Tsunami in the Sky
Originally uploaded by DubbleExposure

This was taken by a photographer named DubbleExposure on a recent trip to Hokkaido. I wish I could take photos like this (and others of his) - just awesome...

The last few months

So I figure it’s about time I wrote something down. Er…

So a lot has changed over the past few months, not least the fact that I have changed jobs. If you may remember I was working for an English school, the fools having been foolish enough to make me Principal in 2006. this was fine while it lasted but I discovered that the higher up the tree you go, the more shite it gets – might only be true for that particular company but more likely it is a truism all over the world. Anyway I wrote in spring/summer last year that I was trying to make myself more marketable, I don’t know if I managed to do this or not, but I think it put me in the right mindset.

Over the summer I had a number of interviews for hr/recruitment related jobs for banks in Tokyo – this was something of an eye opener, as you might expect, not least for the fact that I had to spend about a week in the library trying to find out what it is exactly that banks do to make money. Actually that’s not true, I spent a week in the library trying to get to a point where I could sound like I knew a little bit about how banks make their money. Luckily I have now forgotten everything I read because these none of these banks were that interested in me (nor me them, really, except the wad I might have expected had I joined one of them, they do seem to pay well).

But what I did see was a position as hr manager for another school in Tokyo, this time not an English school but an International School that happened to be quite British in its outlook, curriculum, teachers etc. So after some to-ing and, but of course, no little amount of fro-ing as well, I landed the gig. Even for these guys it took three interviews including one that lasted most of a day! I started here at the back end of November but as part of my lengthy and extended escape period from the last lot I had to return there 4 times in December to ‘finish things off’ – which meant I went to Nishi Kasai and sat there doing not very much at all, but it did mean that I got paid to the end of the December by those guys and the new guys – double salary action, nice…

Being the new guy meant that I got to work for most of Christmas as well, so whilst for the last 10 years or so I’ve had around 10 days off over crimbo and the new year this time around it was Christmas day and new year’s day only (though boxing day was the last day to return to last lot, so it was something of a bittersweet working day). Therefore exciting stories of Christmas adventure are somewhat thin on the ground this year as, basically, I worked. We did go to the brand spanking new train museum in Omiya (in fact the youngster has dragged me there twice), which was good in a lots-of-trains-can-only-keep-me-interested-so-far kind of way, which, I hardly need to add, isn’t nearly as far as they can keep a 2¾ year old boy interested.

Christmas day was full of the usual presents-and-food shenanigans, this year I even got some presents myself, which was most pleasant after last year’s rather dismal showing. The youngster got lots of car/train action, which, well, I was going to say kept him quiet for hours but in reality they kept him interested and loud for hours. The Guru also received presents aplenty, though I’ll be buggered if I can remember what she got, now that it is February after all.

On the Japan front things have been quiet as well. Quiet is the operative word for the new PM, Somethingsomething Fukuda (sorry, can’t remember his first name…might be Yasuro…). Anyway you might remember that I nothing but ambivalence for Silent Shinzo because, as far as I could see, he didn’t do or say anything of note, or anything at all. Well, Fukuda makes him look like Outrageous Abe (I wanted that to be alliterative, and it kind of is when you say it, but it doesn’t work when you read it, if anyone can suggest a synonym for loquacious that starts with ‘a’ then I’d be happy to edit). I digress, so, Fukuda, even more quiet and crap than the last extremely quiet and crap bloke. Goodness how we all hanker for the excitement of the Kid. Along with much of the rest of the world the people of Japan are worried about recession – no, the media are telling everyone that they are worried about recession, making it a truth even if it isn’t.

Lots of other things have happened, none of which I wrote down (though at the time saying ‘I must write that down and write about it in the blog’) and now, of course, can’t remember. As you might expect the usual white collar crimes have continued unabated, the usual frauds, embezzlements and backhanders that keep Japan Inc ticking over nicely, whilst erstwhile parents have continued to show their credentials by murdering their offspring (and vice versa to be fair).

One story I did like from a few months ago was about a bloke who got legless, literally. Chap was riding along a motorway in the countryside somewhere in Japan with some friends and strayed a little too close to the central reservation barrier. Apparently he felt the bike twitch a little so thought he had clipped a stone or something so he slowed down a little and moved in a little and then carried on regardless. It was only when he stopped at a junction a little later that he realised that his right leg below the knee was missing – that and his mate coming to stop beside him and then handing over his newly liberated limb. Apparently the bike twitch he felt was his leg catching on the barrier and then being ripped off – without him noticing a thing! You have to wonder, all mad these bikers (or extremely hard)

Whoa!

Where in the hell did 2007 just disappear to?

They'll get you, and there'll be no exceptions


Once before, a long time ago, I wrote on this very blog about the local traffic police in Nishi Kasai, or rather the parking police, who drove around putting chalk marks on your car tyres to prove you were illegally parked (having to clean your car tyres being the direst punishment in the Japanese Big Book of Punitive Actions). Anyway it was my contention then that this was 'a bit crap really' and wasn't much of a deterrent - if you can be bothered you can go and read the original post, but heaven knows where it is.

