Dogs I've known II: Clive

Long ago and far away I spent three happy years in Wolverhampton, learning how to design things. Back in those halcyon days, a generous government would not only foot the bill for tuition, but would actually pay students a living allowance. Though it did not permit holidays on the Riviera, it was enough to live on if you weren't picky. I wasn't.
After a brief sojourn in the Halls of Residence that was terminated when the cleaners found a motorcycle engine in my sink (you had to look hard; there was a lot of other stuff in there too) I shared various scruffy old houses with an assortment of scruffy young people. Way down the Cannock Road, one such joint brought me into cohabitation with Rory, a ceramicist whose enormous talent was matched only by the eccentricity of his lifestyle. We got on just fine, going so far as to pool our meager funds to buy a 56lb sack of potatoes and thus solve all our nutrition problems more or less permanently at one stroke.
Out beyond the back of the house there was a builder's yard. We never saw the guy who owned it, but one winter he set a small, skinny dog on a rope to guard the place. It was a freezing November, with penetrating rain and blasting winds, and the poor thing had no shelter. Its pitiful whining struck a chord in Rory's kindly heart, and much against the protests of the other inhabitants of the house (I never really worked out how many there were; I was shacked up with at least one of them at the time, but I think there might have been two more) he brought the bedraggled dog in.
A lively session in the bathtub ensued, as we tried to scrape enough debris off the animal to figure out which end was which and possibly what color it was. By the time we'd hosed him down and toweled his skeletal form off, we could see that at least part of him was Collie. "Smart dogs, collies," crowed Rory, "we'll make a pet of him." We called him Clive, after Clive of India.
Seldom has an animal become so devoted to his rescuer. It was heartwarming to see Clive fill out again (Rory fed him considerably better than he fed himself) and we congratulated ourselves on the boundless good karma this humanitarian act had doubtless brought us.
It was not until he started going walkies in public, a few weeks after his rescue, that it occurred to us that something might not be quite right with Clive. Perhaps because his captors the builders had been Indians, he seemed to have an issue with anyone of darker hue. This included West Indians, real Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, nuns and in fact anyone in dark clothing - including policemen. At the sight of them, he would bare what was left of his teeth and snarl like a timber wolf, straining away on his hind legs while his potential prey nervously eyed the frayed bit of clothes line that passed for a leash.
Fellow dogs excited a different kind of passion in Clive. Having been alerted to the existence of love by his miraculous rescue, he had clearly made it his life's mission to give back to his own in a direct and physical way. The sight of any dog - male, female, huge, tiny, no matter - would bring out the Barry White in him.
One fine day in West Park, the inevitable happened. Inflamed by the allure of a well-groomed Afghan hound, all silky hair and eyelashes, Clive tore at his rope hard enough to snap it. Barely pausing to register his good fortune, he streaked towards his quarry with the clearest of intents. She (or he; we never found out, though I bet Clive did) got the message while Clive was still some way off, and tore away into the park, leaving the aggrieved owner with a bruised wrist and rope burns.
It took us an hour to find Clive, but the Afghan was still AWOL when at dusk we wisely left ahead of the duly summoned police. When we found him, he seemed to have expended his ardor and was waiting peaceably under a tree, rising only to snap at passing Bengalis.
"He's got to go," I told Rory, "he's mental. He'll have us all in the dock at this rate."
Shortly after that I graduated, left that house and moved to Bristol. Some months later, I had a call from Rory. He was in town, and we met up. It turned out that he too had sensed the city's allure, and was now living in a squat up in Frenchay. "How's Clive?" I asked.
Rory looked down for a moment, then confessed. "I took him home to my parents' place" (they lived in a high-rise in the magnificently-named Spon End district of Coventry). "I told them I was going to get some milk, and left him in the lounge."
"Eerrr...how long ago was this?"
"Six months."

Japanese antique markets

Sakuranomiya, August 22

The dominant motif of this year’s trip is Heat. Every morning we assure each other that this is the day it breaks, and every day it isn’t. The best part of a month with no sign of rain is a new record for western Japan, and things aren’t helped by the humidity. As I type, however, the night sky is being lit up by some fine lightning, and hopes are rising that this might signal some rain. It’s been over 34 both day and night since we arrived, and in a treeless city of solid concrete this can get a bit wearing.

To a people accustomed to commenting on the weather at some length – the British are mute stoics by comparison – this has all of course been a boon. Despite the subtlety for which oriental languages are renowned there are only so many ways you can say ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ It’s not what you say, however, but the head-cocked, eyes-screwed-up expression of brave suffering with which you say it. The usual American response – ‘you call this hot?’ – isn’t considered good manners.

The TV is on, and it’s the usual mix of idiotic quiz shows, sports and lurid murders. The current one features a boy whose grandfather told him to study harder and paid for such insolence with his life. ‘You kill him, then?’ asked the cops, when they turned up to see what the fuss was. ‘Yup, no mistake there’ he chirped, blessedly unaware of the hideous breach of filial piety this constituted. A long line of TV commentators have endeavored to reassure the population that he will be brought to realize the error of his ways. He used a bat, by the way, guns being illegal here.

We were at a temple market yesterday. The attitude of the Japanese to evidence of their own past is an interesting aspect of their society. Confucianism dictates respect for ancestors, and most people make an effort to manifest it at home. Portraits of parents and grandparents decorate many living rooms, staring down in stern monochrome from their perches directly under the ceiling. Hillsides are covered with forests of finely maintained tombs of polished granite, and most people are still fairly conscientious about visiting them. Simple mathematics, however, suggests that if all ancestors were worshipped equally Japan would by now be almost entirely covered with tombs. That it is not reflects a special aspect of Japanese Confucianism, a kind of statute of limitations on piety under which you are not required to honor anyone you can’t actually remember. In practice, this means the oldest portrait in the house will be of the grandparents of the oldest person there. In a country where people routinely make it to 100 and beyond this can still take things back close to the dawn of photography, but in most cases you aren’t talking about anyone who was around before the 20^th century.

The Japanese are not ones to dwell on the recent past, and with their past it’s perhaps not surprising. Traditional crafts and tales of yore are very popular, but of course none of that concerns one personally. When an ancestral house comes up empty, on the other hand, it’s usual for the family to strip it to the walls if not demolish it entirely. The odd trinket might be kept for sentimental reasons, but it’s rare for anything more substantial to stay on in the homes of the descendents. Furniture, clothes and most other stuff heads straight to the landfill.

