Sakura, sakura

Miki's blog and that of a friend in Seoul currently visiting Kyoto (OK, that is about plum blossom!) have made me nostalgic for Japan at cherry blossom time. There used to be cherry trees in front of the Berlaymont but they disappeared in the renovations, and I have yet to go and see whether the ones in Boitsfort are still there. So, here are some of last year's pictures from Tokyo instead.

More mangled English

We foreigners should be grateful that so much is available in Belgium in English - far more than would be available in, say, French in my home country.

BUT I do wish they would consult an English-speaker before they actually get things printed!



As for this one, it's just inexcusable - it appears on one of the Commission's own buildings, in rue Van Maerlant. That building houses the Commission's Central Library, so this is the wonderful image given to outsiders who come to visit it.

Biblioquiblio

Just finished Donna Leon's latest offering, called "Through a Glass Darkly", which I note seems to have come out here in Belgium before either the UK or US release date. It's competent, though not the best I have ever read, but this time I was paying particular attention to her use of Italian, since an Italian friend - who has only read Donna Leon's books in French - quibbles that she misuses Italian in her books.

For the record, the Italian words and expressions she uses to convey the setting, in this case not only as regards Italy/ Venice/police work but specifically the Venetian glass industry, are as follows (not counting placenames like Piazzale Roma, Riva degli Schiavoni, or words that are used in English like grappa, prosecco, panino, peperoncino, cappuccino):

- personal titles like Signore, Signorina, Signora, Commissario, Signor Commissario, Vice-Questore, Professore, Professoressa, Dottore;

- titles of Italian police/judicial institutions/offices: Questura, Carabinieri, Polizia Munizipale, maresciallo, medico legale;

- titles of publications like Gazzettino, Espresso, La Repubblica, Gazzetta Ufficiale, Corriere, La Gazzetta dello Sport; also Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio;

- title of newspaper article: "Porto Marghera: Situazione e Prospettive"; Quote from Dante: "L'acqua era buia più che persa".

- a number of largely single words: denuncia, maestro/maestri, fornace/fornaci, telefonino/telefonini, dottori, sottotetto, calle, palazzo/palazzi, riva, pescheria, miscela, servente/serventi, vu cumprà, armadio, remengo, preside, l'uomo di notte, un'ombra/ombre, abuso d'ufficio, Veneziano stretto, laguna, nonna, vongole, rombo, coda di rospo, patate bollite, grissini, garzon/garzoni, schiuma, gingerino, tutto normale, (sala di/) rianimazione, forno di lavoro, piazze, canna, banco, molatura, embarcadero, caffè coretto, acqua minerale non gassata, gettate, in nero, vetreria/vetrerie, donnaiolo, idraulici, vittoria, vittima, vendetta, gondoliere.

- the odd word or phrase in direct address: "Mi scusi, Dottore", "Ciao, Papà", "Buon giorno", "Complimenti", "Sì", "Pronto"; interjections: Gesù Bambino, Maria Vergine, Maria santissima.

- several discussions/reflections on the use of "tu" and "Lei".

- a couple of sentences in Venetian: "More, xe beo, xe propio beo"... "e xe beo, me puteo?" (meaning something like, "isn't he beautiful, my boy?".

Now, DL may over-use some of these words and phrases for local colour, but I think they are all correctly used in this particular book. There is nothing like the incorrect use of what is supposed to be someone's mother tongue to interfere with your belief in the character and indeed the whole world the novelist is trying to conjure up!

One day I'll fly away....

In the meantime, I'm playing the tourist in my own town: I live in the tallest and ugliest building in this picture, but had never been on the top of the Cinquantenaire arch before!

Almost in the Orient

As the Royal Art and History Museum opened a new Japanese Art Museum this week, I took the opportunity to take a look at it and at the same time revisit the Japanese Tower (from the outside, at least) and the Chinese Pavilion, which are remnants of previous international exhibitions.
The whole complex has now been designated the "Museums of the Far East".

