I have spent my whole life in a box and have nothing in head, so here goes.

1. Who brings out the best in you?

The one with the spade.  (Hi, if you’re reading this.)

2. Do you like children?

When neither seen nor heard. Otherwise no. Ask me another.

3. What makes you nervous?

Ghosts. Being in an airplane that’s about to crash. Things that provoke fear. Urinating, because on exiting the lavatory I’m never sure whether I’ve actually emptied properly or whether I’m about to have wet chinos. Squid, when they are twenty metres long and in a biting mood, which is a frequent hazard on my mountain in Nara. Being without.

Thank you, WordPress. Can I have my injection now, please?

Fried squid

I get off my commuter train at my local station and attempt to throw away my empty beer can — I can’t always resist a glug on the very long journey from Osaka. This is near enough a daily ritual and I am rather attached to it, but today I was thrown off my rhythm: the recycle and rubbish bins on the platform were sealed. Heavy, officially endorsed planks of words ensured nothing was getting in or getting out. All bins were off limits as a security precaution for the duration of the APEC conference — that’s what the words said. As a magazine editor I was profoundly embarrassed that I was unaware of an APEC conference under my nose, and indeed, it turned out to be just up the road in the city of Nara.

However, my embarrassment was somewhat assuaged when I discovered later that such was the importance of this conference, APEC’s own web site didn’t mention it. The site listed a whole palaver of conflabs happening concurrently up and down the nation, but it took some detective work to find out that Nara was hosting the tourism ministers, who were discussing, er, tourism.

Well, an APEC conference is an APEC conference so I suppose you have to expect a little security.

But I did wonder about locking down the bins at Sango station. We are located in the same prefecture as Nara, but otherwise Sango is a small, non-happening of a town, 17km away from Nara proper. People go there to sleep and wonder whether they could be doing something else with life. As a tactical move, bombing Sango would be like attacking central London by shouting ‘boo!’ in Ongar. Even if the security in Nara were too tight for the most cunning bombers, planting a bomb in Sango would be a gesture so futile as to be risible. And why lock down the bins only in Nara? What about Osaka? It’s just next door. A bomb in Osaka would be as much a blow as a bomb in Nara. It is bigger, more populated, more famous, and there are plenty of good places to have a drink and a feed after a hard day planting IEDs, yet the bins there were open to whatever devices of mass destruction you cared to drop in them.

Back to terror-proof Sango. I was looking at the security-bound rubbish bin with an empty can in my hand. I had no desire to either litter or carry the can home, but no problem. I crossed the platform and dropped my can in the unsealed, unsecured rubbish bin next to the vending machines, which, being managed by Coca Cola and not a rail company, was not a place a terrorist would consider hiding a bomb. So that was all right then.

Christmas and Halloween decorations fleetingly co-existed in the supermarkets and shopping malls.

I hear myself ask, why does Japan need Christmas or Halloween? Why do any of us need Christmas or Halloween?

I thought I had accidentally biffed the skink today. I was planting chilli when the thing zoomed out from under my trowel — stripes, blue tail, the whole skink thing. I couldn’t find any skink bits in the planting bed, so I think I missed it.

These creatures are not unknown in my garden, but every time I see one, I get childishly excited. There they are, real life creatures hanging out in my space and being cute and alive and natural. None have naff jobs or carry mobile phones.

I am, incidentally, sitting in the garden with beer while writing this. I shall have wine in a mo.

In previous years, I have seen the biggest skink ever, lots of miniature frogs (the kind that adhere to the windowpane), geckos, and even a small snake. I didn’t ever see a snake in my garden in Hackney. I did see a hedgehog in my garden in Hackney and hawks hunt over that big green space the other side of the Lea from Springfield park where magic mushrooms grow. I think that’s unspeakably cool.

A Canadian friend of mine was bitten by a baby viper on a street in Kyoto. It got him on the fleshy part of the hand between thumb and first finger. He was completely stoned at the time. You want a head full of tetrahydrocannabinol when you get bitten by a snake. He lived to get wasted again another day.

