Captain Cassowary

My first day on the job.

2012-01-19T22:17:00.002+09:00

I teach at a university in the Yokohama area. I started several years ago, but I will never forget the first day and the first class.

"We're interested in someone who has skills in motivating students", I was told in the interview.

"Oh, do you have motivation problems?" I said brightly. "I think I can deal with that!"

The man interviewing me said nothing. He just looked down.

My first teaching day was a Thursday, an afternoon. I had been warned 'not to expect too much'. But I had worked with students of varying levels of interest before. How bad could it be?

I walked into the classroom. It was really what you might call a lecture room, dominated by a huge blackboard at the front. About 20 students sat in seats, behind desks, towards the back, separated from each other by two or three other chairs. Nobody was speaking or moving.

"Good afternoon!", I said.

Nothing. A massive and deafening silence.

I tried again. "Good afternoon!" Nothing. I couldn't even detect any movement. Maybe they were petrified, maybe they were mannequins, I couldn't tell.

I looked at the information I had been given. Checked the room number. The class number.

"Um, is this class 254?"

Nothing. They sat there, looking at me without expression.

Did I really have the right classroom? How could this be possible?

I looked at one of the students. "You! What subject is this?"

The student looked blankly at me. Perhaps he wasn't there. Perhaps I was hallucinating.

"What's your name?" I pointed directly at another of the students, a big no-no in Japan. But my options were shrinking.

"Eh?"

"What's your name?" I spoke more loudly.

"Matsumoto Shunsuke desu." He spoke in rapid-fire heavily accented Japanese.

I looked at my class roll. There was a Shunksuke Matsumoto. My heart sank. I was in the right place after all. There would be no escape.

These were students who had all studied English for a minimum of 7 years, often considerably more. Many had gone to cram schools to 'improve' their English even more, had studied for hundreds of hours to pass university English exams to get here.

I looked at my textbook, which as an introduction to today's lesson suggested I get the students, in groups, to imagine they were travellers in a spaceship going to a new planet and roleplay from there.

It was going to be a long day.

Japan starts to pay the price for curtailing nuclear power

2012-01-15T22:00:00.000+09:00

As I write this the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power-Free World, attended by thousands, is coming to a close in central Yokohama, a few kilometres away. In this context it is worth reflecting upon some to the costs that Japan is starting to incur as a result of choosing to minimise its use of nuclear power now and in the future.

There are now only 5 nuclear power plants in the country currently in operation. The other 49 have been shut down for maintenance or repairs, either directly after March 11 or in the months since then. Many of these shutdowns were routine; the problem is that once shut down, no plant has been permitted to start up again. It is unlikely that many will be allowed to do so without serious public debate.

Without the steady baseload that nuclear power has supplied, the shortfall is being made up with 'thermal' plants, i.e. fossil fuels. This is already resulting in higher costs of electricity, and the Japan Times reported this weekend that TEPCO is asking permission to raise household rates this March as a direct result.

An even more worrying repercussion of this 'Back to the Future'-style return to dependence on fossil fuels was this week brought to the attention of many when Japan pondered the predicament of being pressured by the U.S. to cut all trading ties with Iran. The U.S. is determined to pursue trade sanctions against Iran in an attempt to strangle Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, yet Japan has traditionally had a friendly relationship with the Iranians, and gets 10% of its oil from them. The Japanese have yet to decide what to do. Meanwhile Iran is threatening, if provoked, to block the Strait of Hormuz completely, which carries one-fifth of the world's oil supply.

Once you start looking at global issues with the idea that nuclear power is the best possible large-scale power source available, your perception of many problems may change. Since my conversion to a supporter of nuclear power I have challenged myself to imagine a world that is not dependent for energy supplies from dangerous theocratic nation-states in the Middle East. An Iran that would have to gain the currency to build nuclear weapons from somewhere other than the pockets of people in other countries who want to heat their house or drive their car. A world that doesn't need to go to war over oil. An America that didn't need to invade Iraq.

When I think about this I am also reminded that uranium exploration has yet to be undertaken in many parts of the world, and that two-thirds of currently known reserves, enough to last for many decades, are in Canada and Australia, two mining-friendly democracies that are probably among the most stable and internationally respected nations in the world.

Nuclear crisis over, Japanese not happy about it.

2011-12-31T15:11:00.001+09:00

Nearly two weeks ago, on the 16th of December, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that cold shutdown had been achieved for all three troubled reactors at the troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Cold shutdown is a technical term referring to a situation where the core temperature of the reactor is less than 100 degrees Celsius, below the boiling point of water; there is no possibility of recriticality; and radiation being emitted from the plant is less than 1 millisievert a year. These conditions have been achieved at Fukushima. The plant is now officially in a stable condition.

Predictably enough, the achievement of cold shutdown at Fukushima has not inspired much celebration by the public and by the media. Nor have reports on 'the crisis in Fukushima' dried up. On the contrary, there continue to be many dramatic reports of decontamination problems, lingering hotspots, and the difficulties of 'unfortunate families' who cannot let their children out to play in the snow in Fukushima. And the anti-nuclear press, in Japan and overseas, seems to have taken the cold shutdown as a personal affront, seemingly offended at the assertion that any progress can be made on such a 'disaster'.

Consider the editorial of the Mainichi Daily News this week. It is titled Gov't starring in its own show to bring nuclear crisis 'under control.' While it is grudgingly admitted that the conditions for cold shutdown have been fulfilled, the editorial claims that TEPCO has changed these conditions according to whim. Yet this cannot be the case, because the concept of 'cold shutdown' is a technical one that predates the Fukushima accident. For example, see the definition as provided by Wikipedia. The article also desperately asserts that the announcement is inappropriate because the temperature gauges in the reactor vessels have an error margin of up to 20 degrees; yet according to the Japan Times the temperatures in the three reactors are 38.9, 67.5, and 57.4 degrees, well below 100 degrees. The truth is that the announcement is in fact very conservative; all three reactors have almost certainly been stable, with declining temperatures, for weeks or even months.

One paragraph of the editorial is worth quoting:

The latest announcement that the goals of the road map have been achieved is merely the result of officials lowering their own hurdles. It reminds me of the time during World War II when the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters called the Japanese army's retreat a "shift in position."

