Simon Rowe

Japan-based storyteller and author. Blogging about life in a Honshu hood at www.mightytales.net 

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Seaweed Salad Days is back in the house! After an eighteen month hiatus I'm pleased to say I'm still alive, and contrary to the premise of this blog that ‘nothing lasts forever', so is the Good Hood of Himeji in western Japan. Only, it's a new hood. https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days 

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I took a plane, bus and boat to get to a small island called Ovalau in the Fijian Islands. ‘Baby Grand’ is all I’ve got to show for it - a tale of an elderly woman with a weighty problem and a gang of fish cannery workers who help her solve it. You can read it here: www.mightytales.net  #shortfiction #shortreads  #books #reading #writing #indieauthor #travelfiction #publishing #story #travel #asiapacific #fiji #newzealand

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Thinking, drinking, writing - yeah, that's it. And an interview with Kitaab! @kitaab.org https://kitaab.org/2019/07/30/how-a-gold-tooth-from-marrakesh-and-kung-fu-from-dengfeng-inspired-stories/?fbclid=IwAR3Hg1-RaO0t9lMXXSWItBM8nUzhx1ZDX5f9mb20wYWZPpyvwTsDY6TQdxY #asia #japan #writer #interview #stories (at Himeji, Hyogo) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0is5KcJYxC/?igshid=1uhpnz5kl07tz

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A short read called WEED: A restaurant waitress uses her wit to have her husband released from prison when a Mexican beach resort town is besieged by seaweed.

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“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” ― George Orwell, 1984

VeloCity is a dystopian tale for cyclists set in Japan 2035 - Part I

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#kindlebooks #mightytales #travelfiction #goodnightpapa #goodreads #shortstories #spain #alpujarra

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Notes from Himeji, Japan: The Colour of the Night

A long time ago (250 years thereabouts), a powerful dude named Sakakibara Masamune decreed that the people of his castle town slip into something more comfortable and shimmy downtown for a good time. “Do what?” his attendants asked. “Throw a party, you monkeys! I’m outta here!”

Indeed he was, off to rule another fiefdom, but not before starting a tradition that would fill the fine streets of Himeji with colourful summer kimono (ゆかた, yukata), octopus dumplings and, a little later, skyrockets and riot police, for three days a year and every year thereafter.

More than just a celebration of the highly functional yukata, it’s a fashion show. Women’s yukata colours are brighter, patterns livelier, and shock-horror! hems are rising. The elderly women of the Good Hood shake their heads and click their tongues at these parading young things in mini yukata; the young fellas nod their heads and knock themselves out with their tongues.

The Yukata Festival, held in mid June every year, also celebrates the rainy season. That’s right, it is the wettest time of the year, which doesn’t stop several hundred thousand people from choking the streets and alleys south of Himeji castle with coin to spend on cold beer, toys and tasty treats. There were once more than 800 stalls, erected and manned by a small army of itinerant carnivaleers called tekiya. The big hand of City Hall has nearly halved this number in recent years, in an effort to manage the heavy crowds. The effect, as always, is similar to squeezing a tube of toothpaste - same crowds, smaller space.

Word on the street has always been that tekiya are in cohorts with the local yakuza; others say that’s an unfair image and that the stall holders are just abiding by a ‘system’ which takes a nice slice of their earnings and hands it to the mob. Let’s call it a ‘licensing fee’. The City seems okay with this as it ‘stimulates’ the local economy and frees up their rubber stamps for more pressing matters.

Times have changed since I tagged along with some English teachers to my first Yukata Festival 20 years ago. Then, youth gangs flocked from all over the province to wage theatrical (and sometimes violent) running pitched battles with their rivals on the city streets. Hard to believe in peace-loving Japan? Well listen to this: watching riot police get pelted with skyrockets, drag troublemakers off to paddy wagons by their orange hair, and see the odd motor scooter get barbecued, reminded me of the Costa Rican fruit vendor riots of ‘91 (Yes, I was in Costa Rica in 1991). Cheap entertainment for the masses, poor public relations for the police, not exactly a festive family affair.

That’s all gone. The police have changed their tune. They now use subterfuge and infiltration tactics, clever stuff like putting dozens of plainclothes officers into the crowds to catch troublemakers on digital camera or video. Maybe this has worked, or maybe the young punks have just gotten older, gotten married and gotten a job, because the Yukata Matsuri is now a family affair.  

‘Smokin Joe’ Matsumoto, the old kitchen gardener who lives on my street in the Good Hood, will be taking his grandchildren again this year. Those long sleeves of his faded yukata will be sure to hold a pack of cigarettes, a lighter and some coins for cotton candy. My old friend Ono-san won’t be going; she thinks it’s too crowded, too noisy, the food tasteless and too expensive. “I’m saving my yukata for the fireworks festivals,” she says.

If you go, be sure to drop by the Ghost House at the edge of Otemae park; it has been a going concern for years, adept at taking your money and scaring the bejesus out of you with the screams of other teenage patrons. They say a good ghosting chills you out during a long, hot Japanese summer. Personally I’d prefer a cold beer...

