I spent a month of my summer building up my faith in humanity by wandering around Central Park in New York City. Don’t worry, I don’t just have an arrogant amount of free time, I was trying my best to do my dissertation research, but amongst the noting of security features and worrying about women’s fear of crime, I also found some time to appreciate how parks can bring out the best in humanity. 

I came into contact with a wide variety of people whilst I trekked nearly every path in the park; from the soul destroying rejections of women not wanting to fill out my survey (‘I can tell you live here! Why won’t you speak to me?! Yes I realise I’m not helping your fear of crime!’), to those who sat with me for over an hour to share their life stories. Not necessarily dissertation helpful, but my favourite conversation began with a woman telling me she used to be a high powered investment banker, before a small incident involving her having a heart attack whilst on the phone, and those on the other end having to dial 911 as she hadn’t noticed, making her decide to sell all her worldly belongings and go on a very long safari. Her spontaneous, hour long, intimate and anti-capitalist lecture was inspiring - she made me promise to follow my dreams and not live beyond my means, and only when she assured me that it was ‘our energies’ that had ‘drawn us together’ that I decided maybe to leave it there. Other excellent moments of humanity included a dedicated librarian opening up to me, as a complete stranger, to share her large sketchbook of art she had spent years doing in the Park. As well as a man, who after making me promise to never get into another stranger’s car in New York again, gave me an amazing backstage tour of Central Park. I had contacted him out of the blue from his website, and despite working two jobs, he added to his impressive 5,000 hours of volunteering to help me with my research - and then followed it up with a tour of CNN studios. It turns out, humans are great.

On planning to spend a month alone in New York, I thought I would become even more wary of keeping my guard in order to make sure I wouldn’t lose everything, get lost and have to admit defeat. I had one encounter that shook my nerve, after a man ran after me (I’d say more chased) to tell me he thought I was beautiful, but did not take kindly to me politely walking away from his creepy/sweaty advances, rather than swooning and agreeing to a date. However, the next day when I was enjoying a picturesque, apparently romantic spot, alone, a man approached me saying ‘Hello? Hello?’. I tried to ignore him, not wanting a repeat of my run in from the day before, but I soon found he wasn’t actually looking to share the romantic spot, rather he was about to propose to his girlfriend. He asked if I could stay there and get any confused tourists to leave immediately so he’d have the place to himself. I happily obliged and enjoyed my almost rom-com moment, which I watched creepily from the bushes, and now have a photo of someone else’s proposal that they don’t have themselves! I may as well share it with the internet. 

Central Park is full of great people, from those that help keep it running, to those that use it for nothing but running - they all passionately love it and what it symbolises about humanity. Parks are a glowing green sign that maybe people aren’t selfish and greedy, but in fact go out of their way to protect open spaces for the enjoyment of all. Yes, Central Park may keep property prices high in New York, but its original founder and designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, saw the park as a bastion of the democratic ideals of community and equality. Olmsted went against the grain in the 19th century by arguing that parks weren’t just for the elite to enjoy, instead they could serve as a meeting ground for people from all different backgrounds. This idea remains today as Central Park is full of people enjoying the shared urban wilderness, and, if the 'energy' is right, maybe even interacting with each other.

Last term my contribution to the Blake blog was written while I was in Japan. At that point I felt my geography perfectly justified playing the ‘I learn stuff about Asia’ card, and so I waxed lyrical about the glories of misguided English t-shirt slogans (“The Ging is liable!”). But settled back down in England as I have been for a while now, I thought maybe I should find something entirely different to talk about, to maybe create the illusion that I’m a more rounded individual than that. Then Freshers’ week hit. I’ve had so many raised eyebrows at the phrase “No, I’m not in your year – I’m a fourth year, I was abroad last year, that’s why you’ve never seen me before (be my friend??)” that I’ve given up. Provider of niche titbits from the Far East I shall remain…

There is actually a lot to say that isn’t so niche of late. This week, articles and BBC documentaries about declining birth rates and men who don’t want relationships (the phenomenon applies to women too, but the men are apparently more intriguing) are doing the rounds in the British media. With my academic hat on, these irritate me intensely, specifically their inevitable and wholly dissatisfactory conclusion that ‘Japan is so unique and unknowable and different – just look at all this weird stuff we’ve filmed!’ Regular people who aren’t interested in relationships? We don't buy that, so let's go looking for some culturally-rooted theory that ‘explains’ why everyone is so different on this side of the globe. Leave aside the fact that it is highly condescending to do this; leave aside the unhelpful tendency of the Japanese themselves to go along with it and insist that they are indeed ‘unique’; it is just frustrating, because a tiny bit of background knowledge about any given part of ‘Japanese weirdness’ more often than not makes Japanese behaviour a whole lot more familiar.