One of the local free newspapers announced that in the opening week, as well as activities like origami and flower-arranging, there would be free demonstrations of "martial arts like kendo and ikebana"! (I wonder if you can get a black belt in ikebana...)

I found the new museum, housed in a former stable/garage behind the Chinese pavilion, a little disappointing because it is tiny: in addition to some netsuke, inro and sword guards they are displaying no more than about a dozen of the more than 7000 Japanese prints the museum claims to have collected, and I'm sure the armour on display was formerly to be seen in the Japanese Tower. But, I did enjoy those prints that were on show, and also re-acquainting myself with the Chinese pavilion, which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't visited since Europalia Japan, when the Japanese Tower next door was first opened to the public - and that was in 1989!

The furriness of words

The last in the "Scottish writers" series of lunch-time meetings organised by Scotland House and the British Council brought us the wonderful A. L. Kennedy, author of "Paradise". She originally trained in drama and now does stand-up comedy, among other things, so it should not have been a surprise that she was extremely entertaining - a good flavour of her self-deprecating sense of humour can be had from the FAQ on her website.
She said she loved "the furriness of words" in response to a question about (I think!) how she imagines her readers, noting that when she writes about a table, she will see her table and the reader will see his or her table but the fact that they are different tables is no barrier to the conveying of a story, which the reader effectively co-creates by bringing his or her own experience to bear on the words on the page.
"Paradise" is written from the point of view of an alcoholic woman, Hannah - everyone thinks all the Scots are alcoholic anyway, says Kennedy, but really it's only 90%... Some people see paradise as a man and a woman in a garden with some fruit... For Hannah it is "an untouched bottle and the man who loves me, the man I love."

Following my ears

Twice today, while crossing the Parc du Cinquantenaire on my way to and from Scot- land House, I followed the sound of music to see what was happening.

The first time turned out to be a demonstration at Rond-Point Schuman, the heart of the EU quarter, against the application of the services directive (also known as the Bolkestein Directive) to the Belgian water industry.

It seems that today is international water day - not that that explains why they were playing Brazilian music...

The second was some sort of military ceremony being held on the sports ground of the Royal Military Academy, which is next to the Army Museum. I couldn't work out what was going on exactly but it was all good fun, involving waving swords around and marching up and down to some rousing brass-band music played by what looked like a naval band. (I don't think that is the Japanese flag, by the way, as it seems to have some sort of design in the middle.)

Big bang in Brussels

After our disappointment regarding the Japanese drumming (taiko) group "Kodo" that was on in Antwerp last month, The Wiz and I were happy to find another peforming this evening in Brussels. It is called Osaka Dadada Dan Tenko - which the local cultural centre managed to transform into "the troupe was formed by Osaka Dadada and Dan Tenko"! The show, which also features the dancer Isaya Mondori, is touring Belgium and the Netherlands under the name Maido Maido, which the programme says means "thank you" in the Osaka dialect - although it seems from this that that's not quite the whole story!

Anyway, it was most energetic and also very funny, for example at one point the curtain rises only to about knee height and you see 2 arms beating drumsticks on the stage itself - and then the arms separate and move to the far sides of the stage... I wasn't quite as taken with the dancing but the drummers are enormously impressive (and have fantastic muscles).

Saturday in London

It's just as well, for my bank balance, that I only go to London once a year! The exhibition (China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795) that was the prime reason for going was excellent, although The Wiz, who knows Chinese history very well, grumbled that the audio-guide commentary - spoken by Michael Wood - was not detailed enough.
I managed to get almost everything I needed/wanted from Hatchards, Grant and Cutler (foreign language bookshop), Marks & Spencer and HMV, as well as finding some good presents in a bath-oils shop near Liberty. I don't want to admit how many books, CDs and DVDs I struggled back with, although I still have 3 DVDs to look out for. Now all I have to do is find the time to watch/read/ listen to everything!
London has about 10 million inhabitants, the same as the whole of Belgium. So how come, while strolling down Piccadilly, I ran into 3 friends from Brussels who had gone over for the weekend?!

