nick-online  -

Just got back on Friday night from English Academy 2005. This was the thing I did last year, where we take about 80 Junior High students to Myoko (aka Bear Mountain) for a 4-day English Camp. It was absolutely fantastic - much more fun for me than last year, as I could actually understand the kids!

My group was group F:

l-r: Tomoko-sensei, Yuya, Taiki, Mari, Nick, Arika, Anna, Mizuki, Midori

We do loads of different events: on the first day is a load of ice-breaking games, where the groups go around and play a load of short games just to gel a bit and meet all the different teachers. Mine was pictionary, which was great fun when you tell them to draw themselves or another one of the group. In the evening is the big Quiz Grand Prix, where we have pub-quiz style questions based by country. Mine were of course the UK ones, my favourite being 'what dog does the queen have?'. None of them know. The second day is the quiz hiking, where we all tramp through the forest on a treasure hunt to get around all the checkpoints. We were a bit late because we found a stag beetle about half way through and spent about 15 minutes chatting to it (in English) and taking photos of it. Then there's some more stuff, but the big day is definitely day 3, where each group has to make an original play - story, props and everything - and perform it in the evening. This is definitely the make or break activity, because if they haven't got to know each other and work together and not be shy then you're sunk. Each group is given a fairy tale, and then a character to add in to the story, for example Cindarella and Doraemon, or Snow White and Ultraman. The kids then get to work making up some wacky story that encompasses both of those. We had Momotaro (A Japanese fairy tale about a hero who was born from a peach teams up with a dog, a bird and a monkey and goes to fight the monsters on monster island) with Anpanman (a Japanese cartoon character whose head is made out of anpan, a bread (the pan) filled with bean paste (the an) - I swear I'm not making this up). It all went pretty well - they of course loved making the props, and did a pretty spectacular job (I felt like such a teacher - making them draw whatever it was in pencil first and all that), and our play came 3rd out of our group of 5, which the kids were a little bummed about because the top 2 get performed again that evening in front of everyone. Still, it was some consolation that the top two plays from our group were the top two overall. I'll try and get my play photos in order so you can see the story unfold...

Wow - look at the Skyscraper District in Shinjuku - it comes out really well. And while looking at the Keio Plaza, a (slightly belated) welcome to all the new Jets who had their first conference there recently!

Current time: unknown.
Current day: unknown.
Current Latitiude: too far south.
Current Longitude: not far enough to the right (unless Australian)
No. of currencies used: 3
No. of coffees drunk: 5
No. of coffees enjoyed: 1 1/2
No. of Sudoku puzzles completed: 8
No. of said Sudoku puzzles rated at 'fiendish' difficulty level: 6
Probability of said fiendish Sudoku puzzles not really being that hard on the grounds that they were published by The Times: considerable.

I'm at Bangkok Airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Narita. I've been awake now for approximately 15 hours, and for the next 2 hours of waiting, the six hours on the plane to Japan, and the three odd hours on trains to make it back to Nagaoka, I need to stay awake. There's something fundamentally amiss with modern air travel in my opinion - I'm sure it could be more exciting than this. I don't think I want anything overtly dangerous and terrifying, but somewhere in between the numbing economy class boredom trip and the fact that while in this stupor you are in fact hurtling through the air at 500 miles an hour in some giant freakish flying train lies the potential for a little more of an experience, surely?

CONGRATULATIONS DISCOVERY!

I went with Ami to the Tate Modern on Friday. The main exhibition was Frida Kahlo, which was pretty amazing - lots of quite gory stuff about miscarriage and her accident, together with some very interesting pieces about her dual Mexican / German European ancestry, many of them lamenting the onset of modernisation. The other galleries also had some great stuff in them. One of the things I really like about the Tate Modern is how they group the artworks in the regular galleries by theme or idea, rather than style or period. This means you wander through the Space/Environment exhibition to find a modern piece of thin wispy grey and green swathes of colour directly facing a Monet, or classical Impressionist landscapes sitting next to Dalis. The Body/Nude exhibition was a glorious mess of paintings, sculptures and photographs all thrown in together, with no discernable connection aside from their subject matter. My favourite part however came at the end of the Space/Environment gallery, which had some interesting things early on but had descended in the final couple of rooms into some serious wank ("The blobs of grey plaster represent unevolved creatures", "The trolley represents a goat" and so on). Attached to the wall in the last sideroom was a small glass shelf with a glass of water on it.




This is a piece by Michael Craig, entitled "An Oak Tree". Fearing the worst, I read the explanation beside it. It's brilliant. This is what it says:

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?
A. Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.
Q. The accidents?
A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ...
Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?
A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.
Q. It looks like a glass of water.
A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree.
Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?
A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.
Q. Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?
A. Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.
Q. Isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes?
A. No. With the emperor's new clothes people claimed to see something that wasn't there because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw an oak tree.
Q. Was it difficult to effect the change?
A. No effort at all. But it took me years of work before I realised I could do it.
Q. When precisely did the glass of water become an oak tree?
A. When I put the water in the glass.
Q. Does this happen every time you fill a glass with water?
A. No, of course not. Only when I intend to change it into an oak tree.
Q. Then intention causes the change?
A. I would say it precipitates the change.
Q. You don't know how you do it?
A. It contradicts what I feel I know about cause and effect.
Q. It seems to me that you are claiming to have worked a miracle. Isn't that the case?
A. I'm flattered that you think so.
Q. But aren't you the only person who can do something like this?
A. How could I know?
Q. Could you teach others to do it?
A. No, it's not something one can teach.
Q. Do you consider that changing the glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an art work?
A. Yes.
Q. What precisely is the art work? The glass of water?
A. There is no glass of water anymore.
Q. The process of change?
A. There is no process involved in the change.
Q. The oak tree?
A. Yes. The oak tree.
Q. But the oak tree only exists in the mind.
A. No. The actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water. As the glass of water was a particular glass of water, the oak tree is also a particular oak tree. To conceive the category 'oak tree' or to picture a particular oak tree is not to understand and experience what appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree. Just as it is imperceivable it also inconceivable.
Q. Did the particular oak tree exist somewhere else before it took the form of a glass of water?
A. No. This particular oak tree did not exist previously. I should also point out that it does not and will not ever have any other form than that of a glass of water.
Q. How long will it continue to be an oak tree?
A. Until I change it.