One might be tempted to suggest that the hyperbole of such an assertion might 'live in infamy'. That the editorial of a major Japanese newspaper is so desperate to keep alive an imagined nuclear crisis that they compare it to Japan's hopeless fight in the Second World War is very informative. It tells us how threatened some people are by its resolution.

As more evidence of public unwillingness to accept the inevitable, a public poll by Nikkei.com found that 78% of their readers did not agree with the government's decision to declare cold shutdown at Fukushima. According to Michio Furukawa, the mayor of Kawamata in Fukushima prefecture, "The crops in Fukushima are still contaminated. No progress has been in reducing the uncertainty felt by the residents."

Yes crops in Fukushima are contaminated. By microsopic traces of radiation that, according to empircal scientific research, cannot possibly affect human health. I wonder, however, if Mr Furukawa would care to speculate on pesticide levels in Fukushima crops, and on crops all over Japan.

As for the uncertainty faced by residents, it is not the job of TEPCO's engineers to address people's feelings. If the public is determined to continue to believe in phantom dangers, well, unfortunately, there is no cold shutdown for that.

New Radiation Safety Levels

2011-12-28T18:50:00.000+09:00

The Japanese government has announced new radiation exposure and ingestion limits that will become law by next Spring.

The current level for food radiation caesium exposure, currently set at 500 becquerels per kilogram, will be lowered to 100. The limit for milk will be brought down from 200 becquerels per liter to 50, and for drinking water the new limit will be just 10 becquerels per liter, down from 200.

The government claims that the new limits are in line with international guidelines, and that the strictness of the new rules is to ensure a margin of safety.

However these claims are only partly correct. Yes, the World Health Organization suggests a limit of 10 becquerels for water, but notes that the limit is extremely conservative, and not meant for 'nuclear emergencies', but considered over a lifetime. If an infant were to drink a liter of water containing 10 becquerels of radiation, the infant would receive 0.00024 millisieverts of exposure, worlds away from the level of 100 millisieverts a year which has an actual measurable risk.

And in regard to caesium radionucleotides in food, the new limit for food is 10 times as strict as that recommended by the WHO; and the American FDA will not intervene until 12 times the limit.

The government panel that decided the new safety measures knows very well that public health is not affected one way or the other by these guidelines. The new levels are not really about safety; the old levels were already extremely safe, even needlessly conservative. The new measures are really a misguided attempt by the government to regain public trust by arbitrarily lowering radiation standards, reassuring the radiation-fearful public that everything really is 'okay'.

Adding difficulty to misjudgement, the new standards will create a huge headache for laboratories and other affected agencies, because new highly sensitive equipment will be needed. Indeed there is some doubt over whether substantial amounts of food, water or milk can be tested at all, logistically speaking.

But it's the hypocrisy of the effort that maddens me. Inevitably some agricultural products will fall foul of the new limits, resulting in rising levels of public fear and unnecessary food wastage. Meanwhile, these low levels of radiactivity are dwarfed by the carcinogens and pollutants regularly introduced into the environment by other sources and other industries. See here for an example of FDA limits being exceeded by 1000 times in an oil spill and barely being newsworthy, let alone scaring an entire nation.

Was the Fukushima response a failure?

2011-12-27T22:28:00.002+09:00

A 507-page report on the Japanese government and TEPCO's response to the accident at Fukushima was released yesterday. The report took months to prepare and included the interviews of 400 people. It found that various mistakes were made both before and after the accident.

Before the tsunami, TEPCO was found not to have considered the possibility of a tsunami nine metres or higher, and didn't take precautions such as building a higher sea wall or preparing for the possibility that cooling systems would be flooded. And after the tsunami, a number of other miscalculations or errors were made. These include breakdowns in communication between officials and on-site workers, switching off the wrong cooling system at reactor number 3, and waiting longer than necessary to start emergency cooling at reactor number 1, mistakenly believing an alternative system was still operational. On the other hand, the report indicates that it is unclear to what extent these mishaps contributed to the partial or full meltdowns that occurred.

The government was also found to have reacted imperfectly. Communication among officials at the prime minister's office and the ministries was insufficient. Specifically, a more accurate estimate of radiation exposure was available, in some forgotten office, that the one the prime minister had immediate access to. Without the more accurate estimates, the government decided on an evacuation zone of a simple 20 km radius from the plant. This resulted, for example, in instances of people evacuating to areas which had higher radiation than the places they evacuated from.

All of these criticisms of the response to the nuclear accident are valid. And there are others as well. But a little perspective is in order. On March 11, Japan was hit by major disasters. An unprecedented tsunami killed 20,000 people. Mistakes were made. But I feel that it must be pointed out that in any situation of such magnitude, mistakes are inevitable. No system is perfect, let alone the Japanese government or bureacratic power companies. To be completely honest, I am in awe of the government's response, and considering the circumstances it is difficult to imagine anything that would have been more effective. I challenge the Australian or American governments to respond half so well. Does anybody remember Katrina?

I clearly recall the first few days after March 11: 24 hour English news coverage, daily updates by the prime minister. One had the feeling of a system struggling, being tested certainly. But also responding to the best of its ability. The more I think about it, the more awe I feel. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated, housed and fed for months. Without a single radiation-caused death or injury. Massive amounts of aid pouring in. Distribution systems stretched to the limit. Hundreds of workers flocking to the crippled plant, working 24 hours a day to ensure its safety.

In the cold light of reason, the government and TEPCO both come out well. Yes, TEPCO could have anticipated a tsunami greater than 10 meters. Or 20. Or 200. But there are limits to what can be prepared for. And you can be certain of one thing: it is impossible for a 14-meter sea wall to be built all around Japan. And if just around nuclear power plants, why not populated areas? Are they less important? And as for the mix-up with the radiation exposures, what the newspaper articles based on the report neglect to mention is the scientific fact that nobody outside the plant, no matter where they were, received enough radiation to adversely affect their health.

It is right and proper that a report be made on the response to the Fukushima accident. It is appropriate that the mistakes that were made are exposed and analysed, so that improvements can be made. But to label this response a failure, as newspaper reports around the world have done, is very disappointing.

