imablog

Breaking my own rules: that's what I'm doing, and my defence is that it seems to be one of the most fundamental properties of humanity in general. When I started this blog, I wanted it to be focused, to have a point (there's an excellent piece on the value of this in writing at Dirty White Candy http://www.dirtywhitecandy.com/archives/668). Long ago, I was involved in the world of 'chatzines', a particular backwater of certain areas of fanzine publishing, and I'm still highly ambivalent about them.

But I feel I need not crave your indulgence because the nature of blog is that it is eminently skippable.

I just wanted to celebrate the extraction of my wisdom teeth. I actually still have three of my wisdom teeth -- it's just that two of them are in pieces in a little ziploc bag.

As the proud owner of two impacting wisdom teeth (and when I say 'impacting', I mean 'horizontal'), I've known for years that they'd probably have to come out. A succession of dentists have told me that sooner is better: the longer you leave it, the worse the operation is going to be. But it's hard to submit yourself to an operation about which you've heard so many horror stories, when you don't actually have any problems.

Anyway, a year or so ago I had an upper wisdom tooth removed. It was quick, and pretty well painless.

Emboldened by this, I finally arranged to have my lower teeth out. Why not have them both out at the same time, I thought? The sort of flip decision that could easily have gone ill, but now I'm damn glad I did.

I had the operation done at the dental hospital of the university I teach at. Although my university campus is miles away, my university's dental hospital is a ten-minute walk from my home.

So many people had warned me of the dangers of wisdom teeth operations. I think my brother had a bad one. I had also been told that I should make sure the operation was done by one of the older dentists: the young 'uns were wrong 'uns. Well, I had the operation done by a young 'un, Wakita-sensei. And he did the job well. He had warned me of the unpleasant possibilities (the worst being that the nerve that lies close to the wisdom teeth got cut). In the event, the operation lasted little over an hour and involved relatively little pain. I was fully conscious during the whole thing.

I spent a night recovering at the hospital (the first in my life, I should add), which was a fairly pleasant experience, apart from the inevitable after-effects of the operation. And now, three days later, I resemble Marlon Brando in the Godfather, and am just about ready to start eating something other than soup, porridge and rice gruel.

Seems to me that's tremendous luck. Getting both teeth out at the same time worked very well. It means I don't have to go into hospital again. Moreover, it means my mouth is 'balanced'. When I had the upper wisdom tooth extracted, I remember that having one side of my mouth out of action felt horrible. Funnily enough, having both affected equally is much better!

So three cheers for my university, and three cheers for Japan's medical system in general. Americans will vilify it because it doesn't employ leading-edge technology like theirs, and deigns to cover everybody, rather just the richest third of the population. Brits will vilify it because it's insurance-based, and so you have to pay (in my case, about 140 pounds for the whole operation plus one-night stay plus medicine, with a discount to be paid back in my salary because I'm an employee of the university). But I think it's great.

I may be less wise than before, but I am a good deal happier!

Just as I find myself talking to a publisher about my historical Chinese novel, my interest is hotting up in the contemporary Japanese novel I started writing. I originally just started doing a crime novel set in Japan. But somehow, along the way, it started deviating from the crime genre.

Now there's nothing too unique in that. Many of Ruth Rendell's non-Wexford novels, which I admire tremendously, do that.

But what I've found myself trying to do is to tell the truth. By that, I don't only mean that the novel has its own inner truth. I mean that as much as possible, the novel reflects the truth. Much crime fiction is based on a media representation of crime that tells us a lot about our fears and vulnerabilities, and very little about the true state of affairs. So I want to explore both.

While doing so, I discovered that last year, out of the OECD nations, Japanese people were the second-least likely to be victims of crime (9.9%, compared with Spain's 9.1%). However, they were the second most afraid of going out after dark (35% of them, after Greece's 42%). That's a lot of frightened people.

I've also solved the problem of my title. I wanted to call the book 'Web', but that has the problem of being confused with the WWW (even though the WWW is involved to some extent). But finally it struck me: the novel is set in Japan, so why don't I call it Kumo-no-su? I can even put in a reference to the Kurosawa film Kumo-no-su-jo (literally 'Cobweb Castle', though the English name for the film is Throne of Blood).

Bless me readers, for I have sinned. It has been nearly four months since my last confession. I could trot out any number of excuses, but I'll settle on the weird way in which time has been compressed in this part of the world, so that the last four months have been, subjectively, only 13 days, 6 hours and 27 minutes (give or take a week or so).

The catholic opening to this entry is there for a reason: apart from not blogging, I have committed a great sin. I have commenced writing a novel set in contemporary Japan. After the 'memoirs of an English teacher in Japan' this is one of the most heinous crimes a foreigner living here can commit. And for pretty much the same reason: the supposed justification for such a book is the light it sheds on the Japanese psyche. It's a part of this huge industry based on the fascination of the 'unique' characteristics of Japanese society (a fascination shared by the Japanese, it would appear).