Years ago, my upper son J tried to stamp on a viper on the mountain above our house. We were strolling in the woods by the tiger shrine when this thing skittered across our path and J, about 10 at the time whooped like a loony and give chase trying to stamp on the snake’s tail. I have no idea why he thought it was a good idea. I suppose you have to be ten years old for that sort of thing to make sense. The path was narrow and I had my whole family between J and I, and I was unable to bound over in a fatherly, rescuing sort of way and had to content myself with shouting like my own kind of loony instead. Of course, the Japanese families strolling in the same woods, unable to see the snake, just saw a big foreigner shouting at a child and I inadvertently confirmed a number of unkind stereotypes in one go.

I have even seen the occasional cat in my garden.

In the neighbourhood generally, we have big snakes (shima hebi, no danger to people), herons, cormorants, ducks, tanuki (a dog-like creature that is reminiscent of a raccoon), stoats and an unnamed stoat-like thingy with longer legs and mangy mien. The river is full of big carp and the paddy fields are full of crayfish and, of course, millions of frogs, which end up flattened all over the road in the summer.

And the wildlife doesn’t confine itself to the garden. I once found one of those miniature frogs hopping across my kitchen floor. I have no problem with frogs in the house but I thought Mr. Cat might have opinions about it so I caught it. Catching a small frog after a bottle of wine and who knows what other gluggables I had consumed that night is a recipe for instant slapstick, knockabout comedy. I tumbled over a chair.

I once found a gecko curled up on the gas element of the cooker. Geckos have chameleon abilities and this guy had matched the colour of the gas burner perfectly. I think he thought he was being pretty clever, cleaving to the gas burner while wearing the colour of cinder. Lucky I spotted him or he would have been real cinder when I put on the water for my tea. I like geckos, but I think they might be a bit daft. Another time, closing the shutters one leapt from the runners right onto my hand where he clung on. You could see it in his face: hey, I just escaped squishy death with that magnificent leap! Geckos pretty much wear their thoughts on their sleeves; they don’t keep much to themselves at all. You always know what a gecko is thinking. And then he did this comic little double take as he realized he was clinging to the hand of a potential predator and leapt again, this time into my daughter’s doll house, where, endearingly, he took up residence.

Oh, and we have lots of bats. More bats than a very batty belfry. I have just been reminded of bats as one zoomed over my head a second ago. A lot of these guys apparently live in the loft of the house behind ours. When I am sitting here with my beer at this time of day I can see them dropping out of the eaves and zooming away like small, hairy jet fighters.

The sky tonight is luminous pink and blue and the moon is very milky indeed and it really is getting close to wine time.

So. Animals. I’m hanging out a bit longer this evening wondering what living things might stroll round for a chat. A herd of wildebeest sweeping majestically across this suburban lawn? A pteranodon in the olive tree, perhaps?

Whatever the beasties here, that commuter train tomorrow morning, with its cargo of blue suits and combovers will be the opposite of wild life.

Mood: deeply mellow

Music: the sound of the spheres

Elections here are normally characterised by huge amounts of amplified noise from electioneering candidates. No one in Japan seems to feel they can be taken seriously unless they are making maximum noise. Noise equals a conspicuous display of effort (issho kenmei).

My story was written a number of years ago and things have got better. This year the pols are allegedly campaigning quietly. Apparently one candidate in Tokyo is leading her campaign with an appeal for quiet, as reported by Time Out Tokyo.

The effect of quiet campaigning can be quite spooky. One candidate posted himself outside my local rail station draped in sash and ribbons, wearing obligatory white gloves, grinning and bowing silently at the commuters as we left. He looked very much like the Mayor of Halloweentown or the anime character Moguro-san, his bows looming at us out of the evening dark like a dummy in a carnival ghost ride.

Yet the local candidates still circle my home blaring their names and yoroshikus when I am trying to write as described in the old post.

