As you can perhaps guess from various comments here and there in these little 'scribbles', food was one of the main pleasures of our two-week trip. The anticipation before each meal, the decision about where to eat, and then of course the actual enjoyment of the food itself ... it's hard to say which gave us the most satisfaction. Before arriving in Vancouver, I had assumed that because I had lived there for many years and Sadako was seeing the place for the first time, our dining experiences would be quite different - for her, everything would be new, but for me, it would be visits to familiar places. As it turned out though, restaurants and food shops had changed so much during the decade in which I had been living in Japan, that I too found myself walking around in open-eyed wonder; almost everything was completely new to me. So those anticipations, decisions, and enjoyments were very much shared by both of us. But one particular lunch we had one day was different ... although a completely new experience for her, it was very familiar for me ...

One morning we made a trip to a semi-industrial area of the city, as I had to visit a shipping company to arrange the forwarding to Japan of some boxes of books that I had left in storage years ago. This business was finished just before noon, and we walked through the rather barren streets of this district on the way back to a main road where we could catch a bus 'home'. Here, among the rows of old brick warehouses, I saw a sight which for me, was like a vision from the past.

It was a small building sitting on a corner lot. The white painted wood-framed structure was so old that it no longer stood quite vertical, but leaned forward a little, as if pulled over by the weight of two large round red 'Coca-Cola' buttons which hung high up on the front wall. These old-fashioned icons bracketed the faded sign which announced to the passerby that this was "Elsie's Cafe". The moment I saw this place, I knew that we had to have lunch there, but I was a little worried about Sadako; it obviously wasn't going to be the cleanest restaurant we could find for lunch, and she's quite a bit more fastidious than I ...

Seeing that word 'Cafe', please don't imagine 'cafe' in the European sense, but rather as simply a short form of the word 'cafeteria'. This was no elegant place to sit and sip espresso, but a working men's cafe, the sort of place the English refer to as a 'Transport Caff', and the Americans as a 'diner'. Stationed here among the warehouses, it no doubt served up breakfast and lunch each day to the men working in the area.

It had been many years since I had eaten in such a place, but at different times in my life, I had taken most of my meals in cafes just like this. I knew exactly what we would see inside - in the centre of the room a horseshoe-shaped counter with red-topped stools arrayed around it, along one wall a half dozen booths, and up on one wall a menu board made of some kind of grooved black material in which white letters were arranged to spell out the 'Daily Specials'. There would be a 'Silex' type coffee machine somewhere, and plenty of those glass sugar dispensers with the little flip tops that pour out a spoonful at a time. Battered menus would stand in metal holders at intervals along the counter, and if we were very very lucky, at the back of each of the booths would be a juke box controller, with page after page of song titles to browse through ...

Sadako agreed to give it a try, her misgivings about the general appearance of the place mitigated a bit no doubt by my visible enthusiasm, and we went inside. It was almost exactly as I had imagined; unfortunately no juke box, but everything else was perfectly in place, and all complete with a coating of grime. As all during our two-week trip we had been eating good breakfasts and solid dinners, leaving lunch as just a small 'nibble' to tide us over, we weren't looking for a full meal. So we passed over the Daily Special, and chose instead from the list of burgers and sandwiches on the menu: Denver ... BLT ... Clubhouse ... Sadako ordered a toasted bacon and lettuce, and I a grilled cheese, and while we waited for them to be prepared I tried to count how many years it had been since I last ate such a thing ... about twelve or more.

There was certainly no 'caffe latte' on the menu here, and when we asked for coffee we were served with thick china mugs of a warm brown liquid that a devotee of the Tokyo coffee shop scene might not recognize. Considering that at 70 cents it was almost exactly one tenth the price of a standard Tokyo coffee, that's perhaps not a surprise. It tasted fine though, as did the sandwiches. Sadako was intrigued by mine; the idea of a sandwich made with the butter on the outside was new to her.

In a way I was a bit sad that this place wasn't nearer to our hotel; I would have liked to come back and try a few more things that I remembered. Maybe a cheese-burger, served open-face with a fried egg on top, chips and gravy on the side. Not the kind of thing I'd like to eat regularly ... but surely once a decade wouldn't hurt ... I must admit though, that there was one important thing missing from Elsie's Cafe - and that was Elsie! It was a slightly bizarre experience. The building 'preserved' so well, the menu still the same as it must have been for decades, the whole ambience of the place frozen in time; and then presiding over these things, an elderly gentleman from Hong Kong - a man from a completely different world. I thought it better not to ask what had happened to Elsie ...