This means that Japanese antiques are relatively cheap, and especially those more personal things like clothes, which appear in huge mounds at temple markets. Ten bucks will get you a perfectly serviceable summer kimono, and if you’re prepared to fork out fifty or so you can get a spectacular formal job in heavily-embroidered silk, complete with sash. A bit of cleaning and it’s good as new. Japanese ladies would rather walk down the street buck-naked then be seen in a second-hand kimono, however, so apart from visiting foreigners business should on the face of it be somewhat slow. The flocks of muttering old grannies who nevertheless descend on the kimono piles are not buying them to wear. Quilt making is a kind of mania in Japan these days, and not surprisingly when so much fine material is to be had so cheap. The combination of Pennsylvania Dutch techniques and silk kimono cloth can be a bit odd – the sartorial equivalent of the Curry Doughnut, one of those wacky but effective Japanese combinations of foreign idioms that no foreigner could have conceived – but I have seen some very fine work indeed, and hats off to the ladies.

Radio in Japan

Driving my little delivery truck around Shikoku in the afternoons I would sometimes search for some music on the radio, but never with any luck; there were five channels with clear reception, but all were filled from morning to night with endless chat. Private local stations, the national channels, AM, FM and probably shortwave too, it made no difference; not a tinkle, not a note, just egotistical bores chuntering on at each other, apparently unaware that the mikes were switched on. What did they have to talk about? Absolutely nothing, as it turned out, but that didn't stop them. Here is a sampler of dialogues from various spots on the dial. First off, an afternoon 'information variety' programme (these descriptions are all from Japanese newspapers, and highly misleading. I once tuned in to a ballsachingly boring drone which turned out to be about 'Onions and how to deal with them' though its title was 'Action Focus').

"Hellloooo! This is Kobayashi!"

"Helllooo! This is Ueda! Welcome to 'Exciting Afternoon'!"

"Mr Kobayashi!"

"Yes?"

"It's getting really hot these days, isn't it?"

"Yes it is, isn't it?"

"We can say it's pretty well summer now, can't we?"

"Yes, that's right, isn't it?"

"Mmmmmm...there is a lot of really good food we can eat in summer, isn't there?" 

"Yes there is, isn't there? You mean things like cold noodles, don't you?"

"Cold noodles, yes! I really want to eat cold noodles, you know!"

"Because it's summer?"

"Mmmmmm, yes, that's right, isn't it?"

At this point the truck lurches and swerves as I punch the station switch, swiping at the dashboard like Mike Tyson. There's a baseball game on the next channel...

"Live from the Tokyo Dome, this is the Giants versus the Tigers and we're at the bottom of the sixth with Kuwata at bat. He's had two strikes and has two runners on base!" (So far so good).

"Our guest this afternoon is the former pitcher for the Giants, Mister Sasaki. Mister Sasaki!"

"Yes!"

"Kuwata is really looking good today, isn't he?"

"Yes he is, isn't he?"

"Why do you think that is, Mr. Sasaki?"

"Well; it could possibly be because he's very fit, don't you think?"

"Aaaahhhh...that's right, isn't it? Because he’s fit....I see! He certainly is very fit, isn't he?"

"Yes he is. That's probably because he's been training, isn't it?"

"Aaahhhh.. is that right? Now I understand! He's been training, eh? No wonder he looks fit. Thank you mister Sasaki! That was Mr. Sasaki, the former pitcher with the Giants! He said that Kuwata is fit, because he’s been training!"

Oh lord. What's on NHK, the Japanese government station?

"Here on 'Traditional Japanese Culture Hour' we are going to receive the honor of learned comment from Miss Suzuki, who is the honorable holder and thirty-four-time winner of the sublime All-Japan Traditional Flower-Arranging Championship trophy. Good afternoon Suzuki - teacher."

"Good afternoon"

"Please honor us with your comment this afternoon."

"Please tolerate my ignorant presence on your famous program."

"First of all: there are many kinds of flower arranging, aren't there."

"Yes there are, aren't there."

"And you have done many of them yourself, haven't you?"

"Well I have, haven't I, but of course any miserable effort of mine has been but a pale imitation of the illustrious work of my great teacher Professor Harada."

"Aaahhh....Professor Harada. He was a great flower-arranger, wasn't he?"

"Yes he was, wasn't he?"

A brief pause while I extricate the truck from a ditch. My eyes glazed over and I dozed off at the wheel. We'd better try something a bit racier; there's a 'popular variety' show on the local AM channel.

"Ok, let's get on the phones! We're calling Takamatsu City today!"

Beep - boop - beep - bip - boop - beep -boop - bip - bip!

Neeeeeeeep. Neeeeeeep. Neeeeeeep. K'chack!

"Hello?"

"Hello! This is Crazy Takahashi from Radio Amazing!"

"Oooooh! Mr. Crazy! Gosh! Ooooohhh!"

"Please honor us with your participation!"

"Please honor me with your valuable air-time!"

"What are you doing right now, Mrs. Ueda?"

"Well, I was just cleaning my bathroom, wasn't I?"

"Were you? Aaahhh... I see!  What are you going to do today?"

"Well, I'm going to finish cleaning the bathroom, then I really ought to go shopping, don't you think?"

"Yes! That's right, isn't it! You know, it's really hot outside today, so be careful!"

"Aaaahhh.. is it? It must be summer, then!"

"Yes, many people are saying it's summer, aren't they?"

"Oh really, are they?"

"Yes they are!"

" Mmmmm. OK, then, I'll be careful outside!"

"Thank you!"

"Thank you!"

We used to have this stuff on British local radio too, interspersed with records by the likes of Val Doonican and Engelbert Humperdinck. A whole generation of punk rockers, bikers and heroin addicts emerged as a direct result. On Japanese daytime radio, however, there are no records. There are also no solo sports commentators; a minimum of two are needed to generate the necessary level of harmony for true understanding of complex, arcane events like Wimbledon and when it comes to really hard-to-grasp sports like Sumo, which has one rule, four or five experts team up to ensure the sound man has no chance to pause for breath. The goal is never to have a second’s silence, and with essentially soundless sports like golf this means the commentators have to drone on uninterrupted for the entire afternoon. Given a match featuring the national team, though - any sport, from soccer to marbles - they wheel on the Mad Bloke. The Mad Bloke specialises in adding as much extra tension and excitement to the brave efforts of the Japanese team by going mental. In the final stages of the marathon, game, match or whatever, his already terse and nervous delivery speeds up as the clock winds down. Slobbering into the mike, he eventually abandons sentence structure and even words themselves in his frenzy. Here is the Mad Bloke in the last minute of a basketball match, Japan versus Somewhere :

“One minute! One minute! Come on Japan! Two points! Fifty seconds! Two points! Come on Japan! Gold medal! Forty seconds! COME ON JAPAN! The Somewhere team shoots! NOOO!!! Four points! Come on Japan! Thirty seconds! Come on Japan! Four points! Not impossible! Twenty seconds! Come on Japan! JAPAN! PERSEVERE! DO YOUR BEST! COME ON! PLEASE! AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

The Mad Bloke sadly never kills himself, though from the volume of the screaming you’d think he was trying to, possibly with a fruit knife. It amazes me that none of the other people in the commentary box, whose ears must be ringing as if at a Motorhead concert, lean over and whack him with a bat.

