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.

Who was that Man...?

So The Man Who Kan is officially now the Man Who Couldn't. As I said before, he was dealt a shitty hand but seismic catastrophes are in the job description for a Japanese PM and I'm afraid to say that he didn't handle it particularly well. Yes, politics is riven by factions, especially within his own party, but at some point he had to stop, draw a line in the sand (after clearing away the wreckage and checking for radiation), grow a pair and, firstly, tell Ozawa to f*ck off and expel him from the party (and deal with the crook later) and then take charge of the country post-quake, show a bit of leadership, be strong, fight and all that. Sorry, but on both counts: FAIL.

So he finally did the decent thing, after the 3rd emergency budget was passed (or whichever one it was) and fell on his sword. After a bit of ministerial tooing and froing, the suits of the DPJ elected another of their own, Yoshihiko Noda, as the new #1. Of the candidates he was one of few who I didn't really want to get it, mostly as he looks like a toad (imagine a flesh-coloured Baron Silas von Greenback and you'll see what I mean), and he sounds a bit like one as well - and kudos to him if he ever starts burping really loudly in a cabinet meeting in a vain attempt to attract Renho for a ministerial debrief...

So Noda has also been dealt a pretty shitty hand by the fates, but at least he has the excuse that he saw it coming. Of course the main problem is the economy - at the moment government debt is running at about double the annual turnover of Japan Inc, meaning that we are well mired in the deepest of deep shit. That said, unlike the mountainous debt of Europe and the US, most of the people the J-govt are indebted to are the people of Japan, as pretty much all the IOUs are written to Japanese banks backed up by the savings of millions of households across the land. This is a good thing, and the only reason Japan Inc hasn't gone bust for the last 20 years, as the people of Japan are very unlikely to stop saving, take the cash from the bank and blow it all in Vegas (or, in the case of US/European debt, the Chinese suddenly saying, "hey, you know all those IOU's? Reckon we'll cash them in now...").

But with a shrinking popuation and no mass immigration any time soon, the tax base will decrease and govt income fall even before the rebuilding of Tohoku gets underway. So sales/consumption tax will probably have to go up, no defintely have to go up, from its current 5% - I can see that at 10% in the next few years and probably 15% in a decade. It's going to hurt but it's got to be done. The Tohoku clean up is, naturally, another bit blot on the landscape (quite literally) - of course things have begun and lots of work already done, I think pretty much all of the displaced people now have temporary housing, as opposed to living in gymnasiums and other evacuation centres - that's pretty damned good going, considering how many people lost their houses. But rebuilding lives, towns, communities, jobs and all the other myriad of things that go into a place to live, that's going to take some work.

And then there is Fukushima. The nuclear plant is still not safe, though the chances of it blowing up and spewing radioactive crap all over Japan have now, it appears, receded. Interesting that everyone is now happy to use the word 'meltdown' to describe 2 or 3 of the reactors - it seems that the partial meltdowns happened within days of the disaster, certainly when we were sitting at home in Tokyo wondering whether we should get the hell outta Dodge. If anyone had mentioned the 'M' word at that time we would have been on a plane without pausing for thought, as would about 12 million people around me. So in a way it is hardly surprising that no one used that word, panic would have ensued, but now the attitude is more 'we I lived through it and I'm not dead yet, so the cores melted, big deal, there's no mushroom cloud over Tokyo...'. Probably way too blase, that, but there you go.

Anyway, good luck with all that, Noda-san.

What's going on...? (as a famous man once sang)

So it's been an interesting month or so, to say the least.

First the earthquake, then a lot more earthquakes, then (not really) nuclear armageddon in Fukushima, then a gaijin-only broohaha (about flyjins or denyjins or cryjins or whatever the label de jour-jins was), then (not really) social and infrastructural breakdown in a large city an awfully long way from the earthquake and (not really) nuclear armageddon zones and a whole load more stuff as well. Phew, it's been a ride!

But for us good folk of Arakawa Riverview (in the large city an awfully long way from the earthquake and (not really) nuclear armageddon zones), life has been reasonably normal, to tell the truth. In the week after the quake there were indeed shortages of foods like milk, bread and dried and canned stuff, but since then things are back on the shelves. There was a subsequent yoghurt scarcity, but that's pretty much OK now, and then a very real scare as breweries suddenly realised that beer producing and shipping capacity was way down and Tokyo running dry suddenly became a very real possibility. So far so good on that one, but we are monitoring the situation carefully (and stocking up on red wine and gin (I will re-label myself a gin-jin)).

Also in the week after the quake the British Embassy (to whom I will doff my cap to a job reasonably well done in the face of enormous stress) changed their travel advice from 'everything is pretty much OK' to 'British nationals should consider leaving Tokyo'. This freaked me, along with the Guru, out and we made plans to move south to a branch of the family down in Kyushu. But after a little reflection and a realisation that the travel advice was more to stop people coming to Tokyo, thereby giving the embassy more responsibilities if things did go bad, rather than a cry to run to the hills (and not Roppongi Hills), we decided to stay put. Others didn't, some went to Osaka or Kyushu, some went to Singapore or Hong Kong, others further afield to Australia or the UK. Fine, I have no problem with that, people make the decisions best suited for themselves and their families. What I find most poisonous is the subsequent name-calling and label-making mentioned above - people that left became flyjins, branded cowards by some who stayed; people who left called the stayers naïve, delusional and crazy to put themselves in harm's way. Basically everyone trying to justify their actions, as if a) it matters or b) it has anything to do with anyone else. So, anyway, get over it people as we’re all people and we don’t have to justify our decisions to others.

