Ruby /// Love, like or hate

Waiting in Shirokanedai

Day 2 at Emi's house. We were about to start when I realised that my clip mic wasn't in my bag, a quick taxi back to my flat confirmed that I had left it in England. Noooooh! So Plan B kicked in - using the camera mic with a view to buying a new mic in Akihabara (electric town) next week. The room was so small the sound was ok.

I've had to learn to not make any sound when interviewing people, I always used to go ah ha, ah ha to encourage the speaker and I when it came to the edit would be really mad with myself, so I know spend a lot of time nodding furiously. However Yuko-san and the interpreter kept making noises. I think it's particularly hard for Japanese as they usually make so much affirming sound when you're talking.

me and Emi-san

The filming went well, Emi answering my questions through the interpreter, telling me a bout her family shrine in the room which has been passed through 200 generations, starting with Samurai. Every morning the first thing she does is bring water and some small food - an apple, rice to the ancestors and chants. She then reads from the book the names of the people that dies that day (the 3rd, the 4th etc) It was really interesting, In Buddhism when people die they become Buddha's, so each person has their ancestors as their own gods.

What I'm realising now is that Home-maker Derbysire and Tokyo will have real threads of connection - although in Derbys there aren't family shrines, there are massive collections of family photos on show. There are also huge differences in the amount of space and the way people live. Everything in Japan is nearer the floor!

Jelly fish - Roppongi

After Emi-san's it was on to Roppongi. Yuko-san wanted to show me a potential home-maker person, an architect who built his own house 20 years ago. His room was really interesting, high ceilings and jam-packed full with photos, maps and architectural models. He told us about the history of Roppongi and how the Shogun had given permission for only 5 shrines in the area, which makes them very powerful today. He studied history so was very keen to explain all of this.

I asked him if he would like to take part in Home-Maker, showed him the UK version on my g4 laptop and he did the classic response, listened to me and Yuko explain the project for about 5 minutes then when we had finished asked me what make the computer was and how much it cost! (which is exactly what my Grandpa did!) He then evaded the question by showing us the word processor he bought 10 years ago, which was like a tank.

Yuko-san was signaling to me that we should go and he then got out another 2 photo albums (Yuko had seen before), I got the giggles, so did Yuko and I was stuffing my hand in my mouth, crying with laughter as he remained oblivious and carried on.
I was so trying not to be rude but I was nearly hysterical with laughter. Maybe you had be there but it was so funny.

We made our excuses and left, if we hadn't been direct we could have been there still. We decided that it was probably a good thing he was not taking part in home-maker, although he was an interesting man with a beautiful house I would have to edit about 6hours of footage as he would never stop talking and going off at tangents.

Stevia Sheila

Back to my home stay and on TV there was a programme with a young Japanese man staying in Essex with a family-run business making dolls houses. He made his own Japanese dolls house. It reminded me of the whole home-maker process, in the exhibition I explained the layout of the 2 adjacent rooms as like a dolls house cut open at the front. It was pretty funny the English family kept shouting in Pidgin English - you like this, yes?

Essex dolls house

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