A sporting moment. In the little factory where I spent a year, all radios were tuned to the High School Baseball Championship from Koshien stadium near Kobe. This is a genuine, 24-karat national tradition, dating from 1915 (as opposed to the soccer World Cup – during which the Mad Bloke herniated himself – which is a new and horribly popular phenomenon). Teams from high schools all over the land vie to scoop the trophy; all wear white outfits, shave their heads, bow to the other team and generally behave like ideal citizens. They then play desperate baseball, stealing bases, running like Carl Lewis and swinging at anything. The victors are magnanimous, the losers blub like five-year-olds, and everyone scoops up a handful of dirt as a souvenir. What could be wrong with all this? Well, one year I got to watch the opening ceremony. The teams file into the stadium in square formation, do a lap and then line up in regiments below a podium. A strapping young lad with the obligatory kiwi-fruit haircut then takes the stand, and, with one arm raised at a steep angle, recites the code of honor and ethical play to the hushed hordes. Watching this, I suddenly got a strong jolt of déjà vu. It took a moment, but eventually I got it. The marching, the speech, the salute - it’s a carbon copy of the opening of the 1936 Olympic Games. The ones Hitler organised.

Pachinko

At various times in Japan I was taken to play Pachinko. This seemingly innocuous game of chance is a national pastime, along with getting drunk and falling asleep in front of the TV, and the palaces constructed to house its machines are truly breathtaking examples of....I don't know, I can't tell you because there's nothing else on Earth like them. 

Huge edifices of glass and chrome, they resemble giant Wurlitzers, with myriad flashing neon tubes and sparkling globes blazing with pulsating light against the glowing night sky. Pachinko parlors are often three or four stories high and contain not only the machine hall but accommodation for their fairly extensive staff, along with other offices and rooms. Those built on cheaper land on the outskirts of towns also have vast parking lots, and thus several acres of land are often devoted to a game whose actual playing space is six square feet. 

Some of the exteriors have themes, like 'Space Travel' or 'The Wild West' but they are all visually hideous in a way that only modern materials and electricity wastage on a grand scale can achieve. Driving through the countryside at night, a big parlor's lights can be detected as a multi-colored glow on the horizon from miles away, like a cruise liner exclusively for retiree carnival workers, with some establishments even playing searchlights onto the underside of the clouds to guide the witless to the fount. 

Pachinko, as you all know, is basically vertical bagatelle. It is played on a machine with a flat screen inches from the player's nose, behind which is a gaily-printed board studded with thousands of pins. Japanese people call it 'pinball', but unlike that game there are no flippers with which one might influence the course of the ball. Through the forest of pins tumble little stainless steel balls that bounce around a bit before falling into oblivion at the bottom. Lurking here and there on the playfield are little trap doors that occasionally pop open for a brief period and allow any ball that enters to win a prize - more balls. The player sits bolt upright like an attentive zombie in front of the machine, controlling the inflow of balls with a small dial to his right. That's it. The machines are arranged in long rows and people sit back-to-back in the narrow alleyways between them. 

Technically, you can't win anything more exciting than snacks or soft toys, but - and here’s a curious thing - near every parlor there is a little hole in the wall behind which is a generous person who will buy your hard-earned trinkets for huge wads of cash. Don’t do the obvious thing and buy something from a toy shop in the hope that you’ll make a profit on it at the hole in the wall, though - for some reason, they only buy things won at Pachinko. Isn’t that odd? Gambling on Pachinko is actually illegal, so these two businesses can surely not be connected.

The atmosphere in a Pachinko parlor is dominated by noise and light; there is the rushing and clattering of the machines themselves, a constant blare of music (often stirring military marches when the DJ senses people are tiring), bells and sirens that indicate wins and the frenzied yelling of announcers over ultra-loud PA systems. The announcers keep up a running commentary on who is winning, what time it is and so on. It's truly deafening, and this assault on the ears is matched by the garish, multi-coloured neon lighting that sears the eyeballs even as you walk past outside. Pachinko parlors are hot and cramped, everyone smokes like crazy and even a few minutes' play can lose you considerable sums of money. For anyone interested in trying it, the overall effect can be simulated by standing in a foundry in mid-shift with lit cigarettes up your nose while someone shines car headlights into your eyes and you feed a stream of coins into a toilet. 

It is occasionally possible to win money at Pachinko, and "professional" players exist in sufficient numbers for specialist magazines to be published describing new machines and parlors, but the fact that the owners all drive the ubiquitous Mercedes and are able to pay the overheads (I once tried to count the neon tubes in a single parlor; I gave up at 800 when I couldn't see properly any more, which at 60 watts a tube lit ten hours a day means a heck of an electricity bill) suggests it's a mug's game. At the end of each day, after the doors close, professional pin-benders open the machines and carefully bend the pins in such a way that it will perform differently the next day. This makes it impossible for a pro to home in again on a winning machine.

Ask the average Japanese adult if they play pachinko and they'll either wrinkle up their noses in distaste or grudgingly admit "sometimes". A great many do, however - between a quarter and a third of the population, according to a recent newspaper survey - and large groups of would-be zombies queue up, waiting for parlors to open in the mornings. 

There are many theories, the favorite being release of stress by self-hypnosis with flashing lights and so on, but if you ask me it is just a refuge for poor fools who don't want to be left alone with their thoughts (or families) for even a minute. Like other bizarre aspects of Japanese life (the matt black buses and trucks, for example, that are garlanded with Imperial flags and driven slowly round crowded inner-city areas while the fascist bastards inside yell messages of race hatred and mortal devotion to the emperor at volumes above the pain threshold through speakers on the roof utterly unmolested by the police, one of whom once gave me a sanctimonious lecture about freedom of speech when I complained that they were rattling my windows) pachinko is accepted as normal simply because no-one has ever thought to question it. Social commentators in the media, of course, are far too busy criticizing the West for its frivolity and wasting of natural resources.

