Back in June 1981 I was revising for my English Literature and Communications A-Levels. One of the books we’d been studying was The Mayor of Casterbridge and one of the quotations I learned by heart back then has stuck with me ever since. The quotation is: Henchard’s act of violence [Read more…]
I did not intend to write about one of my A-Level teachers tonight. I was going to write about a quotation relating to The Mayor of Casterbridge that I committed to memory for my A Level English Lit exam and which has been buzzing around inside my head this week. [Read more…]
After leaving Hawai Onsen Roland and I caught the train to Matsue. While staying at the Mido Resort onsen ryokan was definitely the highlight of our trip, the couple of days we spent in Matsue were not devoid of entertainment, and Matsue Castle remains the most beautiful castle I have [Read more…]
Here’s another account of an onsen ryokan trip which Roland Petrov and I undertook at the beginning of April 1991. We went to Tottori Sand Dunes on our way to Hawai Onsen. I have some slide photos somewhere which I want to convert to digital and post here, but as [Read more…]
My return to Hawai Onsen and Tottori Sand Dunes has inspired me to look up some of my escapades during my first year in Japan. Here is an account of a trip to Yunogo Onsen in Okayama Prefecture with Roland Petrov on Palm Sunday, 1991. We stayed at the Chikutei [Read more…]
As a young man in wartime Japan Mr K was considered unfit for military service because of his weak lungs. But by 1945 the need for new recruits had grown so desperate that even Mr K, weak lungs and all, was considered fit enough for military service.
He was told that he would be drafted into the military on 15th August 1945. In the meantime he was working for the Hiroshima City government demolishing houses in the centre of Hiroshima. Why were houses being demolished?
In the last fifty or sixty years a great erosion of our English language heritage has taken place and at the heart of this loss lies the attempt to render the Holy Bible as well as church liturgies and hymns in a form of English that is supposedly modern and easier for ordinary people to understand.
A few months ago I was struck by the paucity of theatrical productions in Hiroshima and berated a few of my students on the matter. The pat answer was invariably “Ah, Japanese are very shy.” My protests don’t seem to have had much effect on the recreational habits of the million or so “shy” Hiroshimites, but they did land me a handful of free tickets for a kyogen performance on the noh stage at Aster Plaza towards the end of March.
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