The report itself makes no dramatic claim. Indeed the reporting of the panel's findings by different media sources is a lesson in itself, a lesson in how public opinion is manipulated by the media. Associated press-sourced articles are headlined "Nuclear disaster response failed", whereas the Mainichi Daily news headlines their article with "Fukushima accident shows need to prepare for the unexpected." Inside, the article's contents are virtually identical.

Makes you think.

Kim Jong Il dies, Pork Chop to succeed him

2011-12-20T20:35:00.000+09:00

The TV and other forms of media in Japan have been filled since yesterday with news about the death of Kim Jong Il and speculation about what will happen next in North Korea.

Newspapers were driven into a frenzy with extra editions printed. The nightly news went for an hour instead of half an hour.

The Great Leader was the saviour of mankind who hit six holes-in-one the first time he picked up a golf club. He could also alter the weather at will. His fashion sense also influenced the entire world

At least according to North Korean media. Makes you wonder if someone there has a sense of humour. Who could write that with a straight face?

North Korea is one of the most bizarre places on Earth. It is one of my greatest regrets that my dream of living there will probably now not come true. That's what happens when you marry a Japanese woman I guess.

Media speculation has centred around the succession to Kim Jong Il. He had three sons.

The oldest, Kim Jong Nam, was caught in 2001 trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in an unsuccessful attempt to go to Tokyo Disneyland. I am not making this up. He was deported and the incident apparently raised questions about his leadership abilities. Makes you wonder. If the passport had been of slightly higher quality we might now be facing a completely different leader, one who likes Mickey Mouse.

The second, Kim Jong Chul, is said to have a weak character.

The third, Kim Jong 'Pork Chop' Un, has been anointed as leader and will very likely succeed, though for a long time he may be merely a figurehead. He shares his late father's dress sense and apparent appetite for fried foods. He was also apparently educated in a prestigious Swiss boarding school.

The late Kim Jong Il with his son Pork Chop on the right.

The Japanese media is also speculating futilely about the abduction issue. Hopes have been expressed that Pork Chop will address the issue of Japanese nationals who were abducted by North Korea back in the 70s. The North Koreans returned five such abducted Japanese several years ago, but unfortunately for Japan, the chances that any others are left alive in North Korea approximate the chances that Kim Jong Il will go on a diet soon.

People's perception of Fukushima

2011-12-13T21:41:00.000+09:00

The word 'Fukushima' has entered the English language as a synonym for massive disaster. The public's perception of the accident has been moulded unconsciously by months of fearful media exposure and this perception bears little resemblance to the rather more bland reality.

An example of this image of catastrophe can be found on top of the current talk page behind the Fukushima wikipedia article. An editor named Chrisrus wrote:

"Readers want to know...

how many people died as a result of not the earthquake or tsunami, but as a result of the nuclear meltdown radiation per se. If you use the table of contents you can't find this information easily. Just if you hit "casualties" it jumps you to the fact that a couple of workers who were directly right there have died. That can't be all! If we don't or can't know, please say so and explain, and please make it easier to find. I don't need all this information, I just want to know how many people died because of all of these meltdowns, and how many were emergency workers who went right into it to try and fix the problem and how many were citizens who lived downwind or in the surrounding area. We know that the earthquake and tsunami killed tons of people, but as this reads it seems like nuclear meltdowns are only dangerous to you if you're a first responder or some such who jumps right into it with a fire hose or some such. Great heroes, don't get me wrong, but nuclear meltdowns are supposed to kill everyone in the surrounding area pretty quickly and then many many others over the course of time who were farther away and this article leaves one with the impression that if there's an earthquake/tsunami big enough to cause a meltdown, the meltdown is the least of your problems."

This statement is the saddest thing I have read since March 11. This person came into the wikipedia page expecting to read about thousands of people dead and dying from radiation; and when he couldn't find those numbers he assumed it was an editing problem and went to the talk page to complain. Yet he writes lucidly; he may be well-educated, possibly an experienced wikipedia editor. The tragedy is not that his pre-conceived ideas of the accident were so different from the reality; the tragedy is how widespread these ideas probably are.

Some short answers to his pleas:

"I just want to know how many people died because of all these meltdowns." Nobody

"as this reads it seems like meltdowns are only dangerous to you if you're a first responder or some such who jumps right into it..." Yep, that just about sums it up

"nuclear meltdowns are supposed to kill everyone in the area pretty quickly" Are they?

"this article leaves one with the impression that if there's an earthquake/tsunami big enough to cause a meltdown, the meltdown is the least of your worries" Um, yes.

Unfortunately this thing has taken on a life of its own and is probably not correctable. Decades from now Fukushima will be an example of why nuclear power is a bad idea. It should be an example of why nuclear power is a good idea. Public opinion has been permanently altered; governments dare not go against the feeling of the electorate and when making energy decisions may take fear of radiation into account more than the science. Even now well-meaning family members in Australia enquire after my well-being and advise me not to eat the fish; they even express reservations about seafood in Australia...

It becomes difficult to imagine any news that will balance out the negativity; and from now every cancer case in Japan will be blamed by a large section of the public on the reactor accident. Every story of unnecessary decontamination will become part of the greater 'nuclear crisis', and every minor bumble by TEPCO or the Japanese governement will become evidence of the vast conspiracy of governments and nuclear power companies hell-bent on poisoning all of us and keeping it secret at the same time.

Meanwhile coal, oil and gas power station continue to pour massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, simuntaneously spewing out toxic materials out of designed leaks call smokestacks even under normal circumstances. And when accidents happen to those power stations, well, we don't hear about it for very long.

Check out this video of an oil refinery that burned for 12 days non-stop in Chiba prefecture after the quake. Never heard of it? You're not the only one. We don't hear much in the media these days about the hazardous materials released into the atmosphere from that accident.

Fukushima-linked cancer risk so low it cannot be measured

2011-11-27T22:01:00.001+09:00

There was a very interesting article in the Japan Times on Friday. It concerned the risk of getting cancer due to radiation released from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. The science is clear- the risk is so low that it cannot be measured. But that wasn't the interesting thing. What stood out to me was how the information was presented.