When we got up to leave, he laboriously wrote down the prices for our sandwiches and coffees on a scrap of paper and then asked us for four dollars and eighty cents. We paid it with a smile. After all, 390 yen (just about what a piece of toast would have cost us back home) was a pretty good price for a half-hour ride in a time machine!

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Our trip was scheduled to last two weeks - or to put it another way - fourteen dinners! With three days off for a side trip we were planning to make up to the Rockies, and another day reserved for the 'official' family reunion dinner, that left just eleven evenings free to spend in the enjoyable search for interesting restaurants in Vancouver, a pleasure that had afforded me a great deal of anticipation while waiting for this trip. Where to start? Perhaps south-east Asia: Vietnamese, Malaysian ... Thai. How about Mediterranean: Lebanese, Greek ... Italian. Or maybe Indian, Jamaican, Native Canadian, English, Spanish ... the list goes on and on and on - as long as that line of flags that stands outside the UN building in New York. And only eleven days!

Perhaps it may seem strange that somebody living in Tokyo, one of the world's great capitals, should be looking forward to travelling to a relatively small city like Vancouver to get interesting dining experiences. Surely we Tokyoites have every possible type of food available right on our doorsteps, don't we? Well, yes and no. Tokyo does indeed have everything, and with enough diligent searching to find the place, many hours spent on trains getting there and back, and a trip to the bank for a loan to pay the exorbitant bill with which we are certain to be presented, we can eat any type of food that we wish. But it becomes an expedition, a major event, certainly not a simple "Let's go out for dinner tonight. What kind of food would you like to eat?" sort of affair.

Why should it be that Vancouver, with a population less than a tenth that of Tokyo, offers such a bewildering variety of restaurants, while the larger city remains such a 'wasteland'? It is of course, due to historical immigration patterns. Tokyo may be a city of embassies, but Vancouver is a city of immigrants, thousands upon thousands of them every year, coming from every corner of the world. Although a small proportion of these arrive well-off financially, by far the greater number arrive with not much more than what they have carried with them. Jobs are scarce, and they have few skills, but they do know how to do one thing ... and that is cook. Not 'four-star' hotel cooking, but the simple basic methods of preparing the day-to-day foods of their native country. Lacking the capital necessary to start up more sophisticated businesses, opening a tiny restaurant is one of the few options open to them. They find a cheap hole in the wall space on a back street somewhere, clean it up, put in a few tables and chairs, scribble a menu on the wall, and go to it. Ingredients are usually not a problem, because after generations of immigration, markets supplying foodstuffs from all over the world are also common here. And thus one more restaurant is added to Vancouver's 'collection', and perhaps even one more flag ...

But Sadako and I had only eleven days ... Well, don't worry, I'm not about to embark on a plate-by-plate description of everything we ate during our trip. We didn't even get to eleven different countries, as we started repeating a bit (Sadako fell for those Greek salads ... the feta cheese ...), and we also got captivated by the new multi-ethnic cafe-restaurants that have sprung up since I was last here (more about them later ...), but we did get to Lebanon, Vietnam, Greece, England, China, Italy ...

All in all, it was a most enjoyable 'tour', especially for Sadako, and when it finally came time to return to Japan, we did so with a definite sense of regret at the delights we were leaving behind. And actually, they were not all left behind. In our carry-on baggage were a couple of spanakopita we picked up just before leaving our hotel. Sadako had been wanting to try them every time we had walked past that restaurant, but we never did get a chance.

So that was our goodbye to Vancouver - Greek spinach pie eaten at the airport just before boarding our plane. Itadakimaaaaasu!

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

A number of my friends and acquaintances have made trips overseas in recent years, and they usually bring back a sheaf of photographs taken on their journey. Invariably, these photographs are all of a type - the friend or a member of the family posed in front of some famous or scenic place. I don't want to see pictures of my friend; I want to see interesting pictures of the places he went! I don't mean to be sarcastic, because my family photo album also contains similar pictures, and I understand why this happens; it is always difficult to take good photographs of scenery, especially with a small multi-purpose camera. Without a person posed in front of the lens, such pictures are almost always completely devoid of any point of interest. What looked like a beautiful and magnificent mountain range in 'real life' turns out in the developed print to be nothing more than a blurry row of bumps in the distance. But at least our friend standing there squinting in the sunshine is recognizable!