Take two snapshots of Japanese life that I would pass through on a near-daily basis living in Kyoto – both are pretty unfamiliar by Western standards, but by no means ‘unique’ or ‘unexplainable’. First, if I ever cycled along the river that ran through the centre of town, particularly in summer the banks would be crowded with people engaged in all manner of hobbies and pastimes – from groups practising team sports to individuals practising the trombone, from yoga instructors bellowing at their students to amateur film-makers choreographing dance sequences on mobile phones. The figure who surprised me most during my year was the middle-aged man orating poetry at the top of his voice, entirely and delightfully oblivious to the world around him. Second, delve into the even vaguely built-up areas of the city and you can’t find a street without karaoke, games arcades and pachinko parlours. You may think you know what karaoke is like, but probably haven’t ever encountered, much less opted for, the 24-hour deals where serve-yourself ice cream and caffeine drinks are provided to fuel you as you belt out the hits all through the night in your sound-proofed escape pod from the real world. You may think you know what a games arcade is like, but probably haven’t trawled through an 8-storey building packed with chain-smoking off-duty businessmen glued to Tekken or Dance Revolution. Pachinko you may not have heard of – its essentially pinball, but with no paddle thingies (technical term) to hit the balls with, just a continuous, hypnotic cycle of blind luck (and, increasingly, little animated videos if you win). There are one or two terrifying stories of semi-addicted parents neglecting their children while they are glued to the machines, the bright lights and loud music stopping time.

The boring fact behind both of these faces of Kyoto life? Japan is a mountainous, earthquake-prone country, with sufficiently little flat land that cities are squeezed in wherever they fit, buildings packed together, traditionally not especially sound-proof as has been the case since the days when re-buildable paper walls were the only defence against earthquakes. Making noise is simply not practical. I don’t deny that there is also a cultural tendency towards politeness, formality and reservation, but it is hardly unique or incomprehensible that since you need to keep quiet indoors, you had better take your trombone, your dance routine or your poetry outdoors. The marathon noise-fests at karaoke, games arcades and pachinko are similarly a recognisably human form of escapism – escape into noise, and away from the need to be courteous to your neighbours.

The Western stereotype of severe, conformist, polite little Japanese people is over a century old, and clinging to it is just as out-of-date, but it is the stereotype to which we are mentally pandering whenever these social phenomena come along and make us go ‘Really? The Japanese are like that?’ I was asked to do a piece for CamFM last year about education in Japan, and I was surprised to discover that there is a vaguely serious truancy problem at Japanese universities, something that does not tally with either the inadequate stereotype of the highly motivated Asian student perpetually in the library (to which I try hard not to subscribe) or with the more realistic fact that Japanese school kids are pushed through an extremely challenging and competitive university entrance system, complete with cram-schools and extra tuition as fairly standard practise (from which I benefitted hugely, as I spent my year teaching kids as young as 4). Such serious students suddenly playing truant? Actually, given a first taste of freedom at university, I think many of us would follow suit.

And what, to return to the issue of the week, about this surely-bizarre, surely-unique, surely-inexplicable trend of ‘perfectly normal’ Japanese men who in spite of their being ‘perfectly normal’ don’t seem to want relationships? This one is less intuitive, I’ll admit, but it is essentially one aspect of a broader brand of counter-culture. Japan is perhaps not the most enlightened of countries when it comes to gender equality, and interestingly in this case young men are the ones trying to throw off the shackles of social expectations – be the breadwinner, work hard, climb the corporate ladder, be the head of a household – and live their lives with a bit more individual freedom. Put yourself in the position of someone for whom the expectation is that the relationship is less about the thing itself and more about the responsibility to form a family (maybe not so familiar in the UK anymore, but by no means unique worldwide) and suddenly it doesn’t sound so crazy that a subsection (that's the other thing – these stories get dressed up as though everyone is like this, which is simply not true, and I imagine film makers search hard before they find the extreme examples of people like the man in the BBC documentary's introduction who struggle to pick between their wives and their Nintendo 'girlfriends' ) of Japanese men would reject the whole thing.

We should use our brains a bit more before de-humanising an entire nation by letting our appetite for media coverage of 'weird' stuff get in the way and labelling it 'inexplicable'. Different, for sure, weird and wonderful, perhaps, but Japanese people are by no means beyond anyone’s understanding. 

On the ‘weird and wonderful’ note, an update on my previous topic – entirely unrelated, but I simply have to share with the Blake blog readership this sign I saw on a toilet door in Osaka, two weeks before I came home:

Okay…some things are a little beyond understanding!

Sam Glynn

It seems like a lot of us have been feeling like it's week five since, well, since we got back to Cambridge, to be honest. Just for clarification: it's still week two. Or something. Yep. Six more weeks at least. 

