Saturday 9th September: Episode #24 - Yuukan Dango and Botchan (er, no connection)

Dave introduces Andy to an arcane Japanese summer tradition in which you prick a latex covered ball of Japanese bean-paste candy (aka a "yuukan ball") and end up with a sticky ball on a toothpick.

After munching on sticky balls for a while they remember that they are actually podcasting and get on with the subject in hand, namely, Botchan, or "a little boy" - the title of Natsume Souseki's novel set in Matsuyama... but don't rely on anything Dave doesn't tell you about the plot!

Dave delves into the intricacies of translating Japanese novels and exemplifies the difficulties therein encountered by reading four versions of the opening couple of paragraphs of Botchan, which go from the stuffy Meiji era attempt of an old Japanese buffer to a recent "devil-may-care" version in American English, featuring such gems as "Buck b'cawk," and "buttmunch"...

Somehow or other the lads get sidetracked by recurring themes of Scottish roots and the roots of tight-waddery. Andy supplies some genuine backpiped musical relief.

Andy takes us back to civilization with the 5th episode of his Kansai Diary in which he takes us on a tour of sleazy side streets and treats us to a rapping guide to the multifarious bars and dental clinics of nocturnal Osaka...

This week's musical offering, "When too Much is Never Enough," features lyrics by the infamous Mr. B...

Dave polishes off with a bit of Japanese trumpet blowing, "rappa o fuku..."

Dave introduces Andy to an arcane Japanese summer tradition in which you prick a latex covered ball of Japanese bean-paste candy (aka a "yuukan ball") and end up with a sticky ball on a toothpick.

After munching on sticky balls for a while they remember that they are actually podcasting and get on with the subject in hand, namely, Botchan, or "a little boy" - the title of Natsume Souseki's novel set in Matsuyama... but don't rely on anything Dave doesn't tell you about the plot!

Dave delves into the intricacies of translating Japanese novels and exemplifies the difficulties therein encountered by reading four versions of the opening couple of paragraphs of Botchan, which go from the stuffy Meiji era attempt of an old Japanese buffer to a recent "devil-may-care" version in American English, featuring such gems as "Buck b'cawk," and "buttmunch"...

Somehow or other the lads get sidetracked by recurring themes of Scottish roots and the roots of tight-waddery. Andy supplies some genuine backpiped musical relief.

Andy takes us back to civilization with the 5th episode of his Kansai Diary in which he takes us on a tour of sleazy side streets and treats us to a rapping guide to the multifarious bars and dental clinics of nocturnal Osaka...

This week's musical offering, "When too Much is Never Enough," features lyrics by the infamous Mr. B...

Dave polishes off with a bit of Japanese trumpet blowing, "rappa o fuku..."

Saturday 2nd September: Episode #23 - From Pink T-Shirts to Soluble Raincoats, Pin Kara Kiri Made!

Today we're all about fashion: more T-shirts with offensive slogans, socks that look like they have another pair of socks inside, skirts worn over jeans and those feminine boys wearing low-cut pink tops.

This leads us to the beach and the Japanese ladies' nipple denial, before Andy tells us a tale of German nude bathing and its effect on repressed pallid English lads.

In part 4 of the Kansai Diary Andy ruminates on the horrors of mass Japanese tourism but finds solace in Kyoto's lesser visited sites, revealing on the way the trials of Zen monks in pursuit of enlightenment.

STAVKA (www.ardle.net/stavkahome.htm) play the laid back number 'Soluble Raincoat Dissolves', before talk turns to the bath house, and Dave takes us through the procedure for visiting a public bath in Japan. A brief comparison with the revolting practices found in Roman baths follows, before we run the whole gamut with the Japanese idiom 'pin kara kiri made'...

Saturday 26th August: Episode #22 - Old Farts, Deer Poo, Tanka Bollocks, Kattans etc.

Why does Japan's Prime Minister keep going to the infamous Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo? Andy and Dave certainly have no idea, but that's not going to stop them blathering on about it...