Anyway this general level of dissatisfaction with the parking busies, and the boys in blue overall, should not in any way tarnish the image of the Bicycle Parking Police, who are assiduous and dedicated in their approach to what is, in a country of 120 million people and 874 million bicycles, a hard job. So, on Boxing day I was walking through Nishi Kasai on my way to lunch when I stopped dead because I saw this:



So here we have a child's tricycle illegally parked outside a convenience store. The evil perpertrator of this crime is nowhere to to be seen (thankfully as I would not want to meet them!) but the plucky bicycle police (Child Tricycle Division) have reasoned that illegal parking is illegal parking and, dangerous though the situation may become, they have a job to do and that job is to tag illegally parked vehicles and take them away if no one reclaims them within one year and a day of tagging.

As you can see this tag has been firmly placed on the handlebars of the tricycle and now the Bicycle Police can only sit back and wait for the inevitable backlash. I am happy about this on two counts; firstly that the Bicycle police do their job without fear of favour, protecting and serving as is their remit. Secondly, as of Boxing day I no longer work in Nishi Kasai (that's another story) so will not get caught up in the spiral of violence that will inevitably follow this dramatic event.

So the other weekend we went to Karuizawa

Karuizawa is a town in the mountains in Nagano prefecture, I think, and is full of bracing things like fresh air, rain, trees and people, so it’s is good to go to if you live in the chemical smog of Tokyo, or, indeed, Kawaguchi. The other good thing about the place is that you get to go on a shinkansen (bullet train) to get there, which, if you are 35 years old is pretty cool (though, following the immutable law of the universe of you wait ages for one trip on a shinkansen and then two turn up together, the week before I went down to Osaka on business) but if you’re 2 and-a-half (and really, really into trains) it is just the best thing ever in the world. Even better than all that, if you are parent of said 2 and-a-half year old, the journey by shinkansen is only about 1 hour, meaning that once the magic of the ride has worn off, child doesn’t have too much time to get bored before you arrive – great! Anyway if you look here you can see pictures of small boys and big trains.

The first part of our trip out of the metropolis was to visit a great big shopping centre. Doesn’t sound like much fun, I know, but it was a jolly big shopping centre and outlet mall place that sells lots of stuff at knockdown prices. Also it was useful as when we arrived at the station it was chucking it down with, well, not rain but misty, drizzly, cloudy, English style rain, so we didn’t have a great deal of choice. Because we went on a Monday-Tuesday jaunt the place wasn’t stupidly busy, but it was still pretty packed, especially as, due to the poor visibility and lack of maps, we only actually looked at one side of the place. Doh! What we did get to do, though, was spend about half-an-hour in the Lego shop, which was ultra-cool. I remember lego from my days as a kid and in those days it was ‘normal’ stuff, basic space-lego, castles and a few of the ‘technical’ kits. Now, wow, the options are enormous, with more, and much cooler, space stuff, aqua stuff, monsters, really wizard looking technical kits, like the Ferrari 360 racing model, and just loads and loads of fab looking stuff. I can’t wait until Marcus’ old enough for me to justify buying this stuff for him and then keeping it all to myself. In fact maybe I should buy some now and give it a test run, just to make sure it is safe for him to play with, hmm…

Later we dumped our stuff at our pension, a slightly sinister, slightly creepy place, in a you’re-the-only-people-staying-and-no one-knows-you’re-here kind of way. Then we wandered off to find a park to run around in. This we did, luckily, and found not only a park but also a small shrine, which was ok, and also a small sumo dohyo, which was really cool. As you can see from these pictures I taught the youngster the finer arts of the samurai scream and the tachiai – gave me a warm, fatherly feeling I can tell you.

Back at the creepy pension we then attended to our nightly routine, i.e. bath, beer and dinner. The bath was fine, though unfortunately not the onsen style that one might have hoped for. Beer was provided by a small fridge on the 1^st floor landing, you helped yourself and made a note for the owner to tot up upon check out. The problem was that they were charging 300 yen for a small can and, as there was no local beer machine and the rooms had no fridges, this was the only way to get a cold one. Unless you are cunning, of course. So before bath I had one of their overpriced beers but super cunningly I had, beforehand, been to a local alcoholic emporium and brought similar though cheaper cans of asahi superdry. Once I had taken one of their overpriced cans I replaced it with one I had brought, thereby keeping it cool. Later, after dinner (more of which in a moment), I was able to drink a couple more cans of cold beer, but it was the ones I had brought earlier for less cash. Anyway the upshot was that I got to drink beer but didn’t have to pay through the nose for it. I thought it was cunning, the Guru just thought I was being dishonest and tutted at me reprovingly as I quaffed.

Dinner, however, was a fine proposition. How many small pensions in Naka-Karuizawa can boast a Japanese chef who thinks he’s French? Only one to my mind, and that’s where we pitched up. The meal he knocked up for us was really good, a 5 course extravaganza that included soup, fish and meat courses, all of which were tasty and of sufficient volume to fill my stomach. The problem, however, was that the food all arrived in something of a rush. The starter was fine as that was waiting on the table for us, then the arrival of the soup was ok as well. But then, as the last drop of soup was slurped the fish course arrived. Again this was very pleasant, some sautéed sole, if memory serves, but as I was pontificating about something the Guru finished hers a few mouthfuls before I did and, as soon as her fork touched the plate for the final time, the meat course was brought out. So, as she started on her beef fillets I polished off the sole, put the used plate on my left and then started on the beef with nary a break between forkfuls.