I found it curious how 'no cancer detectable' becomes 'cancer may be impossible to detect'. In one the implication is there is no cancer; in the other, there is cancer, just impossible to detect. Language is a funny thing. There's a lesson here about how the media works and what people want to read.

The writer is very keen to keep alive the possibility of danger. Rather than simply inform readers that there is nothing to worry about, the article airs the views of housewives like Yuka Saito, who doesn't let her children play outside from fear of radiation, and makes them wear hats, face masks and long sleeves if they go out at all. We hear about residents who want to flee but 'have no place to go'. We read of consumers who are so worried about radiation they constantly carry geiger counters. One could be forgiven, after having read the article, for having the impression that radiation was a deadly and insidious menace killing at will and unseen.

I think it's very sad that these kinds of views are presented as a valid alternative to those of mainstream scientists who say there is no measurable danger. The risk is quite literally immeasurably small. It's impossible to report a measure of risk that is lower than that. If residents of Fukushima desire to leave because of that risk, can they really said to be acting rationally? If they move to, say, Tokyo, they will be subject to other small, but actual genuine and measurable risks: the risk of reduced life expectancy due to pollution, the risk of violent crime.

By any reasonable measure, if risks to health were to be objectively and rationally evaluated and acted upon, then Tokyo would be evacuated to Fukushima.

Of course we cannot rule out the possibility of Fukushima power plant radiation-induced cancer completely. Science is not capable of that; nothing can be said with 100% certainty. For example, I cannot rule out with 100% certainty that fairies live at the bottom of my garden. After all, they certainly are impossible to detect! But if somebody wants me to take the possibility into account, they are damn sure going to have to provide some pretty convincing evidence.

Not...no evidence at all.

Fukushima decontamination: Is it really necessary?

2011-10-19T22:20:00.000+09:00

You can probably guess my opinion: definitely not.

When the Japanese national government took over responsibility for decontamination of radiation affected areas in and around Fukushima, the initial plan was to decontaminate areas that had over 5 mSv/yr of radiation exposure a year, as determined by aerial survey. However, demands by local governments, based on residents' fear of radiation, have resulted in an expansion of the decontamination area to include any area of above 1 millisievert a year of radiation. This is a 7-fold increase in size, from 1,800 sq kilometers to 13,000 sq kilometers, and includes substantial areas outside of Fukushima itself. Considering that the cost of the first contamination plan was said to be 2.84 billion dollars, the final cost will be colossal indeed. Are they really going to spend 20 billion dollars on removing topsoil, hosing down buildings, and clearing away rubble?

But wait. Decontamination is good, right? It's necessary to ensure the safety of local residents, isn't it?

Well, let's look at 1 millisievert a year (1 mSv/yr) and compare it to other radiation exposures:

1.5 mSv/yr is the average natural background radiation of Australia.
1.5 mSv/yr is also the average natural background radiation level of Japan, according to a pamphlet on radiation released to schools last week by the Ministry of Education.
5 mSv/yr is an exposure typically received by aircrew.
50 mSv/yr is the natural background exposure in several parts of the world, places in India, Brazil, Iran, and Europe. Source
100 mSv/yr is so low that the risk to human health cannot be measured. Source
260 mSv/yr is the natural background level at Ramsar, in Iran, where radioactive spas are used for their beneficial health effects by locals and tourists, and where no increase in cancer has been measured. Source

To me at least, this is definitely a case where fear of radiation has won over reason. Although educating the public would be much better for Japan in the long term, it seems that short term expediency is more important. Increasingly, national standards are being dictated by a vocal and paranoid minority.

Radioactive fireworks!

2011-09-21T21:32:00.001+09:00

Last weekend, organizers of a festival in Aichi canceled a plan to use fireworks made in Fukushima Prefecture, even though the event was staged in support of regions devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. In what must have come as a humiliation to people who actually come from Fukushima, local residents successfully protested the use of the fireworks, fearing they could be contaminated with radioactive materials. Given that radiation levels in Fukushima are too low to affect human health, and that there is no known way for radioactive materials to enter into...fireworks, the incident might be portrayed as an example of how not to support earthquake affected regions. This is the kind of irrational fear that will perpetuate and worsen the discrimination that residents of Fukushima already face.

Some people in Japan don't need radiation detectors. They need irony detectors.

Radioactive Hot Springs in Japan

2011-09-14T22:38:00.000+09:00

I wasn't aware of this but Japan actually has many onsens (hot springs) that are naturally radioactive and well-known for it. In fact Japan has something of a reputation for them. They are visited by locals and tourists for their supposedly health-inducing and even cancer-preventative properties. The most common source of the radioactivity is radon, a naturally occurring element that results from the breakdown of uranium or thorium.

Here's an ad for Misasa Hot Springs, which promotes its 'health-promoting radium', and a newspaper article about the cancer-fighting action of the radiation at Yawaragi onsen, located, ironically enough, in the mountains of Fukushima. Wouldn't it be extraordinary if nearby residents had been suddenly evacuated from there because of something they had been enjoying for generations?

Radiation levels at these onsens are certainly low, low enough for radiation hormesis (if it exists) to be responsible for the health benefits, but they certainly raise eyebrows when compared to the kind of radiation that has caused widespread fear since March 11. According to wikipedia, these kind of hot springs must have a concentration of a minimum of 74 Bq/cubic meter to qualify, and certain hot springs in Italy have concentrations of 4,000 kBq/cubic meter, while I found one Japanese site that states that Masatomi hot spring has a radiation level of 11,000 Bq/liter, and people bathe there and even drink the water for their health. Those kinds of figures tend to put into perspective the panic that resulted when radiation levels in contaminated beef topped 500 Bq/kilogram.

I even came across this by accident last week while on holiday in Kagoshima:

"This leg bath is a radon onsen. For the full body bath please come inside the onsen building."

Where plenty of families (including my own) were happily bathing.

At first I found it odd that there has been no mention of these onsens in the media the last few months. Upon reflection, it was not surprising, because the media would suffer a kind of cognitive dissonance if forced to confront the contradictions inherent in such coverage. On one hand the public is encouraged to panic when levels of radiation are over 500 Bq/kilo of beef, but on the other hand people are known to bathe in and drink water that is much much more radioactive than that - for their health...

