As I lay groaning in the hotel bedroom in Taipei, certain I was going to die, the thought occurred to me that no-one knew where I was. I’d checked into a cheap hotel and, in the days when you thought twice before picking up the phone to make an international call, I hadn’t told anyone where I was staying. In my delirium I convinced myself that when the maid found my dead body the hotel owners would avoid any annoying questions by throwing me and my belongings into the river.
Taiwan isn’t the only place I’ve succumbed to ‘Delhi belly’ (as a matter of fact I’ve had it in Delhi) but I’ve never suffered in Japan, even though I’ve experimented with some of the world’s strangest food there*. There’s an irony here because if you were to choose any bathroom in the world in which to spend an excessive amount of time, it would have to be Japan. Their toilets are wonderful. They are there to pamper you, with heated seats and a button which operates a spray of warm water to clean your bottom. There’s a separate button, as a diagram helpfully explains, for washing a lady’s front bottom – gentlemen are advised not to press this button by mistake. Some models will play music or the sound of running water to hide any embarrassing sounds, and the more advanced models will automatically close the toilet lid after use. This last feature would explain why the divorce rate in Japan is so much lower than it is in England – they don’t have arguments about leaving the toilet seat up.
These space-age toilets (known as washlets) are universally popular with Western visitors who often ask why they aren’t used back home. This is a mystery – one of the strangest statistics I’ve been given is that Toto, the largest manufacturer, sold 1m of these toilets in Japan over the course of a year and only 4 in the whole of Europe. One of the reasons for their lack of popularity here may be our reluctance to broach the subject. I’m reminded of the Texan visiting a posh country house who, when asked if he wanted to wash his hands, replied: “No thanks Ma’am, I washed them on the rose bed on my way in”.
As we drove through the Lake District, my Japanese friend was particularly taken by the dry stone walls which bounded every field. He was also impressed by the rich colour of the moss which is growing spectacularly in this warm, wet, winter covering every shaded surface. Sometimes the dry stone walls would, themselves, be covered in moss, creating a vivid verdant sculpture. This is how the moss would have looked at Koke-dera (see -http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/12/24/the-moss-temple-garden-koke-dera-is-this-the-best-garden-in-the-world/) if we hadn’t visited it in the dry season. The Lakeland moss seems to have an extra dimension as it climbs up the trees as well as covering the ground. Because it’s everywhere we take it for granted, but the truth is we have a thousand Koke-dera’s right here on our doorstep – there really was no need for me to travel 6,000 miles to see a moss garden.
Every Japanese business has an English name and there’s something very endearing about the fact that they never quite get it right. The best boutique hotel in Fukuoka is called “With the Style”; the largest second-hand book shop is “Book-off” (there’s a branch of the same business, which sells second hand computers with the wonderful name of “Hard-off”). I was browsing through Book-off when I can across a book by Alex Kerr called “Lost Japan.” What a find it turned out to be. Although Alex Kerr is an American, the book was originally written in Japanese and in 1994 it won the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan, the first time a foreigner had won the award. The book tells us what it’s like to live in Japan and how Japanese society works.
When the author first came to Japan in the 1970’s, he noticed that when people left the countryside to live in a town, which they were doing by the thousands, they wouldn’t bother to sell their house in the country, they’d just abandon it, sometimes without removing anything – they’d leave the furniture, the bedding, even utensils. He went searching for the house of his dreams in Shikoku and fell in love with an abandoned wooden house with a thatched roof, which he bought for $1,300, and set about restoring. He called it Chiiori, “the house of the flute”, and what he did was so unusual that it’s now become a tourist attraction.
Alex Kerr laments the loss of the Japan which he first encountered when he arrived in the seventies. But in one respect the Japan which he loved is still there. Strangely, although property prices in the cities are amongst the highest in the world, no-one wants to live in the countryside, which is still littered with abandoned houses, which can be acquired for a song. The irony is that millions in the cities hanker after the Slow Life. If they cared to look they’d find that it’s there, right under their noses.
