Japanese Food

One of the things I always try to do when travelling is to stay away from “international restaurants” and instead eat the same food as the local people do. I found Japanese food absolutely delicious, and I’m sure quite healthy as well. I had Japanese food every day and I already miss it: All the little dishes, the combination of tastes and the beautiful way of arranging everything. I believe the visual impression also matters for one's sense of appetite, and it is often overlooked many other places. This plate was just one dish of the 12 courses. Everything was so neatly arranged.

I really, really enjoyed Japanese food and had it for lunch and dinner, but after the first day I gave up on Japanese breakfast. Fish, soup and rice, etc. just wasn’t a good start of the day for me. So at the ryokan in Kyoto I hesitated when I was asked if I wanted to have breakfast. I decided against it, but the host may have guessed my thoughts because he explained they would prepare anything I’d like. So, I just mentioned I’d prefer some dairy products and/or fruit, maybe a little bread… and got a wonderful breakfast every morning for the four days I was there. When I woke up, I opened the sliding door to the little garden outside my room and lay there for a moment, just looking out into the garden (only one other room was facing this part of the garden). And then I could hear the hostess coming down the hallway in her fast little miniature steps, swoosh-swoosh-swoosh, bringing my breakfast. Now, that was a wonderful start of a new day! When paying for my stay I noticed the breakfast was not listed on the bill so I reminded them about this. “Oh no, that’s complimentary!”

I looked at the food at markets and in shops. Lots of (for me) exotic ingredients. Many different kinds of mushroom, seaweed and a lot of things I had no idea what was. I had exactly the same feeling I have when I am in the Chinese shop in the basement of the building I live in: I do not know how to use most of these ingredients when cooking. And when I have got a recipe and ingredients list to go by, I have a hard time trying to recognize them. But I am pretty sure I can get most of it in ‘my’ Chinese shop, or ‘Sachie’, the Japanese shop here. Unlike the experience I had when I was leafing through a Native American cookbook which was given to me when I visited the Pine Ridge reservation in the US many years ago. I do not know where to get squirrels, skunks, bear’s fat or rattle snakes here in Denmark. I toyed with the idea of going into a shop asking for a rattle snake and adding, “If you do not have rattle snake any good, fat snake will do”. But I doubt anyone else than me would find it funny. And I have tasted a lot of things but I do have a limit somewhere before snakes. OK, I’m straying here… back to Japan! I did see "snacks" on a stick, just to eat as you go, which were octopus tentacles and other very exotic food. Perhaps in this case slightly too exotic. (Your eyes are OK, it is the picture which is slightly out of focus!) Another day, a very hot day, I passed a place selling softice. They only had two flavours: soy and green tea. I had never tasted any of these but decided to have a go at the green tea softice. It was good. But then again, softice mostly is, unfortunately.

I was very eager to try out a lot of different food, and I certainly did. A lot of sea food of which much was in raw form. I do not mind raw (we eat herring that way in Denmark) but I would prefer if it wasn’t exactly alive when it was served! Well, it wasn’t, but there were times when I was tempted to pass on the food. One of many dishes during one meal was sliced cuttlefish. It was served on top of a whole mini cuttlefish, and as they put it down on the table, it moved slightly. Oh, it was dead, but a little wobbly, which made it look as if it moved. I am not a great meat eater. Fish is OK, but I do have a problem with food that has big eyes and looks back at me. I don’t find it yukky at all, but I do get a bad conscience. Maybe I am closet vegetarian? In any case, I did taste the cuttlefish, and it was really good.

Although I tasted quite a variety of Japanese food: sushi, sashimi, tofu, sukiyaki, tempura, teriyaki, gyudon, miso shiru, tamagoyaki, okonomiyaki, kare raisu, ramen, … oh, I can’t remember all the names, I did pass on one thing. With a dish of tempura came this little fried fish, which I assume I was supposed to eat whole (?) Head, finns and everything. I had to leave it untouched. And my friend did the same with the one on his plate. This poor little thing gave its life all in vain as I didn’t even eat it.

One of my Servas hosts tried to give me a crash course about tea. What kind of container to use and how to preserve the taste the best possible way. How to break up the leaves of one kind of tea but not another kind. How to whip up the matcha. What temperature the water had to have according to the kind of tea, etc. (I think we generally use too hot water at home). It was extremely interesting and I wish I could remember all this information, but I can’t.

A lot of the food displays outside restaurants made the food look so delicious and appetizing. Of course they were all just plastic. And lunch for four: you need a lot of bowls! (As always, you can click on the pictures to view a large copy of the picture).

The biggest challenge for me was when we had crabs one evening. Try to picture yourself eating crabs with chopsticks. Not easy, I can assure you. We did pick them up by hand and break them, but getting the meat out of the long legs using chopstick was one of the biggest challenges ever for my precision motor coordination. My host saw I was struggling a bit and went to get me some shorter, wooden chopsticks, which were a lot easier for me to handle than the longer, very pointed and rather slippery set I had been using. I never thought it would be possible to actually miss a lobster fork! Afterwards, I almost felt some kind of achievement. I.e. until I started looking at myself and realized I probably needed a hose-down!

