Noda - the first few weeks...

So the new boy wonder is in the hot-seat and what has he come up with to save Japan from fiscal, environmental and demographic catastrophe…?

Well, fuck all so far, it seems. The new kid has been keeping his head down and grafting, I know this because the media types have been bemoaning the fact the kid keeps his head down and doesn’t do interviews or press conferences. The old boys used to have at least 1 press conference a day, sometimes 2, with all that pressing going on you would think they didn’t have much time to do anything, and you’d be right (expect back-stabbing, mud-slinging and, in the case of (The Man Who) Kan, standing stock still in panic induced paralysis at the shit in front of him). But Noda has said “No, da won’t be many press conferences from now on” (apologies for the forced pun there), and those that he will do will be at ad hoc in locations the press will be told about with 2 minute’s notice (cue Keystone Cops-style charging about Kasumigaseki by the press corps whilst Noda chuckles to himself in Roppongi Hills/a rice field/Washington DC etc.)

But like most recent Japanese PMs, I can’t really think of much he’s done. I suppose he has overseen the indictment of the crook that is Ichiro Ozawa, who is still protecting his innocence, deriding the legality of the court and accusing the prosecutors of fraud, thereby acting like the supercilious, arrogant tosspot that he is; I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if he had shouted ‘don’t you know who I am!?’ several times already.

Sorry, back to Noda – er… There’s been a bit of talk about the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), a sort of free trade agreement with the US, but that will be wrapped up in the Futenma base shenanigans that are *still* going on. Then there are the proposed tax hikes, which will put my tax up in the not too distant future through a combination of increased income and sales taxes (yes, I can see they are needed but no, I don’t want them if all they will do is go towards more a) useless, anti-competition hand-outs for rice farmers/fishermen (for example) to keep them voting the right way b) ridiculous pork-barrel construction projects (there are enough real construction projects needed in Tohoku) c) bureaucrats d) semi-public institutions still bankrolled by govt. through my tax (JAL, Japan Tobacco et al) e) anything else that promotes waste and that I don’t agree with. Jesus, I sound like a Republican!).

I’m sure there is other stuff he’s done, but I can’t remember much about it. I’m sure he is doing great things to start the rebuild of northern Japan which will be, in the main, unsung, so maybe he needs to start blowing his trumpet a bit more.

Radiation news

The thing about having a nuclear power station going into meltdown 250kms away is that it makes everyone really paranoid about radiation. The first accusation is that the govt. and TEPCO aren’t telling anyone anywhere near enough about what’s going on at the plant. This was undoubtedly true at the time and though I suspect the flow of information is now much better, after the general panic has dissipated, I’m sure there is more they are not (or maybe not able) to tell us yet.

The second accusation is only possible after the general panic has dissipated and people can get back to living their normal lives, this is the paranoia that radiation is everywhere and the government aren’t telling us about it. The idea is that large amounts of radiation fell on Tokyo in very specific areas, creating radiation hotspots that will, for example, give your child incurable radiation sickness and/or cancer the second he/she goes near the aforementioned hotspot. There is no way the govt. can counter this unless it takes radiation readings from every street corner in Tokyo every 5 minutes for the next 10 years, and even then certain people, like some parents at the school I work at, will not believe the readings are real.

What makes matters worse are completely unrelated, random events that ratchet up the panic. For example a bunch of ‘concerned residents’ got hold of a radiation meter (another really, really bad idea as these are sensitive instruments with which it’s easy to pick up false readings unless you know what you’re doing) and started measuring bits of Setagaya-ku in west Tokyo. Somehow they managed to get an accurate reading and found a really quite large spike in radiation in one spot on a road outside a slightly rundown house. Cue local hysteria so the real boys were called in and, interestingly, found the same readings. Cue national hysteria and calls for the government to resign en masse for lying to the public (actually I made that bit up, but I’m pretty sure someone was saying it). Anyway, what the big boys found was that the radiation was coming from the house and, after getting permission to go in, found several bottles containing radium 226 (the stuff they use as luminous paint for watches) under the floor of the house. The woman who owned the house but no longer lived there said her (now dead husband, died if radiation poisoning…?) might have used the stuff but she really had no idea. So in the end it was all completely unrelated to Fukushima, but the paranoia goes on. Also, the level of radiation just above the bottles was 600 micro Sv/h, about the amount you would get from a stomach x-ray; so not exactly lethal though you wouldn’t want to stand there for too long, so outside the house on the street the level was around 3 micro Sv/h, so no one was going to get anything nasty just walking by the house every day, not that you’d think that listening to some of the comments that came out.