Now, of course, she was far ahead of me so completed her beef whilst I had only got though half, but no problem as then desert arrived, giving me the slightly cack-handed task of, on finishing my meat, transferring the desert to my place mat and placing the dirty dish on my right (where the desert had been), so that I then had dirty dishes all around me. Ah, the romance of fine dining.

I mean, is it too much to ask for them to allow a breath between courses, of for both diners to finish one course before starting the next? Actually no, not in Japan, as, to be honest, it doesn’t seem to be something Japanese restaurants have got their heads around (generalising wildly as I go). This might be to do with traditional Japanese cooking, where you tend to get everything placed in front of you when you sit down and then just plough your way through (i.e. like a meal in a ryokan) so the serving staff don’t need to worry about courses; or other Japanese eating experiences like shabu-shabu, yakiniku, okonomiyaki etc where you do it all yourself. It also happens with main courses if you have more than 2 people sitting down to eat – often 2 will get their meal whilst the rest will have to wait a further 5 minutes before tucking in. I don’t know, but it does seem to be something of a cultural blind spot.

The following day we what most people do when going away for a couple of days in Japan and went to an onsen. This was a jolly swish, new looking place to the north of Karuizawa, up a hill a bit. This is worthy of mention as it was the youngster’s first trip to an onsen and we were on the wary side due to the often very hot nature of the water (and he, being small, isn’t too good with hot water). But like most things when you’re 2½ years old he just took it all in as a big adventure. The good thing about onsens is that they are generally big, so lots of space to run around naked, which is what all little kids enjoy doing, as, let’s face it, do their fathers. So we did the whole onsen thing of washing and then sitting around outside in the bath generally relaxing and so forth. Nice though the onsen was it didn’t actually provide a beer machine for me to buy beer, so one of life’s little pleasures was unfortunately denied. But the bar next to the onsen did serve some local brew, the name of which I have now forgotten, but it was jolly nice.

That day we also visited an odd shaped church, which was odd but strangely pleasant. The oddest thing about the place was its founder, however, who was big in dentistry in the early 20^th century and this was how he made the money to build the church. Under the church, where the crypt should have been, they had a little museum dedicated to him and it had old slogans he had made up, like ‘Spirituality Through Healthy Teeth!’, which I thought was great.

Anyway that was about it. I’ve written too much now, my work here is done.

Rugby World Cup

OK, haven't really written much about anything recently (proper new post in the pipeline, with photos this time), but just wanted a quick mention of the old RWC and England's phoenix like rise from the ashes of, well, the last 4 years.

So, into another final, this time against either the Boks or the Pumas. Personal choice would be the Boks so we can beat them and make up for the 0-36 drubbing we got in the pool game - how much would that stick in the craw of the Boks and their supporters? Beat us in a pool but, when it really matters, coming up short... Of course I'm sure England aren't thinking that way as hubris has a habit of, well, coming back to haunt you. Or something. But I would also love for Argentina to be in the final, just so they can stick 2 fingers up to the IRB, the Tri-Nations and the 6-Nations for shamefully ignoring them all these years.

Anyway, whoever it is, come on England. If you have the time, and inclination, take trip back to 2003 and see the nonsense I was writing then.

Requiem for Silent Shinzo

















the end

Your friendly, neighbourhood bobbies on the beat

Apparently this is a flyer published by the friendly boys in blue from Ibaraki. Just a quiet note to the locals that states the best policy when dealing with the influx of foreigners, all of whom are criminals, is to "stop them at the shores!"

Yes, that is a total of 7 riot police subduing one helpless chap (well, 6 and their mate on his way in to help out)...



Just in case you're wondering, the first 3 kanji in yellow say "gaikokujin", or foreigner. And I thought Japan was a friendly place.

For more see the newspaper report here.

Not long until the Rugby World Cup

So here's something to get you in the mood (and have a laugh at Association Football)

Quick hello

Am on holiday this week, and most of next for that matter, so have a little time to post (I said it was only adieu, not goodbye).

So. this week I have mostly been going to the park. Most parks in Japan are a bit rubbish, like the one near our flat. That one is a smallish expanse of white gravel, with about four trees, some playground equipment (which is ok), a toilet (into which I once threw up whilst 'looking after' the young 'un) and a water fountain. This is fine in the autumn and spring but in summer, with 35 degree days, it is like a furnace as you get heat from the sun, reflected heat from the ground and nowhere to hide. The metal playground equipment often reaches temperatures of 850,000 degrees during August, causing small children to combust on the spot.

But the park near the station is different. First of all it's bigger, which is useful, and this space has been put to good use. Firstly a shitload of trees were planted a long time ago. I have posted before about the trees in spring when the cherry blossoms are out, and jolly nice and plentifulthey are too, but they also have maples (to look nice in the autumn) and lots of what I think of as 'western trees', such as beeches, chestnuts and sycamores, giving the place a bit of height as well.

But more importantly than that the good burghers of Kawaguchi also decided to build a small, paddling river that runs from the top of the park to the bottom, with several sections, with little rapids and places that kids, and their hot parents, can easily get into the water. I cannot begin to describe the pleasure of standing in cool, calf-deep water, under a tree, on a blisteringly hot day whilst the little fella mucks about and generally enjoys himself.