Eric Johnston of The Japan Times visited the elections for Kansai Scene in the March issue with a story called ‘Vox urusai‘, urusai meaning noisy in Japanese.

Meanwhile, voter alienation has been mistaken for a new thing by World Socialist Web Site. I suspect that it has been a fact of Japanese politics, demonstrable by the fact that the men and women with megaphones have been getting away with professional nincompoopism for as long as anyone can remember.

I think people only used to turn out to vote to shut the numpties up. Now the numpties have been forced to shut up, perhaps people can ignore them in peace.

And there it is.

This choco looks unfortunately like cat poo. I’m not sure what goes through the minds of the people who design these things. They must have created this and thought: ‘It looks deliciously like cat poo.’ Or perhaps nothing goes through the minds of these people. Or perhaps they are bitter and twisted souls, hell bent on revenge and humiliation for humanity for some imagined offense. Or perhaps it is designed specially for ladies who are resentful at the social obligation to give chocolate to all the males in the office one day a year. Or … well, I ate it anyway. Yum.

One hundred and eight temptations? That is an awful lot? Or is it? If it is distraction by the here and now that keeps us from enlightenment then everything must be a temptation and everything is a lot bigger number than 108, doh! But Buddhism is very specific that there are 108 of them, not an infinite number, not 107, not 109.

I began to wonder what these 108 temptations are.

A quick rummage online produced approximately nothing. Not even Wikipedia could help, lamely telling me, “108 is the natural number following 107 and preceding 109”, and that 108 is the number of times Japanese people ring the bell at the end of the year and that each ring represents, etc, etc.

Eventually, I found out from Sherman, a on a manga site:

Turns out there aren’t actually 108 named temptations — the number is just generally significant in those religious circles. It’s more symbolic than an actual list, it seems.

So that’s that for enlightenment. The notion of a non-specific list of temptations to avoid in order to achieve Nirvana suggests that you need to have reached enlightenment to know what it was you didn’t do to get there. And enlightenment seems to require a big petulant streak that forbids you from revealing the path to pure, elevated being.

No, shan’t! It’s my enlightenment, yar boo sucks! Etc.

So, I decided to compose a tentative list of 108 earthly temptations that might keep me here rather than in an ethereal otherworld.

So here goes.

1. Twiglets.
2. Cats. Whenever I sit down, mine’s running all over me. Up over the legs to the window sill and back again and threatening to knock over my drink, then walking on the computer keyboard before curling up on my lap or head butting me with affection while purring like a loony. And frankly, when the mogg is doing these things I don’t give a toss about Nirvana or enlightenment, I’m just happy to give him a fuss and a tickle. Cats must be the ultimate anti-enlightenment temptation. Hence, presumably, the Henry Cow song: ‘Nirvana for Mice’ — with no cats around, the ultimate home of the soul must be a pretty cool place for rodents.
3. A nice cup of tea (as opposed to a horrible cup of tea). Honestly, when life is feeling too lifey, nothing beats a cuppa for getting you back on top of things. Apart perhaps from a pot of magic mushrooms.
4. Magic mushrooms.
5. Glorious sunsets.
6. Mountain vistas.
7. A cold, crisp, clear winter day, preferably experienced walking by a river in England with the prospect of a stop in a pub just up ahead.
8. Outer space.
9. Chatting with my daughter.
10. A good book.
11. Hugs.
12. Randomly inserting ‘erm …’ into a list to make it sound like I’m stuck for ideas when I’m not really.
13. Anchovies.
14. Ice cream — especially a cocktail of Häagen-Dazs grown up flavours like Belgian chocolate, walnut, honey, macadamia, etc. (Not including anchovy flavour ice cream, which anyway isn’t in Häagen-Dazs’s repertoire, though I believe there’s a place in Taiwan that does it).
15. Giving up on time-wasting lists before you’ve finished.

No, I don’t really want to plod on to number 108. Judging by the list I have here, I have enough things to keep me happy here, so I’ll postpone Nirvana to another life.

But what about other people? What are your 108 temptations keeping you from rapture?