Green Spots [Japan]

The headline does not refer to some kind of exotic disease but to all the small lungs of the cities. I knew Japan was densely populated, but it was much greener than I had expected. I don’t mean the parks and Japanese gardens, because I expected those, but the small patches of green everywhere else. The shoulders and central reservations of the expressways were green, pink, red, white, etc. depending on the season and which trees and bushes were planted there. And everywhere these ‘green spots’ were well-kept and in immaculate condition.

In Fukuoka I saw a building where they had brought up the park to the 12th floor or so. Across the street from my hotel in Tokyo they were restoring a building and the riggers had put up the scaffolding around a tree. I. e. a large branch was in the way, but the scaffolding was constructed around this branch, so the workers would have to climb up or down to get past it. It made me think of the urban renewal in my block when they chopped down everything which was in the way of the builders and their machines. The big tree in our backyard was totally disfigured and is still recovering today, 12 years later.

Some flower beds in the city were an abundance of colours. Very designed, groomed and organized. But other places I saw flowers I usually do not associate with the city, like the beds with (I think they were) poppies by the streets in Ginza, Tokyo. Somehow I thought that wild look was even better than the well-groomed one.

The more unusual green spots I saw were in Kanazawa. By a parking lot was something unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It can best be described as a vertical garden, I suppose. In the same town, by the Saigawa river, someone had used old ladies shoes, painted pink, as flower containers. Needless to say that was also a first for me.

Private gardens were very small, but I found out you really did not need a garden to have one. What I mean is that many people had lots of plants in the small space between their outer walls and the street. Others had a small display of fresh flowers outside their door. A private home in Kyoto in the same street as my ryokan had flowers in a granite bowl outside. I walked past it every day and noticed it was constantly changed. Not much, just a small detail. My picture was taken in the morning, and when I returned in the afternoon the big leaf had been replaced. Hard to explain but it put me in a good mood to walk past these flowers every day.

Toilets [Japan]

Public convenience, restroom, bathroom, lavatory, men’s / ladies’ rooms, etc. Call it whatever you like. I prefer to call a spade a spade. The best thing was that all those I saw were free of charge. I don’t mind paying, which is what we often have to in Denmark, it’s just that when I need 'to go' I don’t always seem to have the change I need for the lock, and that’s a nuisance. None of that in Japan.

I came across two main types: either the very simple type with just a porcelain bowl in the floor, or the state of the art, high tech models with a heated seat, bidet function, drier, a choice of sound effects (anything from the ocean or Mozart to a simple flush effect) and in one case LED light. I do not think a pilot’s license for a small aircraft is strictly necessary in order to work the controls, but it would be an advantage. The control panel was slightly intimidating for someone like me, who really just wanted the core performance and none of the fancy stuff. As far as I understood you had a choice of temperature, volume, pressure and direction of the water and air. Anything from a squirt to a jet. And the text was also in braille. Often a manual would be posted on the wall, and I recommend studying it well ahead of the time you would actually need the service.

In one restaurant there was not only the panel next to the bowl, but also a remote control on the wall. I tried to figure out why you would need a remote in a cabin of less than one square meter, where you could reach everywhere, anyway. Maybe you could take the remote with you and give your friend, who went in there after you, a real surprise!

Karaoke [Japan]

'Never' is a big word, but until a few weeks ago I would have sworn you would never, ever catch me singing karaoke. And even if it should ever happen, chances of me actually admitting it would be next to none. But there we were out one evening and my Japanese friends took me to a karaoke bar. I didn’t realize what kind of place it was until after we got all the way in there and sat down and someone started singing. Otherwise I might have been tempted to head for the closest escape route. I had been a lot more spirited and cocky when we were singing in the car some days earlier. This was different. I tried (without much success) to convince myself that I’d try anything once. And why not simply take the bull by the horns and take the initiative instead of just trying to hide and wait until the other 4 people I was with had had their turn and I would feel a bit of a pressure on me. So, as the first of my friends had finished 'performing' I flipped trough the songs trying to find one for myself.

I have always imagined that karaoke was most fun if someone was either a really good singer or completely tone deaf. Those of us falling somewhere between those two categories may just risk looking rather pathetic up there. However, I picked a song I thought I could do without being too embarrassed, and I just went for it. Half way through the second verse it suddenly struck me there was a rather long guitar break coming up which I had happily forgotten all about, but where I needed to come up with something to do. I improvised a little choreography for one person and one microphone stand (which was really just a variation of a dance for one person and one vacuum cleaner to a Springsteen number I used to do at home), and somehow got through the song.

I have never been offered drinks from as many strangers as I did the rest of that evening. I am not sure if this was because they thought I was pathetic or a good sport, but who cares. All I know is that it’ll most likely be the first, last and only time you’ll ever see me in a karaoke bar. Probably. Without much doubt. I think. Maybe…..

Etiquette [Japan]

Although I did know quite a few things about Japanese etiquette before I arrived, whenever I wasn’t 100 percent concentrated and had my mind on other things – in other words: pretty much all the time – I forgot. I knew perfectly well that I was not supposed to wear shoes indoors, but one of the first days I still forgot and had taken two steps inside, until I was reminded. Oops! Back to the entrance again, cheeks and ears a little more red. There were indoor slippers and bathroom slippers, and at one ryokan* even a third kind of slippers for outdoor use. And no slippers allowed on tatami* mats. No shoes in temples either, of course. Next time I’ll make sure to only bring shoes without shoe laces.