Not goodbye, as such

You might have noticed that I've been rather lax with the posting recently, bit difficult not to notice really. But work is exceptionally busy and I've started studying Japanese again, 930 to 1030 every evening (have a suspicion the company is going through a rough patch, so better make myself more marketable...), which kind of cuts into blogging time.

So, I'll try and post again soon, but I wouldn't go holding your collective breath if I were you, as I don't know how regular this is going to be.

Still, it's been fun.

Adieu

Preserving the great traditions of S.E Asian nations

Laos the great whaling nation or Japan at it again? You decide...

Hmm

Lots of odd stuff going off in Japan right now. None of it, I should point out now, concerns Silent Shinzo, but that is to be expected. In fact he's a bit like Silent Bob in those Jay and Silent Bob Do Mescaline type films, one of which I watched once (I think I might have been drunk at the time, that is only reason I can think of that I actually sat through it).

I digress. No, read in the paper this morning that a 17 year old boy, a high school student as you would expect, from a central bit of Japan walked into a police station yesterday morning with his mother's head in a platic bag, as you would probably not expect. Apparently this boy had killed his mother and hacked off her head the previous night because "he really wanted to kill someone" and I suppose his mother was the closest person to hand, as it were. I know Japan is full of weird, but how weird is that? What strike me are parallels with the chap who did all the killing at Virginia Tech in America a month or two ago. Both boys, both obviously very disturbed...er, that's about it on the parallels, but the main difference which I can see, but a lot of Americans can't, is that fact that American college chap got his hands on lots of guns and ammunition and managed to take a lot of his classmates with him, whilst Japanese boy, with only a knife, decided he didn't need his mother anymore and then turned himself in. At least he kept it in the family (I realise that is not a particularly nice thing to say, and certainly isn't too good for his mum, but it did keep the death toll down).

Other weird thing is the new hatch down in Kumamoto. This is a baby hatch, the first in Japan, where parents with new offspring who suddenly decide they don't want said offspring can leave the little one in a hatch in a hospital and the nursing staff will take the baby in and look after it etc. Why anyone would wait until giving birth before deciding they don't want to keep their baby is beyond me, but obviously people do (and before we get into a discussion about the prosand cons of abortion, the Japanese have a very different take on abortion than the typical western view and it is, because of this, a lot more common - I'm not saying that's good or bad, it just they have a different way of thinkning about it with much less of the stigma (but no less of the emotion, I feel sure)). Anyway the weirdness was that yesterday morning, I think, or amybe before, the nurses found a 3 year old boy had been abandoned in the hatch. Now relieving yourself of a newborn must be pretty hard, but a 3 year old! Apparently the little boy is 'helping police with their inquiries', to use the euphemism, but what sort of parents would do that? (answer, I suppose, is desperate ones).

Anyway that's all quite depressing. On a lighter note Steve and I ventured into town last week to watch the Classic All Blacks do a number on the Japan national team on the rugby paddock. At half time it was 6-10 to the Old New Zealanders (I think calling them the All Blacks adds to their aura, they're from New Zealand, so say that!) and so we thought that ew might have a game on our hands, but alas no as after 1/2 time the ONZ's scored 26 points with noreply to walk away with it. The Japan coach is ex-NZ star John Kirwan, he wanted his charges to play the ONZs to toughen them up a bit before the Pacific 6 Nations - that's all well and good but I shudder to thnk what score the Young New Zealanders would put on this Japan team...

And finally. Just a few words about the little fella, he now has more energy than that star that exploded recently and got all the NASA scientists in a tizzy. However he is putting this to good use by learning lots of new words, some of which we even teach him. His favourites right now are 'where are you?' which he says whilst hiding behind the curtains; daddy + noun, such as daddy belt, daddy work, daddy beer or daddy shoooes, just in case I had forgotten; whilst also beginning to realise that some words work better with daddy, like 'pick me up' (as I won't respond when he asks me in Japanese), but when mummy is cooking he'll point to the cooker and say 'abunai' rather than dangerous, both of which he knows. Clever that.

Lots of stuff



Well where to begin with it all? I think the last proper post was before I went back to the UK on the business trip. This was a successful little jaunt with myself and the principal from Taiwan going in there kicking butt. Well sort of. We certainly went and we certainly kicked about London for a week or so. But whether any butt was involved or not I suppose is a moot point. At the time the trip seemed successful, but now, a month or so later the fruits of our labours seem a little less burnished. This is more to do with the owner of the company and whether he wants to spend money or not, and, as his history in this department is not the strongest, I think our plans may come to naught, or at least, closer to naught that we want. The trip did, however, confirm what a little weasel the supposed boss of UK operations is, I am surprised his cutlery drawer has any knives left in it, judging by the number I saw protruding from various colleagues’ shoulder blades (ooh, bitchy). I now get the Guru to check my back every time I come home – so far so clear, but I will not be betting on any hedges.

Of course the other reason to be back was to see friends and family, which I managed to do equally successfully, though this was a weird feeling as I was back in December, only 4 short months previously, and it didn’t quite feel right seeing everyone again so soon. Usually I go for 12 to 18 months between visits so twice in four months and we almost didn’t have anything to talk about. Indeed the whole trip felt a bit weird, I had a vague and nagging sense that I wasn’t working enough even though my days did seem to begin at about 9 (into the office) and finish about 11pm (back to the hotel), but the evenings seemed to be spent in pubs, which although I was with work people talking about work things (and spending work money, in some cases), didn’t quite feel like work, even though it was. Then the whole slightly odd family/friend feeling and you have a strange sense of, well, weirdness.