One last thing about Pachinko. A few years back the North Koreans launched a ballistic missile clean over Japan into the Pacific. The Japanese air defense forces were caught on the hop, and the defense minister wasn’t told until the following day. North Korean TV, meanwhile, was regaling the masses with footage of the liftoff backed with commentary by the same mad quacking woman who announces each new triumph of the Workers’ Paradise. At the same time, their representatives reassured the world that what they’d seen was actually a satellite launch (They said that they’d launched a satellite to broadcast patriotic songs. NASA have been unable to find it, and the fact that the songs are being broadcast intermittently on long wave suggests that someone may not be telling the entire truth. The model the North Koreans proudly displayed on the TV news was of a football painted white to represent the Earth surrounded by a ring of bent coat hanger wire, along which a tin can painted silver progressed in a series of jerks. They’d presumably spent all their money on the rocket.) It’s the last outpost of Stalinism, is North Korea, a darkened land of third-generation indoctrination run by a cunning elite who skillfully play the nuclear blackmail card to get food and cash out of the West, while denouncing their benefactors in bloodcurdling terms and letting their own population starve. Many Japanese have a basic loathing of communism anyway, and fear North Korea as an unstable geopolitical time bomb. All the odder, then, that they go and play Pachinko at all - because a large proportion of the parlors are run by North Koreans, who channel the profits directly back to their homeland.

A Japanese funeral

My father-in-law died some years back; not unexpectedly, as he had lived a bachelor life for his final twenty years on a strict diet of meat, booze and nicotine, but unwelcome nonetheless. My wife being an only child, she and I automatically became the Chief Mourners.

The relatives assembled. He died in hospital; no fuss, no pain, the numbers just got smaller and off he went. There was a small amount of dignified sniffling from one or two ladies, but nothing unseemly. There was, however, work to do. First things first: the hospital recommended a funeral company, whose unctuous representative turned up suspiciously quickly. It being thought tasteless to discuss such matters at such a time, we were not informed exactly how much everything would cost, but the best possible service was assured.

The body was suitably dolled up and delivered to the house, where we were busy laying on the beer and peanuts for the wake. A special bed was laid out for the occasion, and a rented futon of spectacular gaudiness covered all but his head, which was frozen with dry ice to keep him fresh and perky.

My father-in-law had a simple rule in his house: if he could remember a particular object being new, then it was technically still new and thus did not need cleaning. He had a very long memory. His predilection for fried food, coupled with a cigarette habit which must have earned him Christmas cards from Japan Tobacco Inc., and latterly the presence of an incontinent dog (a large, mad Siberian Husky puppy whose testicles were connected to the centre of its brain with a very thick cable, and who celebrated the announcement of walkies each day by pissing with joy in random directions) had lent the place a certain atmosphere. He ran his own business for years, not that he ever got rich, and as owner of a shop was the target for profligate gift-giving. He attended the weddings and funerals of all his employees, their friends and relatives, and, if the captions on the gift wrappers were any guide, a number of total strangers, returning from each laden down with further gifts. Ties, tea sets, coffee makers, towels – millions of towels – luggage, commemorative books and slews of electrical doodads – all went unopened into the numerous wardrobes upstairs that divorce had handily vacated. When they realized this stuff was never to be looked at again, the hordes of mice who lived in the walls and ceilings phoned their relatives to come on over for a gnaw-in. By the time he died and the place had to be tarted up in a hurry for the wake, things had got to the stage where you didn’t dare lean on any surface lest warm water and spoon handles be required to separate you again. We cranked up the incense a bit to mask the fragrance of the dog, and spent an afternoon scraping the stalactites of congealed fat off the kitchen ceiling. We needn’t have bothered, it turned out, at least as far as his surviving brother was concerned, as his first comment on arrival was how clean the place was compared to his own.

The priest arrived. This was the neighborhood man, who rolled up on his ladies’ bicycle (Buddhist priests start out on bicycles and graduate to large motor scooters, which they ride in a manner that suggests they’ve already checked and confirmed that they qualify for heaven). He hummed and hawed a bit at the body in its casket, then set out a bit more incense and began the droning. The liturgy of Japanese Buddhism in most of its various flavors relies heavily on droning for effect. Reading from a little book of scripture, the priest chants in measured phrases at a sprightly pace, each lungful delivered in a sonorous monotone punctuated at the end by a cheeky little lift. Every ten phrases or so, he reaches out one gorgeously clad sleeve and pings a little bell. It used to go on for hours, but nowadays the TV generation likes things a bit snappier, so ten or fifteen minutes is about the limit, after which he cleared off for the night.

You’re supposed to sit up the whole night, but few do any more. After some fairly cheerful drinking and gossiping around the body, everyone shoved off and we bedded down, leaving a candle burning downstairs in case the departed came back to life and wanted to go for a pee.

Come the morning and all was business. The funeral company man turned up bright and early to top up the dry ice and take some details for the shindig itself. A photograph had to be found for display at the service, and I insisted on one in which he looked at least amiable. (Finding one was no simple task, as there seems to be some unwritten Japanese law that when a picture is taken, all men present must scowl like demons. In the picture taken at a formal dinner to mark our wedding, more or less the whole family is there. My leg was in plaster at the time, so I couldn’t obey the photographer’s injunctions concerning the exact correct seating position – buttocks clenched, knees welded together and tight fists poised on the thighs – and to everyone’s dismay both my wife-to-be and I seemed to think it appropriate to smile. In the resulting picture we thus stand out a bit; two cheerful young souls surrounded by three rows of gargoyles apparently in various stages of chagrin, rage and constipation).

Various relatives drifted in and sat around making odd comments about nothing until the time came to load him up and take him down to the temple. He couldn’t just go as he was, though. First he had to be dressed – selected relatives getting to put socks on his feet – and placed in the coffin, again by various guests. Certain objects were then put in there with him to jolly up the interior; a photograph or two of happier times, a car brochure (this from the son of a distant relative who remembered how much my father-in-law liked cars) and his golf gloves. The funeral company man reminded us that certain objects could sadly not be consigned with the deceased, including live ammunition, spray cans or explosives of any kind. I’d give a lot to hear how they came to have to issue that particular warning.

The job of Master of Ceremonies was then handed back to the priest, who called each first-degree mourner up to administer final refreshment in the form of water dripped from a green leaf onto the frozen lips of the corpse. Things were getting a bit odd for my taste by this time, and I was doing my best to stay out of it. The coffin was then lined by everyone with flowers laid on for the purpose (‘Use lots of flowers! We have plenty!’ beamed the funeral company man) and the lid was shut, a little window over his face preserving the opportunity for last glimpses for anyone who turned up late.