So for our trip this time, although I did take a camera, I didn't use it much, having long ago given up any expectations of coming back from trips with any photographs that I would feel proud of. But even though I thus have no actual photographs to show you, I do have a collection of remembered 'images' - moments from the two weeks that somehow made an impression on me, that stuck in my mind. Would you like to see some of my vacation 'snapshots'?

A bus stop: at which we stand waiting for the Number 3 'Robson' trolley to come and take us back to our hotel. Many other buses also stop at this point, and as one of them pulls in to the curb and stops, an elderly man with a cane limps towards the bus. As he approaches, the entire front corner of the bus suddenly collapses to the ground with a 'swoosh' of air - just as though one of the tires had become punctured. The old man steps easily onto the platform, which is now level with the sidewalk, and as soon as he is safely aboard, the driver reverses the mechanism and the vehicle smoothly lifts itself back into normal position and drives away. We notice a sign on the side ... "Kneeling Bus."

The Granville Mall: a main street in the centre of town, closed to cars to form a pedestrian mall, and featured prominently in all the tourist guide books. One morning I pass by here, and notice a group of four people standing forlornly on a street corner - a family of Japanese tourists, parents and two teenage children. Father inspects a guidebook, while the others take in the sights: a couple of drunks lying against a nearby building, the panhandlers standing with their hands out, the decrepit buildings housing sex appliance shops and adult video stores ...

Meanwhile, right outside our hotel just a few hundred yards away, the streets are buzzing with activity. People read their morning newspapers in sidewalk cafes, stroll along the seashore on the seawall, stop and chat in the morning sunshine ... It is an entirely different world, but as it's not a particularly 'famous' area, the Japanese tourists will probably never see it during their stay in Vancouver.

Which image of this city will that family take back to Japan, the panhandlers and sex shops, or the cheerful community?

A bank lobby: where as we wait in line to cash some traveler's cheques, we notice a small table off to one side on which stands a coffee pot and some cups, along with a sign: "Gourmet Coffee - Help Yourself." There are a couple of chairs there, and as we stand and watch, an elderly couple enter the building help themselves to coffee, and sit down to relax. A minute later they are joined by a friend, but as there are no chairs left he walks across the lobby and 'borrows' one from the loan department. When he returns with the chair and pours his coffee, the three of them settle down for a chat, just as though this was a lounge in the local community centre. At the counter doing our business I ask the clerk about this, and she tells me "Oh, we don't mind. They are in here almost every morning."

An overgrown, bushy area in one of the many parks: as we stroll along I notice clumps of large berries growing in the tangle of vines. They are blackberries, and five minutes later my tongue is a deep purple colour, there is a juice stain on my shirt, and I'm grimacing in pain from more than a few deep scratches on my arms and hands. But I'm very very happy. These delicious berries grow all over the city, anywhere that a few square metres of space has been left alone by the parks maintenance crews, and the end of August is the perfect time to sample them. Colour is your guide; the small red ones are not ready ... those that have gone black but are still quite hard are not ready ... but the big, soft, juicy purply-black ones are perfect! If you can reach them, that is. For no sooner does any particular berry reach this prime condition, than it is plucked off by the first passerby. Easily reached areas of the bush are thus kept 'picked clean'. As you stand there looking for prime targets you can always see many just waiting to be plucked ... but they are always just that fraction too high, or too deep within the bush. And those thorns! Long, hard, and very sharp! But we discovered a good way to quickly accumulate a handful of delicious berries - work in a group. On father's shoulders a light-weight daughter reaches up to 'unplucked' territory, and passes the fruit down to another daughter standing by.

These berries should be in the guidebooks!

In Lynn Valley, tucked away in the mountains that form the northern boundary to the urban area: we've come up on the bus for a short stroll among the tall trees. As we walk along the forest path, we pass stumps marking places where trees had been logged off many years ago. After ten years of living in Japan, where trees in the hills near my home are harvested at a girth of about 20cm, these massive stumps, about 2 meters in diameter, come as quite a shock. What must it have been like to walk through this forest when these giants were still alive? How could men ever have been so arrogant as to destroy them so coldbloodedly?

We reach the stream that flows down the valley, and stand in wonder on the bank overlooking a pool among the rocks. The colour of the water is beyond description: I want to tell you that it was an emerald green, yet that is not true, it was actually completely transparent - every tiny pebble on the bottom was visible. The desire to become submerged in this crystal liquid is intense, but as we have not come prepared for swimming, I can only stand and enviously watch the local children as they play in the magical fluid.