The last time you felt anything remotely like unadulterated joy might seem like a little while ago (I mean, it might be yesterday, you should still watch this) - but this video by the excellent Shishi Yamazaki, a Japanese animator, might remind you of it. Yamazaki has created an exuberant video-portrait of herself dancing through the streets in a district of her native Tokyo (YA-NE-SEN stands for Yanaka/Nezu/Sendagi, the areas she dances through). There's something lovely and refreshing about everything from the jazzy music to the mixture of scribbly pencil and splashy watercolour in which she has rendered the scenes - I love the hand-drawn feel of it all as well as the simplicity of the idea, and the song is just the right level of catchy...

Enjoy! 

“You’re different from other girls”

“That’s what you think”

“You’re smarter, you’re almost like a man”

“Oh no I’m very much the woman”



One of the latest sources of amusement among my friends here at Cambridge is the ‘date’ I went on last week. Not because I made a fool of myself or anything disastrous occurring. No, my ‘date’ is funny due to the fact that I don't think it was a ‘date’ (it was just tea and cake at Copper Kettle – yum!). They insist that this one-to-one encounter between a member of the opposite sex and I is a ‘date’.  I on the other hand maintain I was meeting an old friend from college and this was therefore not a ‘date’  This did however lead me to think about what does and doesn't constitute as a ‘date’? 

Is 'going for coffee' a date? Is it a date, if you are in a group? Does a swap count as a date?!?

How could I find out? Well if I bypass my usual knowledge sources (Google, my dad, my mum or whoever's nearest) what's left? Dates are a bit too tame for Cosmo now. Not that I read Cosmo as it's not exactly feminist/costs money but I don't think the Vagenda is going to cover this either. So now I've eliminated popular culture and popular feminism, I guess I'll do what I normally do when I've run out of ideas. Watch YouTube.

Whilst trawling through the backwaters of the internet… ok when I was desperately avoiding work back in first year, I got a new YouTube addiction.  After watching endless animal videos and the entire Enrique Iglesias Youtube Mix, I eventually stumbled across the wonders of 1950s public service announcements – the TV equivalent of advice columns.  My fascination with these videos is compounded by my love of the terms ‘gee whiz’ and ‘aah swell’ but also the social construction of these creepy conforming Stepford-Wife ideals that were being promoted as the 'proper' way of being - some of which are pretty much common sense, others of which are appalling.  These videos range from warnings about the dangers of potential Soviet invasion, socialized medicine and homosexuality(!) to how to organize a family dinner, to test your moral fibre and (thank God) dating etiquette. 

Here is a sample of some of my favourites to help you learn about the world of dating.

For those who appreciate this guiding hand from the past you can also such treats as 'How much affection' and 'How do you know it's love?' or even better 'Easy does it, Ladies'(which I think was actually just advertising a gear shift). And although this hasn't actually helped find out how to tell if it is date or not (but hey what else are we going to talk about at brunch), I am also glad that no one is expecting me to be engaged before leaving uni, or feel compelled to change myself to suit others, or other things that I wish Betty Draper in Mad Men had been told. 

And if you didn't find any of that compelling and you don't now feel like Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile, check out this ad of a woman using radioactive face cream. Oh the Fifties.

Georgina Phillips

Lian Wilkinson. 19. Company Stage Manager (that’s the person who makes sure everything backstage gets done) of the Cambridge Greek Play.

Cast: 22

Props: approx. 300

SM team: 4

Morning: Go last minute prop sourcing for running props (ones you need to replace. In this case, flowers, newspaper, a few leeks or so…). Depending on how prepared we were last night, get into theatre about 11 o’ clock-ish to set up the stage. And paint the Prometheus set: 6 giant black boards.

12:20pm Quick sausage roll for lunch as I track down a missing pair of wellies haphazardly thrown into the Stage Left wing after the curtain call last night.

1:15pm Actors’ call for notes from the previous performance. By this time the set-up would hopefully be 95% complete.  I’m wrestling with a couple of prop birds. Catch my shadow as the technicians play around with lights. My headtorch makes me look vaguely Teletubby-esque. Great.

2:15pm House opens for the matinee performance of Prometheus and the Frogs. Props set. Cast coming, Deputy Stage Manager Joe chatting away on cans (headsets).

Joe: “Who’s already done their Christmas shopping?”

Me: “I haven’t, but I’ve already planned what I’m going to buy.”

Joe: “Typical stage manager…”

2:30pm Start of the first act. Prometheus: a tragedy. A lot of arty ideas and aesthetically pleasing visuals. Throughout I am juggling between reeling in material, preparing for the second act, collecting props and judging masks (Michael’s winning). Oh, and getting a hug from a cast member or two. Or ten. Which is nice.

3:30pm End of first act. 15 minutes to mop/sweep the stage, get Prometheus set out and Frogs set in, add 253 props onto the stage and place them meticulously, and lead a 10-strong team (lovely cast members volunteering to help) without having a coronary. Phew.