In Part 3 of the "Kansai Diary" Andy visits the ancient capital Nara and regales us with tales of deer poo, enormous gilded boots, ornate gardens with nasty secrets and strange ceremonies conducted in mossy shrines.

STAVKA plays "Asleep on Wake Island", an ode to those miserable gits who constantly complain in this land of plenty. More info on STAVKA can be found at http://www.ardle.net/stavkahome.htm.

Next Dave reads an anti-Zen poem in the 'tanka' style sent in by Arthur Moss, before drawing once again on a 17th century account of Japan in the second part of John Saris' diary.

We round out with 'Dave's an Idiom', in which we talk of huge numbers and repentance, in another snippet of the Japanese language you will never need to use...

Saturday 19th: Episode #21 - Of Sweating Monks & Stinking Cabbages

Skunk Cabbage Smells Good
Andy's new hard rocking theme tune is subverted by some God-awful sentimental Japanese ballad which would have us all going off to Oze the countryside of Gunma-ken to get a whiff of skunk cabbage ("mizu-bashou" in Japanese).

"When summer comes I remember
Faraway Oze, the distant sky,
Gentle shadows float towards me in the mist, moorland paths;
The skunk cabbage blossoms,
...
The skunk cabbage gives off its scent,
It's dream-like scent..."

Andy's Kansai Dairy - Part 2: Collapsing Bridges and Sweating Monks
Well anyway, next comes Part Two of the Kansai Diary, an audio record of Andy's recent trip to that region. In this episode he focusses on the collapsing bridges of Uji town and a fat sweaty monk in Daigoji temple.

Andy explains how one can become enlightened by being whacked on the bonce by a Zen master...

First Order Flesh Requisition
This week's musical interlude is a piece of melancholic reggae, another STAVKA song called 'First Order Flesh Requisition'...

Edmund Blunden and The Voyage of John Saris
Dave takes us through the second part of his mini-series on Edmund Blunden's "A Wanderer in Japan", in which Blunden introduces us to John Saris, an Englishman who visited Japan in the early 17th century. This leads onto a new mini series in which David will read two extracts from John Saris' diary. Here is John Saris describing his arrival in "Fuccate" - i.e. Hakata, the port town on the north-west coast of Kyushu:

"The place exceedingly peopled, very civil and courteous, only that at our landing, and being here in Fuccate and so through the whole country withersoever we came, the boys, children, and worser sort of idle people would gather about and follow along after us, crying, 'Core, Core, Cocore, ware,' that is to say, 'You Coreans with false hearts,' wondering, hoping, hollowing and making such a noise about us that we could scarcelyhear one another speak, sometimes throwing stones at us (but that not in many towns) yet the clamour and crying after us was everywhere alike, none reproving them for it."

Dave's an Idiom - Mizu-kusai
We wrap up with the strange Japanese idiom which, taken literally, means to smell like water... - "mizu-kusai" - a bit like "mizu-bashou" I'm sure...

Download the podcast here.

Saturday 12th August - Episode #20: Travels in Japan - Andy's Kansai Diary; Edmund Blunden in Nagasaki...

We celebrate the 20th episode of the ABC podcast with a few drinks. The 20th episode ushers in the first of a series of parallel readings. Andy will read extracts from his travel diary, written while on a week's holiday in the Kansai area. Andy's travels is a seven-part series.

Dave has been doing some reading on Japan and Japan related topics and will also be reading whatever takes his fancy. For the next two episodes his theme will be Edmund Blunden in Japan, but that will lead on to the accounts of travellers to Japan from previous centuries...

Unagi Harakiri

Anyway, in this episode Dave kicks off the show by indulging in more talk of eels, and the different way in which they are cut open in the Kansai and Kanto areas of Japan - and the reason why that is. (Hint: harakiri.)