Whilst I was away, of course, the poor English teacher was murdered, so for once Japan was all over the English media whilst I was in the UK. I didn’t know the girl but she lived in the town that we used to live in so a few people I know did know her apparently, and possibly one chap even knew the guy that did it (though said chap is a bit of a bullshitter, so that could all be hot air). But get this right, on Thursday last week one of our managers, an Australian woman, was groped on a train. Groping is, unfortunately, quite widespread on Japanese trains and there are posters everywhere saying things like ‘if it happens to you, shout for help’, so my colleague did and no one lifted a finger to help her. She dragged the guy onto the platform, kept shouting, but no help. Eventually a couple of young guys helped her get the miscreant downstairs to the station office because ‘she was causing trouble’, all the while telling the bloke it would be ok (what about her!?). The station officials asked her what she wanted to do, she said call the police so they did but then let the bloke go! She then had to drag him back into the station and lock him in a room. When the police finally arrived she was made to feel that she had done something wrong and caused an affray – right up to the point she showed her ID card and they realized she was married to a Japanese guy, at which point they became very helpful and apologetic. This all happened around 8-9pm but she wasn’t allowed to leave the police station until 3am as they questioned and questioned her, made her act out the scene several times and took lots of photos. She was even finger-printed because she didn’t have an official ‘hanko’ or family seal with her. Good to know that foreign women can feel a little bit safer now after the Lucie Blackman and Lindsay Hawker incidents.

Anyway enough of that. On getting back to Japan work suddenly decided to bowl a few off breaks at me, so I went from quite busy to exceptionally busy in the blink of an eye. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say we have staff problems (they want more) coupled with company problems (we’ve got less) which is the recipe for, well, more crap for me to have to deal with. This one isn’t going to end anytime soon, I fear, so we could be in for a long summer of discontent, which will be fun.

On a much happier note the youngster achieved the ripe old ago of two years on April 27th, which I my book is a good reason to have a party. So we had one. In reality he got an extended, long weekend party as his birthday was on the Friday, the last Friday before I finished work for the Golden Week hols. So on Friday he got to open a couple of presents before I went off to work. At this moment he opened a couple from my parentals (a noisy bus and a couple of DVDs) and from us (books). Then on Saturday he got his main present from us, which was a brand new bicycle. As you can see from the photos below he doesn’t have much to do at the moment except sit on it as he can’t get the hang of steering and has no idea what pedals are for. That meant that Saturday afternoon was spent pushing him around on aforementioned bike.





That evening I went off into Tokyo to see a friend’s band play, which was excellent except for the fact that someone forced me to drink an intemperate amount of beer, mostly without me realizing it, so that come Sunday I was much the worse for wear. This wouldn’t have been too bad had I been allowed to lie in bed and groan the day away, but with a hyperactive 2 year old, with a new bike, and a wife who wants you both out so she can clean the house, it was not too be. We made it to the park, where he could run around a lot and I didn’t have to do very much, but thank goodness the park had a toilet (and for any new parents out there a word of advice – hangovers and children’s’ swings are a match made in hell; avoid).

So then on Monday we had his birthday party. This entailed inviting the Guru’s side of the family over for tea and cakes. The little ‘un is getting pretty good at recognizing the different parts of the family. He knows, for example, that oojiisan and oobaasan (grandfather and grandmother respectively) are likely to visit and is jolly happy when they do, like Monday. Conversely he knows that ganma and ganpa (the closest he can get to grandma and grandpa) live in the computer and we see them every few weeks or so (we see them via webcam, hence them living in the computer). He even knows that cousin Charlie lives in the computer as well, with uncle Julian and Auntie Katharine, though not in the same place as ganma and ganpa as he doesn’t see them so often. Anyway is he in for a big shock in the summer when we all go back and he finds out these are real people!

So anyhoo they came over (the Japanese side, that is, the UK side webcammed on Friday evening, reinforcing the above notion of computer habitage) and the aforementioned tea and cakes were had, as was beer and other food stuffs. As you can probably tell I’m trying to find something interesting to write about here, but alas it was not to be. We did go for a walk down by the river and took photos, as you can see below, but that was about it. Tomorrow, however, we are off the Aquarium in Ikebukuro as I feel it would be beneficial to the youngster’s education (and I think aquariums (aquaria?) rock), so more photos then – might even write something about Japan...



(Oh yeah, Silent Shinzo had a big pow-wow with the Chinese PM (whose name escapes me right now...Jintao, or was that an old one?) and then with the USandA PM Georgie B, but I still can’t think of anything to write about the bloke. For f*ck’s sakes do something Shinzo!)

What's he talking about?

"It is the vast majority of the people in the world against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world.

"What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength.

This was Hilary Benn talking about "terrorists" and the subsequent downgrading of the use of the term 'the war on terror' by the Blair administration.

Or was he talking about Blair, the neo-cons and the George W Bush...?

Anyway Apologies

I'm sorry, I haven't posted for a while, I just don't seem to have the time at the moment. Tonight is the first night in what feels like weeks (it is weeks) that I have been home at a reasonable hour (i.e. before 9pm), so blogging has fallen by the wayside. I will get back on that horse just as soon as I can, especially as the first week of May is all holiday, but it might all be a bit quiet until then.

