The final bill was about 15000yen, which also suggests that the reason my throat hurts is from too much singing. As my friend Rachel once said: "You need to fight filth with filth" so we piled into a fast food restaurant I'm too ashamed to name for breakfast. The reasoning works though, I felt much better after ingesting two fish burgers, a hash-brown and a coke.
Walking round Yokohama at 6am was great - not many people about - early-rising workers off to get the first train, people going to Haneda Airport, and us dirty-stop-outs staggering in the thin early morning light. I've missed much of what was a wonderfully sunny, though extremely windy, day and the sun is throwing long shadows across my balcony. There's half a cup of un-drunk tea next to my laptop and two empty eggshells. I'm going to brush my teeth, have a bath, and do some Japanese homework - though in which order I don't know...
*(I was on the train to work the other day and an older woman opposite me kept coughing 'productively' into her mask, then taking it off and giving her nose a good blow. I'm a bit squeamish about snot and phlegm, so those together with a warm train carriage was making me feel a bit gooey-kneed).
These past two days we've been battered by strong winds that thump against the apartment building, and actually make it shake. Yesterday at work (I have an 8th floor classroom with windows all down one side), as I was starting a private lesson, the clouds started to take on a rather bruise-like colour which quickly became a dirty yellow-smoggy shade. Then suddenly, I could no longer see up the road that runs away from the center of Yokohama. Something like a yellow smoke was marching towards the building. It moved quickly and was gone within about 20 minutes of my first noticing it, leaving behind bright, cloudy skies. It turns out that what I witnessed may have been a cloud of dirt and sand from the Gobi desert blowing through. I recall one of my students mentioning this last year as a reason for his wearing a mask. If the dust coming through is that thick, so far from its original home, I guess that's a pretty good reason to wear one.
A student later in the day commented upon the wind, pointing out that as the wind was from China there was bound to be dirty and polluted dust coming through. Which brings me to another thing - the fact that a lot of people feel the same way about the Chinese as the English and French traditionally do about each other. Products made in China are generally disliked (but cheap, ne) in a lot of places, but I've never been warned so many times to steer clear of Chinese ebi gyoza, Chinese garlic and, in fact, anything Chinese.
Hmmm, my thoughts today are a little muddled as I didn't get home until 7am. I was out karaokeing until 6am with some teachers and students from school. How did we manage to spend 6 hours in a karaoke box? Copious amounts of beer, Haribo Gold Bears and various munchies. The final bill was about 15000yen, which also suggests that the reason my throat hurts is from too much singing. As my friend Rachel once said: "You need to fight filth with filth" so we piled into a fast food restaurant I'm too ashamed to name for breakfast. The reasoning works though, I felt much better after ingesting two fish burgers, a hash-brown and a coke.
Walking round Yokohama at 6am was great - not many people about - early-rising workers off to get the first train, people going to Haneda Airport, and us dirty-stop-outs staggering in the thin early morning light. I've missed much of what was a wonderfully sunny, though extremely windy, day and the sun is throwing long shadows across my balcony. There's half a cup of un-drunk tea next to my laptop and two empty eggshells. I'm going to brush my teeth, have a bath, and do some Japanese homework - though in which order I don't know...
*(I was on the train to work the other day and an older woman opposite me kept coughing 'productively' into her mask, then taking it off and giving her nose a good blow. I'm a bit squeamish about snot and phlegm, so those together with a warm train carriage was making me feel a bit gooey-kneed).
French-English/Japanese-Chinese
on 2008-02-25 10:04 pm (UTC)Good to see you are back in the blogosphere or whatever it's called. Julian Cope makes a similar observation in the opening of his book Japrocksampler. He typified the English attitude with the illustration of the front page of the Times from a period in 1911 which saw heavy Fog smother the Channel "Fog Hides Channel - Continent Cut Off!"
He reckons it's because the British and the Japanese are both island nations - sea kingdoms.