3:43pm Check that Frogs is all good to go. I put my thumbs in the air and get 28 pairs of thumbs all up in the air, smiles all around. Spend the next 3 minutes convincing myself I have definitely forgotten something and going into panic mode.

3:45pm Start of The Frogs. Nothing I can do now but wait to see if each prop magically appears. They do. Readying the wings throughout the show, including a logistical nightmare of mummifying someone/coffin entrance/another person’s quickchange/coffin exit/Dinghy entrance. Actor whacks me with an oar. Thank you very much.

4:30pm End of the Frogs. Time to reset the stage for Act 1 of the evening performance. Run over toe with a black board. Ouch. Still looking like Po, but all in black, not red. Emo Po, as it were.

6:30pm Finish packing up Frogs and laying out Prometheus. Fight over the microwave as performance week is Ready Meal Week for everyone. Hide in the wardrobe department with lovely costume assistant JoJo.

7:30pm House open for Prometheus take two. Massive déjà vu moment.

7:45pm Start of Prometheus take two. Make a hummus sandwich (a Frogs prop), whack a bag of popcorn in the microwave (another prop), grab some sweets (prop)…

8:30pm Changeover again. Cast member takes one of my chocolates that I foolishly leave on the props table. Must remember to put them in a safer place…

8:45pm More thumbs up and cheesy grins. Curtain up. Showtime again. Cast member forgets to take a kazoo from the props table, rushes off stage and makes the best improv late entrance ever.

9:30pm End of the evening performance. A shattered cast change and head for a drink. SM team and some amazing cast volunteers (and lovely tech crew) remain to reset as much as possible for the day after.

11pm Leave the theatre ready for tomorrow. I actually go outside after 12 hours of theatre light and headlamp beams. Meet up with the cast, have a chat, return home around midnight.

2:20am Finish writing a blog post about what’s been taking over my life for the past 6 weeks.

So, with the weather in Lamebridge returning to full apocalyptic form, I think back to the summer...

I was lucky enough to spend three weeks in Turkey this September, ostensibly doing 'theological research', and certainly having a truly eye-opening, mind=blown experience. With a very conscious fear that this may become a travel brag/gap yah gush, and with a vague, underlying message of how people should free themselves of obsessive, petty concerns and just trust strangers and the wind in my mind, I detail some of the cool shiz I did back then, here, now. 

The majority of my time was spent in Istanbul, an incredible city which excites all the senses. Given recent political uproar with protests having taken place at Taksim Square in the weeks before over Turkey's increasingly less secular government, I had my reservations about Istanbul's inhabitants, and worried that they would be aggressive and unwelcoming towards travelers. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was given more cups of free tea in those three weeks than my entire life thus far! And was shown so many carpets. 

One of my favorite sites in Istanbul (other than all the kittens on the street. So many awwwgasms) was seeing devout Muslims praying on the street right outside the mosque because they were running late for prayer, and couldn't get a space inside. A religion which is so often demonized in the British press became endearingly flawed and beautiful, peacefully existing on that street alongside Western tourists in all states of dress, a Korean dance show (whaaa? It happened) and all the aforementioned kittens. 

As well as all the stunning architecture, delicious food and fascinating museums I went to, I was blessed to meet so many cool kids. That above all is what I want to share and impart onto y'all: strangers are great. I met people from Australia, Chile, North America, Spain, France, Germany, Canada and New Zealand, and that was just at breakfast in the hostel. I would encourage everyone who has the chance to travel, meet other people and leave all your fears behind. I was afraid of EVERYTHING before I left, and learning that I don't need hair straighteners for three weeks was just the beginning of the three greatest lessons I've ever learnt...

'Thank you' is the only phrase you need to be able to say in every language; exhaustion is the best pillow and home is wherever you lie your head. 

For further details on why you should travel places: http://goinswriter.com/travel-young/

Cambridge, you're beautiful, but we're only 3 days into this relationship and you're already coming on a bit strong. You promised us in May Week you'd be good to us, what happened?! You started to rain. The Siberian wind arrived. And what is all this work shit about? 
It's ok though, the Blake Society is on hand with some ways to escape without actually leaving your room...

Go and invest in a Wes Anderson boxset - you'll start to imagine that you too live your life through a yellow filter; you'll wish that Bill Murray was your uncle/dad/scout leader; you'll start to think maybe Owen Wilson isn't so bad after all; and you'll realise that maybe your family are fairly normal...

The soundtrack to the stunning film 'Beasts of the Southern Wild' (which you should also see) makes every essay seem like you're saving the world with your words, because you're just THAT good (warning: you're not, it's just the music is dangerously uplifting). 

A short documentary to make you feel in total awe of the world we live in, it certainly provides some perspective and reminds you that our little planet is pretty damn attractive...

Keep on scrolling through Blake's blog for more procrastination disguised as culture...