When I was fresh out of university and even more naive than I am now I came across a family called Elliot who published a series of books known as “Elliot’s Right Way” books, each written by a different expert in their field. They covered dozens of topics, from driving to bridge to gardening. I was amazed to find that the names of the experts were made up and that each and every one of the books were written by Elliot himself or one of his two sons. They were massively popular and earned a fortune for the Elliot family.
It was a similar story with Mrs Beeton, author of the famous cookbook. Her husband was a publisher and he got his wife, who couldn’t cook to save her life, to pretend to be an expert and together they cobbled together a cookbook relying entirely on the expertise of others. Lots of howlers crept in, such as advice to cook carrots for 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours. Mr Beeton went on to produce a gardening manual under his wife’s name, which was ridiculed in the gardening magazines.
The Beeton story came to mind today when I read that Jamie Oliver has been named as one of the country’s most influential gardeners*. Now, there are two things we can say with certainty about Jamie Oliver. The first is that he can cook (unlike Mrs Beeton). The second is that he’s no gardener. He’s been named as an influential gardener because the DIY store, Homebase, have employed him as their new face. It happens that I’m a regular at Homebase (see - http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/11/11/over-wintering-cannas/) and I’ve seen ‘Jamie Oliver’ branded plants on sale there. I thought they were poor quality and over-priced, and I’ve got a feeling that that view was shared by others, as they featured prominently in the half-price “bargain corner”, looking rather worse for wear.
Influential Jamie Oliver may be, but it’s a poor sort of influence if the product is as bogus as the name of the author on an “Elliot Right Way” book.
Like Amy Winehouse, she was compared to Billie Holiday, and like her she had an addictive personality – in her case to men and cigarettes – and like her she died in 2011, although she managed, just, to reach her allotted three score years and ten. But unlike Amy Winehouse, dying was not the best career move available to her. Cesaria Evora only became famous outside her native Cape Verde Islands when she was 50 and already a grandmother. Her first album, Miss Perfumada, released in 1992, won her 8 gold discs and she was awarded the Legion D’Honneur in 2008. She was brought up in an orphanage because her mother was too poor to raise her and she suffered extreme poverty in adulthood. Her life was more turbulent, more colourful and more productive than Amy’s and her talent was just as prodigious, but she won’t, more’s the pity, make the slightest dent on the British charts.
This video is of Sodade… meaning, appropriately, longing.
When my friend Kenji first came to England in 1972 he was given just one pound in exchange for a 1,000 yen note. This year he exchanged 1,000 yen for £8. This eight-fold increase in the value of the yen is partly a reflection of the rise of Japan’s economy and partly due to the relative decline of ours. In 1972, Japan was just beginning to export its odd little cars to the UK. How we scoffed. Who would dream of buying a Japanese car with a funny name when you could buy something British called the Humber Super Snipe? But soon after this my mother fell for the sporty Toyota Celica and now my family own four Japanese cars and every camera and TV in our house is Japanese.
I’ll never forget the sense of awe which I felt when I first visited Hong Kong and saw its soaring skyscrapers. Arriving in Tokyo today revives that feeling. It’s not just the buildings – everything is modern and up to date – light years ahead of our own capital city. I feel privileged to be able to share in that wealth when I visit Japan. I’m full of admiration for what they’ve achieved, but I can’t help feeling that when you add together all the Japanese stuff we’ve bought over the years, I’ve paid for quite a bit of it.
furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water
~Basho, 1686
When I asked Kazu Ishihara which were the ten best gardens in Japan (excluding gardens he had designed) his list included Kiyosumi in Tokyo (as well as, inevitably, a garden he had designed himself). Kiyosumi has strong British connections because the tea house, which is now its focal point, was built as a guest house for Lord Kitchener and because the garden was originally built for a Tudor-style residence designed by the English architect Josiah Conder, the man who re-modelled Tokyo in the nineteenth century. Sadly, the house, together with nearly everything else he built, was destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 (what the earthquake didn’t get, the American bombs did). But there’s nothing at all English about the garden, which is a typical Japanese “strolling” garden, whose pathways wind around a large pond. Even in mid-winter the garden is enchanting but it looks its best, I’m told, in May and June when spectacular displays of iris and azalea come into flower. But there’s a problem with including this garden in Japan’s top ten. It borrows its scenery from some of Tokyo’s ugliest architecture, which intrudes into every aspect. In fact it’s impossible to take a photo of the garden which doesn’t include a chunk of brutal concrete. I’ll have to ask Kazu to reconsider.
Note: The Basho haiku is carved on a stone monument in the garden.
Alex Kerr tells the story of how he arrived late one afternoon at Kongo Sanmai-in, a temple that offers rooms to pilgrims and travellers and he was asked by one of the monks if he would like to see the Buddha in the main hall, but he said he was too tired. Later that evening, on the way to the bath, he passed a monk who remarked pleasantly how fortunate he had been to be able to see their Buddha of divine power. “Well, actually, we were planning to see it tomorrow”, he replied. The monk shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Sanmai-in’s Buddha is a hibutsu. Mt Koya’s other statues are sometimes put on display, or even lent to other temples, but this one has never left the mountain. This is the first time it has ever been shown to the general public. It’s called a five-hundred-year hibutsu. The doors closed at five o’clock today and you’ll have to wait another five hundred years if you want to see it.”
The “five-hundred year hibutsu” is good rule for travellers and today, finding myself in Tokyo on one of the very rare days that the Emperor opened the inner garden of the Imperial Palace to the public there was no way I was going to miss the chance to stroll in the Emperor’s garden. The word stroll implies a quiet contemplative walk, but what I hadn’t bargained for was the fact that the Emperor himself would be there with his family so I had to share the walk with 100,000 Japanese who didn’t want to miss the chance to see their Royal family. And so the fascination of the visit turned out not to be the Emperor’s garden (which didn’t amount to much after all) but the sight of his Palace, surprisingly made of concrete and steel, and the Emperor and his family waving at us from a balcony behind bullet proof glass and the enthusiasm of a multitude of Japanese, waving their national flag.
I’ve yet to come across a deeply religious Japanese person. The Japanese follow two main religions, Shintoism and Buddhism, but more, so they tell me, as a ritual or a superstition, than a matter of faith. But they have a new God, which they seem to follow blindly, the God of Electricity. Monuments to this God are everywhere, even in the most sacred Shinto sanctuaries. They are especially prominent on the mountain sides, as if to permanently remind us that the once beautiful virgin forests have been bulldozed and replaced with crytomeria pines. But it would be unfair to say the utility poles and pylons have ruined Japan’s urban landscape – it would be unremittingly ugly without them. The phrase ‘urban jungle’ could have been coined to describe the concrete bleakness of Japan’s cities.
Where, then, is the beauty in Japan? Well, not all the architecture is grim – the skyscrapers of Tokyo rival New York and Hong Kong. There is breath-taking beauty in Japan’s coastline, its lakes, temples and gardens. But the essential beauty of Japan is in the small details – a simple flower arrangement or an ornament in a tokonoma alcove.
Japan above all is the land of beautiful people. There’s nothing more depressing than standing in a queue behind an American who has let himself go – by which I mean let himself grow to twice his normal width. In Japan size zero is the norm; people take pride in their appearance and often look far younger than their years. Last year, at the Gardening World Cup one of the translators, who worked hard and played hard, had been out all night celebrating her birthday and the designers were wondering how old she was. ”27″ said one, “No, 24″ said another. She was 41, but like so many Japanese didn’t look her age because she hadn’t put on the weight which is associated with growing older. Very few men or women develop the middle-aged spread which we think is inevitable, so that their waist measurement at 60 is the same as it was at 30. The Japanese look good and to see them makes me feel good and takes my mind off those utility poles.