So how can I excuse joining the ranks of the cultural myth-makers? Shamelessly, I would like to have a novel published. But as mitigating circumstances, please consider the following:

1. The current publishing climate is very tough indeed. Publishers aren't buying a whole lot. They aren't taking chances. And the historical Chinese detective story my agent is hawking round is, I have to admit, a chance. For all that the lure of Japan is giving way to burgeoning interest in China.

2. Write what you know, they say. Well, I would for once like to be able to write based on what I see or have experienced, rather than it all coming from textbooks and imagination.

3. My goal for writing the book is not to offer some sort of paean to the 'uniqueness' of the Japanese characters portrayed. I don't feel that Japanese society is any more distinctive or 'weird' than Song Dynasty China, and I intend to approach both the same way: as they are. Different, sure, but diversity is the nature of humanity. As is commonality...

4. I have a plot which is getting more interesting to me the more I find out details about it.

5. I've been reading Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides which fascinates me, as it manages to be awful in so many of the ways by which I judge books. Not much in the way of mitigating circumstances, I grant you, but this is point 5, and I'm reaching a bit.

So, there we are. I will be spending my New Year trying to get as much of this written as possible. The current provisional title of the book is 'Cut In Half', even though it doesn't actually feature someone being cut in half (damn! given away the plot!). Maybe something more hypnotically attractive will occur.

Back in Japan, my lingering impression of Perth is how British it seemed to me. Sure Australia's a lot bigger than Britain, and that does stuff to people. And it's very multicultural -- but then where I lived in Britain wasn't exactly monocultural. I was expecting culture shock from the subtle differences, akin to that I experienced with my American colleagues when I first came to Japan. But in the event there was none. Maybe three weeks isn't enough.

Overall, I'd say Perth's a nice place, but not really somewhere I could live (I don't drive). It isn't a destination I would choose for a summer holiday, but I don't feel at all bad about going. And I guess the trip was helped by, on the return flight, meeting a former student who is now a flight attendant on Singapore Airlines, who showered us with goodies, along with a glass of champagne from First Class.

If only I'd managed to get some writing done while I was there...

Anyone ever eaten a tamarillo? Also known as a tree tomato?

Odd things. A little bit tangy, but otherwise slightly resembling passion fruit.

I don't think I'll go out of my way to get hold of them in future, but it's nice to discover completely new fruits.

Today we also discovered that Australian Indian food is basically akin to British Indian food which, to my taste at least is well above Japanese Indian food. This means that so far Perth has scored well in both the SE Asian (especially Vietnamese), and Indian food stakes.

We also had Italian, but it was nothing special.

I've also been researching the beer. Not being much of a lager/cold beer fan, I didn't have great expectations, but Fat Yak pale ale was perfectly good. I have 4 more bottles ready to try. I'd like to try something on draught in a pub, but won't have much opportunity to visit one. I feel a bit like one of the Supersizers (Coren and Perkins in the eponymous TV show) in that my eating and drinking is probably doing bad things to my body already. A Japanese diet is, basically, pretty healthy after all.

I've come to Perth escorting 55 Japanese university students. It's a strange experience. A sort of involuntary holiday. Three days in and some students are already complaining that me and my colleague aren't doing anything. Well, er, no. Unless you count making sure the students changed planes OK at Singapore, making sure the two students who left their wallets on the first plane got them back, making sure the student who left his iPod on the second plane got it back, arranging for the student who lost his passport after two days here to get to the police and to the consulate to get a replacement, searching for students who got lost trying to get back to their homestay family, and, (and here I kid you not) repeatedly having to tell one student that yes, he could go to the toilet and pointing out where it was.

The students' complaints ought to be correct. I shouldn't really be doing anything. The point of this trip is for these students to learn English, and learn how to cope in a foreign environment. Unfortunately, since most of these kids behave more like primary school than university students, I have actually been working for my measly per diem.

Still, Perth's nice enough, even in mid-winter. Let's hope we have no more crises.

I really should resist the urge, but I can't.

I avoided reading The Da Vinci Code. There didn't seem much point in reading it, as I'd already read and enjoyed the amusing fiction from which it was plagiarised (The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, whose authors foolishly sued Brown without realising that as they'd originally pitched their book as 'non-fiction' they hadn't a hope of winning).

Then Angels & Demons came out, and my wife decided she wanted to see it. I don't like watching sequels without having watched the first movie, so off to the DVD rental store I went.

And by the bones of Elric, The Da Vinci Code really is as awful as the rumours had it. I suppose it doesn't help that the film had so many negatives (Tom Hanks, to name one), but the killer for me was the nonsensicality of the plot. The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail was silly, but it was interestingly constructed, and included a lot of genuine research to try to slip the curve balls past you. In The Da Vinci Code, on the other hand, we are expected to believe that there is a conspiracy which through the ages has provoked mass murder by elements of the Catholic Church. As in The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, the conspiracy is the bloodline of Jesus Christ. But we are expected to believe that this is somehow 'provable'. Why? Because in a tomb is the body of Mary Magdalene (with her birth certificate, presumably?), and this can be DNA tested to establish a line of descent to someone living nowadays.