I made the first blunder when I had taken a taxi to my hotel. The fare was about 1700 yen. I gave the driver 2000 and didn’t expect any change back. He came running after me with the exact change and almost looked a bit offended. You do not tip in Japan.

Some things I am still not sure about. When they gave me my change (if there was not a special little tray to put it) they handed it to me with both hands. I was never sure if I was also supposed to take it with both hands or not. Most of the time I would be holding a wallet and/or the item I had just bought, so I only had one free hand. I guess it really was not that important.

I tried to sit on the floor by kneeling and then sitting back on my heels but I never lasted more than 5 minutes before it felt as if all blood circulation had stopped. I think that must be learned from you are young? Being overweight doesn’t help, either. If I had sat like that for longer than five minutes, they would have had to carry me around locked in that position for a day or two afterwards, I’m sure. But luckily it seemed as if nobody really cared if I sat crosslegged or with my legs stretched out.

It seems perfectly acceptable to slurp. I am not used to that, but it somehow felt cosy and relaxed, so I made an effort to learn how to slurp my soup. I was not a good learner. I either inhaled way too much air and had a fit of coughing or almost got it up my nose. I guess those “will you stop that” looks from my parents when I was a child and happened to slurp had had their effect, after all.

The bottom line is that even though I tried to act according to local etiquette, I did look like a fool regularly. A friend of a friend had invited me out for dinner, and as we went into the restaurant we were in the middle of a conversation when the doorman (there is probably a more correct term than doorman) gave me his right hand. Or rather: he lowered his head and reached out his right hand in my direction. In my world that is the beginning of a handshake and I realized much too late that he was actually just offering to take the umbrella that I held in my left hand. I stopped in the middle of a movement and after flapping both arms around for a moment I finally managed to give him my umbrella. My new friend – whom I had just met ten minutes earlier – seemed to manage to kill a chuckle, but the doorman struggled very hard to keep a straight face. (Incidentally, the dinner was absolutely delightful. Thanks for inviting me, E!)

I am sure my Japanese friends can add to the list of the things I did the 'wrong' way. I hoped that there were extenuating circumstances and it was my impression that many people made allowances because I was a foreigner and saw I did make an effort. Sometimes perhaps too much of an effort. At many restaurants they had disposable chopsticks with pointed ends at both ends. Someone once told me it was best to use the end of the chopsticks you did not eat from when you took food from a common plate. One evening friends told me that I was overdoing the ‘politeness’ a tad. “You can stop juggling those chopsticks around like a drum major. It’s way too formal”. I think other things may not be so easily forgiven. Not sure what, though. Maybe soap in the bathtub? I have a feeling that might not be so popular.

* Links
Ryokan (Traditional Japanese Inn)
Tatami mats

Languages and communication [Japan]

In Kyoto I arrived at a ryokan* at the same time as an Australian girl, so we were shown around together. When we got to the Japanese bathroom the host made a stop, looked at us and said, “Please, take a bath!” Unlike the Australian, who found the remark rather insulting, I understood that it really meant “You are welcome to use the Japanese bath any time you’d like” and not that the host wanted to imply that we needed it, right then and there. Communicating can be tricky. I tend to have a rather humble approach. I never expect anyone outside Scandinavia to understand my own language and I do not expect everyone to speak English, either.

My Japanese friends are fluent in English, so we were able to discuss the meaning of life as well as the crises of the world. But I did find that most of the taxi drivers, people who work at hotels, restaurants, etc. did not speak a lot of English, and then intonation, body language, and sometimes a little “street theatre” seemed to help. I do not speak Japanese and it is, after all, their country I’m in. Somehow their 200 words in English and my 50 in Japanese worked out fine, most of the time. But sometimes a simple thing as asking for the key to my hotel room could be a problem. The number of my hotel room in Fukuoka was 711. A big hotel, but most of the guests were Japanese businessmen or Japanese holidaymakers. They were not used to foreign guests. If I said “sevenhundredeleven” the receptionists did not understand. I thought “seven-eleven” would be easier, but then I was just pointed in the direction of a shop further down the street! I tried “seven-one-one”, but the result was a confused look and a “.. won-won? Won won won?” So after one day I just learnt to say “shichi-ichi-ichi” and they understood. How hard can it be?

I did try to learn a little Japanese during my stay. After a while I was beginning to wonder if everything was repeated, I had heard “moshi-moshi” (hello, when answering a phone), “moto-moto” (originally), “koi-koi” (a card game), “shabu-shabu” (a dish), “soka-soka” (I forgot the meaning of that one) and “so-so-so” (yes…, I hear you). Yes, I have already begun to forget, and I have not been home for a week, yet. I was using the few words I knew with great enthusiasm. Kyoto was one of my first stops, and I used the Japanese word whenever I wanted to say “thank you”. “Arigato”, I said. But I was corrected: “Here we say “okinni”, you know!” Another place I also wanted to tell some friends I thought our dinner was delicious, so I said “oishii” only to be told, “We mostly say “umai” here instead”. Somehow all this is why I like languages so much: just when you think you know something, there is more to know. You never finish learning.