Andy in Kansai, Part 1

Then we hear Part One of Andy's 'Kansai Diary', documenting his recent trip to the cultural heart of Japan in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion. This week centers on the truth about Kyoto's Geisha, and a visit to Uji to visit some alleged UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Andy's photo documentary of his trip can be viewed on his website at: www.ardle.net. Click the "Photos" button when you get there.

Low Tech Stavka

STAVKA sings 'Lo-fi Gods', an ode to all things badly recorded.

Edmund Blunden and the War Poets

Talk turns to the poets of World War One. David reads and discusses three wartime poems:

• Rupert Brooke - The Soldier
  
• Wilfred Owen - Dulce et Decorum Est
  
• Jesse Pope - The Call
  

He also reads a poem by Edmund Blunden, written in 1936. It documents the way in which memories of war can be vivid even though some details, such as placenames, once so much a part of the soldier's life, are now forgotten:

Can You Remember?

Yes, I still remember
The whole thing in a way;
Edge and exactitude
Depend on the day.

Of all that prodigious scene
There seems scanty loss,
Though mists mainly float and screen
Canal, spire and fosse;

Though commonly I fail to name
That once obvious Hill,
And where we went and whence we came
To be killed, or kill.
Those mists are spiritual
And luminous-obscure,
Evolved of countless circumstance
Of which I am sure;

Of which, at the instance
Of sound, smell, change and stir,
New-old shapes for ever
Intensely recur.

And some are sparkling, laughing, singing,
Young, heroic, mild;
And some incurable, twisted,
Shrieking, dumb, defiled.

January 1936

Blunden in Japan, Part 1

Blunden subsequently visited Japan a couple of times, before and after World War II and wrote of his experiences in post-A-Bomb Nagasaki, an extract of which is read by Dave. Blunden recalls the Admiral Pellew incident when a British naval commander brought his ship into Nagasaki harbour hoping to capture some Dutch ships. There were no Dutch ships in the harbour at the time, but the disgrace that the mayor of Nagasaki felt was such that he committed harakiri.

Dave's ABC of Japanese Words and Idioms

Dave rounds the show off with another Japanese idiom, "jouhatsu", which has a double meaning - "evaporate" or "disappear" which was perhaps an unfortunate choice coming as it does so quickly on the heels of an account of Nagasaki...

Saturday 5th August - Episode #19: Cow Day Eels, Barbarians and Other Questions...

We kick off with confusing talk of Cow Day, seasonal interregna, Chinese cosmology and eel-eating - all of which are somehow connected.

Next we reveal what Dave's Dad was doing in Malaya in the 1950's and explore the end of empire in that region before opening our ears to another STAVKA track, "Felled in Ginza."

Andy then tackles the slightly dodgy subject of Asian bloodlust - have wartime barbarities merely been transformed into violent manga, sadistic porn and extreme schadenfreude?

Controversy then continues with Dave reviewing Kishore Mahbubani's book "Can Asians Think?", which leads to a discussion of whether or not Japan is different from other Asian countries, as exemplified by its economic success.

Saturday 29th July - Podcast #18: What's in a Name?

What's in a name? Quite a lot, as it turns out, as Andy delves into the world of Japanese monikers and unearths romanticism, conservatism, confusion and a lot of bilingual double-entendres too.

STAVKA rock out with the experimental piece "We Have Come For What's Left of Your Mind", before Dave lifts the curtain on the stereotype of the ultra-polite and civilised Japanese.

Saturday 22nd July - Episode #17: Cetaceans & Other Animals

This week we return to the subject of cetaceans: that's whales, dolphins and porpoises to you.

Andy begins with a Japanese proverb about whales:

A whale on the beach is food for seven villages

David counters by challenging Andy to translate an extract from Jerome's Latin Bible whale:

fuit Jonas in ventre ceti tribus diebus et tribus noctibus

Erm, that's something like "'twas Jonah in stomach of whale three days and three night buses."

On which day of creation did God create "great whales"? (Rats! Dave was hoping Andy would say "Day seven" so that he could call him an imbecile. Whales were created on "Day five".)