Now because of the goings on in Fukushima TEPCO (that’s Tokyo Electric Power Company, for those who have been living in the north pole for the last month) and the Japanese Government have come in for some pretty stinging (by Japanese standards) criticism in the last month. The main foci have been:

1) Tepco don’t know what they are doing

2) The govt don’t know what they are doing

3) The govt don’t know what Tepco is doing

4) Everyone is covering up the scale of the nuclear related problems

The first 2 are undoubtedly true as neither Tepco nor the govt have a clue what to do about the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant or, if they did know what to do, they have no idea how to do it. The 3rd point is probably true – Tepco are definitely the bad guys here (except the valiant Fukushima 50 (and probably more) who are trying to cool the reactors and sort out the problems – these heroes are distinct from the homogenous Tepco mass as I think they do have a clue what they are doing and probably a clue how to do it (and are trying to do it the face of seemingly insurmountable incompetence by their “superiors”)). Er, yes, Tepco, definitely the bad guys, or more likely lethally negligent guys…lost my train of thought. Ah yes, so, not only does it look like Tepco have been pulling the wool over the eyes of their staff and the people of Fukushima, it seems that they haven’t really told the whole story to the govt, or the IAEA, or anyone else. This does not, as you may well imagine, fill one with confidence about what is happening there right now, but it will, hopefully, mean that those (ir)responsible will be brought to book when the (radioactive) dust finally settles. One thought – some argue that Tepco should be nationalised, as should all nuclear power production, but I wonder. Private firms will cut corners to save costs, thereby endangering lives like now; however state industries can be woefully inefficient and ‘jobs for life on the state sector’ can very easily lead to similar sloppy work procedures. So what to do…?

Point 4 above, that everyone is covering up, does, I think, have some merit as an argument. The reason, I think, is that the govt need a diversion to take everyone’s mind, and view, off what has happened to Iwate and Miyagi prefectures in the aftermath of the quake and tsunami. The devastation up there, the sheer scale of the rebuild that will need to take place is, I think, on a level that people cannot comprehend, and when they do start to think about it the excrement will hit the slowly rotating cooling device. So, better to keep the focus of the people and the world on Fukushima, which so far has killed 2 people (I think) rather than on the destruction wrought upon Tohoku area on 11th March, after which some 30,000 are dead or missing. So when, again, the radioactive dust finally settles, (the man who) Kan can quickly whip a satin sheet off Tohoku, say ‘ta-daa’ and show everyone that the clean-up is underway, reconstruction has already started and things aren’t as bad as you thought they were, so keep calm and carry on. Mark my words, you read it here first.

But here’s a seditious thought – why bother rebuilding Tohoku? It was full of old people, most of whom were unfortunately swept away by the tsunami. Rural depopulation is such that the areas affected were dying anyway, there was little inward investment above the govt building useless roads to nowhere and empty concert halls in vainglorious but futile pork barrel projects. Schools were closing and classes amalgamating in towns all over the area as fewer and fewer children were born because the kids that were born moved to Tokyo as soon as they were old enough, never to return. So why bother? Rebuild the ports and the fishing fleets as they were useful; and then put all the rice fields together in one big lump and either nationalise rice growing in that area or sell the land as one or two blocks to a major agricultural business and let them grow rice on an industrial basis as opposed to the millions of mom & pop farms that again are slowly dying as the kids realise rice farming is hard work. With the hundreds of thousands of displaced people, ship them to Tokyo or other areas of rural depopulation (which is most of Japan outside the major cities) and start filling up the gaps in those communities – Tohoku is lost, don’t bother trying to find it again. Japan needs a radical rethink towards the countryside, maybe this is the time to do it…

Of course the counter argument to that (apart from the humanitarian one), is that Japan should be trying to de-centralise, especially Tokyo, as there is too much important stuff here so if/when the big one hits us (as it surely will) too much infrastructure will be destroyed. What Japan should be doing is rebuilding Tohoku and encouraging (forcing?) govt departments, businesses and the like to move to these areas to disperse the potential damage when another quake hits (I don’t mean when another quake hits that area – Tohoku could be the place to go as it has now been ‘disastered’ so the chances of another catastrophic event are, compared to Tokyo which hasn’t had a major quake since 1923, hopefully reduced). I don’t know, I don’t think there is a right answer, just options that all seem a tad bleak.

Let’s leave those happy thoughts for a while and talk about fashion.

I don’t, and won’t, claim to know a lot about fashion, especially where young ladies are concerned, but a recent trend has got me confused. As a rule I don’t criticise what people wear – if they want to look foolish then that’s their lookout, also I don’t want to sound like an old fart, which is getting harder as the years go by.

Anyway the recent trend is for women to wear glasses. Nothing strange there, I know, but the fashion is to wear what look like oversized, plastic framed glasses but only the frames, no lenses. Now wearing glasses is a pain in the, well, often the nose and behind the ears, but generally it’s more just annoying having something stuck to your face, so why go to that trouble if you don’t need to?

A pictorial reference to the fashion would look something like this

OK, yes, she’s fit, but she would be without the frames.

The Guru says these women are wearing the big glasses to make their faces look smaller and therefore more cute. If this is true it seems odd, as to me it looks like they have big glasses on, not a smaller face. Another explanation is that they actually need the glasses and lenses, but can’t wear them with the lenses in as they get in the way of the artificially long eyelashes – this, I think, holds more water as a theory.

So I don’t know, but it seems to me that this fashion cocks a snook at people who really do have to wear glasses. ‘Ha haa’ they seem to be saying, ‘I can take my glasses-frames off and suffer no degrading of my sight, whereas you, have-to-wear-glasses-person, you will stumble around bumping into things if you tried to do the same’. This seems a little rude to me, but there you go. If I fine out the real reason I’ll let you know.