I wonder how many people in Japan visit their local onsen weekly, unknowingly or uncaringly luxuriating in significant levels of radon-induced radiation, only to fearfully cringe away from Fukushima produce at the supermarket

The Reality of Radiation in Japan

2011-09-05T22:01:00.000+09:00

Before March 11, like everybody, I had only the vaguest ideas about nuclear power and radiation.

But I have to tell you, it has been a revelation since then. I have been reading and reading. The net is extraordinary. I have searched for and read mainstream scientific views, and have been bombarded with alarmist articles and videos by well-meaning friends. The amount of unsubstantiated fear-grounded media out there is extraordinary. But if you read the science objectively, in my view it is impossible to not come to the conclusion that 99% of the fear Japan is experiencing is unnecessary.

Half the battle is to be careful about your sources. This site is an example. Here, they have just decided to include everything they could find that was anti-nuclear, seemingly on principle, and have thrown in massive numbers that are meaningless without context. Then there are the youtube videos like this one by Arnold Gundersen. He comes across as a credible speaker and looks the part; then he starts talking about 'black rain', something no reputable media source would mention, and then you know you're in trouble.

The craziest video is the one called 'Japanese government killing its own people', which you can see here. You might call it the 'piss video'. It's an exercise in clumsy propaganda. We don't see the calm, measured presentation from the bureaucrat simply stating that the local radiation is not dangerous. Instead, the original video has been cut and we see this aggressive (and irrelevant) questioning: they don't bother to include anything as boring or prosaic as actual radiation measurements. I guess people would rather see bottles of urine being thrust around. Oh well. And yes, that Japanese bureacrat does come across as a heartless. But I have to tell you: the man with the urine trying to block the elevator is getting 10 times the sympathy I got last year at the Yokohama immigration office when my visa was unceremoniously cut for no reason from 3 years to 1. But if I had tried the same shit as the urine guy, I would have been detained, interrogated, and deported before you could say 'discrimination'. My point is: that Japanese bureacrat is being heartless not because of radiation, but because he is a Japanese bureaucrat. And did you ever think why it is THIS video that goes around the net, and not some calm NHK presentation? Well, people love to feed their fears; and this video tells me a lot more about human paranoia (quite a bit) than it does about radiation in Fukushima (nothing).

That's enough of the fear-mongering for the moment. If you are really interested in finding out the facts, you need to go to trustworthy sources. Wikipedia is one. In fact, it's the best source of information on the planet; because it's free, nobody gets paid, and it is beholden to noone. All it is is people slogging it out with facts and sources. Start with the article on the Fukushima accident

In fact, read the discussion page behind it; it is truly a wonder and I am in awe of it. For example, on the main page there is a quote from a man (I just looked it up, and, low and behold, it is Arnold Gundersen, the 'black rain' guy!), saying that Fukushima was the biggest industrial catastrophe in history. I thought, that's a bit rough, especially in comparison with genuine disasters like Bhopal in India. So I go to the discussion page and there is a huge discussion about whether to remove the quote. Or not. You should read it yourself and make up your own mind. I also just noticed that above the quote there is a little wikipedia note: neutrality disputed. What other news source will take that much care? For impartiality, go to wikipedia.

As for actual radiation measurements in Fukushima (or Tokyo, or anywhere in Japan), they are freely available, in Japanese at least: e.g. an independent company or the more official NHK site.

To interprest the figures, you have to know about the sievert, which is how radiation is usually measured when it affects humans affects bodies. Included in this one unit is all the different types of radiation. 10 of these sieverts will kills you, and 1 will make you sick. When thinking about how much radiation is dangerous, you can start by comparing the dose to natural background radiation, and that's where it starts to get interesting. This natural radiation can vary a lot from place to place, anywhere from about 0.3 to 2 or 3 millisieverts a year (a millisievert is 1/1000th of a sievert.) Well, according to the Naver site Tokyo today has 0.056 microsieverts an hour, 0.49 millisieverts a year, on the lower end of the natural background radiation range. Obviously nothing to worry about. Up in Fukushima itself it is a little more interesting. People in Fukushima city are getting 10.6 millisieverts a year, some 20 times what people in Tokyo are getting. But, in different places in the world the natural background radiation is substantially higher than even this, up to 20 or 50 or more millisieverts, or even more in certain areas in Iran or India. Those areas do not have higher cancer rates than other areas. In fact, no negative health impacts on humans have been observed for doses less than 50 millisieverts a year (according to who you read, it could be higher). In fact according to wikipedia, some areas in Iran have high natural radioactivity of more than 200 times normal background level, higher than safety levels for nuclear workers, and hot springs there are visited by locals and tourists!

Which brings me to radiation hormesis. Never heard of it? Neither had I, before all this happened. Radiation hormesis is the theory that very low doses of radiation are...good for you! It's not accepted by the mainstream of nuclear science, but there seems to be substantial evidence for it, and scientists are at least taking the idea seriously. The very lack of widespread knowledge of the existence of this theory should tell you how much the media is disposed to negativity on the subject. Now, I am not a supporter of radiation hormesis. I don't have a degree in nuclear science, I have not published on the issue in academic peer-reviewed journals. But the issue demonstrates there is some evidence that low level radiation is good for you, just not enough evidence to overturn the dominant paradigm. Science is very conservative; you need a lot of evidence to overturn an existing theory. And that's probably a good thing.

Now there a lot of people, strident activists, who are firmly against nuclear power. Arnold Gundersen is one. Helen Caldicott, an Australian woman, is another. You can see an interesting debate between her and George Manbiot, a British journalist and environomentalist. I've spent hours watching debates like this, and much longer chasing up the substance of what the people say, a much less interesting but rather more illuminating pursuit. As an example, George Manbiot wrote a detailed reply to issues Ms Caldicott raised in the debate, detailing her inadequacies at some length. The comments after his article are themselves amazing.

