Charity Bizarre

Japan is an odd place. Hundreds of years of largely self-induced isolation mean that culture and tradition are deeply embodied in almost everything that goes on, work or play, yet there is still a fascination with things geijin. This, coupled with a national gift for mimickry (well, they did invent karaoke), makes for some alarming incongruity.

Like the Andean pipe band outside Daimaru department store - Peruvian down to their alpaca hats, ponchos and charangos, but entirely of Japanese lineage. Or the kids of the Ramsay Pipeband from Osaka, behind whom we marched up the hill to the Kobe Club Global Charity Festival at the weekend, to the tune of "Scotland The Brave". To watch, as it turned out, Japanese belly-dancers...

The Kobe Club has the faint whiff of local money meets ex-pat over a gin and tonic, and frankly it’s not a whiff we’ve been that keen to savour, but Jessica likes dressing up for the kids parade, and an ‘ethnic food corner’ is always a tempting proposition.

This was our second year, and it was fun to see the same faces again. The aggressive German bloke with his composting worms occupied the same pitch as before, this time refining his ‘Recycle and save the planet for your children…’ opening gambit to “Kids like worms…” He also had a snappy new product name - ‘Can Of Worms’- but this time we were not falling for any of his eccentric earthworm eulogising.

The crap kung-fu guy was back, performing his stiff-armed, martial arts histrionics to the theme-tune of ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ (with carboard cutlass). As if this wasn’t bizarre enough, the fact that he was a lanky white Caucasian gave some reverse polarity to the whole ‘incongruous’ leitmotif. Disappointingly, there was no repeat invitation extended to the existentialist female dancer with a plastic bottle on her head.

But it was, as they say, ‘all in a good cause’, and we did what all good citizens do on occasions like this and bought a collection of sorry old tat - tat du monde, no less - with a smile and an inflated sense of our own benevolence.