The Rugby World Cup

It’s almost over and I haven’t written anything about it. So, some musings…

- England were pretty rubbish on the field (looking good against Romania and Georgia does not count)

- Off the field England were not saints, but a large section of the media did seem to have it in for them from the moment they arrived in NZ (Mick Cleary and Mark Reason in the Telegraph spring to mind)

- I feel sorry for Wales but Sam Warburton should not have made that tackle as he did, whilst James Hook and Stephen Jones should have done better than 1 from 6

- I feel slightly sorry for South Africa, but they should have been a lot more savvy in realising that Bryce Lawrence had given carte blanche at the breakdown for anyone to do anything

- Japan played well, very well, at times but lacked composure when it really mattered

- No one put 100 points on any of the “minnows” – this was a great improvement and will only get better the more opportunities they are given to play the ‘big’ nations

- I now want France to win on Sunday, just because everyone is writing them off and saying they are the worst team ever to grace the final. Allez les Bleus!

- Stop blaming the refs and start looking at you team’s shortcomings

- Roll on 2019 when it all comes to Japan


And Dan Wheldon, R.I.P.

Lastly some pictures of cars from La Fest Mille Miglia in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago

La Festa 2011, a set on Flickr.

Politician is a bit of a prat shocker!

Goodness it was over 2 months ago since I posted about the centenarians – where does the time go…? Anyway,

Political news now

I have little time for most politicos, it’s all about self interest and not about running a country properly, or even trying to most of the time. But about Japanese politicos I am even more in despair – I just don’t know why they bother. If there wasn’t actually a prime minister I don’t actually think it would make the slightest bit of difference to the country as a whole. OK, there might have to be a top level game of ‘paper, scissors, stone’ (or the j-equivalent ‘junken’) to decide who goes to the [insert name of international conference here] this week to stand at the back, not say anything and then come home and be criticised, or there might be an unseemly tussle if Carla Bruni comes a-visiting and someone has to shake her hand (or other stately appendage), but otherwise Japan would probably quite happily carry on with no head of state, or rather with the faceless grey bureaucrats and the plain grey emperor. But anyway they do have a PM so I’d better write about him.

Actually it’s not about him, the Man Who Kan, I am going to write, it’s about his erstwhile Moriarty, Ichiro Ozawa. OK, this is all old news, but hey, I’ve been busy. So Ozawa is the oldest of old skool, he is only in politics for one reason – himself. Pockets to line, plebs to rule over, god given right to lord it over other people with the expectation that they will thank him for doing so. I don’t like him, if you can’t guess.

Anyway a few months ago a probe was started into some alleged falsification of his financial reports by him and his little minions. At this time Ozawa was a serious heavyweight in the Democratic Party of Japan, a contender for future PM if he could avoid scandal. Now, as we know the DPJ had been out of power for decades until the The Hat came along and won an election. He then ballsed it all up over Okinawa and fell on his sword, as reported here before, and then The Man Who took over. So, new government formed for the still fledgling DPJ ruling classes, what better thing to do than launch a hostile bid for the leadership, just for a laugh. So that’s what Ozawa did.

Now, the timing of this, as you can see, is a bit odd. OK, the DPJ, according its constitution I think (a constitution that needs some serious revision by the sound of it) have to have a leadership contest – but as a party, if you’ve just been through a messy divorce with the standing PM and your popularity is shaky to say the least, you do not want the party ripped apart from the inside by an extremely partisan leadership contest. So, someone needs have a word with the potential leadership contenders along the lines of ‘this is a really delicate time, a time for unity, so there won’t be any challengers, will there…?’

Unfortunately the possibly most-appropriate person to have this little chat is our friend Ozawa, controller of the largest faction in the DPJ, but his chat is more like ‘Come on! Where are all the fighters in this town!?’ So he throws his hat in the ring.

All the while this is going on the investigation into his ‘financial irregularities’ is in full swing and the evidence is pointing increasingly strongly to the fact that he is a lying, cheating bastard (he’s a politician, as if there is any doubt!). His response to this is a simple ‘fuck you!’ to the investigators, reporters and general population of Japan.