One thing that comes out clearly in these debates is that anti-nuclear activists always maintain the mainstream of nuclear scientific opinion is wrong. Not only do they question the scientific consensus, they charge that there is a conspiracy, a cover-up, to hide the much more dangerous and sinister truth. Well, my take on that is this: it stretches credulity to suggest there is a huge international conspiracy, involving not only thousands of respected scientists, but including the organisations of the United Nations. But this is what you have to believe if you believe that the paranoia and fear-mongering in the media is justified.

For the official, authoritative view of the dangers of low-level radiation, see this publication by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiation. Their FAQ is particularly readable. In these documents you can see the moderate, rigorously scientific viewpoint. You might summarize this view by saying that the tiny releases of radiation from Fukushima will have a negligible effect upon human health. Not only that, but the response of the Japanese government and TEPCO to the nuclear accident, derided in both Japanese and foreign media as shambolic and ineffective, is revealed by the relevant agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, as both effective and appropriate.

But be aware, now we're getting into the actual science; but it's where you have to be if you want to think about this issue with any authority. It's the kind of authority that Arnold Gundersen and Helen Caldicott have to deny. In fact, it was clear in the debate that she hadn't even read the documents.

For me, personally, I became suspicious of the 'dangers' of radioactivity when I saw how the media was treating it. There seemed to be a lot of panic and precious little data. As an example of the fear of radiation versus radiation, consider the current beef scare. When it broke out NHK featured an hour-long news report focusing on this issue. There was a lengthy introduction, footage from cattle farms in Fukushima, an examination of flaws in the inpection system, repeated shrill announcements of becquerels in the hundreds and thousands, interviews with crying supermarket managers who had inadvertently sold the meat, on-the-street interviews with young mothers fearfully clutching babies and wailing about the safety of their family etc etc. Finally, there was a 10-second clip from an actual nuclear scientist at Tokyo university, calmly stating that you would have to eat a kilogram of the beef every day for several years in order for it to have any measurable effect upon your health.

And that contrast- between 45 minutes of fear-mongering and 10 seconds of reality – tells you all you need to know about the nuclear ‘crisis’ in Japan.

And now, if you haven't before, you are now obliged to read some unashamedly pro-nuclear opinion to balance it up all the negativity. You can start with this site, The Hiroshima Syndrome, which has an excellent chronology of the actual accident, among other things. There is also Rod Adams, who has an interesting take on Arnold Gundersen. Read it yourself and make your own judgement about him!

For one view of why the media is full of disaster, watch this British documentary.

And here is a link where you can compare fatalities from different energy-related accidents in history. As you can see, nuclear energy is much much safer than fossil fuels such as coal, and even safer than hydro.

Finally, and very sadly, the Fukushima accident will have a long-term and substantial detrimental impact upon the planet, in terms of contributing very significantly to global warming. Germany may be the first of several countries who regrettably roll back nuclear power because of the irrational fear of radiation.

Risk vs Perception of Risk

2011-09-01T21:38:00.002+09:00

Back in March, in the days after the nuclear accident, there was panicked talk of evacuating Tokyo.

Well, risk is a funny thing. It is quite extraordinary that we are allowed to live in large cities, with the associated vehicle emissions and other pollutions, shortening our lives by a very measureable amount. Given that the radiation levels in Fukushima are far lower than those that could adversely affect human health, it is absolutely clear that there was an argument for evacuating Tokyo. If the people of Tokyo had been evacuated into the Fukushima evacuation zone, they would be living longer than if they stayed in Tokyo city.

Kan goes, Noda becomes PM

2011-08-29T19:03:00.003+09:00

Yoshihiko Noda became the new prime minister of Japan today, ending months of speculation about the successor to Naoto Kan. Kan had been a lame duck prime minister since the March earthquake and tsunami, as, despite an overall superb effort of rescue and reconstruction, he was forced to take responsibility for the disaster and especially the 'crisis' at the Fukushima nuclear plant. He finally resigned on Friday, and the Democratic Party of Japan chose their new leader today.

Noda's triumph was not easy; the contest became a battle between Ichiro Ozawa and his enemies. Ozawa himself could not run, as his very membership of the party is suspended due to a funding scandal, but his personal favourite Kaeda Banri stepped in for him. In this light, Noda's victory represents a victory for the anti-Ozawa faction. We shall have to see how he performs. He is said to be a fiscal conservative. Look for a rise in the consumption tax.

That's Japan's sixth prime minister in five years.

Radiation vs Fear of Radiation: The Body Count

2011-08-14T20:13:00.005+09:00

Japanese TV and public opinion continues to be dominated by the faux crisis at the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

There's no doubt that the accident has had a huge negative impact upon the economy and psychology of Japan. But not for the reason you may think. That is, not because of the radiation (there's hasn't been enough to adversely affect anybody), but because of the Fear of radiation. Putting aside for the moment the direct and indirect financial costs this Fear has incurred, a simple body count can be quite revealing.

The Body Count: Fear of Radiation

You can be absolutely sure that if people had been killed by the radiation, we would be hearing about it constantly and numbers would be updated daily. On the other hand, no media source that I can find has attempted to calculate the number of people who have died as a result of the fear of radiation from Fukushima. It's difficult but not impossible to make an estimate. I can think of at least 4 sources of injuries or fatalities:

1. Iodine idiocy: In the first few day after the accident occurred, iodine sales around the world skyrocketed, in the false belief that just taking iodine can protect you from radiation. This happened despite government warnings that iodine was both ineffective and unnecessary. Although I couldn't find any news about people dying, some people appear to have been hospitalized due to overdose. The insanity was particularly spectacular in China, where people rushed supermarkets to buy salt in the false belief that iodised salt could provide protection from Fukushima radiation:

2: Unnecessary evacuation. According to Wikipedia, no less than 45 people died at a hospital in Futaba, Fukushima when the order came to evacuate immediately. Apparently the staff were not equipped to evacuate hundreds of patients and many elderly or bedridden were...left to die of dehydration or inattention. A terible death. And entirely avoidable as radiation levels were never high enough to require such a swift and heedless flight.