I make a private plan to return here for a swim before we have to leave Canada, but our list of 'places to go, things to do, people to see' is truly endless, and we don't make it. But I remember ... and I'll be back ...

The Stanley Park seawall: strolling along one evening after sunset. On our right, a rocky section of the beach, with gentle waves lapping at the shore. On the left, the dense undergrowth of the park. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a movement on the rocks below us, and we freeze and stand silently peeking through the gloom. What is it? A moment later, a head pokes up into view and scans left and right. It's a raccoon, and I speak softly to him, offering reassurance that we mean no harm; he is free to cross the path. He takes my word for it, and we watch as four of them (parents and two kids?) scramble up onto the seawall about two metres in front of us, and dart across into the dark greenery on the other side. For a few seconds we hear them scrambling deeper into the forest, and then all is silent again.

We weren't so surprised to find raccoons living in the heart of the city, but a few nights later, our eyes certainly opened wide when we spotted a skunk strolling along through the greenery just outside the door of our hotel! When we asked about this, the locals just shrugged their shoulders "Skunks? Oh, there's lots of those around. Why not? Who's going to bother them?" Who indeed!

This 'snapshot' is a 'double'... The beach at English Bay, just a few steps from our hotel, on a day near the end of our visit. The sand is packed with sunbathers, the water full of swimmers, and the large diving platform with a tall slide floats just off the shore, the children lined up waiting for their turn to slide down into the sea. The concession stands are doing booming business in hot dogs, fries and colas. Lifeguards in their red shorts watch over the summery scene from tall chairs and rowboats, and the beach front pathway is crowded with strollers and onlookers.

The second snapshot is of the same location, but taken on the next day, September 3rd - the first day of school. The summer vacation is over, and although the sun still shines and the water still beckons, the beach is absolutely deserted. The diving platform is gone, towed away to winter storage somewhere, the concessions are closed, and the lifeguards are busy cleaning out their 'station' in the low building that stands behind the beach path. Only a few strollers are on the path now, and all along the shoreline, sticks of wood, strands of seaweed, and other debris tossed ashore by the waves is starting to accumulate. But the sun still shines ...

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Here's a little tale of two cities, or at least, of the trains of two cities. May I play a little game, and call these places 'A' and 'B' for a moment?

In City 'A', the trains and buses run quite efficiently, the vehicles are clean and generally on time, and the system is well organized, although very crowded during rush hours. But there have been many problems recently with passengers avoiding payment of the proper fares. In fact, cheating is rampant. Every few months, stories appear in the newspaper describing the latest fare scam, and how the transit authorities have moved to counter it. Students, salaried workers, many segments of society play the 'game' of trying to cheat the system. Passengers are even sometimes seen jumping over the entrance barriers, in order to enter without paying.

In City 'B' also, the system is very efficient. Routes are well thought out, vehicles are new and clean, and the trains and buses are well integrated. In this city though, jumping over barriers is not a problem - there are none. To board a train, one simply walks into the station, takes the escalator up to the platforms, and steps into the first train that comes. Arriving at the destination station, the procedure is reversed - off the train, down the stairs, and out onto the street. There are no turnstiles, no gates, no ticket collectors. It's not that the system is free, as tickets are required to ride the vehicles, and vending machines for these are found near the entrances to all stations. But the designers of the system obviously feel that their populace can be trusted enough to do away with checking everybody to see that they have paid the fare. It is an 'honour' system.

So just where are these two cities? If I were to tell you that they are (in no particular order) Vancouver and Tokyo, would you be able to match the two of them with the descriptions above? I suppose that those of you with no personal experience of either of these two cities will perhaps identify Tokyo as the 'honest' city, and Vancouver, with its rather more individualistic population, as the place with the cheating problem, but residents of the two cities know better. It is the other way around, and it is the Tokyo riders who play the fare 'games' so avidly. A recent story in one of my Tokyo newspapers quoted officials of the railway companies to the effect that lost revenue from the cheating was estimated to be on the order of many billions of yen per year.

What are the motivations behind these patterns of behaviour, which contradict our common images of Japanese people as being extremely law-abiding, and Westerners as being more 'free-wheeling'? It seems to me that there are a few causes for the Tokyo cheating - the first and strongest of which is the extremely high cost of transportation in this city. Ticket prices are high, and taking the trains day after day can run up very large monthly bills. The incentive to cheat 'a little' is always there. The fierce complexity of the system also encourages this in a way. With so many routes, so many fare schemes, and so many different ways to calculate the routing of a journey, attempts to 'shave' travel costs by artful application of the rules is a completely legitimate procedure. But the line between justifiable manipulation of the rules and outright theft is perhaps sometimes unclear ... Another important factor is one common in societies all over the world - the system is so large and faceless, that it is easy to feel as though nobody is being 'hurt' by cheating. People who would never think of stealing a piece of merchandise will cheat the train system without a second thought. It just doesn't seem like 'stealing'.