One thing is trying to learn to say a few words, writing is a different thing altogether. I made the remark that I thought it would be easier for me to learn hieroglyphs than write Japanese and people laughed. I suppose they thought I was joking. Not entirely, though. When I had learnt to write my first name in katakana I must have looked as proud as a small child writing his name for the first time. In the end I could also recognize some hiragana symbols. But kanji?! The only ones I learnt were 6 very simple ones. And how many are there? 3000 or so I guess? I am grateful all the directions and all other important information I needed were also written in romaji. On this sign from a train station it is kanji at the top, hiragana below that, and finally - lucky for me - the romanization at the bottom.

Apparently there seems to be no distinction between R and L in the Japanese language. So when speaking English, play and pray sounds the same and so do liver and river, etc. I didn’t think this was a big problem, because it was easy enough to find out which word it was from the context. When I was ordering at a restaurant and the waiter suggested “Lice?” I wasn’t too surprised. However, my command of the small facial muscles that control the corners of my mouth were put to a serious test, when a man who was very active within local politics told me about the election (city council) the following day. “I am very excited” he told me, “Tomorrow: erection. Big erection!” I swear, I kept a straight face. However, I can only remember one time when I actually misunderstood, at least for a moment. Someone had asked me where in Japan I had been, and after I had told him he said, “Ahhh. Wrong holiday!” At least that is what I heard, but just when I was about to ask what places he thought I should have visited instead, it occurred to me that he had actually sad “Long holiday!”

Sometimes my knowledge of English was a distraction. There was a popular brand of soft drinks called Sweat. That name may cause some English speaking people to forget they were thirsty, but I am more curious, so I bought a bottle from the vending machine. It tasted like grape fruit and was quite good. Another day, before getting into a taxi I noticed the name on the side of the vehicle “Kinki Taxi”. Now, that may make someone rather reluctant. Maybe it’ll be better to wait for the next one? Kinki is the region, and there were a lot of taxis from that company in Kyoto.

* Ryokan: Traditional Japanese Inn

Order, accuracy and sense of detail [Japan]

Friends from abroad visiting me in Copenhagen often think we are pathetic because pedestrians here always stand, very patiently, waiting for the little green man, before they cross the street. It doesn’t really matter if it is 3 o’clock at night, with no car in sight, we’ll wait for the green light. It seems we have some fellow sufferers in Japan. I saw the exact same phenomenon there. No jaywalking.

There were two things I never saw in Japan: graffiti and litter. It seemed to be non existent. Everything was clean and tidy. It was the time when the cherry blossom petals fell to the ground, and I saw people sweeping up these petals every day in front of their homes, as well in public parks. A pity, really, as I sort of like the look of “pink snow” on the ground. We sort our domestic waste but do not have sorting systems at public places.

In Japan I saw garbage sorting bins at most train stations, parking lots and picnic areas, and people seemed to use these very conscientiously and carefully. And there were pictograms, so even an illiterate like me understood the system. In Denmark we seem content if people would only throw their trash in the bins and not right next to it. So there’s definitely room for improvement here.

It also seemed the rule to write distances very accurately. If the elevator was 105 meters away at the other end of the platform, the sign would say 105 meters and not 100 meters. And if the temple was 390 meters away, that’s what the sign would say and not 400. Good to know, so when you passed 395 meters you knew for sure you’d missed the entrance to the temple!

When I was going by train from Narita Airport to Tokyo station, I was given a ticket with the seat number 12C. I sat on 12D instead, which was by the window.

When the conductor checked my ticket, he brought to my attention that I was in the wrong seat. I do not know how many people were in the other carriages but the picture by this paragraph will show you what the rest of the carriage I was in looked like: not a soul. So I was slightly perplexed but promised to move, if the legal ticket holder for seat 12C should arrive. That seemed to satisfy him and he moved on. We were already on our way, and it was the Narita Express which went non-stop from the airport to Tokyo station. I still don’t get from where another traveller would arrive, unless he did a James Bond stunt and jumped onto the train from a low flying helicopter. You never know.

The Japanese [People]

I have wanted to visit Japan for a long time and several friends of mine were interested in going with me, but somehow it never worked out. Not enough holiday time, or we did not have time off at the same time. Finally I decided to go by myself, or maybe I’d never make it there. As I had managed to convert overtime from last year to extra holiday time, this spring was the chance for me to go. I already knew a handful of people in Japan, whom I was going to meet, and I had also made contacts through Servas* and was going to meet two families while I was in Japan. I had heard from a couple of people that it might be difficult to make Japanese friends along the way, as they were often quite reserved. This is something I’d definitely like to deny. That was not my impression at all. Everywhere I went I met extremely open, friendly and wonderful people, who were very interested in talking to me and showed a genuine interest in what I had to say. It may be true that if you stay at hotels and inns all the time, it can be difficult to talk to people, because most of the people I met there did not speak a lot of English. And as I don’t speak Japanese, communication would be rather sluggish.

However, it happened more than once that people crossed the street in order to come over and talk to me, ask me where I was from, and told me to let them know if I needed any assistance, etc. In those cases I guess I was more reserved than the Japanese, and slightly taken aback at their interest. If I ever hesitated for a moment at a street corner (sometimes I simply looked for the most adventurous looking way, not the direct route), I would be approached immediately by someone offering to give me directions. One time I asked a woman waiting at a bus stop a question. She did not understand English, but I got a clear signal from her: “Don’t move from this spot!” and she rushed into a shop and came back with someone who spoke English.

