SIMON ROWE
  • Home
  • Seaweed Salad Days
  • TRAVEL WRITING
  • The Lens
    • Latitudes
  • About
  • Contact

Life in Japan: Sounds of the Good Hood

5/29/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
Must be May; the sound of running water is everywhere, rushing through the sluiceways and gushing from the culverts of the Good Hood. It’s ta-ue, the time when every slip of cultivated earth not yet paved over is flooded and planted with rice seedlings. Soon will come the frogs, then the hungry paddy snakes and after them the sky will be dark with dragonflies.

Air space over the Good Hood is already crowded. Those damn noisy bulbuls outside my front door, looting and pillaging the gardens of the hood as they do every year before the wet season humidity drives them back to the mountains. But give me squabbling bulbuls any day; when the nauseating drone of cicadas arrives after the wet, neighborly conversation becomes a cross-street shouting match and sleeping late is only for the elderly, the dead and owners of heavy industry ear plugs.

But now time to enjoy the cool, quiet evenings. Almost quiet; that new bugle player from the Self Defence Force (SDF) base up the road must be on loan from
the Ueshima Underwater Orchestra (UUO). His Taps and Reveille sound like a bulbul with the flu. But enough of the bird flu...

More and more I’ve come to recognise the denizens of the Good Hood by their sounds. Pre-dawn brings the Opera Singer, an elderly woman who cycles by my house singing songs from old Japanese operas. Her voice is strong and feminine. I have never seen her face.

There is the Running Man who appears after dark on weekdays. He sprints the length of the street, the bata-bata-bata of his rubber soles like a machine gun on the pavement.

Night-time also brings the Newspaper Dude, the screech of his bicycle brakes his signature, a lingering tail of cigarette smoke his calling card. His female counterpart is The Drill Rider, a female shift worker who rides an electric bicycle that sounds like a high-speed dentist’s drill.

If I miss the Opera Singer at 6am, there is always Miss High Heels who passes at a tottering gallop as she tries to make the 7.05 city bus. In my half-dreams I imagine a camel in stilettos. I have never seen her face.

And there are other sounds:

The loose sheet of rusting iron on a house down the road indicates wind strength, rattling violently in typhoon season. The screams from the English teacher's house across the road as he makes love to his girlfriend in his lunch hour. A housewife arguing with her mother-in-law. Mother-in-laws talking about their lazy daughter-in-laws. My neighbour discussing the high price of kerosene with my other neighbour. The baby screaming above the Funabiki Barber Shop. Maekawa-san scolding her two shitsu dogs for pooing outside the barber shop. The kendo club across the Semba River whose clack-clack of wooden swords sounds likes a gazillion raining chopsticks. And finally, the rhythmic, hypnotic chant of the Himeji Kogyo Highschool baseball team as they do their calisthenics. This is a day in the life of a small Japanese neighborhood—told in sound.



2 Comments

    This Blog:

    What is the essence of a traditional Japanese neighbourhood? Writing from my home in Himeji, a castle town in western Honshu, Seaweed Salad Days distills, ferments, presents! 

    Archives

    February 2025
    March 2024
    March 2023
    May 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2018
    February 2018
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All
    Buddhist
    Cha No Yu
    Coffee
    Cycling
    Dining
    Festivals
    Frogs
    Haru-ichiban
    Himeji
    Honshu
    Hyogo Prefecture
    Iaido
    Incense
    Japan
    Japanese
    Japanese Cafes
    Japanese Tattoo
    Kissaten
    Machiya
    Neighborhood
    Nostalgia
    Obon
    Rice Paddies
    Seasonal Winds
    Shinto
    Shinto Gods
    Town House
    Wet Season
    Yakitori
    Yukata Festival

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Seaweed Salad Days
  • TRAVEL WRITING
  • The Lens
    • Latitudes
  • About
  • Contact