At the temple we all milled around outside a bit, with the men smoking furiously in anticipation of the coming ordeal (thirty minutes of abstention). Inside a room next door to the temple itself, the funeral company had set up a large carved wooden altar at the far end, in the middle of which the coffin was stashed under a field of carefully-priced (and, it turned out, mostly plastic) flowers. Wreaths bearing the names of the mourning households were hung from the walls - carefully spaced to maximize the effect, as there weren’t many - and one or two sallow youths in black tuxedos acted as ushers. When everyone had shuffled in and sat down there was another half-hour drone-a-thon from the priest while each mourner in turn (and in order of seniority, us first) shuffled up to burn some incense. At the top of the altar was a hastily printed enlargement of my father-in-law’s picture, and below it a wooden tablet on which was inscribed his new name. His new name? When you die, in this particular version of Japanese Buddhism, you must receive a new name. This is for use in heaven. Heaven? There’s a heaven in Buddhism? New one on me, too. Turns out there is, at least in Japan. They’re a bit vague about it, referring to ‘this world’ and ‘that world’, but it seems that there definitely is another place, and it’s a bit classy so your own name won’t do at all. 

As your new name has to serve you for eternity, it follows that it ought to be a good one. The priest, who for some reason knows which names are best, will be happy to sit down and think of a really nice one for your treasured relative. For a price. Now, as we all know, certain Chinese characters have particularly auspicious meanings. If you’d like the dear departed’s new name to feature one or more of these special ones, it can perhaps be done. At a larger price. (My wife’s uncle Yasumasa was a bit of a rogue, with a taste for the good life, so when he died his new name was a real beauty. It cost the best part of a million yen, or five thousand pounds at the time. I hope he enjoys using it, though knowing him as we did it seems unlikely he’s anywhere within telephoning distance of heaven. When his creditors subsequently began to emerge and claim his entire estate it turned out he owned nothing at all. I suppose whoever is in charge in ‘that world’ must by now have sent the lads round to reclaim the name after the check bounced).

With the service over, it was into the cars and off to the crematorium. This turned out to be a squat, concrete block in the middle of the tomb yard of another temple some way off. We stood around in the bleak little building while the stove was cranked up and all was readied. As the coffin was trundled into the flames the priest, rather unnecessarily I thought, reminded us that this was the last time we’d see the departed. Alas, this turned out not to be true. After some time and one or two peeks into the sight glass by the bored-looking crematorium operators, the slab was pulled out again. Steaming away, there lay a toasted but reasonably complete skeleton. The mourners all crowded round to get a good view. “Ah yes,” said the priest, pointing, “the skull has exploded. That normally happens.” Everyone nodded and frowned in concentration as he picked up a large pair of chopsticks and started to poke about among the fragments, commenting on the discoloration of the cancerous bones. “Here it is” he announced finally, and propped up one of the bones for all to see (one of the uppermost vertebrae, I think). He tapped it with a chopstick. “You can see quite clearly the figure of the seated Buddha. This is an unusually well-defined one”.

This was getting a bit too much like Voodoo for a nice boy like me, so I left them to it (everyone took turns, I later learned, to load the bones into an urn with the chopsticks).

Outside in the sunshine, my father-in-law’s older brother was perched on a tomb like a little gnome, merrily puffing away on his 379^th cigarette of the day.

“Not going in, then?” I asked.

“You won’t catch me in a place like that,” he grinned. “Depresses me something terrible.”

I pointed to his gasper.

“They won’t let you smoke in there, either, eh?”

“I’ll tell you something.” He pointed a bony finger at the still-smoking chimney. “People say he died because he smoked and that’s why he got lung cancer, but that’s a load of rubbish. People who are going to get cancer are going to get it, no matter what they do. I’ve smoked seventy a day since I was fifteen and I’m fine. Doctors say they can’t find a thing wrong with me, and I’m eighty-five. He was going to get cancer anyway. Not suprising he died.”

Errr…alright then. I felt it better to change the subject, and figuring I had nothing to lose asked a question few Japanese would dare to.

“What did you do in the war?”

He beamed. “Me? I was in China. It was excellent. I was buying horses for the Imperial Army. I’d go and buy horses off the Chinks for a few sen each and sell them on to cavalry officers. Time of my life. You could get women for almost nothing – the army laid them on for the troops. Lots of food and tobacco, too, right up to the end. We had a fine old time.”

I confess I was beginning to like him. With my interest in the war and his apparent willingness to talk about it I could have stayed and chatted all day but frantic flippering from the doorway of the crematorium suggested my presence was required. The last bits and pieces had all been swept up with a brush and pan, and a final drone had accompanied the sealing of the urn, so this bit was finished. We all piled into the cars again and tooled round to yet another temple where my father-in-law’s bones were poured into the base of the family tomb to join those of various ancestors. Then it was back to the room with the altar for a feast and extensive drinking, while his digitally retouched photo gazed down on us from the top of the flower-bedecked edifice.

Well, the long day drew to an end and that was that. Or was it?

“We were lucky,” my missus told me, “the priest agreed to combine the seventh-day memorial service with the funeral so we don’t have to do it next week. There’s nothing now until the 49^th day.”

Sure enough, one month and nineteen days later everyone reassembled at the temple and a drone was performed. The priest, who had some time to waste before his next appointment, then treated us to a rambling sermon which started out as an advertisement for his particular sect (“Some other sects I could mention believe in more frequent memorial services, but we are progressive and don’t think any more than this is necessary”) but went on to cover various themes such as the recent poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway (“In times like these, where such terrible things are happening all around us, it is reassuring to know” etc.) and ended up with a thrilling update on the state of his lumbago (“Riding a bicycle, as I do is, I think, the best way to get around but my lower back hurts dreadfully sometimes.”)

“Remind me,” I asked my wife as we tucked into yet another communal lunch, “what’s the point here?”

“The departed soul hasn’t actually departed. It’s still present. We have just prayed for it to leave and go to the other world.”

“Why didn’t he bugger off after the funeral?”
“He needed to see that we are alright and that we are doing everything properly.”

“Right…so that’s it, then?”

“Until next year.”

Sure enough, one year later we did it all again. And again a year after that. When the seventh anniversary comes around, we’re supposed to have another shindig, and if we’re really devout it should go on at gradually expanding intervals until, wait for it, forty-nine years after my father-in-law died. I will be 85 by then, and what with one thing and another I haven’t booked the hall yet.

Bicycles in Japan

Everyone cycles in Japan; unlike in Britain, not only is it permitted to ride on the sidewalk, you'd be mad to try anything else. Another big bonus is that - unless they are Mormon missionaries - no-one has to wear those hilarious helmets that look like upended bidets. 

Bicycles are everywhere, in ranks, lines, rows and every other possible formation, and often just scattered around in heaps like an upended box of coat hangers. Though they are not cheap, people treat bicycles like disposable tissues, and as soon as a fault develops the offending machine is often abandoned somewhere discreet like a park, to be picked up after a suitable interval by scavenging trucks and crushed for scrap.