On my way by train from Kyoto to Fukuoka I got to talk to a very nice man from Hiroshima. When he found out I was planning to visit Hiroshima on my way back, he gave me his card, told me he was a good-will guide* and asked me to please call before I came to Hiroshima, as he would love to show me his city. My stay at Hiroshima was very short, and I never did call. My only regret in connection with visiting Japan is that the six weeks I spent still did not allow enough time.

It seems that Japanese friendliness starts at an early age. One day at Wajima, a small town by the Japan Sea, I was in a shop and a little girl stood in an aisle, looking at the goods on the shelves while humming. (I talked to her mother afterwards and found out she was 2 years and 10 months). Suddenly she turned her head, had eye contact with me and her eyes and mouth were wide open, “Ooohh!” There were other people in our aisle but she only stared at me. Then she just smiled and in her baby voice said a clear “konnichi wa!” I returned her greeting, and she laughed and offered me a half eaten cookie. Although I took that as a great honour I turned down her offer, and by then her mother had caught up with her and I started talking to her. The little girl was waving for a long time as I left the shop. It made me wonder: what is it that either makes children interested in or afraid of anyone who looks “different”?

The only people I encountered who weren't polite - I'd go as far as saying they seemed pretty ruthless - were fast moving businessmen at large. My first experience with them was when I travelled from Kanazawa to Tokyo and had to change to the Shinkansen at Maibara station. There was a veritable stampede of men in suits rushing from one platform via the footbridge to another platform. They steamrolled everything and everyone in their way. Survival of the fittest in practice. I do not expect any favours. I can take care of myself, although I did have the disadvantage of having to carry my suitcase as I was trying to keep up with the moving mob instead of being run over by it. Somehow I managed to jump on the train just before the doors closed. Phew! Another day I went through Tokyo during rush hour. Big mistake. I thought I knew what a crowded subway carriage looked like, but I didn't. Those that I had been in before had only been half full compared to this one. No reservations against body contact here. Not even sardines in a tin are as close together as we were. No matter how full the carriage was, people made a run-up on the platform and jumped into the mass of people inside the carriage. Sometimes it took more than one attempt until they got stuck between two other people and managed to stay inside when the doors closed. At a point a man held his briefcase in front of him and bulldozed me up against a metal railing so I got jammed in between him and a railing. I could hardly move my chest to breathe. A scary feeling, to tell you the truth, but we were only two stations from the end of the line and I somehow managed to keep calm. Out on the platform afterwards a man collapsed. I felt as if I had just gone through a combine harvester. Luckily I managed to escape the reaper-binder.

If I had only “seen the sights” my stay in Japan would not have been the same. The people I meet while travelling are much more important to me. I have been a member of Servas* for nearly 30 years and am still amazed whenever people invite a “stranger” to stay as a member of their family for a few days. It has been a unique way for me to experience what the everyday is like for a Japanese family.

I am especially grateful for the time I spent with my Japanese friends, and friends of friends. Thanks for inviting me into your homes, for introducing me to your family and friends, for taking time off from work in order to spend time with me, for those long drives to show me your favourite places, for the delicious home cooked meals, for taking me to your favourite restaurant, for praising my chopstick technique (and for managing to almost pretend you did not notice when I catapulted a piece of food across the table one day), for teaching me a little Japanese, for our long talks and for bearing with this crazy Scandinavian who is not always familiar with Japanese etiquette. Thanks, simply for being the wonderful people you are! Domo arigato!

* More information:
Good-will guides in Japan
Servas

Bollywood Film Festival

There is a Bollywood Film Festival in Copenhagen at the moment. Although I go to the movies quite often I had never watched a Bollywood movie until this week. The closest I have been was about five years ago when I went to see the Danish movie ‘Halalabad Blues’ which has a Bollywood inspired dance sequence. I’ll have to apologize to the couple of billion Bollywood experts out there who actually know what they are talking about for the following spontaneous impressions from the complete Bollywood novice that I am.

My friends and I bought a pass for the whole festival. The first evening we were there was a small culture shock for me. The auditorium was very much alive during the movie. There were wolf whistles, cheers and shouts to the actors and what took place on the screen. Some people had smuggled in hip flasks and were having a small party, etc. This kind of anarchy in the auditorium reminded me of the Sunday afternoon ‘school cinema’ from my childhood. I can’t remember much about the movies we saw then, except I know that it was all a contributory factor to my great love of the movies today, but the circumstances, the whole atmosphere in the cinema and the rows we made I do remember very well. We used to stand in line outside looking as angelic as we possibly could, because the order in which they let us in depended on how calm and well-behaved we looked. But once we had passed that entrance we all stampeded through the corridors, into the hall, and took whatever short cuts we could find to the seats we wanted regardless if there was actually an aisle or if we climbed across the rows of chairs like a hurdler. During the movies, there would be children making their own sound effects to whatever took place in the movie and there would be paper darts and paper balls flying around. All that stopped when video arrived. But the lively auditoriums at the Bollywood Film Festival made me think back at these childhood Sundays with great nostalgia.

During the first Bollywood movie we watched I think I was being much too analytic. I was trying to understand. And I got caught up in technical stuff such as the fact that all the sound seemed to be dubbed afterwards – I assume by the original actors. The lip/sound synchronization was a little out of synch, and background sound/noise was extremely scarce. It made big, outdoor scenes with a couple of hundred people sound as if they were being recorded in a soundproof shoe box. And I suppose I also tried to make sense out of the extravagant music numbers. I have a great love for the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood musicals, and the musical numbers in those could either carry the plot, visualize a certain mood or the character’s thoughts and wishes, or sometimes just be pure dance apparently without any deeper meaning. In the four Bollywood movies I watched none of the musical numbers seemed to carry the plot.