There was a massively thick copy of the Yellow Pages next to the Gideon Bible in my hotel room in Miami. It turned out that the reason for its excessive bulk was that there were more than 100 pages devoted to adverts from lawyers. There are over a million lawyers in the States and I’m sure there’s enough work for each and every one of them. It’s a reflection of the difference in the way of life between America and Japan that Japan has only 25,000 lawyers.
One of the reasons why America has so many lawyers is that there’s so much crime. The fear of crime permeates every aspect of ordinary American life. In Japan, crime is rare and consequently there’s no fear of it. If a woman goes into a crowded Starbucks in Tokyo and wants to bag a seat, she’ll leave her handbag on a chair while she joins the queue at the counter. She doesn’t have the slightest worry that it won’t be there when she gets back. When the bars and clubs empty in Shinjuku in the early hours, a lot of very tipsy people will pour out onto the streets, but it’s a happy crowd, completely free from any tension or aggression and everyone will get home safely. When motorists park up they’ll leave their car unlocked, with the keys in in the ignition.
There was a time when, as a visitor to a new and unfamiliar place, I relished the sense of danger in knowing that I couldn’t trust anyone and that my money and passport were under constant threat. But there’s a wonderful feeling of liberation in being in a place where you can trust everyone, and equally importantly, they trust you. When you check into a hotel you won’t be asked to pay in advance and only rarely asked for your credit card details. And when you do come to pay, whether it’s in a hotel, restaurant or shop you can be certain that no-one is trying to over-charge you or rip you off and you don’t have to count your change. A country with only 25,000 lawyers is a very good place to be.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials Thoreau
The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food and extend them to life in general. Here in the Lake District where I live with my wife and three daughters, we have a garden where we grow our own food. We know full well that this is an inefficient and expensive way of organising our lives but we do it because we enjoy it and because it forces us to eat healthily and in season. It is slow, because gardening is all about patience.
The principles of Slow Food are "good, clean and fair" - 'good' means that the food should be of good quality, 'clean' means that it should be free of pesticides or harmful chemicals, 'fair' means that when you buy from a farmer, you pay him a decent price. Supermarkets and the large chain stores routinely break all these principles, which is why we, as a family, don't use them. Slow food means also taking the time and trouble to cook the food yourself and to take pleasure in eating it with your family and friends. I like the idea of extending the principles of Slow Food to life in general with the aim of achieving a good work/life balance.
This blog of my Slow Life is mainly about my garden in the Lake District, but also about my hotels, where I earn my living, and about the occasional forays, which my Slow Life allows, into the worlds of design, music and local affairs.
There's also quite a lot in this blog about Japan and the Japanese. This is because I admire their way of life and the fact that the Japanese, more than any other nation, are trying to embrace the Slow Life, even to the extent of having Slow Cities.
As I lay groaning in the hotel bedroom in Taipei, certain I was going to die, the thought occurred to me that no-one knew where I was. I’d checked into a cheap hotel and, in the days when you thought twice before picking up the phone to make an international call, I hadn’t told anyone where I was staying. In my delirium I convinced myself that when the maid found my dead body the hotel owners would avoid any annoying questions by throwing me and my belongings into the river.
Like Amy Winehouse, she was compared to Billie Holiday, and like her she had an addictive personality – in her case to men and cigarettes – and like her she died in 2011, although she managed, just, to reach her allotted three score years and ten. But unlike Amy Winehouse, dying was not the best career move available to her. Cesaria Evora only became famous outside her native Cape Verde Islands when she was 50 and already a grandmother. Her first album, Miss Perfumada, released in 1992, won her 8 gold discs and she was awarded the Legion D’Honneur in 2008. She was brought up in an orphanage because her mother was too poor to raise her and she suffered extreme poverty in adulthood. Her life was more turbulent, more colourful and more productive than Amy’s and her talent was just as prodigious, but she won’t, more’s the pity, make the slightest dent on the British charts.