As a kid, I was a real bicycle buff. When I was twelve my father bought me a second-hand Raleigh, and explained that there would never be another so I'd better learn how to fix it. Being unable, then as now, to keep from interfering with perfectly healthy machinery - a trait which has furnished an impressive collection of scars at odd points on my body with which to impress girls at parties - I fell on the hapless machine and spent years constantly dismantling it in search of largely imaginary faults. In this way, I picked up a rudimentary knowledge of engineering, largely by trial and error, until I was able to build and rebuild entire bikes for my friends with an acceptably low injury rate and progress to more gratifyingly complex motorcycles and cars. 

The engineering in even cheap bicycles is invariably good; they are minimalist devices, with no more parts than necessary, and rely on high-quality materials and standards of assembly for their remarkable durability. The Orient has long been largely pedal-powered, and during World War II the Japanese used bikes to beat the Europeans to all the prize spots in Southeast Asia (an act of military brilliance that the pedestrian British infantry nevertheless viewed as cheating). In the years of reconstruction after 1945, a time for which many older Japanese people have a perverse kind of dewy-eyed nostalgia, the bicycle was a symbol of revival; one step above walking and thus one step in the right direction. The first Honda motorbike was a standard model gents' tourer with a bolt-on motor that sounded like a cat sneezing and couldn't have pulled a chicken off its nest. (It must have been a source of endless merriment at the Triumph factory in Birmingham). 

With this long history of cycling, their alleged commitment to the environment and their oft-professed pride in simplicity, you'd think people in Japan would still treasure bikes as sturdy friends. Not so. Entire rivers, lakes and swamps all rest on a solid bed of serviceable bicycles, and they can also be found up trees, on mountain tops and in the foundations of office blocks. Near my home in Shikoku, there was a canyon full almost to the brim with dead ones, and railway stations regularly have to deal with hundreds of them abandoned in the cycle park by absent-minded owners who, in the throes of Baroque hangovers, forget they own a bicycle at all and just go and buy another one. This lackadaisical attitude extends to scooters and motorbikes, too; along the riverbanks in cities lie hundreds of dumped ones, some stolen by juvenile delinquents and abandoned, others just thrown away. Even those that no longer run are still complete, with hundreds of parts and assemblies in good-as-new condition that in other countries would be sold to DIY buffs by used-part dealers. In Japan, however, such a trade would not work, as the technical knowledge to fix anything more complex than a light bulb is not a feature of their education, formal or otherwise.

Music at the Royal Wedding

I tuned in to the royal wedding in time for the bit where the couple stood on that oddly Speerian balcony at Buck House and snogged for the tourists. I’m not so stuck for titillation that the kiss itself held my attention, but rather had pulled up my chair for an appearance by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

I’ve been exiled from Albion’s shores lo these 22 years now. After the first decade or so away, during which I barely thought of the place from one month to the next, I began to construct a new and detailed view of Britain using mostly the thousands of random pieces I had gathered in the course of an unusually long childhood.

Whenever I’m back there – I still call it “going home” – it’s hard to see what has changed. As soon as I return to this side of the pond, however, the differences between Britain today and the country I grew up in become clear again, as the perspective of distance and history works its magic.

Queen Elizabeth has certainly seen those planes on a few occasions by now. The first time around they were brand new, and represented the state of the art back when Britain was a world center of aviation technology. She was a teenager, and the two fighters were being used daily for their designed purpose – chasing and destroying the planes of the enemy. One corner of the palace had been reduced to a heap of rubble by Elizabeth’s ancestors the Germans, who every night sent London an endless stream of dolphin-shaped bombers with evil Benz engines installed upside-down for greater efficiency.

Both the Spitfire and the Hurricane have the same Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, a huge V-12 that makes a very distinctive baritone booming sound. As the war progressed and the threat of invasion receded, it became Britain’s turn to pound cities from the air. As vast fleets of American bombers were leaving at dawn to bomb by day, the British obligingly shifted their operations to nighttime, with the Avro Lancaster heading the field. It’s powered aloft by four Merlins, whose voices have a slight choral dissonance. You can hear it coming and know what it is without looking.

Prince Charles, who was also on the balcony on Friday, bears more than a slight resemblance to his grandfather. King George the Sixth chose to stay in London throughout the war, even when invasion seemed imminent, and as an RAF veteran wore on his uniform the same embroidered wings sported last week by Prince William. The victory celebrations in 1945 featured the flypast to end them all, and the massed Merlins blasted the impudent microphones that sought to capture their mighty hymn.

Exactly fifty years later, almost to the day, I sat in a deck chair in my parents’ garden, surrounded by old friends. It was the afternoon of my wedding, and an extraordinary run of weather had turned Britain into a living postcard of a remembered youth, all shadows and warm scents. And suddenly there it was; faint down the wind, but unmistakable. My college metalwork teacher was there and heard it too, and so did my father, who had learned the song as an engine-obsessed boy during the war. Sure enough, the deep, hollow note grew and swelled until a single Spitfire streaked by no more than a mile away. No-one else raised their heads, but we three had savored that rare melody.

The Memorial Flight serves to keep alive the Merlin’s song, a voice undimmed by age that sings of a land in thrall to engineering, an industry at the peak of its creativity and power and the sense of purpose war brings to a society. Right behind them on Friday came their modern-day equivalents, sleek jet fighters flown by computers and built through partnerships with our former enemies that were forged to face the new perils – first the monolithic Soviets, and now who knows what beyond a rag-bag of terrorists, failed basket-case states and nebulous emerging threats. A thousand times more complex, potent and expensive than the three old warriors that led them through, the jets nevertheless sang of nothing, their voices a dull, bland roar.

Dogs I've known: Solly the Pup

Solly the Pup

Some years back I spent a happy couple of months training to be an outdoor survival instructor on a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland. The arrival of our group triggered the longest spell of fair weather anyone could remember, and the superstitious locals were somewhat reluctant to let us go. It was a beautiful spot, the Guinness was symphonic (and three quid a pint, even then) and the natives had eccentricity to spare. We were led, in a loose sense, by a dynamic but somewhat idiosyncratic former SAS guy. He had the right idea in wanting to make money by teaching survival skills to businessmen, but the wrong one about pretty well everything else. Still, he knew his onions when it came to living off the land, and under his errratic leadership an exciting time was had by all.

