Darlo's World

Today is one of Japan’s many national holidays, 建国記念の日 (kenkokunen no hi, National Foundation Day). On this day, Japanese celebrate the founding of the nation and the imperial line by its legendary first emperor, Jimmu, who established his capital in Yamato (thank you Wikipedia). To be honest with the exception of not having to make the commute to University in Kobe (and of course not receiving any food for the day), it didn’t seem to have the same kind of holiday atmosphere as others have done. This could be just me due to the fact that it was around 8 o’clock this morning that I finally went to bed, emerging sometime in the afternoon.

Why was I up so early? Well after re-watching the Sexy Vampire animation by James ‘Gosha’ Franzen, I felt inspired to crack on with the next page of the Lotaku webcomic. Didn’t get it finished mind you, but felt I made a decent enough dent in it.

Regardless of not having to go, I still went to Kobe this afternoon, to the same train station I get off for University. According to a couple of friends, a second hand book, game and CD shop is closing down soon and had put a lot of things on sale. Now this particular shop already had a huge 105 section (despite being second hand this is still a gigantic saving on what you’d pay for one manga in the UK), and it can be very difficult to find a specific title that you’re after. I ended up just buying 2 books but was tempted by some of the games and DVDs (DVDs in Japan by the way are incredibily expensive, and we thought anime was expensive in the UK!).

After a quick stop at McDonalds to grab a couple of hamburgers, I was soon on the train back home. It’s been well documented (I’m presuming, being too lazy to check of course), that the world is in fact small. Well anyway, on the train from Juso I was approached by a polite woman asking about my coat (in English). Like most day’s I was wearing my old PGL Staff fleece top; it’s nice, warm and has many 便利 (benri, convenient) pockets. It turns out that she herself had done some work at PGL at the Boreatton Park site. Where’s that you might be thinking? Well it’s only in my home county of Shropshire of course, herself coming from Birmingham. She’d moved to Osaka in January after working in Hiroshima, a place where we’re all due to take a class trip.

There were a few other mini-coincidences that we compared but here’s the clincher. When she moved to Osaka in January, she became a resident of Kamishinjyou! Just a month after I say goodbye, another midlander moves in (not into the mens dorm of course). It makes me wonder, does Kamishinjyou have a curse where it much always have a resident from central England?

So to play us out, let’s have that Sexy Vampire if you please…

Talking to strangers is something that’s been drilled into our heads since the early days of ‘Stranger Danger’, roughly the same time as I recieved one of those ‘Green Cross Code’ card holder … things. Also as I’ve previously discovered trying to start up a random conversation with someone you don’t know can at times be like trying to get a five year old to recite the complete life on Henry the Eighth in detail in Latin. This obviously gets enhanced further when you (wish that you) have the speaking capabilities of someone roughly a fifth of your age (aka a five year old).

However once in a while an anomoly occurs and you get some little smart-arse who’s studied nothing but English Classics in their short little lives and can do such a task. This in turn must mean that there is hope for people wishing to strike up a conversation, even a short one, with a complete stranger and not have it go AOT like someone carrying something very expensive and slipping on a pile of mochi.

To the point then. Today a friend and I were in a park in Umeda practicing kanji on white boards and seemed to draw the attention of a (possibly) homeless man. As he came closer I saw him staring down at my whiteboard (covered in miscellaneous kanji combinations). I explained to him we were doing kanji practice and our conversation began.

The conversation ended as quickly as it started as he went off to join some friends a few meters away and we continued our kanji practice. After a while, partly due to boredom and the kanji for the name 今井 (Imai), we ended up playing a few games of noughts and crosses, followed by me testing whether or not my friend new へのへのもへじ (henohenomoheji).

Quote from Wikipedia

Henohenomoheji (へのへのもへじ) or hehenonomoheji (へへののもへじ) is a face drawn by Japanese schoolchildren using hiragana characters.

The word breaks down into the seven hiragana characters he（へ）, no（の）, he（へ）, no（の）, mo（も）, he（へ）, ji（じ）. The first two “he” are the eyebrows, the two “no” are the eyes, the “mo” is a nose, and the last “he” is the mouth. The outline of the face is made by the character “ji”, with the dakuten forming the ear. Children use henohenomoheji as the faces of kakashi (scarecrows).

This have caught the ears of our visitor who had returned and seemed very eager to show us some other variations of the game. Unfortunately I never had the chance to ask him what they were that he drew, but I did take some photographs of them, and will ask some friends when I next see them.

Speaking of photos, there’re going to be new photo’s on the blogspot page daily for a while! In the mean time, here’s a video of Darth Vader (aka Dave Prowse from Bristol) doing what he does best. Also, did you know R2D2 (aka Kenny Baker) was a Brummie? o_O