How about those Vancouverites then - do all those people thronging the stations each rush hour really have a ticket nestled in their pocket? Well, although I suppose that most of them do, I am sure that there are some who don't. I don't believe that Japanese and Canadians are really that different, and that when faced with similar environments, they probably behave in similar ways. The motivation for cheating in the Vancouver system is much less; the fares are cheaper, and the system is on such a smaller scale, that it hardly seems worthwhile to cheat it. Then too, it isn't completely an honour system, as there are random spot checks made occasionally to see if everybody is carrying a ticket, with fines being levied on those found to be cheating. Perhaps in reality there is just as much cheating going on in Vancouver as in Tokyo, but the transit company has decided that the cost of enforcement, with ticket barriers and checkers, would be greater than the amount being lost to dishonesty.

But for Sadako and I, buying tickets and then wandering around the station looking in vain for the entrance barriers, it certainly was a pleasant feeling to realize that we were 'on our honour' to use the system properly. It's too bad that most of our friends back in 'honest' Tokyo wouldn't believe us if we told them about it ...

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

We noticed the strange stones on the very first evening we were in Vancouver. The small hotel in which we were staying was only a few steps from English Bay, and taking Sadako for a walk along the sea-shore there was one of the top items on my list of 'things to do' during this vacation. So no sooner had we arrived and got settled into our room, than I was dragging her out again, "Come on. Let's head down to the beach ...!" The late August weather was perfect, not muggy like it had been back in Tokyo, but dry and warm (warm by my standards, that is. A 'little cool' to Sadako!).

The scene was 'picture postcard' perfect. A half-dozen freighters were riding anchor in the wide bay, waiting their turn to move into the inner harbour for loading, with the sails of small boats and wind surfers scattered among them. The wide and sandy beach was arrayed with long logs beside which, sheltered from the light breeze, people lay sunbathing, reading or chatting. The wide pathway separating the beach from the grassy areas of the park was crowded with strollers, all moving along (or was this just my imagination?) much more slowly than those who walk in Tokyo parks ... A stripe painted down the centre of the path divided it between 'walkers' and 'wheelers', this latter group being made up of cyclists and people wearing rollerblades.

We joined the 'walker' side, and hand in hand, made our way slowly along the pathway, enjoying the changing views of the bay and the opposite shore that came into sight as we moved along. The shore isn't all made up of smooth sandy beach. In a few spots, the sea laps right up against the path, and here and there rocky outcrops jut out into the water. It was at one of these places that we saw the stones.

The first impression, seeing them from quite some way away, was that a group of people were standing on the sand below the level of the seawall, and that just their heads were visible, poking up into view. But when we got a bit closer, we saw that they were stones, most of them about the size of a person's head, and each carefully balanced in position atop one of the large boulders of the outcrop. And balanced they were, not just sitting in place on the larger rocks. Some of them looked like eggs standing on end, others more like inverted pyramids, poised on the tiniest of points. In places, clusters of three of four smaller stones were piled one upon another, forming frail-looking towers. They looked quite 'impossible', and our first thought was that they were some kind of modern sculpture, with the stones being either glued together, or held in place by something like steel rods.

But no, they were simply balanced in place. There were more of them at other places along the seawall, and at each of these spots people paused in their strolls to enjoy the 'exhibition'. We overheard some of their conversations, and it seemed that these stones were actually quite famous, being the work of a man who made a habit of coming down here to English Bay frequently to construct these displays. He had been featured in various media, and the 'Balancing Stones of English Bay' had become one of the better-known sights of Vancouver.

And so we too enjoyed the show, not only that evening, but every time we came down to the water for a stroll. He seemed to choose a different area each time, and we never knew where we would run into another of his displays. Seen against the sunset sky, they were especially beautiful, and even if our association with balancing stones had gone no farther than these casual meetings, they would have made a most pleasant part of our vacation ...