So now we have a spot of internecine warfare in the DPJ and not just a little bit but a full on battle front as Ozawa is an important figure in the party who then gets endorsed by ex-PM, and current waste of space The Hat, and the very real possibility that, if Ozawa wins, he will become the first PM to be indicted whilst running the country (as well as the small matter of being something like the 3rd PM in 12 months).

The saving grace is the election process – now I won’t claim to understand the whole shebang, but basically the election votes are divided between (I think) the equivalent of the power-blocs in the Parliamentary party and the rank and file members. In the parliamentary party the votes are reasonably even between Ozawa and Kan, but the rank-and-file, who have been watching as this idiot Ozawa tries to destroy their attempt at government, are horrified at the prospect of him being PM and so are in favour of Kan by about 8-2.

In the end, of course, the election was won by the Man Who with the votes going almost exactly along the lines above. Was Ozawa repentant? Of course not, probably do it all again. The happy news is that he will be prosecuted by the police for the financial irregularities, but not before he threatened to sue the entire panel that came up with the indictment in the first place – his defence being ‘You can’t do that, don’t you know who I am?’ and other such choice defensive posturing. I’d like to think that’s the last we’ll ever hear of the inestimable Ichiro Ozawa, but I have the horrible impression that he will somehow avoid prosecution and bide his time whilst the Man Who inevitably cocks something up and then step into the leadership vacuum. Will be a sad day for Japan if it happens…

Holiday news now

Lock up your daughters, Mr Sexy Peasant is a-coming home for Christmas! Or something like that. Yes, we will be back to Blighty for festive celebrations from December 17th to, I think, 3rd January.

Already I have been instructed to present myself and family at a photo studio in Crowthorne (I know, who’d have thought it!) for family picture snappage – though worryingly father parental has mentioned something about having smart clothes with us for a ‘formal’ shot (golf-playing-brother is the organiser (I know, who’d have thought that adjective could be applied to that person!)). Anyway word to the wise, we will not have much in the way of formal clothes with us, not with normal clothes, Christmas presents and a small child with us.

And now, a brief mention of house guests

We have a house guest by the name of Adam – he is the nephew of a friend of the family and, unlike most 18 year olds (well, unlike most 18 year olds I knew when I was 18 (as I don’t really know very many now)) he doesn’t drink, take drugs or smoke – maybe he isn’t really 18… but he is jolly polite and somewhat diffident.

Anyway he’s here as he has a deep and abiding interest in Japan that needs knocking out of him so he’s staying with us for a couple of weeks. He arrived on Saturday evening looking slightly bewildered by it all, though he had been on a plane for 12 hours and had used, so he told me, one of paper bags that most people just make fun of.

Yesterday the Guru, youngster and I had to go to Meiji Jingu shrine near Harajuku for some serious feng shui praying (don’t ask me) so took Adam along with us. Then we wandered back through Harajuku to Shibuya and thence to Shinjuku and a ride to the top of the TMG building for a look over Tokyo’s sprawl. All very pleasant but at the time a little, niggling worry as whenever we asked ‘where you like to go and see now?’, he didn’t really know. Hmm, thought yours truly, so taking the bull by the horns when we got home I asked him outright, ‘what are your plans for the next 2 weeks?’ to which I got the reply;

‘Er, I don’t know really – maybe go to Kyoto and I’d like to climb Mt Fuji’

So you’ll have done a lot of research, then? Yes, you can climb Fuji in late-October but you tend to have to be an experienced climber with the full kit as snow has already dusted the top of the mountain. And Kyoto, good, that’s a couple of days, what about the rest?

OK, so maybe he is like any other 18 year old; lots of ideas but a bit lacking in the preparation department.

The right to reside

As I mentioned a while ago one of the things that is meant to make buying property easier in Japan, when one is an alien, is having permanent residency. I didn’t have it when we started the process so, in the spirit of… well, applying, I applied for it. Now this may sound easy, but it is not – actually it is easy to apply but it is a pain in the arse to get everything done for the application.

Now as we know the Japanese as a race love bureaucracy as much as, no, more than, the next nation state, and usually this means that as long as you follow the guidelines and tick all the boxes you should be fine. However the Immigration bureau didn’t sign up to this and to call them capricious would be to describe Usain Bolt as ‘quite fast’. This is not just me, by the way, anyone who has had any dealings with immigration feels the same way and phrases such as ‘case by case’ and ‘depends who you get on the day’ and ‘what a bunch of shysters’ are often heard after a trip of one of their offices.