We look at Japan's attempts to restart commercial whaling, the killing and eating of dolphins at Taiji, and then take a look at what those folk on the Faeroe Islands get up to.

This leads into a somewhat heated debate about the nature of cetaceans and whether or not they are special animals. Andy argues that dolphins are as humans as, well, humans, but later his fundamental misanthropy exhibits itself when he opines that "humans are just animals"...

From here we get into a wider discussion concerning man and his place within the animal kingdom.

On the musical front we return to alternative rock, as Andy's band STAVKA perform "Vinegar Tom" for your listening pleasure.

Dave attempts a comparative review of two books, John Gray's "Straw Dogs" and Robert Kaplan's "Warrior Politics" - a more coherent online review of the two books can be read on his website, here. The connection between Gray's book and the theme of "man and his place within the animal kingdom" becomes apparent when it emerges that Gray is even more of a misanthropist than our Andy (who is, after all, only 95% Jane - er Jain).

Links
Whaling - Wikipedia
A bloody war - Economist
Stop weeping over whaling - Helene Guldberg, Spiked
Why humans are superior to apes - Helene Guldberg, Spiked
Speciesism: a beastly concept - Josie Appleton

Saturday 15th July - Episode #16: The Peace Park Podcast...

The lads return with a live broadcast from a very humid Peace Memorial Park in the centre of Hiroshima.

We hear how Dave's ditch-digging resulted in no episode last week, before launching into talk of summer plans: Andy will head for Kyoto and Norway, while Dave will head towards another ditch, which may or may not be full of newts.

A brief chat about the ugliness of Japanese parks and their lack of grass leads us to Easter Islanders playing the cryptically-named techno piece "92,000 yen". Andy then tells us how the title was inspired by his encountered with the Hiroshima police a few years back, after which we learn of Dave's immigration misdemeanour.

Finally we treat you to a short extract form the aborted podcast with our friend Mr.B, before wandering over to the Peace Bell to wrap things up with a dong for peace...

Saturday 2nd July: Episode #15 - Small Penises & Removable Vaginas

Podcasting Disaster - Our Guest Gets Carried Away

This week's episode kicks off with a tale of a podcasting disaster: how our last recoding session resulted in the guest presenter stripped down to the bone and being carted off to hospital, but only after the amubulance crew called the fire brigade for some extra assistance!

Somehow or other this event leads us into a not entirely unconnected discourse on the endowment of the Japanese racoon dog (aka "tanuki").

ABC of Japanese Idiom

You may note that this section came quickly in this week's programme, as you would expect when the matter in hand is none other than the celebrated chinkoro, which is to say, being translated out of Osaka dialect, "small penis" (Jap or foreign).

• chinmari - snug
  
• enpitsu - pencil
  
• hari - needle
  
• hinedaikon - shrivelled radish
  

Japanese Love Dolls

Next we introduce you to "Candy Girl", the adult-sized sillicone female companion with detachable parts who may be responsible for Japan's declining birthrate. Consider:

"Japanese society's potent ability to consumerize has now made mature, healthy relationships with women superfluous to a growing number of men, with potentially disastrous effects on future Japanese demographics."

Tokyo Journal

Easter Islanders

Andy's techno outfit comes up with the song "Pure Essence of Carsten Meissner," after which we learn the sad story of the gentleman named in the title, which involves The Complete Works of Freud, a deviation about Clement Freud and his role in the classic BBC Radio 4 panel game, Just a Minute.

Website of the Week

Website of the Week features www.stumbleupon.com, where you can get a toolbar for your browswer that lets you surf the web in an intelligent and personalised way.

The Battle of the Somme

Being July 1st, we commemorate the Battle of the Somme which kicked off on that date 90 years ago, and our presenters tell us what their respective grandfathers were up to at that time.

The World Cup

The English are currently facing another kind of battle in the soccer World Cup, a tournament from which Japan have recently been eliminated. Dave tells of the case of too many yellow cards, and then finds himself caught short...