Now frankly if I was the sort of Catholic fanatic who is prepared to murder to defend the faith, I would find far more important targets. Why waste time killing people who are linked by DNA to a corpse that some people say is Mary Magdalene, who some people say had a child by Jesus? In what way do such people threaten the church?

A whole lot less than the scientist-enemies of Angels & Demons, I'd say. So despite the awfulness of the prequel, we saw this. My heart sank with the first mention of the Bavarian Illuminati. Funnily enough, I can even forgive the nonsense-science of the 'anti-matter bomb'. But it's just twaddle. The only redeeming feature of the film is the performance of Ewan McGregor who, like dear dear Ian McKellen (are these actors chosen for the similarity of their names?) in the first film, is let down towards the end by the author effectively rendering their carefully crafted believable (well, in the case of McGregor, anyway) character ridiculous.

As my wife said, maybe Ewan McGregor is trying to become the new Michael Caine: being the only good thing about crap movies.

...in books, that is.

I was reading Graham Swift's The Sweet-Shop Owner and came across a reference to 'Dave Mitchell' who is, of course, a double-person, being a slightly nerdy but very sharp comedian, as well as a slightly nerdy but very sharp novelist (the only Booker Man shortlisted writer I've ever met, in fact).

It reminded me that I am the villain in Chris Priest's A Dream of Wessex, which is the sort of obscure fame I like. Have you ever appeared in any books or films?

This is a meme, which I normally avoid, but I like this one. What you have to do is set your iPod, media player or whatever on shuffle, and write down the names of the songs as answers to the following questions, in order. My answers are appended.


IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY?' YOU SAY?

The Lazy Sunbathers

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

The Lovecats

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

Destiny of Circumstance

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

Melodies Haunt You

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

Glory Box

WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?

Pull Shapes

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

Egypt

(could I be a little hard of hearing? Could that be 'Eedjit'?)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

Why why why

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

Top dog

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

Fuego

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

Smalltown

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

Solsbury Hill

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

Corsair (Boards of Canada)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

Spit on the Griddle

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?

Spare Parts Express

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

Fool's Gold

WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?

Pleasure

(Thank goodness for having my wife's Spandau Ballet on the hard disk)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

Clear as crystal

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

Stimulate the beaded hamster

You know how actors have a tendency to be 'luvvies'? Those outside the world of theatre grind their teeth as an actor launches into one gilded encomium after the next.

But of course the same is true of writers. The same tendency to spout, for example.

'I've always been a writer, really. I wrote my first novel at the age of seven, though [winks roguishly] it wasn't awfully good.'

Rubbish! This is the problem of being someone who makes their living from doing something that almost anyone can do. That, along with the fragility of the writer in a world of massive competition, induces an insecurity that romanticises the whole business insufferably. I mean, imagine David Beckham saying:

'I've always been a footballer, really. I played in my first game at the age of seven though [winks roguishly] I only scored three goals.'

So bloody what? It's no big deal to play a game of football, and even Beckham wouldn't come out with something as banal as the above.

Or how about:

'I've always been an accountant, really. I first compared my income with my outgoings at the age of seven though [winks roguishly, or at least as roguishly as the average accountant can manage] I didn't use double-entry.'

Writers, then, are like luvvies, except that the insecurity often manifests as bile. Not so much 'luvvies', then, as 'haties'.

What has occasioned this burst of self-fulfilling polemic? Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree, that's what. Firstly, the book is fundamentally dishonest. It doesn't make clear on the front or back cover that it is basically just a collection of reviews written for some magazine or other. Indeed, the back cover blurb begins 'This is not a book of reviews.'

But there is worse. In the introduction, Hornby waxes lyrical about the importance of making reading a pleasure again. He rails against the snobbery that identifies some books as worth reading, irrespective of how much a reader enjoys them. So far, so good.

Then, in his second review column (you see, actually, this is a book of reviews) he writes about seeing a woman reading High Fidelity, and being distressed by the fact that she didn't appear to be cool and clever. And when she finished the book (she has been on holiday at the same hotel as him), he writes 'I was glad she finished it and moved on to Harry Potter or Dr Seuss or whatever else it was she'd packed.'

Twat.

I think what bugs me about this is that, judging by the evidence of the introduction, Hornby isn't aware of what a snob he is. Either that or he's being all postmodern and knowing.

Incidentally -- and this is probably a theme I'll return to -- this is also related to one of the greatest diseases to afflict the modern writer: writing about writing. Self-obsession can, in certain cases, be interesting. But usually it is tedious, the written equivalent of the pub bore. Writing about reading: now that's a more interesting topic, and one which reflects the actual point of writing.

Well, I'm pleased to be able to say that it looks like I now have a literary agent. Since it is said that getting an agent is more difficult than getting a book deal, I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to find a means of getting Bao: Absent Heads published and into a bookshop near you.