Back but jet-lagged

So have returned from my international business jet set lifestyle trip to the UK but have been straight back into the office and am knackered. So, if it's ok with you, and even if it's not, I will not be writing usual post just yet.

But I should mention that I did play backgammon with the fatherly parental and he did whip my sorry a$$ something like 26-10, though even he had to admit that my dice did appear to be loaded against me. Oh well, good work there and better luck (for me) next time...

The comfort of women

Japan has a bit of a pesky little irritant that just won’t go away. No, not Krazy Kim this time, or gone-bad politicos, or corrupt business persons or even a dodgy building industry (though it does have all of these things to worry about). No, the little itch that Japan just can’t scratch is the Second World War.

Now it might seem odd that I am writing about this a mere 62 years after the jaunt ended, but to use a clichéd Americanism, Japan just can’t get any closure. The problem is, however, self inflicted (unlike the war) because Japan just can’t or won’t accept that they really did anything wrong. It was a war, you see, so anything goes (as in, now for a second tired cliché one paragraph, ‘all’s fair in love and war’ (and as far as I can tell Japan loved being at war (well, in the beginning when they were winning (I digress (and have used too many brackets now (darn))))). Now I have written in the past about certain things that happened in the war (or perhaps didn’t) like the Rape of Nanking and also the aftermath, such as the ongoing issues with Japanese PMs visiting Yasukuni Shrine to honour class A war criminals. But another issue has also never gone away, that of the alleged, so called, unverified, supposed ‘Comfort Women’.

The basic premise of this is simple, during the war the Japanese army forced many thousands of women to work as prostitutes but specifically to provide ‘comfort’ for Japanese soldiers stationed overseas in places like China and the Philippines. Now the government finds it very hard to deny this since former Imperial Army soldiers have come forward and said they did this, the forcible rounding up, and also in 1992 a number of documents were declassified showing that the army did indeed run official brothels. So now, it seems, the official line is that Japan accepts moral responsibility for this treatment, but not legal responsibility, and even that’s pushing it a bit as Silent Shinzo recently declaimed that there is ‘no proof’ of any of this. However the official way they argue it is this:

1. Even if the women were held against their will there was no law against it at the time
2. If it was illegal to force women to be prostitutes (and we’re not saying it was, see point 1), then the international laws you might be referring to didn’t apply in military-occupied territories
3. Even if we are caught out by 1 and 2 above, everything was settled at the end of the war so we have no case to answer

And this is what the courts in Japan have been saying for the last 62 years, or at least since people have been trying to sue the government. For example in 2000 the Tokyo District court threw out a case by 46 former alleged sex slaves when it decided that ‘crimes against humanity’ (on which the case was brought) as a concept did not exist in the 1940s, whilst a court in Hiroshima in 2001 threw out a case stating that coerced sex wasn’t illegal in the 1940s! The courts obviously didn’t know their history because apparently the notion of crimes against humanity goes all the way back to 1904, whilst in the first half of the twentieth century Japan signed up to no less than 4 international treaties outlawing the white slave trade, trafficking in women and the abolition of forced labour. So you’d think that they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, but still the government won’t make any reparations or, really, admit that it happened and say they are sorry.

Of course because Japan is a sovereign state you can’t actually sue it from the outside, so you can’t bring a case against the Japanese government in, say, America, you can only do that in Japan (and fair enough on that score). But as noted above the judiciary in Japan don’t look like they are about to go as far as admitting to anything anytime soon, even when it is pointed out that the basis on which some courts make their decisions are fundamentally incorrect.

The third defense of the government, about things being sorted after the war, is also erroneous, or at least open to attack. Apparently after the end of the pacific war the country was in a bit of a state so when it came to war reparations, mindful of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles, MacArthur or whoever it was who took these decisions said, effectively, “aw c’mon, these little guys are whacked so no, you can’t have any of their money because right now they haven’t got any”. The important thing here, say prosecutors, is the ‘right now’ bit because, they argue, in 1945 that may well have been the case but in 2007, or even more likely in 1988 before the bubble burst, Japan has money to burn (OK, that happens now with soon-to-be-discovered prefectoral slush funds) and some of it should be going to those who were wringed in the past.

The article I have taken a lot of this from (from the Los Angeles Times section in the Yomiuri (it had to be a foreign newspaper as the Japanese press isn’t going to write anything balanced about this issue c.f. Yasukuni etc)) reckons that Japan will need to do something about this in the not too distant future as it is affecting relations with Asian neighbours and trading partners such as China, Korea and the Philippines, but personally I wouldn’t be holding my breath. Japan has far, far too much of a grip on the ‘Japan was the real victim’ stance with regard to WW2, mainly on account of the atomic bombings of the two cities. Whilst this was indeed a terrible and abhorrent thing, there is a collective, national blindness about what happened in the decade before August 1945 that led to the decision to drop the bombs. Therefore issues like Nanking, Yasukuni and Comfort women will run and run until there is no one left alive to champion them and then they’ll be quietly forgotten.

NB Anyone else feel that the government’s defense #2, the one about happening in occupied countries, is just a bit too close to Bush, extraordinary rendition and the hostages enemy combatants held in Guantanamo Bay for, ahem, comfort...?

But anyway...