Among our brave band we counted Solly, without doubt the thickest dog in all natural history. Solly was an Alsatian, more or less, and about six months old. To say Solly was good natured would be a triumph of understatement. He lived solely to serve humanity, though unfortunately in the role of jester rather than anything useful. He was built like an overweight giraffe, and whenever he got excited control over his legs seemed to pass to an alien consciousness that hadn’t quite got the hang of working them. I got my first demonstration of his faithful, undying devotion to anyone at all while we were waiting at the ferry pier. “Watch this,” grinned our boss, and set off down the wooden jetty at a sprint. Game for any lark, Solly bounded along beside him, barking like a lunatic. A foot from the end, the callous human stopped dead. Solly’s spaghetti legs weren’t up to sudden halts, however, and he sailed in a graceful arc sixteen feet down into the frigid Irish Sea. Yells of encouragement brought him paddling frantically ashore, where he cowered shivering and whining on the beach. “Come on Solly!” yelled the boss, and ran off down the jetty once more. Sure enough, with a joyful yelp, the hapless mutt charged off after his beloved master – and straight into the drink again. “You’re a GOOD BOY!” chortled his tormentor, as the pathetic animal dragged himself back out of the sea, “Thick as a short plank, but a good boy!” Solly’s sodden tail wagged with delight.

For a survival training ground, the island was notably short on wild sources of nutrition. The sheep were off limits, for eating at least (they make great sleeping companions –  quiet at the back), and there wasn’t a lot in the way of leafy vegetation to be found on a seven-mile rock whose summit was encrusted in salt from massive Atlantic gales that drove sea spray clean over it. Rabbits, however, abounded, and when we inexplicably tired of eating raw limpets (hint: swallow early, as the more you chew, the bigger they get), we’d try to secure one of our floppy-eared chums for the pot. If you have a dog, of course, rabbit hunting is a piece of cake. Unless it was Solly. Often as we came down off the hill in the evening dusk, we could see rabbits dotting the turf below us like little dinner nuggets. Solly was dog enough that his ears would prick up at the sight, his tail would stick out like a lance and off he’d go, bounding downhill like an avenging Fury. The bunnies would watch him from the corners of their soft, doe-like eyes, poised at the critical moment to simultaneously scatter in random directions. Solly’s brain was an early 4-bit job, slightly brighter than a door chime but not as complex as, say, a programmable toaster. Too much input would freeze it, automatically applying the brakes to any moving limbs. Multiple vectors were more than this primitive device could handle, and faced with ten fleeing rabbits it simply shut down. Solly was no better at stopping on a hillside than on a pier, however, and it could take thirty feet for him to bring all his underpinnings under control, by which time the rabbits were safely in the hedges, blowing raspberries and sticking fingers up at their gormless nemesis.

One fateful evening, Solly made a major evolutionary leap. The rabbits exploded in all directions as usual, but in one of those monkey-with-a-typewriter moments, Solly actually latched onto one and kept after it. His quarry streaked down hill like a brick down a well, but for once Solly’s legs were on speaking terms with each other and he gained steadily like a heat-seeking missile. Astounded, we cheered him on.

Had there been any data-retention device between Solly’s ears, two pieces of information might have popped onto the screen and prevented what happened next. The first is the difference in mass between a small, cuddly rabbit and a dog who never refused anything from a can (even lapping up some unguarded brown paint on one memorable occasion). Brer Rabbit is built for speed and agility, and his svelte chassis permits lightning-fast turns. Solly, on the other hand, was a thing of berserk energy and momentum, both of which were now present in far greater amounts than he could handle. Botany not being his long suit either, he had no inkling why canny Irish farmers since days of yore have planted gorse hedges at the edge of their fields. Sheep, as anyone who has had one (oh stop it) knows, will eat most things found in nature, but gorse hedges are off the menu due to their batteries of lethal thorns.

Hurtling after his prey like a furry comet, Solly clearly had the scent of victory in his nostrils. The rabbit, however, had other ideas. A foot from the hedge, it hung a left as sharply as if demonstrating a geometry problem. Solly barely had time to register this unsportsmanlike ploy before he was engulfed in a green hell. It took us a good ten minutes to extract him, perforated and whimpering, while every rabbit from there to Dublin wet itself laughing.

I’ve met some memorably odd dogs in my life (Clive was another; I’ll tell you about him anon) but Solly holds a special place in my heart. His intellect-to-mass ratio was no better than that of some corals, but for sheer devotion he took the ribbon. I often wonder what became of him.

American cars and trains

From a letter to the UK, some years back:

My neighbor was fixing his motor this morning. It’s a 1973 Ford LTD; 18 feet long, almost three tons but only two doors (each, though, as long as some cars). Seats like armchairs in a Piccadilly club, column shift, copious swathes of maroon velvet and acres of fake wood printed directly onto metal. This, he tells me, is the small version with the 385-inch motor; there was a 440, and the police got a version with, wait for it, 600 cubes. 

He was replacing the front ball joints, and when I peered into the cavernous hole left by removing the wheel the whole setup from which the hub dangled looked less substantial than that of a Mini. The worryingly small disc was backed by tiny, spindly little arms that must flap and flex like asparagus under any sort of lively driving. Ford exhibited a touching faith in the quality of their components by securing the ball joints not with bolts but with huge rivets that have to be ground off to release the hub. 

"It’s a great car," he asserted, "I can go a whole week on a tank of gas." He works three miles away; the tank holds about 30 gallons. Go figure, as they say here. I rented a Chevy Suburban not long back, a 5.7-liter beast like an overweight Range Rover. Aware of their dreadful reputation as guzzlers, and knowing that we were going to Washington DC and back, I took it into a gas station and blithely said "Fill ‘er up." We were still sat there 15 minutes later – the damn thing had a 42-gallon tank. Despite the primordial pushrod V8, the aerodynamics of a block of flats and several hours at a steady 75, I couldn’t empty it.

I thought of you when I was up at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum a few weeks back; hall after hall of behemoths, including that electric thing designed by Raymond Loewy that looks like an art deco mantel clock and is made entirely from aluminum, and a really weird steam locomotive with vertical cylinders clinging to its flank like sucking piglets and driving a huge flywheel, whence the urge is transmitted to all 10 wheels (including the tender) by shafts and bevel gears. More than one can see in a day, and a vast 2-10-0 chuffing up and down outside, departing every hour to haul a train of ancient cars through the bewilderingly pretty Amish countryside.

Earthquakes in Japan: old friends

On January 17, 1995, I was awoken in my apartment to the east of Osaka by a sensation familiar to all long-term residents of Japan – the rhythmic rocking of the entire building. “A big one,” I remarked, as pots and pans clattered to the kitchen floor and the water in the bathtub sloshed over the sides. The swaying lasted about a minute, but the power stayed on and the sturdy concrete structure soon settled back down with only a few small cracks visible. It was only when I arrived at work to find my office trashed and saw the vast palls of smoke climbing into the skies over Kobe to the west that I realized that something catastrophic had occurred.

The following day, I was dispatched by my employer to find out what had happened various friends and colleagues. With a bundle of plastic sheets and supplies strapped behind me, I set off on my motorcycle.

