Nippon gambatte! (Good luck Japan)

It's in times like these that I wish I believed in God. That way maybe there would be something he could do to help. I wish I had any faith in religion, but I don't. I do have faith in people though, and it's people we are going to need now!

I will not write an inane article this week, about some little silly London adventure of mine. I wish to change gears a little and quickly talk about my home away from home, the place that I grew up as an adult, that place is Japan. As my online nickname may suggest, I am a lover of the country and people of Japan. I lived in Fukushima and Tokyo for almost four years from the age of 22, up until I was almost 27. These were formative years for me and I feel like I really became the person that I am today through my many good and bad experiences living and learning in Japan. I still have many close friends in Japan and this has broken my heart more that I can possibly communicate through mere words. They seem cheap and hollow as I write them, but feel I must, if only for my own sanity. I am generally not the kind of guy who can really talk about such things, so this is a little strange for me and a kind of therapy as well. I have the same sort of feeling I had as I sat horrified and watched planes crashing into buildings in New York on live television as I sat helpless in my Tokyo apartment.


I can only wish my friends, and all of the people of Japan for that matter, nothing but strength, courage and fortitude in this time of national disaster. Of course, these are all traits that the Japanese people have in great abundance, and I have no doubt they will show amazing resilience and bravery en masse. I can only imagine what it must be like for them right now living through this nightmare.

I read online the names of towns, cities and villages where I have been and have so many wonderful memories of and I wonder if the nice lady who I talked to at that izakaya in Izuwakamatsu is going to suffer the effects of radiation poisoning. Is my friend Adam, a teacher in Sendai, still alive? Are my old friends in Tokyo alright? These are only some of them!

I did hear from one friend who is from Iwate Prefecture and lives in Tokyo, he was traveling with his wife in Hiroshima at the time and therefore had no contact with the Quake or Tsunami. I was very relieved to hear that he and his family are fine and out of harms way. I really don't know what else to say except, if you are reading this and have the means to donate, do it. If you do not, please keep your thoughts and, yes, even prayers with the Japanese people. They are going to need it. We will be here to help when they need us.
I know I will be.



Be good to each other. Peace. Love.

 

      One of my tattoos I got some years ago to show love to Japan.

P.S. Negative comments about the media below.

I have one comment on the media before I continue. They are callously talking about the NIKKEI and Stock exchanges and economics of this disaster and you know what...I don't care right now! The time will come to deal with this, I realize it is a necessary evil, but people are fucking dying out there, man! I wish every stock broker and any person cashing in financially on this terrible disaster great guilt and shame, you're the one's who have to live with it!

Glastonbury for Geeks: It's World Book Night in London!

That guy gets it!

It was the first ever World Book Night in London yesterday and I was there! The plan was to give out a million books all over the UK, not just me, others helped too. This is a really cool cause that was easy to get behind as reading in London and other places less important, is not really the highest priority these days, what with the proliferation of video games, films and TV shows about singing and dancing high school students,  frozen pizza's, borderline illiterate chavy mums and dads, and well, the just plain dumbing down of civilization! This is just my opinion of course. But I digress...

The previous night in Trafalgar Square, all of us book givers gathered in a sort of Glastonbury for Geeks to bow at the feet and just have some shits and giggles with some of the authors and pseudo cause celebs who read passages from their favorite books...some quite annoyingly. It was frickin' freezin' outside but many of us were warmed by can's of beer and/or cider, and I even saw a couple in their 50's drinking out of a silver flask. That was nice. It was enough to make you be proud to be British!

     Glastonbury for Geeks or Lolapalooza for Nerds...you decide! (Not meant as an insult...I was there too!)

The event was MC'd by comic Graham Norton who was his usual fun and flamboyant self, and who did a fine job I think. Actor Rupert Everett was there, the great author John Le Carre read from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and was great, even doing German accents for the German characters. Philip Pullman was there, as was Suggs, the lead singer from Madness for some reason.

As a person born in Canada, I was very much pleased to see Margaret Atwood there. She was charming and funny and read an entertaining piece from her novel The Blind Assassin. I must admit, I found reading Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale quite a chore in high school, but after hearing her, I realise what a piece of Canadiana she truly is.

Author David Nicholls read from his novel One Day, and it was really and truly excellent. I intend to buy this title forthwith and would encourage you to do the same! Next came our lord and master, Mayor Boris Johnson. He read a poem about a hangover that I have to say, I really liked. Now, I'm just a drunken writer but...this guy is in charge of our city, right? Should he be reading this sort of thing? Meh.
There were others there as well, but I'm afraid that some of my activities from days gone by seem to have erased the name's from my mind.

The highlight of the evening had to be when author Alan Bennett read from his novel A Life Like Other People's. It was a lovely and touching story about him and his mother that really had the entire crowd hanging on his every charming word. But this is not what I'm on about. After reading, he compared the closing of libraries in the UK to child abuse! You know what? He's not wrong and I am proud and glad that he said it. Especially since Boris Johnson and other politicians were there to hear it! Not that their cold two faced bastard politician hearts would understand. I tell you one thing friends, Mr. Alan Bennett has balls and I am now going to make sure I read every single word he has ever written. It's the least I can do!

The next day was WORLD BOOK NIGHT 2011!!!

                              Caledonian Rd. Station Art by Kim

The next night my fiance and I went to Caledonian Road Tube Station to hand out our free books to the public. The novel is called Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez as chosen by said fiance. I should add that all this was in fact her idea and I give her full and total credit as I was only her beautiful and talented assistant and thank her for getting me involved...OK, that's out of the way ;)

We arrived at about five o'clock in the evening and we just so happened to arrive at the station as Arsenal fans were coming back from their thrilling nil-nil tie with Sunderland. We began our scpeil and started to hand out the books. Many polite and learned passers by stopped to ask questions and tell us how this was such an excellent idea. Indeed. But we started to notice that no Arsenal fans took any, which we found strange. We thought that they might be skeptical about our intentions so made sure that people were aware that we were not trying to convenrt them to any religion or take their bank card details or solicit anything from them whatsoever. This did no good at all. As we discussed why this was and threw out a few jibes as the passing football fans, the Station Master informed us that it had nothing to do with us, and it's not that Arsenal fan's don't like to read, it's because "Arsenal fans can't read!" This was news to me, but I accepted his hypothesis.

The only rule of getting a book on World Book Night 2011 is that after reading it, or if for some reason you don't like the book, you simply give it away to someone else. I think it's a fair and simple rule, and considering you are receiving a free book, I hope that it what happens.

It's actually quite a neat process as we write our names and special stock number in each book, which you can then go online and checkout, this will then show where the book has been on it's travels. So, if you receive the aforementioned book sometime in the years to come, it might just have come from me.

"You're welcome!" he said smugly.

Be there next year for World Book Night 2012 or you are a jabroni!