Now I just have to try to write the next one in less than the ten years this one took.

I really haven't got this, have I? Or rather, oddly enough, I have. I've known from the start the way the medium works: that it is a product of soundbite culture, and that the art is to produce concise, tightly written chunks. But with my typical perversity, I persist in producing essays. Ah well, it's no surprise it took me so many years to start blogging. Give me a month or so, and I'll fade away, don't you worry.

Anyway, my topic for today is something that ran through my head yesterday. I'm sure it has been written by someone before, but what's the point of a blog if you can't set down half-baked ideas as they occur to you?

I'm off at a tangent from writing, here. It may have been the Olympics that set me thinking about this, but I was considering the ebb and flow of repression through history. There are those who subscribe to a sort of neo-Panglossian attitude, believing the history of mankind is a slow ascent towards more enlightened government. I don't believe this. Perhaps it's not the Olympics: perhaps it's the documentary by Terry Jones on how the Romans were more ruthless and 'barbarous' than the so-called barbarians.

Anyway, I was wondering what factors are involved in the level of authoritarian repression imposed on populations through history, and it occurred to me that one factor had to be the technology gap, by which I mean the gap in control of certain key technologies between the rulers and the ruled. These key technologies obviously include but are not limited to military technologies. We must also consider surveillance/privacy-related technologies, and even the social technologies of mass persuasion.

My point is that, for repression to flourish, rulers must have a significant lead in these technologies, that can't be overcome by those they rule. This is illustrated most starkly in history by the military technologies, one example being the mounted knight of feudal times. This was such a superior piece of technology to the peasant warrior that the nobility's control came easily -- although the longbow (and crossbow) came along and upset things. The crossbow's impact was probably less, because its cost of production kept it within the nobility's control. But the longbow was different.

The same principle applies to other societies through history. If technology allows rulers to ignore the wishes of their populations (sending tanks into Tiananmen Square, or Iraq as it may be, with minimal consequences) then it is more likely it will be exploited. I'm not arguing that if there's an exploitable technology gap there will inevitably be a repressive regime; just that it makes it more likely.

I think it's this principle which led some people to believe that the Internet was an essentially emancipatory piece of technology. They saw it as providing ordinary people with some of the technology that had previously been limited to those in power. But I think this is a mistake. The Internet can equally be seen as a tool of control.

One of many factors that makes this comment half-baked is that I haven't specified what I mean by 'repression'. I suspect my definition may be wider than some peoples'. For example, there's no doubt that Japan has a highly-controlled society; the same political party -- with the exception of a single blip -- has been in power since it was let out of prison (for being war criminals) and installed by the US after the war. But I wouldn't necessarily say that Japan is a much more repressive society than, say, the UK. This is a multi-dimensional problem. Burma and North Korea, for example, are repressive and inefficient. The exploitation of the rulers is blatant, and ordinary people are conditioned to a large extent by fear. These are pretty crap forms of control, though one can argue that the rulers don't mind: they make more in both absolute and relative terms than if their countries were freed up and allowed to be more efficient. 'Western' countries use fear less directly in their control (though induced fear of external threats is, of course, a staple) and end up with populations more able and willing to get their economies pumping. In the case of Japan, I'd even go so far as to say they end up with a happier population, though there are many who are prepared to live unhappily and die in the cause of freedom who would revile me for saying so...

In Writers' and Artists' there's an instructive essay by Bernard Cornwell on the subject of writing historical fiction. What I like about it is that he kept making me feel he was arguing something wrong (and which went against his own work) and then he'd pull it all back. So at first, I thought he was arguing that historical accuracy didn't matter, and then he points out the obvious: that accuracy is paramount for many readers of historical fiction.

Good for Bernard. And what a shame his advice is ignored by just about all film and TV writers.

Bernard Cornwell writes about a case in which he had to 'change history'. It was in a Sharpe book, and it involved Sharpe penetrating French defences where in reality no British soldiers did.

I think most people would regard that as a venial alteration. But Cornwell wrote that he felt it necessary to point out in a note the historical reality. Presumably most TV and film writers would be baffled as to why he should bother. In Braveheart, for example, William Wallace impregnates Princess Isabella of France. Never mind that she would have been 10 at the time, and still in France: why should that get in the way of a good story?

And here's the rub. What it boils down to is a writer who believes that his or her story is so important that it outshines recorded history. It is nothing more nor less than personal arrogance. And it is celebrated, as part of the cult of the auteur which our society has erected.

Of course, matters are muddied by the fact that there is no such thing as 'true' history. Braveheart begins, reasonably enough, by pointing out how history is so often concocted by the victors. There are always other possibilities.

And yet... Isabella was 10 when Wallace died, and she had yet to arrive in Britain and marry Edward II. This isn't English propaganda. You won't find any Scottish historians who would support the Braveheart version of events. So what it amounts to is the use of the ambiguity of history as justification for the authorial right to write whatever you fancy. And of course, in the case of Braveheart I'm choosing only one of a series of historical goofs.