Among the places on my rounds that harrowing day was the small natural history museum in the grounds of the Kaisei Hospital, run for fifty years by Dr. Norio Kikuchi. Happily he had survived, as had the building, and we sat together for a while on the nearby sea wall before surveying the damage together.

As a young medical intern in the years immediately after World War II, Dr. Kikuchi and his friends regularly toured the Amami Islands in a truck, stopping at each village to set up a clinic. Scattered in the East China Sea, far to the south of Japan’s mainland, the islands were among Japan’s poorest and most remote places. Their people lived mainly by fishing and subsistence farming, and outside the small towns there were no medical facilities at all. The young doctors from the mainland brought basic checks and care and were made welcome by everyone. After the day’s last clinic they would stretch a sheet over the side of the truck and show movies – the only ones many of the islanders ever saw, and vividly remembered even today by many in their eighties and nineties.

In the faded pictures displayed on his museum wall, Dr. Kikuchi is a tanned young man on a great adventure, in a time when the whole country was living from day to day in rubble and chaos. Now we sat in silence as he smoked his inevitable cigarette and gazed at the shore. “It’s a mess in there,” he remarked with a wry smile, “I’ll show you.”

The shutter over the main door rattled up, and immediately I could see what had happened inside. As the building lurched, all the cabinets had detached from the walls and fallen forward, their drawers sliding out as they toppled. Thousands of specimens lay scattered, strewn in a great flood across the floor and up against the glass door. Their boxes had opened, and the labels had fluttered out to cover every surface like thick snow. Dr. Kikuchi grimaced, then clapped me on the back. “Well, at least we’ve got something to do now!” he grinned.

Time and again in the weeks that followed, I remembered his words. In the wreckage of the city, where eight-story buildings had toppled onto their sides and railroad tracks lay twisted like uncoiled rope, people worked in a way I had never seen before. With incredible speed they cleared pathways through the devastation, searched the ruins for survivors and bodies and began the seemingly insurmountable task of restoring their homes. With the fires extinguished and the main roads clear, survivors returned to salvage what they could from the mounds of debris. All around them, a massive effort was under way to bring back electricity, water and transport. Crews from the utility companies toiled alongside local government workers, police and construction teams in a massive, coordinated effort to push back the mess and put the whole city right. To a nation that travels by train, the reopening of the first line through the city just days later had immense significance. Within a month, all four main lines were running again; by year’s end new buildings were rising all around, and many of those displaced were already contemplating the day when they would return to their neighborhoods.

Everyone I knew back then had the same attitude in the days and weeks that followed the quake. They took this mighty sucker-punch that had caught them in their beds, and stood right back up again. With all their wrenching loss and bereavement, they still bowed to each other as they met, and smiled as they traded experiences and advice. Even in the first terrible hours, as transport systems failed and victims struggled to escape, there was no mass panic or lawlessness, and a few incidents apart, police reported no looting or theft. Later investigations revealed that some structures had failed because they had been built in breach of codes or with corners cut for financial gain, but those are crimes of a different kind. In Kobe in 1995, the ordinary Japanese people showed the world who they are, and why they have always prevailed in the face of repeated disaster. Amidst the vast destruction and horror this week has brought, they are showing it again – the same small bows, the same wry smiles and the readiness to accept that now, once again, they have something to do.

Why houses are getting cheaper

The US housing market remains a sick puppy, lying in its basket and flippering feebly at human approach. Out here in Greater Suburbia, there are any number of clearly irresistible houses that have been for sale since about the thirteenth century. Anyone who can get a mortgage has their pick of a des. res. with all the amenities and a desperate seller.
So old Joe down the block, a 50-plus-year resident, went to the stars last Christmas. Joe's house was admittedly no great prize as he left it. He had last redecorated in about 1975, and the place sported a legendary guy basement full of a long lifetime's plunder from his place of employment, the Pennsylvania Railroad (When I first met him, ten years ago, he proudly boasted that he was still using up his vast stock of PR toilet paper. He retired in 1985). Rusting metal, bizarre home-made wiring and lots of water leaks dripping in the gloom meant you had keep your hands to yourself. Still, once his nephew had cleaned it all out, it wasn't a bad little house. It sold this spring to a very nice Mexican family, for roughly what it would have cost in 1980.
Looking around the ol' neighborhood (try Zillow.com), most other joints that have changed hands in the last year have sold for about 40% less than they would had the market remained even flat after 2007.
The big question then, pop pickers: is this a temporary lull, with the Good Times just waiting at the gate to scamper back in when the sun comes out, or a permanent re-setting of the market? The latter, in my opinion. Here's a bit of Captain Economics 101:
Any kid of ten (I have one around here somewhere) can tell you that growth-based economics is a crock. Even two percent growth, compounded, requires that your economy double in size within a lifetime - something that cannot happen unless you start out a lot poorer than we are. Once all the conquerable lands with natural resources and inadequately armed people are invaded and civilized, the only way this model continues to work is if we get to hit the re-set button every few decades. Traditionally, this was done by holding a World War; the victors got to drive the losers' economies for a while, and could thus rig things like exchange rates and trade agreements in their own favor. Presto: boom times for the winners, gradual recovery for the losers, nothing to worry about for, oh, a good 50 years.
The last time we got to do this was in 1945, and now time's up. The golden glow of WWII has long since faded, but no-one's had the nerve to start WWIII and the economy has thus been bleating for a major re-set lo these 20 years past. Seeing as we can't get it together to hold another round of global mayhem, however, various parts of it are going ahead and re-setting themselves.
Of the $220,000 average price of a house in my neighborhood four years ago, I'd say that about $40,000 was nominal value (also known in the trade as "trying it on"). That's the difference between replacement cost (which your insurance company uses to calculate your policy) and the selling cost. To buy a house like mine in outer Detroit would cost about $25,000; in Palo Alto, about $450,000. For the same house. The replacement value in both places would be similar. As you can see, Detroit features negative nominal value - houses sell for less than they cost to build, which is why no-one is building any - while in La-la Land there's almost no connection between what something is worth and what you have to pay.
A healthy housing market is one in which nominal value is no more than a certain fraction of replacement value, and I'm proud to say that my neighborhood qualifies. Which is why houses do actually sell here, and yet don't even a mile or two away, where nominal value makes up over 30% of the asking price.
Look for the housing market to start moving again when houses sell for a figure that is closer than telescope distance to their actual value. Californians - don't hold your breath...

Starting the Pole Star

Away we go.

This is the opening message from the Captain, here at the Pole Star. This blog is about life on earth, with no particular focus at first. Read along as things progress, and as the man said: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like".