Whaling, scraping with Junko, and Kampo Spa at Arima Onsen - Thu 17 May

This morning, the TV wouldn't turn on. It took quite a bit of fiddling before it kick started. Mama was ready to go out that morning and buy a new one.

The morning newspaper-digest talk show (an unusual show format) was all over a big story about a 17 year old Japanese who'd decaptitated his mum in her sleep - "...you can't kill people if there's no war..." - and taken her head in a bag for a little trip to watch R&B music videos at a local store for a while before taking the bag to the police and confessing. When they searched the house, they found the mother's arms standing up in pot plants.

As he does every morning and night, Boss passed the early morning playing Microsoft card games.

In the car on the way to Ono-san's house for another day of bee-frame cleaning, he talked politics. He explained how the Japanese government are liars, claiming that nuclear power is safe but refusing to build them in known earthquake-prone areas. As Kobe demonstrated, however, anywhere in Japan is capable of catastrophic earthquake.

Somehow, I also brought up the Japanese whaling issue. It seems the Japanese are well aware of the rest of the world's displeasure at their whale consumption habits. I tread very carefully around this topic, it's one area I've seen people get very touchy. Several pro-Japanese-whaling opinions have been put to me (and no counter-whaling ones).

• whale numbers are increasing
• they eat so much plankton at once, leaving not enough for the other sea animals
• that they're smart isn't a good reason - other animals are smart. Cows' big eyes shed a tear when they're shot, he explained
• they eat or use ALL of it, with a spirit of gratitude, wasting nothing - even the beard is used for puppet strings.

He then commented that he doesn't believe whales need to be eaten. He just doesn't like the hypocrisy of this kind of imposed 'selective vegetarianism'.

He explained how the Japanese have no pride in their country now, that no national flags are flown (indeed are torn down or burned, due to associations with war crimes) and that the national anthem is never sung.

We drove a fair way to pick up Junko, a couple of years older than me, whose photograph graced these pages on Monday 15 May, two days back. On her days off work, she volunteers at the Ono's - she's interested in getting into bees.

I spotted a shop called N'ABLE HOUSE on the drive, which didn't seem a very capable name for a business. Also, a sign for a business called 'Daddy's Ca#e', where #=a music treble clef. I read it as 'Daddy's Cage', and thought it worth asking my fellow passengers about. They explained it was 'Daddy's Cafe', and agreed 'Daddy's Cage' would be a strange name for a business.

On the drive, Boss explained to Junko he wouldn't be able to drop her home for various reasons, including he'd promised he was going to take me early to an onsen (hot spring), which was a little embarrassing, and that she lived far away and it added up to a lot of driving in a day, and that he might have to take his wife shopping, as she doesn't have a licence and the wind today was strong for bike riding. Uncharacteristically for a young Japanese woman being spoken to by an older man, she piped right up and repeatedly complained. He offered her bus money, but it would still take her an age to get home.

Boss explained how the Japanese had the most respectful word for 'mother'. I didn't quite get his logic, which seemed to be this:

1. The kitchen in old Japanese homes was always in the north. The word for north is 'kita'.
2. The original phrase for mother was 'person from the north' or 'kita no kata'.
3. 'kita no kata' became 'o-kita-sama', which became modern day 'o-kaa-san'.

To me, this still says to me that mother means 'kitchen person' - maybe I missed the point.

The fire wasn't already boiling today when we got to Ono-san's - he knows how to start a fire, with a blow torch.

It took a long time for the water to warm. We still hadn't got scraping by midday, when Boss turned up and took me to a nearby little restaurant for some cheap and delicious pork noodles and fried rice. I explained my ambitions to photograph as many as I could of the varied "Don't jump out in front of traffic" signs around the narrow roadways, and we detoured on the way back for a snap of a couple of them.


During the day, Ono-san had a try at the electricity-based method of attaching the wax starters to the frame wires, with much-congratulated success.


During the workday, I grilled Junko on the Kansai regional dialect, because I've been quite interested in tucking a few novelty Kansai expressions under my belt. She helped me build up a little translation table of grammar and phrases.

Boss figured this boiler heated the water hotter and was taller so more convenient. He reboiled some of the cleaned frames and scraped up the wax residue that came off.


After an early knock-off, Boss drove me to the Arima Onsen district, which has around 1000 years of history. We visited Boss' favourite, Kampo Spa, the highest on the mountain and therefore the only one with drinkable onsen water. He also likes that there are natural products for toiletries - I had a shampoo selection of light brown horse neck-oil, or jet-black charcoal. The onsen water was a semi-opaque red, with a high iron content.

Tonight's dinner was temaki - roll-your-own sushi in seaweed. I WILL be making these, yummo.


There was a reprise of the whaling discussion during dinner, brought up by Boss. Some more points were raised by Mama.

• The Chinese eat everything on four legs except tables, and everything that flies except planes. No-one makes an outcry about them eating dogs, which is discriminatory.
• As the number of whales increases, and there's not enough food for them, they're smart - they kill themselves by beaching themselves.
• Whale meat is very healthy!

Boss went on a myth-debunking spree, explaining that the greenhouse effect is a lie - just try filling a bath with ice and melting it, does it overflow? Also, there's no such thing as the ozone layer - has anyone seen it? "We get lied to a lot."

On TV, there was something like Japanese Survivor comedy, with two men in the wild trying to scratch together food and having adventures, all with subtitles - very good for my natural Japanese!

I popped out in the dark to the rice fields immediately behind the apartment building, and enjoyed the utter din of frogs.

I learned tonight that the Komuros use the stings straight from live bees in their apitherapy (bee sting therapy), not needles. [Note - this understanding was later further refined - they pull the stings out and apply them manually with tweezers, there's no angry bee swarms on epidermises.] Their patients have had crippling rheumatism alleviated, several kinds of cancer cured, hernias fixed, and the treatment fixes herpes as well. [More information to come - I watched over a patient's treatment the next Saturday!]