We went again the following evening and I was determined to just lean back and enjoy it and not really think too much about it. It was beginning to be fun. I didn’t even mind that towards the end something very unexpected and highly unlikely suddenly occurred and solved all the problems. Sort of a ‘deus ex machina’ effect. During the third movie I was beginning to warm up to this genre. Why take it all so seriously? The song-and-dance extravaganzas, the over the top special effects, arranged marriages, love triangles, a lot of suffering young people, really bad villains, distressed women, heroic men, a lot of courting but very few kisses, slapstick comedy and the abundant colour orgy was great escapism. It wasn’t until about halfway through the fourth movie in three days that I began to feel the symptoms of an acute overdose, and I doubt I’ll watch anything else during the festival week. But this festival was still quite an experience!

Links:

Bollywood World

Snow

One of my sponsor children asked me about snow a few months ago. What was it? How did it feel to touch it? And did we get a lot of it in my country?

Mariam is seven and comes from a small village in southern Mali where it gets close to 40 degrees centigrade in the summer, and during the coldest months rarely gets below 12-15 degrees centigrade at night. I tried to figure out how I could explain the concept of snow to a child who had never seen snow or ice, or even experienced anything really cold. Then I heard they had a refrigerator at her local community centre and managed to organize for someone to show her the ice box in there. I explained that snow fell almost like rain, that children would play in it, and I found some photos of the snow covering everything in our back yard. I also managed to track down a children’s book in French for her, in which white was the predominant colour because the story took place in winter. Thinking I had done what I could to explain about snow, I sent it all to her. A few months later I received a letter from her. One of the things she wrote was, “Thanks for the colouring book” …..

Linguistic quirks

When living in a small country it seems like a necessity to learn foreign languages if you want to communicate with people outside your own country. From the first grade we were taught to understand Swedish and Norwegian. Not necessarily speak it, just understand it when you read it or listen to it. Later it is compulsory to learn English and at least one more foreign language, usually German. The three Scandinavian languages are somewhat similar, but I think you both need to learn about the basic differences and also try to make an effort when listening in order to understand. This used to work fine, but the last time I was in Norway, the young people immediately started speaking in English to me when they heard I did not speak Norwegian to them. I am sure it’s the same in Denmark, as there has been less emphasis on Scandinavian languages in ground school for a number of years. I think this is sad, as it was quite a gift to be able to manage all over Scandinavia with one’s own language. Like a “buy one get three” deal.

The hard part is not really the words that are completely different in the Scandinavian languages. The tricky words are those that seem alike but really have different meanings. A Swede asking for a “rolig” [Swedish=fun] place in Copenhagen will sometimes be pointed in the direction of a “rolig” [Danish=tranquil] place such as a cemetery by a well-meaning Dane. In a shop a Swede will sometimes ask for a “kasse” [Swedish=bag] and be given a “kasse” [Danish=box] instead, which seems a bit of an overkill for the two apples and a chocolate bar they just bought. Some years back, when I was visiting a Swedish friend, we took a walk by the coast and found a nice little café called “Café Måsen” down by the water. “Café Seagull.” Very idyllic. I do know what it means in Swedish, but somehow it was quite a distraction for me that the same name had a completely different meaning in Danish. Hardly a bad word, just a little childlike and funny: “Café Botty”.

Some time ago another Swedish friend, whose knowledge of the Danish language (even below the waist) is excellent and knew I would appreciate the picture, e-mailed me this photo taken in a Swedish tennis hall. The text says it’s forbidden to [play] ball against the walls. However, in Danish the exact same words mean it’s forbidden to screw against the walls.

Then there is Norway…. When I was about ten and on holiday with my parents I made friends with a local Norwegian girl. On a nice summer day, we went swimming in a mountain lake. Wenche had already waded out into the water and as I was ready to get in, I shouted “How is the water, Wenche?” and she answered that it was “fresh”. I ran to the end of the jetty, jumped into the water and learned the hard way that there must have been nuances in the meaning of that particular word in our two languages, because she meant ‘ice-cold-so-your-blood-will-freeze’ and I heard ‘refreshing.’ I must have been close to getting a heart attack right then and there and ending my life as a ten-year-old! But now I’ll always remember that mountain lakes are cold, even on a hot summer day.

During a train travel in Norway I looked out of the window as the train stopped at a small town called Hell close to Trondheim. A lot of people rushed out of the train in order to get their picture taken with the sign at the cargo handling/godsexpedition. I stayed on the train. I mean, what does one do, if the train leaves and one gets stuck in Hell? And yes, it can get quite cold in the winter, so Hell does in fact sometimes freeze over.

Finally, there is that much publicized name of a small town in Upper Austria. No joke, no hoax, it is a real place. And actually not that far from Petting, Bavaria. The beginning of the word is pronounced like the beginning of ‘food’, but still. It seems tourists constantly go there to take pictures, and sometimes to take the sign itself. There is a ‘drive carefully’ sign below the name of the town, but literally translated from German it means, “Please, not so fast!” which does not make the whole thing less amusing. The local people are fed up with having to replace the sign constantly and even had a vote about a name change a few years ago but decided to keep their 1000-year old name. You’d think the local people might try to cash in on this tourist pilgrimage, but there are no souvenirs. They have no F***ing postcards and no F***ing T-shirts for sale!