So, I know that we have to get the required forms, some bits of paper from the town hall to prove I pay my taxes, copy of the marriage certificate, pay slips and other stuff, but then there’s the ‘extras’. Permanent residency is sort of the holy grail of ‘visas’ (it’s not really a visa, it is permission to reside, which is different apparently), so they don’t give them out willy-nilly. If, for example, I wasn’t married to the Guru and/or have a 3.5 yr old progeny running around (and making a lot of noise) then the basic requirement for PR would be 10 years continuous residence and having made a ‘significant contribution to society’ which by the look of it means being a Nobel laureate in pro-Japanese propaganda, or something, so they take it quite seriously. Luckily, if you’re married to a Japanese personage and your contribution to society consists of a 3.5 yr old noisy child then apparently this is on a par with Nobelhood (and thank goodness for that).

So anyway, back to the application. Before submitting the documents we did some research, of course – in one of the Japan forums I participate in there was a plethora of advice, most of it consisting of information like, ‘submit the stuff they ask for and then add…’ some of the stuff they suggest to add sounded quite useful, like degree certificates and references, others quite strange, like a map from your local train/tube station to your house. But then again when we did the spouse visa application we had to submit some daft stuff, like photos of us together, a report on how we met, that sort of thing, so you shouldn’t be surprised. One of the most amusing bits of advice was from a bloke who described the PR application process along these lines – ‘what the bloke dealing with your application does is get your file and start taking bits of paper out, like the application form. He won’t read what’s on the paper, he will just place it on the desk in front of him. He will do this until he has put all the pieces of paper on the desk. If, when he has finished, he cannot see any of the desk uncovered by paper, your application will be approved; if an area equivalent to one piece of A4 is uncovered, he will read your application and decide. If more than one piece of A4 of the desk is uncovered, your application will be rejected.’

So, off we trooped to the Saitama immigration office in May to submit the application. I took along the necessaries and a selection of the optional extras (with full intent on providing sufficient desk coverage). Up came our number and so I started to have over everything – as soon as I started the chap said ‘oh, permanent residency’ as if he were a little surprised – perhaps not the sort of thing that usually happens in Saitama. Once I had given the necessaries I started on the extras, the chap looked a bit bemused when I gave him the map of the station/apartment, but when I brought out the degree certificates he started to look panicked, saying “no, no, we don’t need all this stuff, the application form will do” and started to hand stuff back to me – very odd, I thought, don’t you want to ask me to name all the prefectures of Japan, I have memorised them…? But no, just the docs, as it were.

So, “how long will ask this take?” was the next question; “well, about 6 months to a year, so if you haven’t heard from us by June 2009 then reapply for your spouse visa anyway, just in case” was the response – a whole year!? What are they going to do, genealogy and DNA testing? Probably, is possibly the answer, and I wouldn’t have put it past them. So that was it, really, all we had to do then was wait.

And wait we did, until the end of November when, low and behold, the application was approved. A colleague of mine from the Philippines, who has PR, said his application took a year to complete and whilst it was going on immigration contacted his landlord and his then current and his previous employer, to check he was legit. As far as I can tell there were no checks done on me like that (as, for one our landlord is a right old gossip and if immigration had called him he would have been straight round to us; and two, if they had contacted my employer they would probably have ended up speaking to me as that sort of HR thing would probably end up on my desk). But for us it was almost exactly 6 months to the day since we made our application.

Now, after all the palaver of applying I was expecting a little ceremony or something when I went back to the immigration office to get the stamp put into my passport, but, disappointingly, there was nothing – no ceremonial stamping, no handshake from the branch director, no word of congratulations from the immigration minister, not even a photographer from the local paper to record the happy event. Just a ‘here you go, and don’t forget to go to your town hall and update your alien registration card’, which I duly did a couple of weeks later.

If all that seems like a bit of an anti-climax, rest assured it was for me too. But the good news is that I got it and so I don’t now have to go back and get a new visa ever three years as this one lasts, in theory, forever. But I do need to get a re-entry permit, which does only last for three years, which is the government’s way of… sorry, another government way of making money from foreigners. And gaining it didn’t make any difference to buying property as we’ve already bought it; oh well…