History is important to me. Not the 'absolute' history of the nationalist, but history as a metaphor for all knowledge and truth. History tells us that we cannot be absolutely certain about anything. Some people react to this by saying that if we cannot be absolutely certain about anything, then everything is up for grabs: we are free to write anything and call it truth simply because 'It spoke to my heart' (Randall Wallace's defence against criticisms of Braveheart).

I've had a similar argument to this a number of years ago in the pages of a fan magazine. And it revolves around the word 'absolutely'. Just because you can't be absolutely sure of something doesn't mean you can't do your best to find the truth based on the information you have. Indeed, the reason that science is such an effective system of knowledge is that it is based on precisely this principle: it is always incomplete. Scientists are constantly refining, improving their model, but they never attain an 'absolute' truth. Such a 'truth' is reality itself, and the only perfect model of that reality is, therefore, reality itself.

The same is true of history. So an author who uses history has, I believe, a duty to try to be as authentic as possible. There are situations in which it is, perhaps, forgivable to modify. In The Tudors, Henry VIII is given a single sister, fusing the attributes of two. For TV writing we can maybe accept this (the series has other, more questionable, modifications). If you lose your readers through confusion and complexity, then you aren't giving a very true picture of history. In my own work, I've had to give a simplified rendition of the intricacies of Chinese bureaucracy and criminal law; to be strictly accurate would be to make my book completely unreadable. My defence is that at all stages I try to maintain the important ideas -- that is, the ideas that people at the time wrote of as being important -- about the system. Oh, and that I distort the picture far less than the Chinese stories about my protagonist, written a mere five or six hundred years after the events in question.

But the principle should be that historical accuracy comes first. If you can't find a good story in history as we understand it to have been, then don't write a historical novel: write pure fiction.

My favourite historical crime writers are probably Lindsey Davies and Ellis Peters. Both strike me as sincere in wanting to reproduce their period, or rather, to take the reader and let them feel something of what that period might have been. In the case of Davies, criticisms can be made of, for example, the way in which Falco seems so chummy with the Emperor. Nevertheless, I still feel that Davies is striving for authenticity in a way that Steven Saylor, who also writes Roman detective stories, isn't. Saylor shovels research on to the page, but his characters' inner voices seem all too contemporary. A character on a bireme ruminates on how slavery is a bad thing .... duh! Do I need to be told this by a Roman character in a novel? Davies is far more instructive here. By portraying slavery in a more nuanced way, as a part of the society, she helps us understand how such an appalling practice could be sustained.

Away with absolutism. My credo is a recognition of the incompleteness of knowledge, and a concommitant commitment to sincerely representing the best picture that can be painted.

I suppose what I really started this blog for was to write about my writing. It seems to be the nature of blogs. Because such navel-gazing disturbs me slightly, however, I gave myself a period of grace. But with the summer holidays upon us, my period of grace is over and I must buckle down.

Oh, there's another problem. I don't actually much like writing about writing. I get around this problem by focusing not on the process of writing itself, but on what surrounds it. I don't think I'm being unnecessarily cryptic, but what I mean by this should become evident as my posts accumulate over the next few days or weeks.

I'll start with the specific bit of writing that has concerned me most over the last few months. That's my recently completed Bao: Absent Heads, a crime novel set in China in the mid 11th century. I'm now in the process of trying to get it published which, of course, requires an effort equal to, if not exceeding, that expended in writing the book.

Any author who tackles a background such as this has to come up with an approach to a number of problems, whether explicitly or implicitly. The first problem I'll address is the language problem.

My book is set in China, nearly a thousand years ago, yet it is written in English. So what do I do?

I suspect that many people won't even see the problem here. But 17 years of teaching English in Japan have made me acutely aware of the phenomenon of blindness to other languages. The most obvious manifestation of this is what I call the 'Arithmetic Assumption'. This is the belief that all languages are effectively the same, and that switching between them simply requires the substitution of one language's vocabulary and grammar with another. Naturally, this doesn't work at all. Even between modern Japanese and modern English there are some massive discontinuities and strangenesses. One example of this is the recurring question asked by students: 'How do I say yoroshiku onegaishimasu in English?' Answering this question is one of the greatest challenges facing an English teacher in Japan. This is not to say that it can't be answered; in fact it can be answered, in many ways, and that's part of the problem. But what is clear is that there is no single equivalent of yoroshiku onegaishimasu in English. It's an expression based in Japanese culture. It's a polite formula inviting the other person to look favourably upon you.

Saying yoroshiku onegaishimasu in English requires some thought about the purpose of the communication. If you want the result to be natural English, then you have to do some fancy, context-specific footwork. If you're lazy, and don't mind the result sounding odd (and even incomprehensible), then you can just take the 'arithmetic' approach and replace it with 'Please regard me with your best favour'. Or, you could try to keep the Japanese feel by leaving it in Japanese.