Lice, damned lice and statistics?

I'm greatly amused by the expression "spreading like wildlife" instead of "spreading like wildfire", reported here - although sadly it seems there are so many occurrences, it may be becoming the norm. However, I had a "wildlife" moment myself the other day when I noticed a video in a friend's house that appeared, thanks to the placement of a label, to be called "Lice in Wonderland". Must have been a lousy film!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

♣ Beannachtai na Feile Padraig! ♣

The aliens are coming....

Belglish

Belgium has 3 official languages - French, Dutch and German - and Brussels is officially bilingual French-Dutch, even if the French-speakers predominate. It is partly to avoid having to choose between French and Dutch, or using both, that you often see signs etc. in English - but sometimes of a rather odd variety! I presume the author of the poster about clearing up after your dog (in fact, speaking as a dog proposing to educate his master on this subject) has never visited America and been asked if he wanted to save some of his meal for later...

Spellcheck and (non) co-operation

I am pleased to see that a comment I made on a rather more serious blog than this one (Language Hat) has been taken up by another (Language Log)!
I used to collect interesting mistakes in EU texts, whether caused by spellcheck (e.g. Cupertino for co-operation) or Freudian slips, e.g. "the UK givernment will provide aid...", "this Regulation shall be blinding in its entirety..." (when the text happened to be about the classification of sunglasses); but I threw most of these out in a clutter-clearing phase some time ago and now have to rely on memory.
However, it is difficult to forget my dear friend V. reporting on the Albanians' interest in concluding a "customs copulation agreement"! The poor thing had to put up with a lot of teasing about "international affairs" after that ...
I once received a document referring to trade in "fresh, dried and frozen crap" (instead of carp) and was sorely tempted to refrain from correcting a list of public holidays for customs transit offices, in which a Danish secretary had managed to type an S instead of a W in "Whit Monday".
Spellcheck is of course of limited use because if the word you mis-spell is the correct spelling for another word, it doesn't pick it up. Hence the verse:
"I have a spelling chequer, it came with my pea sea
It plane lee marques four my revue, miss steaks eye can knot sea
Eye ran this poem threw it, I'm shore yaw pleased two no
Its letter perfect in its weigh, my chequer tolled me sew...."

As others see us

I've been unable to trace this back to its origin, it is reported in numerous blogs as being from a Swiss e-mail to The Telegraph in January 2006 but seems to appear in others, e.g. this one (sidebar), as far back as August 2005:
"Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home - grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way - to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV.
And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign."

As it happens, the first part could describe life in many places in these days of globalisation, with the exception of relying on takeaway food rather than cooking at home, which is singularly British, especially combined with this being non-British food (although it might just as often be fish and chips as, say, Chinese food). However, I'm not convinced that "suspicion of anything foreign" is either particularly or peculiarly British. Yes, the British would rather not be members of any club they don't run themselves - hence British attitudes to the EU - and yes, xenophobia is hardly unknown in the UK, but to say that it is the most striking feature of what it means to be British is pushing it more than somewhat.

Here in Belgium, those expats who want to integrate into Belgian life often find themselves unable to break into social circles which are not just based on but often limited to family, neighbourhood/region (= language) and politics/religion. Unless they actually marry into a Belgian family, when they become co-opted into this network, foreigners will often find Belgians easy to get on with at work but unwilling to socialize outside it - partly, of course, because they may be commuting further to work, given (they claim) that foreigners have priced them out of their own capital city, but also it seems to me, as a matter of choice. They don't mind trading or working with foreigners and are certainly more inclined to learn their languages than the British are, but when it comes to it, I'm not sure they are fundamentally any less suspicious of foreigners than the frequently monolingual British.

I find the question of "national character" both very interesting and highly dangerous as most of us have strong stereotypical images of specific nationalities - including our own - that colour our perception of them. Rabbie Burns may have said,
"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"
But we also need to see others as they really are and not as the images we have built up from books, movies and received knowledge cause us to expect them to be!