But ... on the last day of our holiday, when we were down at the beach for yet another walk along the waterfront, we got a bit more involved with these mysterious stones. We were standing and admiring yet another new display, when I suddenly felt the impulse to try this for myself. I knew that it looked completely impossible, and supposed that it would only be after a great deal of practice that one would be able to balance even the easiest of stones, but I felt that I had to give it a try. While Sadako watched from up on the seawall, I jumped down onto the sand, picked up the first irregularly shaped rock that came to hand, approached one of the large boulders, and tried to set my stone in place on top of it ... A few seconds later, I stood back in amazement and stared. There was my rock, balanced 'upside-down' on a small point. I waited, expecting to see it fall over, but nothing happened; it just kept sitting there, defying all common sense. Seeing this, and knowing me very well, Sadako must have given up all hope of being able to continue with our stroll, and she was right. There was no way I could stop at just one. While she went back to our room to pick up her camera to record this insanity, I started building my own little exhibition corner. Every rock that I picked up, no matter how weirdly shaped, and no matter on what kind of surface I tried to balance it, stayed standing upright when I let go of it. They just wouldn't fall over. By the time she got back, I was surrounded by a collection of my own upside-down pyramids, three-story towers, and other glueless marvels.

Sitting here in my room now, writing down this story and trying to think of some explanation for the events of that afternoon, I'm not sure what to think of it all. I'm not a person given over to any kind of mysticism, and certainly don't think that there was any kind of bizarre energy emanating from myself, or from that particular spot on the beach, but neither do I have any special manual dexterity. But there stood the stones, and there they still were when I brought my two daughters down to see them later that evening. The next day, Sadako and I flew back to Japan, but speaking to the girls on the phone four days later, found out that they had seen the stones still in position just that afternoon ...

Perhaps though, there is a simple explanation for this little exploit. I was at the end of a two week holiday which had been one of the happiest and most pleasant times in many a year. Being in that beautiful city, with no thoughts of work or deadlines, together every day and night with a very special woman, spending the days strolling and eating ... Well of course my hands were steady - isn't that what vacations are for?

There is another interesting aside to this little story ... No sooner had I showed my daughters what I had done that day, when they both jumped down onto the beach to try it for themselves. Choosing 'little-girl sized' stones, rather than the larger ones that I had used, they too had almost instant success, and soon surrounded my sculptures with a collection of small 'escorts'. Were they too so happy and relaxed? Or is it just that balancing stones is really something that anybody can do anytime, once they give it a try? There's one way to find out, isn't there ... next time you are down at the river, or at a stony beach ...

Let me know how you make out!

(September 1996)

(Photos taken some years after this, during a balancing 'session' while camping out in Japan ...)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

We almost walked right by at first, without even realizing that it was a food store. The only thing we could see was the outdoor seating area of what looked like a cafe, and of outdoor cafes, we were at the moment quite sated. But noticing a smallish sign-board with the legend 'Natural Foods' decorating an entrance down one side of the large building, I steered Sadako towards the opening ... "Do you mind I poke around in here for just a second? It looks a bit interesting ..." Interesting it was; we stayed for more than just a second, and it turned out to be a place to which we would return a number of times during our trip.

I have no idea at all why they chose the name 'Capers' for this astonishing store. It seems a bit silly to name an entire store after a little-used spice (are capers spices?). The dictionary tells us that the word also means 'foolish behaviour', but I think that's somewhat archaic now. Maybe it is simply that it was a Mr. Caper who started this business. If so, then he gets my applause, because as we strolled around inside the large building staring at the displays of things for sale, one thought persisted in my mind - "How can I get these guys to open some branches in Tokyo?"

To wander among these shelves here in Capers, is to wander among a whole new world of eating - and this isn't even specifically an 'ethnic' store. The sign outside says 'Natural Foods', and the emphasis is obviously on organic and 'simple' foods for health-conscious people. Fresh vegetables and fruits - goods for baking - dairy products - mixes and prepared foods of all kinds - every possible sort of spice - a million kinds of packaged drink ... the long high rows of shelving are jammed end-to-end with interesting foods.

The entire front section of the store is taken up by the bakery and deli counters, where all sorts of prepared foods sit behind the glass waiting for hungry buyers: salads, breads, muffins, quiche, lasagna ... more luscious-looking dishes than I could list here in ten pages. As I stand there staring in awe at the selection, one of the clerks behind the counter asks if she can help me, and when I say that I'm just looking at the moment, she smiles - I'm sure she's seen that same look of disbelief on many faces.