These three options summarise the plethora of options facing someone who is writing a 'foreign-language' book. My own book is set in China, and everyone in it speaks Chinese (even the Qidan servant boy in the bathhouse). Er... not quite. Because the book is set nearly a thousand years ago, so the language they are speaking bears about as much relation to modern Chinese as Chaucer's work does to this blog.

In some ways, this gives me freedom. No one alive speaks the language used by the characters in the book.

On the other hand, I want readers to feel that they are in China. Much of the point of this sort of book is creating an imaginative environment in which readers can immerse themselves. On the one hand, I don't want to pander to mistaken cliches about China; on the other I do, at least, want readers to feel that the background is authentic, and that requires meeting at least some of their expectations.

The latter point stretches beyond the borders of mere language, so I'll hoik myself back. How do I represent speech? And what sort of language do I use to narrate the events of the book?

To tackle the latter first, I could adopt an idiom akin to Ernest Bramah's fascinating Kai Lung books. There are two difficulties with that. The first is that I would have to pull off an extraordinarily elaborate form of expression, and yet keep it readable. As it happens, I did sort of try this for some 'texts' that appear within the novel. And those who have looked at the book have advised me to trim them back (actually, at least one advised me to eliminate them, but since they form an integral part of the plot I'm reluctant to do that).

The second difficulty is the distancing atmosphere that is created. It's a literary orientalism: the exoticising of China as some fantastically obscure and convoluted society. To be honest, I believe that Bramah himself wasn't entirely guilty of this. His books show more understanding of China than he is frequently credited with, and I think some of his parody was directed at British bureaucracy and social hypocrisy. I may be wrong about that.

OK, so if I don't adopt an exotic idiom, how about just writing it naturalistically? In fact, this was what I attempted. I reasoned that for many readers, the society of Song Dynasty China would itself be tricky enough to get into, without also having to contend with a style of writing. So I ended up deciding that I should try to avoid any quirks.

But as my yoroshiku onegaishimasu example from above should make plain, it isn't possible to write in completely natural 21st century prose and represent 11th century China. Sure, I could take the cop-out beloved of so many TV writers, and just couch everything in 21st century terms. For example, I could ignore the fact that the Song Chinese measured time using ten-day weeks and a complex calendar with 12 months that don't correspond neatly to our Western ones. Now there comes a point, I concede, where it becomes impossible to render 11th century China in English, and I am forced to compromise. But what's the point of writing about a different time and place if you make no effort to describe it as it was? Song China was remarkably 'modern'. I believe that to write about it in utterly modern language would actually diminish the extent to which that modernity is communicated.

So, my ground rules involve the use of a few little tweaks. I don't write about 'weeks', I write about 'tendays'. The months are numbered, and much of the timekeeping revolves around festivals. I never use the word 'China', because it makes more sense to call it the 'Great Song Empire' or similar, as its inhabitants would. I hope these don't strain the comprehension of readers, while helping to conjure up a different place.

Then there is the question of whether I use Chinese. Some books about China are littered with stray Chinese words 'for flavour'. In particular, these will be untranslatable words like 'qi'.

Reluctantly, I have to do this. So words like 'li' and 'yamen' are rendered in Chinese (yes, modern Chinese with pinyin romanisation: I'm keen to be authentic, but I think accuracy can be taken too far). But I never do this lightly.

Now, does all this also answer my question of how people speak?

Partly. I'm trying to make my characters sound like natural inhabitants of their world. So that means, at first, I strive for natural dialogue. And secondly, I introduce into their language as many elements as I can to make them sound Song Chinese. This is a balancing act. In his mammoth (as yet unfinished) translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase, David Tod Roy has his characters referring to each other as 'little oily mouth' and other such expressions that seem slightly odd to the modern reader. What I tried to do was insert a few authentic idiomatic expressions, but choose them carefully so that the reader doesn't stumble over them as overly 'foreign'. For example, I have a soldier refer to the hero as 'You great plucked chicken!' which I think conveys the idea clearly and naturally.

I will come back to this issue of language, but it's evident that the great faux pas of blogs is going on for too long at one time, so I'll leave it here for now. Many of the issues which I've touched on here will resurface later, especially when I look at other examples of historical/cultural fiction (such as Lindsey Davies's Falco books, the Brother Cadfael books, The Tudors and Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee).

A few years ago, at the start of a trip to Britain, I went down with a mystery bug. It was a bit unpleasant: fever, chills, sore throat, you know the sort of thing. After a few days of this, with no improvement, I thought I should see a doctor. So I waited a couple of hours in a clinic attached to a South London hospital. Finally I got to see a nurse, who pronounced me pretty well OK, and advised me to keep taking the paracetamol I had been consuming.

The result was, I spent a month with this horrible bug, got a mouthful of ulcers (side effect of the paracetamol) and, as you can imagine, didn't enjoy the trip quite as much as I might have. Poor me.

A year later, at exactly the same time of year, I suddenly went down with a horrible bug. Same symptoms, pretty well, with a very high fever and a sore throat. On this occasion I was here in Japan. I went to see my local doctor. He quickly diagnosed tonsilitis, gave me some medicine to take, and I'd knocked the tonsilitis on the head in a couple of days.