Update August 3rd 2008:

The other day I was walking through the Latin Quarter in Copenhagen with my American friend Paul, who understands Danish but still turned his head to have a second look at this sign and had to smile! In Danish it just means finish. And the poster refers to the end of a sale.

Links:
Hell, Norway.
Petting, Bavaria.
Fucking, Austria.

Karelia

The year before the final collapse of the Soviet Union I was invited to stay with a family in Petrozavodsk, Russian Karelia. A friend of mine, Torben, a Danish doctor, had visited some colleagues in the USSR the previous year and gave me some good advice about the travel.

There was so much extra paper work because I was going to stay with a family and not at a hotel, and Torben had also prepared me for the very thorough security check I would have to go through in customs. Everything was unpacked, opened and scrutinized. Down to removing the cap of my toothpaste and examining the contents. My Russian friend had arranged that I could visit a school during my stay, and I had asked the teachers I was to meet if there were any teaching materials from Denmark they would like to see, and they had asked for three things: maths books for the first grade, beginners books for learning English and material for sex education. I tried to find the most ‘sober’ book I possibly could regarding the last subject. But I still anticipated problems at the customs because of this. On the other hand, Torben had managed to get through customs with 150 packets of ten with condoms for the hospital his colleague and friend worked at by insisting they were for personal use. “How long are you planning to stay?” “Two weeks!” How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. But no, when seeing the book on sex education, the customs officer froze for a second and then picked up the book. I’ll swear he looked through every single page of the book before he called over another customs officer who also ‘inspected’ the book thoroughly. Both officers went over to a secluded area and passed the book around to 3 or 4 other colleagues, and they took their time looking though the book, while taking turns keeping an eye on this ‘pervert’ who was trying to smuggle it into the USSR. I managed to keep a straight face through the whole procedure. Finally, they decided to classify it as ‘pornography’ and confiscated it. They put it in a sealed envelope along with a Danish crossword puzzle they had also confiscated from me. They told me in no uncertain terms that this material was strictly illegal but they would let me off with a warning, this time. I could pick up the envelope when I left the country again.

I finally met my friend in the arrival hall, and I guess he had started to worry as hours had passed after my flight had arrived. During the next week and a half I would meet a lot of wonderful people in St. Petersburg (back then, it was of course still Leningrad) and Petrozavodsk and experience a lot of interesting things. I had noticed that when my Russian friend introduced me to his friends and acquaintances he said my name, and then said something else, which made people look at me with a rather wry smile. My Russian vocabulary is less than 20 words, so I had no idea what he was saying, but after this had happened a couple of times, I asked him what he was saying about me. It turned out he had said, “This is Millie. She’s the enemy!”

Of all the places I have travelled, I have hardly met people (friends of my Russian friend) more eager to invite me home or take me out somewhere. An Armenian friend of Victor’s insisted on taking us for a full day excursion by car up into the taiga. Great! I was really looking forward to that. He did warn me that his car was small, and old, but that didn’t matter to me. The next morning, as we were waiting outside the house, we heard some loud bangs – sort of like Onslow’s car in Keeping Up Appearances – and there they were! One of the side windows at the back was partly missing. Instead they had tried to cover it with corrugated cardboard and tape with limited success. It was October and freezing cold, but who wants to make a fuzz over a little ice-cold turbulence in the car. After going a few miles, the bonnet blew up. I am sure my heart skipped at least a couple of beats. The driver simply stuck out his head through the side window, so he could see where he was going, and pulled over. He managed to tie the bonnet in a closed position with a piece of string, shrugged and mumbled, “it happens sometimes”. To this day I am impressed that the hinges didn’t break and the whole thing blew off, not just up. Through all this the left side of my brain tried to convince the right side of my brain (which was terrified) to calm down. I would either have the time of my life, or we would end up killing ourselves, and I had absolutely no influence on which way it would go, so I might as well relax. Luckily for all of us, it was the first. The almost literally endless forest up there was extremely beautiful in the autumn. Maybe 15-20 different kinds of trees growing wild among each other and had every colour from green, through yellow, orange, red and purple to brown. I’ll never forget that day.

The visit to the school was interesting. I taught English in an 8th grade and assisted the teacher of the first grade in the art class. The pupils didn’t have to wear school uniforms anymore, but most of them still did. I wonder what my Russian colleagues thought of the change of rules I practised that day. E.g. the students were used to having to stand up when they spoke in the classroom. I explained that in Denmark you remained seated when you spoke, so that was what we were going to do during my class. Most of the students seemed to enjoy a change, but there were a few who nervously glanced in the direction of their regular teacher as if to ask, “Is this really OK?” before they remained seated while speaking. Another thing that seemed to shock some of them was that I would sometimes address someone who had not raised his hand. They were definitely not used to that.