Read more dispatches at Seaweed Salad Days

https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days

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What do twenty years of living in a traditional Japanese neighbourhood add up to? 30,000 words and a lot friends! Seaweed Salad Days @ www.mightytales.net (at Himeji, Hyogo)

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Coffee, rum, and an antique shotgun bring to the boil the suspicions of a group of barflies when a stranger enters their village cafe in Andalusia, southern Spain. #shortstories #travelfiction #mightytales #kindlebooks #kindle #amazonbooks

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Wet season dispatch from Himeji, Japan - https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days #Himeji #Japan #rainyseason #simonrowe #blogwriter (at Himeji, Hyogo)

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Tonight promises to be a king tide at the Poodle Bar. Tonight all boats will be lifted, some may lose their rudders, others will flounder and sink, and the lucky ones will limp home to port and a dry dock for the rest of the weekend. The unlucky with be bundled into a taxi and driven to an address of their best pronunciation. https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days (at Himeji, Hyogo)

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Notes from Himeji, Japan: Night and the City

Humphrey Bogart said, ‘The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.’

The problem with Friday nights in the Good Hood is that everyone is a few drinks ahead. Which is not to say that I’m a slow drinker—I’ll raise my glass to your health as fast as the next drunk—it’s just that by the time I’ve finished work, helped with the chores and read Harry the Dirty Dog or Where The Wild Bums Are to the little people of my household, Hana-kin is almost gone.

Hana-kin means ‘Flower Friday.’ Seasoned drinkers who survived the dancefloors and big hair of Japan’s 80s Bubble era still use the term to describe the day when a week’s worth of paper shuffling, screen-staring, drifting through meetings and endless trips to the green tea dispenser comes to an end, and night and city beckon.

To Japanese youth, the term Hana-kin is archaic—like grandad’s shoestring neckties or Tahitian Lime hair tonic—and likely conjures images of drunken businessmen singing karaoke with neck-tie bandannas while their junior female colleagues pour drinks and mop up the vomit of those who have passed out. It is true—I have borne witness. And yes, the youngbloods are right, Hana-kin does need an image upgrade.

The gap between old and young doesn’t bother me; I feel equally at ease in the raucous dive bars on Himeji’s Salt Street and the faux wine bars of Fish Town Street. But in the end, there’s no place like home, and my home for the past 18 years has been the Good Hood north of Himeji Castle, an old neighborhood which survived the WWII firebombings and still breeds a sense of true Japanese community. I like to drink with ‘my people.’ That’s why on Friday nights, whenever I can, I make for a place where the salt-of-the-earth gathers like a crust on the counter.

To the Poodle Bar!

The Poodle sits at the confluence of a busy street and the deathly quiet one which leads into my neighborhood. Before the roller door goes up around 6pm, the counter has been wiped, ashtrays set at half-metre intervals, toilet scrubbed and the karaoke volume adjusted downwards from the previous night. Around 7pm, the first customers drift in, the early birds, the oldtimers, pensioners, widowers, maybe a retired mobster or two. Later, their seats will be taken by factory workers, truck drivers, lonely single men and the odd housewife on-the-run.

Come on in, take a seat and start your night with the words, ‘Tori-aizu, biru!’ or ‘A coldie for starters!’ There’s nothing like a glass of brown bubbles to slacken the jaw and loosen tongue. But tonight, as on most Fridays, the seasoned drinkers are ahead. For the pensioner, the two grease monkeys with calloused knuckles, the huddle of smoking housewives and the jokester singing “Top of the World”, that first beer is a distant memory.

Bottles of Black Mist Island Shōchū (焼酎) now line the counter, the ‘bottle keeps’ of these regular patrons, each bearing the name of the man or woman in front of it. This is serious drinking, Mum, the kind that makes an Irish funeral wake look like a child’s tea party.

Tonight promises to be a king tide at the Poodle Bar. Tonight all boats will be lifted, some may lose their rudders, others will flounder and sink, and the lucky ones will limp home to port and a dry dock for the rest of the weekend. The unlucky with be bundled into a taxi and driven to an address of their best pronunciation.

The Poodle Mama oversees this night-time circus with the ease of a woman who sees it every Friday night. She is a woman in her late 50s who looks like what Raymond Chandler might have called a ‘drawn-out dame.’ Her makeup is thick, I cannot tell if she is smiling or grimacing as she moves between patrons, pouring beers, working swizzle sticks, encouraging the money flow across the counter. Will she sing a song? Will she? The pensioner pleads. His cajoling ends in a sad (very sad) ballad about love lost in snowy Hokkaido.

The Poodle Mama is clapped off vigorously by the young mechanics at the end of the bar and a greasy microphone is thrust into my hand—with a song pre-selected. And so once again, the deathly quiet street which leads to my home resounds with the words, ‘On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, warm smell of colitas rising up through the air…’

Admittedly, closing time at Poodle is an hour I seldom see; the messiness, mayhem and mumbling missing persons reach me only as sounds lost in the night, when I am safely tucked up in my futon and dreaming of water skiing bikini girls and a warm tide lapping at my toes.

Which reminds me…

If I ever open a bar here, I will call it the High Tide Bar and I will raise a neon sign over the counter which will read in atomic orange kanji, ‘If you drink to forget, please pay in advance.’

https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days 

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The Hitman Who Ate Too Much

Dining from a buffet required a special strategy. Just like killing a man. That is, to optimise the outcome one had to show restraint and discipline—caution even. A buffet was a visual trap, apt to overload the senses with its colour, presentation and aromas, all of which could foul one’s good sense. One had to start small, start light, and not succumb to that trait of many a man’s undoing—greed.

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- Me