Now, you may think this is another rant about how rubbish Britain is. And I confess, on reflection I was none too pleased at being charged 25 quid for such crap service (I don't qualify for free treatment on the NHS).

But my point is weirder still. A year after that I went down with the same symptoms, once again in the last week of July. And would you believe it, yesterday I made it four years in a row.

I confess, I find this mind-boggling. Now, granted, it always seems to happen just as the hot weather really sets in, and when I'm, on the one hand, dealing with the end of semester stress and, on the other, faced with the psychological crutch of a summer holiday to convalesce in. Even so, it's unnerving.

Now, the medical comparison is a bit more complex. Part of me agrees with the British attitude of resisting over-medication. On the other hand, in this case I believe my condition was misdiagnosed, and the necessity of paying for treatment, along with the long wait, dissuaded me from returning. The result was that I spent a month, unnecessarily, with unpleasant symptoms.

In the Japanese case, I was given antibiotics. I'm well aware that these are over-prescribed here. As no new antibiotics have been developed for some while, when germs get resistant to all the existing ones we're going to be in a bad situation -- it's easy to forget just what a revolution the development of antibiotics was to medical treatment.

On the other hand, those antibiotics killed my sickness stone dead in a matter of a couple of days. They've done that for the last two years. This morning I went to the doctor and he stuck me on an antibiotic drip, then prescribed 4 different drugs for me to take for five days! Overkill? Well yes, almost certainly. But I had told him that I had a lot of work on, including a book to produce, and an examination to proctor tomorrow. And I have full confidence that this unholy cocktail will have me sorted doublequick.

My consultation and the drugs set me back ... about 25 quid, though that's after my mandatory health insurance is taken into account. Good value? You tell me.

The evil cheese scientist mentioned the heat of Nagoya summer. I used to discourage people from coming in the summer. Now I think I would recommend it, if only for the experience.

I still remember leaving Nagoya station in 1991, having already been fairly hot while in Tokyo, and walking into a wall of steam. Now, however, my body seems to have adjusted to the climate, and I'm no longer unduly bothered by it (so long as I have an air conditioner fitted at home, I should add -- I'm no mad dog, me).

Those from sunny climes, or those who are well-travelled, would probably find nothing special in a Nagoya summer, though it does offer the hottest and most humid time to be had in Japan outside of a sauna.

We are lucky, I suppose, in that Japan has no shortage of water.

I'm new to this, as you might guess, although in a sense I've been writing 'blogs' for 25 years.

I wondered if anyone knew the criteria used by Livejournal to select the ads that adorn blog pages? Is it simply based on location and stated interests, or does it come from content? It seems that an amusing game could be played by manipulating one's blog in an attempt to get a particular ad.

I've just returned from a holiday in Ise-shima. A typical Japanese holiday in some ways, as it was only three days long. But it did set me thinking about comparisons with Britain.

Ise-shima, in case you didn't know, is a region in Mie prefecture, in the central part of Japan. Its two main claims to fame are the Great Shrine of Ise, the most important Shinto site, and the pearl diving culture associated with the coastline, and especially with Toba, where the Mikimoto museum is to be found.

Well, we did both the shrine and the museum on our previous visit to the area two years ago, so this time around we opted for less elevated pleasures. We spent the first day at possibly the best beach in Japan, with perfect weather, sand and sea. Bizarrely, on a holiday weekend, the beach was not crowded.

Day two was a visit to Parque Espana, the Spanish-theme(d) park not far from the aforementioned beach. This was a typical piece of Disney-style confection, with the slight gloss of a 'castle' filled with educational and cultural artefacts. The rest was roller-coasters and other rides. Most importantly, despite the blistering heat, the son and heir had a great time. Now, I confess to never having been to EuroDisney, and having generally avoided similar 'attractions' in the UK. But what struck me was how good-natured everyone was at this place. I observed no screaming kids. The queues were orderly and patient; everyone was friendly. I think more than anything, it was this which overcame my basic tendency to meet themeparkery with grumpiness.

Day three was a visit to Kashikojima, a real little tourist town on an island boasting an aquarium, a small harbour for cruise rides round the islands, a load of swanky hotels and not much else. We had no time for the cruise in a faux Spanish Galleon, so did the aquarium instead, having our hands nibbled by doctor fish, and trying to hook a crab in the interactive area.

We stayed near Ise city, at the Seaside Centre run by one of the universities I work for, a beautiful place right on the coast, offering accommodation, large Japanese baths, breakfast and a superb evening meal for around thirty pounds a head.

Now the point of this little travelogue is the obvious homily that it wouldn't have been possible in Britain. Not just for the trivial reason that Britain isn't Japan, but for others besides. The price, for one thing: we stayed in a tiny B&B in Cardiff last year. There is absolutely no comparison, though I will concede that the Seaside Centre was very cheap even by Japanese standards.