The first graders were great. They had collected leaves and moss outside and were making collages of their findings. The sad thing for me to see was that they were all given the exact same colours of crayons to work with and specific written instructions (hand written by the teacher): paint a sun in the upper right hand corner of your paper. Put glue on your leaf. Place it in the lower left hand corner, etc… One of the children I was working with was Sasha. We exercised a little disobedience together, disregarded the instructions and stuck the leaves and moss wherever we liked on the paper. I sincerely hope I did not get him into trouble concerning the assessment of his project afterwards! before I left he came over to me as I was packing my bag, held out his little clenched fist, released it to let his boy scout pin fall into my hand and raced out of the room before I could say or do anything. I still have the pin, have often thought of him and hope he has a good life!

I am also a computer teacher, and they showed me their computer room. Back home, we had PCs in several classrooms and here they showed me a room with a huge computer in the middle, and several monitors along the walls. The computer was the size of a medium sized refrigerator. Not without sarcasm, the teacher said, “Soviet computers: The greatest in the world!”

Time to go home. At the airport I got back the envelope with the items they confiscated upon entry. I.e. I got a sealed envelope with my crossword puzzle. No trace of the book…….

Travelling through Europe by train

I do not even want to get into exactly how long ago that was, but back in the last century some time when I was in high school, my friends and I always travelled all over Europe by train during the summer holidays. Literally all over. As far as the Interrail passes were valid, anyway. Decreasing prices for plane tickets as well as perhaps increasing indolence may make such long train travels seem rather anachronistic to students today. True enough, I have spent very many hours in trains during my youth, but sometimes it was just as interesting getting somewhere as actually being there.

Some of these travels I wouldn’t have liked to be without. Such as going by train all the way through Italy one summer and experiencing the huge differences in the behaviour of the people we shared compartments with. In the north of the country they did not seem very different from people we would meet in Scandinavia. Nice, but slightly reserved. South of Rome people seemed to talk a lot more to the other passengers, and we all shared whatever food and drink we had brought. South of Naples was when all the fun began. Our compartment was meant for six people, but with a little goodwill and effort you could fit in eight people, which we did when the train got very crowded. The corridor was extremely crowded as well, so it was easier for people to push their luggage in through the windows than carrying it with them to their seat. Consequently, we assisted in getting bags off all sizes, a couple of folding push chairs and at one point a homemade cage with a live chicken in through the windows. All in all quite an eventful trip to Sicily. Very hot and very smelly, but we had fun.

I remember another train travel which ended up not being much fun, though. At a point my friend and I felt slightly bored and also needed to stretch our legs a bit, so we decided to ‘go for a walk’. This was the kind of train with corridors going all the way through the train at one side, and closed compartments usually seating up to six people each leading out to these corridors. We started walking towards one end of the train and got to talk about how often we actually met someone we knew while we were travelling. Waiting in line at the Gare du Nord right in front of us would be someone we knew from school. Someone’s cousin would be crossing the street right in front of us in Verona, etc. Like I said, ‘everyone’ went Interrailing at the same time. We both played sports quite seriously at the time and when going to and from games in the weekends we usually met someone we knew on the ferries in Denmark. (Now there are bridges everywhere and I suppose nobody talks to each other anymore). Anyway, as far-fetched as it seemed, we started glancing into the compartments as we walked the length of the train and back. You never know. Naturally, we didn’t see anyone we knew, and we didn’t think about it anymore until two hours later, when we were addressed by two uniformed French policemen who asked us to take our things and come with them. Uncomprehendingly we tried to explain that we were on our way home and would miss our connecting train if we left this train, but there was no mercy. Downcast, slightly crestfallen and very confused we followed them. They kept us for three hours at the police station as we were questioned and they went through all our stuff. Not having done anything except taking a walk in the train, it took us quite a while to figure out what had hit us. It turned out that things had been stolen from a lot of compartments in that particular train, and when talking to the police several people remembered these two girls walking around, looking into all the compartments! They finally let us go. I felt about two inches tall and really just wanted to call my parents and say I would be home later than expected. (But this is what I don’t understand: if we had really stolen something, wouldn’t we just have left it in the train when the police turned up and asked us to leave the train? Maybe they checked the compartment after we left....).

Finally, I can’t think of train travels in Europe without thinking of a trip back from the former Yugoslavia once. In the same compartment as my friend and I were two young men, who were extremely tanned and all they were wearing were shorts. One of them also had an Indiana Jones type of hat and they were carrying their wallets pushed down behind the waistband of their shorts. We could hear they were Finnish but could not understand anything they said to each other. We tried to steer clear of these two young men, whom we simply considered ‘too much’! We basically ignored them. After many hours in that train, and the weather not being that hot anymore, these two half naked men seemed more and more out of place, somehow. Long story, but we were well into Germany before we tried speaking Swedish with them. It turned out that they had been camping, one morning they had gone to get breakfast and when they got back their tent was gone. In it had been their backpacks and everything else they had brought with them. They only had the shorts they were wearing and their wallets. Since they had money, and a valid Interrail pass, they had decided to travel back home and pack again so they could continue travelling. They just caught a train with no time to spare, and there had been nowhere they could buy some clothes, yet.

We had been prejudiced and convinced that these two men were parading around showing off their bodies as if they were god’s gift to women. And they had really had all their clothes stolen. Another lesson learned for me. Don’t judge. And maybe a lesson for the two men as well: if you need help – ask for it! So, Juha and Pekka from Jyväskylä in Finland, I wish I would have known about your situation earlier, and we would have lent you some clean T-shirts long before we actually did!