Wouldn’t you just know it? Last week a letter arrived for me. It looked very plain and the envelope promised neither that I had won any yen nor that I was being asked to fork any out. And as no birthdays or anniversaries were due, so I was perplexed. On opening the envelope I was somewhat surprised to find an invitation to the Embassy to view cherry blossoms with the outgoing and newly arriving Consuls General (I think that’s the correct plural) on Tuesday 27th March. It was the proper thing, too, mostly printed but name handwritten. And this had come to the flat, not to the office, so it was obviously a personal, rather than a professional invitation (I think). Anyway the bugger is is that I will be flying to the UK on Monday 26th March and will therefore be unable to attend.

I RSVP’d as per the instructions and the women to whom I spoke seemed a little surprised. Then again I did say to her that, assuming that the reason Her Majesty’s government want to meet me was to recruit my services for a spot of cloak-and-dagger, I would be only too happy to visit the MI5 building in London next week instead of meeting my contact at the embassy. At that point she hung up, rather abruptly I thought, so I am still waiting for my ‘drop’ details in London, it will all be very hush-hush so I’ll probably have to wait a week or two until I can write about it, but rest assured I’ll keep everyone informed...

Happy thoughts

Am reading this book at the moment, as you can see from the sidebar, about the Vietnam War. The basic premise is simple – get a load of the old protagonists together, those responsible for the war rather than the foot soldiers, and get them to chinwag like that should have done 50 years ago and find out if they missed any opportunities to not have a war.

When I started reading this book I thought this was a fascinating premise and got into the book, but on reflection I think they are, to a greater or lesser extent, a bunch of fools. It’s easy not to have a war, you just don’t fight. When you’ve started you just say stop. I don’t know if I’m being too simplistic here, though I think I probably am, but surely it is easier not to have a war than it is to have one, especially if the two protagonists are separated by 5000 miles of ocean.

However the main current of the book is that the knowledge of each side about the other was, essentially, non-existent, and their ability to communicate with each other wasn’t a great deal better. If they’re going to talk about missing opportunities I feel it would be better to do it with wars that are yet possibly not to happen, such as the bellicose rantings of the US against, for example, Iran, rather than an opportunity that has been missed already, as in Vietnam. But perhaps that’s the point and that we should learn from our mistakes – if so I hope someone gives George Bush a copy of this book before it’s all too late.

Interestingly, in the Vietnam War, so the book says, the ‘intelligence’ community apparently were the ones to get it right, by basically saying, from a very early point, that the US was never going to win the war, not even close, their military strategies were doomed to failure and that they were fighting a completely different war than they thought they were. But the military were blind and deaf to this and kept shouting at various presidents to increase troop numbers until they had enough materiel to defeat the ‘enemy’ (though even knowing who the enemy was was quite tricky). I’m not sure about you, but this does sound suspiciously like what has happened for the last few years since 9/11 to me i.e. intelligence being twisted to be ‘fit for a purpose’ then the military going in, doing a job and then being totally unprepared for the aftermath, and then just shouting at everyone to provide more troops for a war that is increasingly unpopular at home. But, and this is big but, Iraq is not the new Vietnam, right...?

Rich Pickings

So, had a tricky week at work last week, hence no posting, but must admit the creative juices not flowing to freely either, which doesn’t help.

This week also there hasn’t been much going on to write home about, as it were. The results of the question posed in the last post, about Silent Shinzo’s apparent fall from grace were published in the Yomiuri, but such were the responses that I can’t really remember what they were on about (which isn’t good reportage, I realize, but there you go). Anyway from what I remember there were things like ‘he hasn’t had enough time yet so give him a chance’, also at least a couple of ‘well, what has he done?’ which kind of reflects what I was banging on about in the post, whilst I’m sure there was one ‘I just don’t like his ugly mug’, of which I heartily agree. Of course Silent Shinzo’s response to this was a furious verbal broadside against the print media in general and the Yomiuri in particular, where he savaged the inanity of the questioning and questioned the reliability and validity of the research undertaken. Or maybe not, but it is nice to speculate what he might have thought.

What we did you, yesterday, was go strawberry picking. The reason we did this was, ostensibly, to show the little ‘un that strawberries do not grow in plastic trays in supermarkets but are, in fact, part of living things called plants. So off we trooped to Konosu at 715 on Sunday morning. Now Konosu, for regular readers on this blog, might sound familiar, as indeed it should as it is the place where yours truly has been to get/renew my driving license (see here if you’re bored). I am beginning to think that Konosu may well be the centre of the universe as far as Saitama Prefecture is concerned, or at least the centre of Saitama. So anyway we get there at about 845am and go to this suspiciously small plastic greenhouse and ask a startled looking chap if we are in time. The reason we have to do this is this is a strange place – they only give out 40 tickets for fruit pickers and don’t take bookings, so if you get there and all tickets are gone then you are out of luck, bye! You may think this odd – me too, but don’t worry, it get odder.

We were in luck and safely procured three tickets but then, as the picking didn’t start until 10am, we had bugger all to do. Now luckily there was a playground thing and so the youngster could spend an hour clambering over, under, through and around things, mostly avoiding other bigger kids running amok, but not always. At the appointed hour we re-presented ourselves to startled looking chap, his visage hadn’t changed, at which point he asked us, and others, if we wouldn’t mind getting in number order according to the tickets. OK, this wouldn’t be too tricky unless he had given out random numbers, ah. So as we had 27, 29 and 32, this meant the youngster would be on his own in between random punters, but then, after a moment of milling, everybody ignored startled bloke anyway. And I thought these Japanese were meant to take rules seriously?