I don't think that I could have been more awe-struck by a food store if I had come from a famine-stricken country to be suddenly faced with such incredible riches. Perhaps in a way of speaking, I had. There is a 'health food' shop not too far from my home back in Tokyo, but the contrast between their display of rather scrawny (and very expensive) vegetables and the mounds of fat, juicy and very healthy-looking ones here couldn't be stronger. That Tokyo shop reminds me of the Vancouver health food shops of 25 years or so ago, back in the early 'hippy' days. I suppose it's all a matter of evolution. This 'Capers' store didn't just spring up overnight, but developed over time from those early precursors.

Ten years ago, when I moved to Japan, I found the local supermarket to be quite a wonderful and enjoyable place; on every shelf of every aisle were new and interesting products for me to inspect and try. It was very appealing at first, but over the years I discovered that there are a couple of major drawbacks to Japanese supermarkets. The first is that when you have seen one, you have seen them all; there isn't the slightest difference between any of them from one end of the country to the other. The Japanese diet has now become extremely standardized; on any given night x% of families eat 'House' curry rice, x% spaghetti, another x% sashimi ... and so on, and the food on sale in every supermarket in the land of course reflects these statistics. Each store is an absolute clone of all the others. This standardization of eating habits also accounts for the second 'problem' with Japanese supermarkets - the almost complete lack of 'ethnic' or 'minority' food available. If I want to make a cake ... sorry, there's no shortening. To make cookies ... no applesauce. To make muffins ... no wheat germ. Now of course one can't really criticize this; it makes no sense for a store to stock items that none of the locals will buy. You don't find much sashimi in Lagos, udon in Mexico, or wakame in Alberta either, I'm sure. But it is a reflection of how insular Japan still is, and of what a low level of immigration she permits, that her supermarket shelves remain so bare of 'exotic' foods.

Perhaps one day, we who live in Tokyo will see this type of store take its place next to our standardized supermarkets. Let's see ... if it took about 25 years in Vancouver for the early health food shops to evolve into this amazing store, and if Tokyo follows the same time scale, then by about 2021 we might have a 'Capers' in my neighbourhood. I'll only be 70 years old - still lots of time to enjoy some of those giant muffins from the bakery counter ...

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)

I couldn't really say that it had been six years since I had had a vacation, as our family had made trips up to grandad's old farm during some of the those summers, but as I had always taken my woodcarving work with me during those outings, they were more of a 'change of scene' than a vacation. It's not that I don't enjoy the woodcarving and the ten-year project I have taken on, but I would be less than truthful if I didn't admit that the monthly deadlines do sometimes impose strains. My daily routine is quite relaxed, and I'm certainly not overworked, but after seventy-five repetitions, the monthly routine sometimes seems a bit trying. No sooner is one print finished and sitting on the table in front of me for inspection, than the thought arises "Time to get going on the next one. The collectors are waiting ..."

So I was ready for a little break. I put in 'extra' hours during the month preceding the trip, to get a head-start on the following print and ensure that I could spend a couple of weeks on holiday in Western Canada without concern as to how far I might be falling behind, and then Sadako and I headed for the airport, tickets to Vancouver in hand, accommodations reserved, and no woodblock packed in my bag.

Of course the time passed very quickly indeed, and before we knew it, we were sitting on an airplane again, heading back to Japan. I have never really liked the traditional idea of being forced to bring back an o-miyage, a souvenir, for every single person in the community back home, so rather than bring back silly presents that nobody really wants anyway, now that I'm back here in my little room in Tokyo, it seems like it might be a better idea to sit down at my word processor and put down some impressions of a few of the things that we saw and did. Our Japanese friends might find them entertaining, and who knows, perhaps they might be encouraged to visit that beautiful place themselves.

I hope you enjoy this collection of little Vancouver o-miyage.

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Quite a number of people I meet seem to be interested in my eldest daughter's name ... at least I do get plenty of comments and questions about it. It is, as far as I can tell, unique, but unlike other unique 'made-up' names that I have heard, it has no 'strange' feeling. Her name is 'Himi', and how she got it is an interesting story ... my computer did it!

At the time that Himi's mother was pregnant with her, the two of us were living in a small basement suite in Vancouver, Canada. As part of the preparations for the birth we attended a series of prenatal classes, and of course her mother also went for regular medical check-ups. One day the doctor discussed with us the idea of taking an amniocentesis test. This was not something casually recommended for pregnant women, but was suggested for us because of the age factor; 37 was considered a bit on the 'risky' side for a woman having a first baby. After going over the statistical information presented to us, and weighing the risks and benefits, we agreed to the test. It was carried out satisfactorily, showing an apparently normally developing child.