A day well spent, in Ghent

Not the best day for it, but I went to Ghent today to see my friend L. in the short window of opportunity between her return from Australia and departure for San Francisco.

Had lunch in the Groot Vleeshuis, or old (15th century) Meat Hall, hung with Ganda hams, and wandered around the Patershol district in the rain. Here we went to an art exhibition at the Caermersklooster (former Carmelite Convent), which doesn't seem to have met with everyone's approval to judge from the comments in the visitors' book...

Then had coffee at the Pakhuis, one of the best designs I know of by architect /restauranteur Antonio Pinto.

Rear of the year?

A friend who has just moved to Montreux in Switzerland was happy to discover the statue of Freddy Mercury which, she claims, has the best bum (butt to American-speakers) she has ever seen on a statue. Now, I can't say I had considered ranking statues in this way (though perhaps Boo's recent post would suggest it), but I think my vote would have gone to Michelangelo's David. What do you think?


A few derrières from statues in Brussels: female, male, and a sort of man (the Man from Atlantis) who seems to me to have child-bearing hips.

Sunday walk

In the Forêt de Soignes again, this time around Rouge-Cloître.

















There are still some bits of snow lying around.


Came back on the tram that goes through the forest.

Anima

After seeing all those movies over the last couple of weeks, this week we had the Anima cartoons festival, in which I had selected only the 5 being shown in the original Japanese with subtitles, not dubbed into French:

- The Book of the Dead/Shisha no Sho, historical ghost story made using puppets, the puppet animation and backgrounds were beautifully done but I wasn't that keen on the story;

- Grave of the Fireflies/Hotaru no Haka, very sad story of 2 children in Japan during and just after WWII;

- Only Yesterday/Omohide poro poro, romantic story about a young girl growing up in Tokyo but who loves the countryside;

- My neighbours the Yamada/Hohokekyo tonari no Yamada-kun, my favourite, not only beautifully drawn but very funny scenes from everyday family life with some gloriously surreal flights of fancy and quotations from Basho to boot;

- Pompoko/Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko - ecologically-minded fable concerning a revolt by the tanuki (sort of badger) against human expansion into their territory, which for some reason is on general release in Belgium this week.

I really don't think I want to set foot in a cinema now for several months, and anyway I have heaps of books waiting to be read!

Favourite words

Mehvesh in Japan raises an interesting topic, listing her favourite words in Japanese. My favourite words in Japanese are all those almost untranslatable expressions like "pica pica" and those that conjure up a picture like "hanabi", fireworks (literally, flower-fire).
My favourite word in French is "cuniculiculture" which means "rabbit-raising" - I got it from an EU directive, but its meaning was evident to someone who once owned Beatrix Potter's, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" in Latin (Fabula Petro Cunicula).
I've always liked the fact that the Dutch word for sound is "klank".
In Italian, I love "telefonino" (mobile phone, cellphone) and in Spanish, I have to nominate "caminante" (travelling, rambling, wandering..), por supuesto (of course).
It pleases me that the Turkish word for turkey - the bird - is "hindi", and my French-speaking Turkish class likes the fact that "çok kolay", meaning "very easy", sounds similar to "chocolate".
It amused me enormously in Greece to find that a bus stop is called "stasis", this word having been taken into English with a much more high-faluting philosophical/psychological meaning.
I have - or did before I lent it to someone! - a great book called "The Meaning of Tingo" (also see article here) which contains some wonderful words/expressions in different languages including, in German, Türschlusspanik, literally, door-closing-panic: the feeling, as you get older, that things you used to see as possibilities are rapidly becoming less possible..
In English I think my favourite word is haberdashery, but I also like crapulence and gallivanting. My family still uses the Tamil words "poo" for flower and "poochy" for insect, which we picked up in India because we found them appealing. In Welsh there's a lovely word "hwyl" meaning something like happiness.
And I'm sure there are dozens more words I like, in various languages, that don't spring to mind right at this moment!