Now the picking could begin. But this was no ordinary picking, rather it was a strawberry eating experience. You went into the greenhouse, picked a strawberry off an obliging plant and then ate it. You had a small punnet in which to catch the strawberries as you cut them off the plant and also a small dish containing condensed milk, which you often eat with strawberries here, and that was it, off you go and eat for 30 minutes whilst, of course, paying for the pleasure. There was none of this collecting strawberries and taking them home to make a nice pie or, indeed, tart. Now I don’t know about you, but I have a threshold of how many strawberries with condensed milk I can eat at 10am on a Sunday morning, standing in an overly warm greenhouse in Konosu and it does not, I can confirm, take 30 minutes to reach that threshold. More like 10 minutes, and that was pushing it. The Guru also, I must add, felt likewise. The only person who might have wanted to stay and consume even more (but without the condensed milk) was the youngster. I don’t know if he came to realize that strawberries grow on plants, but he definitely did find out that all he had to do was follow a parent around and he would be given lots and lots of them to eat.

And that was about it. We went, we ate, we returned. They were very nice strawberries though.

The Abe issue

The Daily Yomiuri has, once a month, a readers’ write-in thing where they propose a theme and your average punter can write in and let loose their thoughts. Recently they have had such things as ‘what more can Japan do to encourage eco-friendliness in others so we don’t have to?’; ‘Just how many nukes should we drop on Krazy Kim’s People Mart?’; and a personal favourite ‘What avenues of whining should Japan now explore in an attempt to get a permanent seat on the UNSC?’. This month’s question is a little different, however. If memory served it is something like ‘Why has new-ish PM Shinzo Abe’s popularity gone down the tubes?’

Now I have thought long and hard about this over the past few minutes and I must admit to being at something of a loss. This might strike you as strange, but it is so. The reason I am at a loss might, however, also be the reason his popularity has gone down the tubes, as I can’t think of anything that Shizo has done since he became PM, so much so that I still can’t think of a decent, or indeed any, nickname for him, which I find just a little bit depressing.

So, he came to power after the Kool Kid Koizumi collected his P45 in September last year and, as far as I can remember, really hasn’t done anything. It almost seems as if Japan has gone to sleep with him at the helm. Reading through the archives of this blog, as I am wont to do on occasion when bored, I have come across posts about Krazy Kim, about dodgy architects, scandals a-plenty, succession issues, Yasukuni, takeovers and makeovers and all sorts of other things that happened with, to and by the Kid (read back, you’ll find them all in there (somewhere)), but since the autumn I really can’t think of too much that has gone on. OK, there was the cabinet minister that said women were essentially ‘birthing machines’ and that they were failing in their duty – he threatened to resign but Abe wouldn’t let him. That was interesting for about a day, but that’s about it.

It’s almost as if John Major has decided that being the most dull and boring politico in Britain wasn’t enough so he thought he’d branch out and give another legislature a go. But maybe, and here possibly is the point of all this, the Kool Kid has actually done what all politicians want to do but generally fail in the attempt: he changed the game (here in Japan), changed the political landscape. Recast the mindset of ‘the people’ (whoever we/they are). Redefined what it is to be a politico in Japan. Reinvented. Shifted. No longer are ‘the people’ going to be happy with a faceless, humourless, unmemorable grey suit. Now, because of the Kid, perhaps people want politicos who try and do stuff, who have opinions, who try to change the way things work (or don’t work), who say things like ‘oops, might have bungled that one a tad’ and who have, (shudder) some passion for the job.

The thing with the Kid was that he polarized opinion, he really was, it seems to me, either loved or hated. Now that might seem strange if you are reading this in the UK or US (or elsewhere, but I don’t know much about the politics of that country) as political parties, and political issues, often have the effect of polarizing opinion, but here in Japan consensus has often been the order of the day. This is perhaps because Japan has essentially had one political party in power since 1945 (the good ‘ole Liberal Democratic party, who are neither liberal nor democratic, natch) and also because harmony is/was paramount – in this sense harmony means collusion between big business and big politics to ensure people are told what to do and then do it, sort of like Stalin or Hitler’s command economy but with smiles, nicer cars and no gulags. But the Kid, with acts like going postal (privatizing the postal savings system), being principled (kicking out the dissenters in the party) and having the balls to fight (his back me or sack me the country at the last election, and they backed him), maybe something changed in Japanese politics which has, perhaps quite unexpectedly, changed something in the electorate.

So when Silent Shinzo (how about that one?) comes along, expecting everyone to slip back into their late-90s political acquiescence, he may be feeling just a tad miffed that people are asking him questions and expecting (as if?!) answers and action. I think there may be a lot of head scratching going on the Strip OL Shabu-shabu joints of Shinjuku as the old guard, the ones who breathed a sigh of relief when the Kid was as good as his word and retired in September, try and figure out how they can run a damned country with a lame duck PM and an increasingly irritating tendency from ‘the people’ to ask questions they shouldn’t and expect something approaching a reasonable, or at least reasonably believable but not necessarily true, answer.

Or I might be wrong, maybe they just don’t like his ugly mug, but I’d like to think that there’s a bit more to it than that.