The Fortune-Telling Doll

We wrap up with more tales of dolls, this time in the shape of an old Japanese horror story...
(courtesy of Tokyo Journal)

Links and Sources

Tokyo Journal

Japanese Slang Uncensored

BBC Radio 4: Just a Minute

Clement Freud

Ref awards player 3 yellow cards!

Saturday 24th June: Episode #14 - A Trip to Miyajima

Recorded live form Miyajima Island, (with consequent sound drop-outs), we begin by pondering why the Japanese like to group famous things into threes, before turning our attention to the shady dealings of Sokagakai, Japan's equivalent to Scientology.

Then on to earthquakes: a recent one brings back memories of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, and Andy tells us how he almost became a looter.

Next we look at the recent fad of the 'Meido Kissa', cafes in which waitresses attired in French maid outfits are ogled by nerds, which have apparently already made their appearance in Hiroshima.

The show is then interrupted by a ravenous deer who devours Dave's show notes, but the lads make good their escape and go to gawp at the Big Red Gate, symbol of Miyajima, and do a spot of winkle-picking at its foot.

Next a quick look at Itskushima Shrine, with its floating stage for play performances, before the appearance of a motorized priest leads us to a digression on the lucrative trade in remembering the dead in Japan.

Easter Islanders provide us with another mellow techno number in the shape of 'Devious III', before we go to sample one of Miyajima's delicacies, 'Momiji-manju', maple-leaf shape sponge cakes filled with chocolate, custard or sweet bean paste. Sounds revolting, doesn't it?

A brief chat about eels and the Japanese ingrained habit of gift-giving and the ferry home beckons...

Saturday 17th June: Episode #13 - The Hidari Maki Show!

This episode opens with a live duet accompanied by Andy on the guitar...

"A Bomb City, A Bomb City, Episode Thirteen, (rpt.)
Its got style, its got class,
And if you don't like it you can stick it up your et cetera..."

This episode is nuts. Dave confesses that when it comes to nuts he is a peanut-man or was that peeman. Andy follows up with an explanation of the exoteric and esoteric meanings of the Japanese word "peeman" (green pepper)...

Japanese Nutters and Nutters in Japan

The main theme of today's episode is a consideration of the various mental cases who inhabit this fair city...

Japanese Nutter, Case #1: Andy tells us of the bizarre antics of the Yano Can Man

Japanese Nutter, Case #2: Dave describes the antics of tram-nutters who have learnt by heart everything that tram drivers and conductors say and delight in going through their spiel while on the tram...

Japanese Nutter, Case #3: Andy returns with a tale of a local Tourette's Syndrome victim who insists on accompanying him on his morning dash to the station...

Japanese Nutter, Case #4: Andy's classroom encounter with a real "hidari maki"...

The Case of a Foreign Nutter in Japan: Or what an English teacher did in class one day...

Easter Islanders

Music is provided by Easter Islanders, Andy's electronic outfit, who play the intriguingly named 'Oscar : Cut 'n' Dried Quagmire' - a nutterish title if ever there was one...

History As He Sees It

Andy has something against the Poles which he thinks should be set straight. Why was their country in the wrong place between the wars? Who was General Pilsudksi? Did the Polish cavalry really charge against German tanks in 1939?

All will be revealed on the podcast...

Dan Kurzman's Gaffe in The Day of the Bomb

Dave then tests Andy's historical knowledge by getting him to spot the series of historical errors in a passage from Dan Kurzman's 'The Day of the Bomb : Countdown to Hiroshima'. How many errors can you find?

In early January 1939, while Szilard was at Princeton visiting Eugene Wigner, who was teaching there, his friend gave him sensational news: Niels Bohr, the famous Danish physicist, had just arrived from Denmark after escaping from that Nazi-occupied country in a British Mosquito.

Japanese Idioms

• hidari maki - a nutter
  
• jigane o dasu - to reveal one's true colours
  

Buzzwords

• rigmarole
  
• to go off half cock