3. Suicide. On Google you can find news articles reporting on the 'plague of suicides' as the Japanese supposedly off themselves in droves because of depression caused by radiation. Not surprisingly, the truth is a bit more prosaic. It's true that there was a 20% rise in the suicide rate in May this year- 499 more people killed themselves than in May last year. However, it's impossible to say for certain that these suicides were related to Fear of Radiation as opposed to stress in general resulting from the earthquake and tsunami- loss of family, PTSD etc. As far as I can tell only two suicides can definitely be put down to the nuclear accident: an organic cabbage farmer worried about his soil and a dairy farmer who was forced to slaughter all his cows after the milk became unsaleable.

4. Heatstroke. Since the accident in Fukushima 35 out of Japan's 54 nuclear plants have been shut down for 'renovations' or 'safety checks'. An extraordinarily unnecessary move unless you are expecting another 14 metre tsunami in the near future. And these shutdowns have resulted in this summer's major government appeal to the populace: power saving. And it works: stores have dim lighting, escalators are turned off, even my wife refuses to turn on the air conditioning to below 30 degrees. In fact, she reports from online gossip that in some areas 'neighborhood watch' groups are patrolling the backstreets to find houses with the airconditioning putting out too much exhaust, so they can knock on the doors and harass people (every Japanese neighbourhood has a bunch of middle aged ladies who love to do this). Well, heatstroke this year is up by three-fold. More than 13,000 people were hospitalized in June alone, and 35 have died. Some people will die every year from heatstroke in Japan, but if there is a three-fold rise something is going on. If deaths have also risen three-fold, that works out at maybe 23 people who died unnecessarily because they were attempting to save electricity by not using air conditioning. A phenomenon which I find entirely believable, if very sad.

Summary:

Iodine overdose: ?

Evacuation: 45

Suicide: at least 2

Heatstroke: 23

Total: 70 plus.

The Body Count: Radiation.

None. And not likely to be any either, as nobody apart from a few workers has received a dose equivalent to the lowest dose that could possibly be associated with an increase risk of cancer or other adverse health effects. And the number of those workers is very small, and statistically they are unlikely to suffer any health effects. At least, not from radiation. The Fear on the other hand...

Hiroshima does not equal Fukushima

2011-08-06T22:01:00.005+09:00

Today is the 66th anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. In Hiroshima today, a speech by prime minister Naoto Kan, a 'peace declaration' by the mayor, and comments from bystanders all sketched a similarity and connection between the 1945 atom bomb attack and the nuclear accident at Fukushima in March.

A very regrettable and inaccurate conflation for many reasons. But also a very revealing one.

Conflating the bombing of Hiroshima with the nuclear power accident in Fukushima is like blaming iron mining for gun deaths because guns are made of iron. You may as well accuse the Beatles of murder because Charles Manson liked 'Helter Skelter'. Hey, some people do. But in reality, there is no connection between the peaceful use of atomic power and nuclear warfare except that they happen to use some of the same material. Uranium. Of course, the processes used in the production of energy from nuclear power and the chain reaction used for a nuclear explosion are very different. And if you compare the body count of the Hiroshima bombing to the Fukushima accident (140,000 to zero), you get a snapshot of the absurdity of the comparison.

Nevertheless the fact that the comparison is being made is revealing; for in the public mind atom bombs are connected to nuclear power. Fallout is the same as radiation release; a nuclear reaction is like an atomic bomb; and the unspoken message is that nuclear power can kill us all just like nuclear war can, leave us all in a radioactive Biohazard desert fighting zombies and giving birth to mutant babies with 3 heads and 7 eyes.

Don't laugh this is the secret that lies behind the public's distrust of nuclear power. It explains why it is so hated and feared, and why despite its obvious advantages it is not the main source of energy for human society.

It's also the unspoken rationale for otherwise environmentally sound political groups (like Australia's Greens) who oppose the peaceful use of nuclear power. The older membership of the Greens are veterans of the anti-nuclear protests of the 70's. They can't see the science: in their eyes nuclear power equals the danger of nuclear war. This is a genuine tragedy, for a movement that otherwise has many progressive and life-affirming policies is trapped by this anti-science and irrational fear of the only truly green energy source that can deliver the vast amounts of energy that the world craves.

On Japan and China's high speed rail

2011-07-25T20:09:00.002+09:00

Since the high speed rail crash in China two days ago that killed 35 people and injured 200, the accident has received wide coverage on Japanese television.

It's a shame that the coverage has been so ... smug.

The Japanese consider themselves the world leaders in high speed rail. It is true that they have some things to boast about: the shinkansen, Japan's bullet train, is fast, efficient, safe and reliable.

But for some time Japan has, let us say, been a bit perturbed at the rapid spread of high-speed rail in their traditional rival, China. Chinese high speed rail is cheaper, faster, and built at a fraction of the cost. It also has 3 times the rail length of the shinkansen system in Japan.

And for the last two days the avalanche of smug has been overwhelming. The accident has led the nightly news both nights. The lack of safety measures that led to the accident in the Chinese rail system has been emphasised repeatedly. Experts have appeared to express dismay at the poor quality of the Chinese rail system. And tonight there was an extensive review of the Japanese shinkansen safety measures - the meticulousness, the complexity, the multiple layers of redundancy. The implication was obvious: Japanese high speed rail is safe, good and reliable; Chinese rail is dangerous.

I have also heard several times that the Chinese have built their high-speed rail system using German, Canadian and Japanese technology. The subtext here is that the Chinese have to steal technology from others, and that all the success of the Chinese system is due, at least in part, to Japan.

There was also widespread reporting of the 'investigation' into the Chinese accident, which has included burying derailed train carriages in the ground right next to the rails so that trains could run the next day, an action so unlikely in the Japanese context that upon hearing about it, several officials in the Japanese shinkansen department immediately died because their brains exploded.

Of course, the elephant in the room in terms of the history of rail safety in the two countries is the Amagasaki rail crash of 2005 when 106 passengers were killed and 555 were injured when a Japanese local train derailed. Not that this accident has been ignored in the nightly report: it was used to contrast the quality of post-crash investigation. Whereas with the Chinese crash there has been little or no effort to explain the crash or improve safety so far, after the Amagasaki derailment investigators closed the crash site for 25 days while they investigated everything they could, and the rail line itself wasn't opened for 55 days.