For another, the travelling. We bought a Mie prefecture pass called a Mawarianse. This provides unlimited travel on Kintetsu railways and Mie buses for about 4 days. It also provides free entry to a variety of places, including Parque Espana and the Kashikojima Aquarium. It cost about 45 pounds.

We travelled by Kintetsu express train from Nagoya. We went 140 km. Not by bullet train, as this was a pretty countrified region. It took two hours, which seems tolerable to me. More importantly, it was a pleasant ride. At no point were we dumped off the train and into a waiting bus. We took the Kintetsu every day, and it was on time every time. When I say 'on time', of course I mean by Japanese standards. By Japanese standards, the British 'on time' means 'late', and in some cases 'late enough to make the evening news'.

So Japan has a functioning railway system; the UK does not. This is a song I have sung aplenty in the past. But there is yet another comparison. One thing that made our trip pleasant was that we travelled light. Two smallish bags between the three of us. This was possible because we had sent on a larger pack (about the size of a large rucksack) by 'takkyubin': delivery service. There and back cost us 12 pounds. The service was brisk and efficient, and utterly reliable. Again there is a comparison with Britain. Last year I had the brainwave of trying this trick by sending a suitcase from London to my parents. Amazingly I managed to find a delivery company in Britain. However as well as costing far more than the Japanese equivalent, the service was awful. One of the most absurd points was when they insisted that I had to pack the suitcase in a cardboard box. At this point I swallowed the expletives that rose in my gorge, told them I wouldn't be using their services, and hung up. I then tried DHL, as it turned out the company I'd found used DHL for the actual transportation. DHL charged much more, but in the conversation I discovered that the cardboard box was actually their fault. They were only prepared to offer contents insurance on things that were packed in a cardboard box. So I forgot about DHL, got back on to the first company, told them stuff the insurance coverage, but would they shift my case, and they agreed.

The suitcase did arrive at my parents (it was picked up and delivered by people who didn't speak any English, so it's a good thing there were no complications). But the hassle I had to go through to achieve something that, in Japan, would be trivially simple, was enlightening.

Britain seems to have lost the idea that infrastructure is valuable. Maybe it's connected with the Thatcher declaration of the end of 'society': the nation is fracturing into nothing more than self-interested interest groups. But the comparison has made it evident to me that everyone benefits from a recognition of common interest. An efficient rail system has a knock-on effect on the whole of society. It stimulates many other areas of industry and business.

Similarly, the whole network of delivery companies -- though I believe they use road not rail -- help so many other parts of society run well, whether it be the grandma and grandpa in the country sending a box of apples to their favourite grandson in the city, or a company which needs to get a product sample to a client in doublequick time.

My point here is not even a simple political one. Though you might expect a left-wing sensibility is necessary for a train service, you could hardly describe the Japanese government as left wing. The Japanese railways are actually private (their major privatisation was handled intelligently: its lessons were pointedly ignored by the British snouts, eager to immerse themselves in the privatisation trough). The delivery companies are also private. Japan has also recently privatised its post office (though that was a political snout-feeding decision which has led to a far less efficient service).

What it really seems to boil down to is the recognition that some things are in the common interest. I think that a society which loses touch with this notion of common interest: which allows councils to sell off 'commons' to property developers, for example, is broken.

I can't help wondering, as I embark on this first entry, whether my blog will go the same way as my web page. Abandoned to posterity with its amusing references to finishing a project 'some time next millennium', it was wiped by my Internet provider at some time during the last five years without me even noticing.

Perhaps the interactivity of a blog will correct this error.

So I'll put down right now topics that may well be mentioned here, and others that probably won't.

Firstly, I live and work in Japan. I therefore have a user's interest in the language and culture of Japan. Because I live and work in Japan rather than merely being a fanboy, however, I should note that I have minimal interest in manga and anime, and none at all in little plastic dolls of superpowered high-school girls. I have translated console games based on DragonballZ, Saint Seiya and One-Piece. This doesn't mean, however, that I actually like any of these or, for that matter, that I even own a console.

What I actually like is Japan as a human culture; as a collection of human beings who do things in certain ways. I find these as fascinating and infuriating as any human culture (my birth culture included), and I constantly remind myself and any handy victims of my rants that Japan is not the uniquely unique place many of its inhabitants, and culturally challenged commentators from other -- principally English-speaking -- cultures think it is.

Secondly, I'm fascinated by China, or at least, historical China. Fascinated to the extent of writing novels set in the Song Dynasty. That's not something you do with a view to becoming the new J K Rowling or Dan Brown. But I felt compelled to do so nevertheless.

And thirdly, on a related topic, I do have some interest in writing, though annoyingly enough I find looking too closely at technical issues related to writing saps me of the will to write. And that despite my career of editor, pursued after leaving university, and at an off-and-on level ever since.

This isn't everything, and I haven't got on to my list of hates apart from anime fantasy dolls yet, but it will do for now. Given my tendency to waffle, if nothing else I can use this blog as an exercise in brevity.