As part of an amniocentesis investigation, medical personnel discover the sex of the coming child as a matter of course, and we were asked if we wanted to be told, or wished to remain 'ignorant' ... It seemed to me to be a lot more fun to know in advance what we were expecting, so we let them tell us ... "XX", they said. The ever-growing 'bump' contained a little girl!

Once we knew that, it was obviously time to find a name for it ... for her. The first decision was the choice between 'western' or Japanese. As this child would be a 'mixed' baby, and hopefully, would grow up in both cultures, we wanted to make sure she had a name that would work on both sides of the Pacific. It would have to be easily pronounceable in both Japanese and English, and not have any strange feeling in either place.

As English is much more accommodating than Japanese in this respect, allowing a wider variety of sounds to be pronounced, it seemed to make sense to form her name from standard Japanese syllables rather than from English sounds. As long as we stayed away from those Japanese sounds that have no equivalent in English, the resulting name should fit our 'transpacific' criterion.

And this is where the computer came in. During those years I was involved with developing computer programs for the company for which I worked, and had a small personal computer at home. It didn't 'speak' Japanese, but using the Roman alphabet equivalents, I programmed it to print out a list of all possible two-syllable combinations in the Japanese language. As there are only 48 sounds, this meant that I was soon presented with a printout containing nearly 2500 items, looking something like this:

aa ai au ae ao
aka aki aku ake ako
asa ashi asu ase aso
ata achi atsu ate ato
ana ani anu ane ano
aha ahi afu ahe aho
ama ami amu ame amo
aya ayu ayo
ara ari aru are aro
awa awo an
 
ia ii iu ie io
ika iki iku ...

... and so on and so on for page after page ...

Now of course, most of these 'words' were complete nonsense. Some were indeed real words ... 'aka' means 'red', 'ato' means 'later' ... and so on. But as at this time I spoke almost no Japanese at all, I knew nothing about this. I simply took a pencil and went through the list marking those items that sounded to me like they would be a good name for a young girl. Himi's mother then went through to see what I had selected. (I don't know to this day what she really thought of all this, but she was very complaisant about it, and went along with my little game ...) In turn, she laughed and shook her head, as she read my 'suggestions'. Of course, most of the items I had marked were completely unacceptable for one reason or another, but there were a few left over when she had finished.

One of these in particular I found attractive. When we had been visiting Japan a year or so prior to these events, I had picked up a map of the country with town names printed in Roman letters, and reading it over again now one of those names jumped out at me. It was the same as one of my selections from the computer list ... Himi. It seemed to fit all the criteria: it was easy to pronounce in both languages, it was euphonious, and it was unique as a person's name (although there is a famous similar name in Japanese history ... Himiko, a semi-mythical queen living many many centuries ago ...).

The more we thought about it, the better it sounded, and when I dug into the dictionary and found that the syllables 'hi' and 'mi' could be matched with the characters for 'sun' and 'seed', that put the final seal on it. Our 'bump' became Himi.

This wasn't the end of the search though, because I wanted to ensure that this child would never be saddled with a 'label' that she found unacceptable or inconvenient. I liked the sound of 'Himi', but what if her future didn't turn out to include much contact with Japan? What if she grew up completely as a Canadian, and didn't want to be constantly reminded of her Japaneseness? We had no idea what her future would hold ...

So we decided to give her a middle name as well, a completely 'normal' Canadian name that she could opt to use if she ever felt that 'Himi' was not suitable. As it had been I mostly responsible for choosing her main name, her mother took the lead here. She went back to her memories of childhood and selected 'Anne', which for her had Canadian resonances due to the popularity in Japan of the 'Akage no Anne' (Anne of Green Gables) stories. As a sort of added benefit, this name too was easily written and pronounced in both languages.

So a few months later, when this little girl came into the world, and the time came to fill out the certification of her birth, she was given a triple 'four letter word' name, Himi Anne Bull. (I noticed then that even her initials hide a sort of pun ... HAB represents the French-Canadian word Les Habitants, meaning simply 'Canadians').

I told all this to Himi just the other day, as I was curious to hear what she thinks about her name, and how she came by it. Her reaction was completely positive. She likes her name very much, and I hope that this is an expression of her general self-confidence. She doesn't seem bothered by the fact that it first appeared on my silly computer printout.

All in all, I think it was a good thing to have done ... not chosen a name ... but created one!

(September 1996)

Posted by Dave Bull at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)