To me, however, this tells us more about the faults of the Japanese system that its strong points: the actual cause of the crash was known by the end of the day it happened. Congestion on the Fukichiyama line had reduced the leeway in the train's schedule to just 28 seconds. The train driver had overshot the platform in the previous station, losing valuable time, and in an effort to catch up had accelerated the train far past the safety margin of the curve it was on when it was derailed. This was known almost immediately, yet the line was closed for the next month as engineers took measurements...

Mutant beef invades safety-conscious Japan!

2011-07-18T20:42:00.003+09:00

The number of contaminated cattle whose meat was distributed to the poor trusting and innocent residents of Japan has reached 578, and may rise further.

Tonight the news was full of the continuing scandal, brought on by farmers in Fukushima who unknowingly fed their cattle hay that was contaminated with radioactive caesium.

In some cases the contamination was somewhat above the government-set safety levels of 500 becquerels/ kg., e.g. up to 700 becquerels. In a few cases the detected level was much higher, even up to 3,000 becquerels/kg.

But what does that actually mean? Well, if you have spent 45 minutes browsing the net as I have, you will know that it means...not much.

The government-set safety levels are based on the idea that there is 'no safe level' of radiation. Now, nobody has actually shown any negative effects from very low doses of radiation, but what scientists did in the 1950s was extrapolate downwards from the very high doses received in Hiroshima that did kill people or damage their health. It's an exercise akin to observing 50 shots of alcohol in a day will kill 50 % of people (for example), and extapolating linearly downwards and claiming 1 shot will kill 1%. This is obviously wrong for alchohol (hey, I can attest to the benefits of a beer a day), and with radiation it's an unproven idea, but the result is you get things like Japan's very strict safety limits that cause undue panic when they are violated.

This can be demonstrated very easily when you consider naturally occurring radiation. The Japanese are stocking up on brown-coloured underwear right now because beef with levels of radiation of over 500 becquerels per kilo may be in their supermarket. However, even a humble banana contains about 15 becquerels. Eat ten and you already have 150. Eating a hundred bananas at one time (unlikely I grant you) will give you 1,500 becquerels, enough to unleash pandemonium and put you on the nightly news. Coffee has 1000 bq/kg. Half a cup of kidney beans has 30 bequerels. 100 sqm of air in an average Aussie home will give you 3000 bequerels!

Yet again, reality was only given a brief 5 second snippet tonight, when a university professor bluntly stated that you would have to eat a kilogram of this beef every day for a year to have even a barely measurable impact on your health. Of course, if we are considering that level of danger, you may as well take the beef off the market on the grounds that eating much less than that will kill you a lot faster...from arteriosclerosis, colon cancer or gout.

Radioactive Mutant Contaminated Cows!!

2011-07-12T20:32:00.002+09:00

Over the last couple of days the media in Japan has been wracked by another nuclear contamination scandal. It turns out that radioactive caesium levels some four times higher than government-set safety levels have been found in the meat from 6 cows from a single farm in Fukushima. Not only that, but some of the meat had already entered the distribution chain when this was found out. Some has been sold and efforts are being made to track down the rest.

Well, how much of a disaster is this really?

Not much, it turns out. Sure, the meat has levels of contamination 4 times the safety limit, but that is starting from a very low base. The safety limits for these things are set at the very bottom of a very large range of possible safety levels. This is done because governments (especially the Japanese government) are concerned about being 'on the safe side'. The 'safe side' is in fact very very very safe, because there is actually very little reliable data (read nil) on the long-term effects of very low-dose radiation in food supplies, leading to very conservative or even paranoid safety levels. In fact you will not be able to find a respectable scientific or medical source that says eating this meat is unsafe. This was reflected in tonight's news. It featured 30 minutes of reports on the 'fear' aspects of the incident: criticism of the inspection system that let the beef slip through; footage of 'contaminated' farms; interviews with concerned mothers; speculations on how much meat may have already been sold; and lengthy reports of government efforts to track down the remainder. In contrast, there was a mere 10-second clip of a medical scientist, who stated bluntly that the eating the beef could not harm human health, and that eating kilos of it would give you no more radiation that you would receive during a chest x-ray.

That contrast, between 30 minutes of fear and 10 seconds of reality should be very instructive.

It tells you all you need to know about the nuclear 'crisis' in Japan.

In a nicely ironic aside, in the last five minutes of tonight's news viewers were given a little glimpse of the real negative effects of the accident at Fukushim. In parliament today Prime Minister Naoto Kan stated that the set goal of a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide levels by 2020 'would need to be revised' as due to the effects of the accident in Fukushima Japan would be unable to rely on nuclear power to the extent it has until now.

Yet another example of how the real problem here is not radiation, but fear of radiation.

The nuclear industry doesn't have to be quite so stupid.

2011-07-07T20:20:00.002+09:00

Today a new and fantastically stupid scandal broke when it was revealed that a nuclear power company in Kyushu tried to influence public opinion by instructing its employees to pose as members of the public and write emails supporting restart of the local nuclear plants.

The emails were sent on June 26 during a live televised debate on whether to restart the reactors or not. The reactors have been shut for maintenance since the March 11 quake and the owners of the plant were also apparently trying to persuade the governor of Saga prefecture, where the reactors are located, to support the restart.

The scandal looks like it will force the resignation of Kyushu Electric Power, Toshio Manabe.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the emails received that night supported an immediate restart for the reactors. It is even believed that some emails supporting nuclear power were read out on air, supposedly from normal residents but actually from employees of the Kyushu Electric.

The Japanese nuclear industry has enough public relations problems without actually behaving idiotically and adding unnecessarily to their woes. The eventual restart of all the reactors in Japan is inevitable; Japan cannot survive without them. But it doesn't help anybody when you alienate the public so cheaply and pointlessly.

Truly, this kind of madness is the last thing Japan needs.

Almost missed the front gate guys

2011-07-04T19:40:00.002+09:00

Until a couple of days ago I was feverishly and haphazardly preparing for an academic presentation. On several occasions I went to work very early indeed, arriving before 6 a.m., in order to avail myself of the excellent resources available in my office for a couple of hours before the work day started. No matter how early I arrived, the guys at the front gate were there to greet me and pretend to give me my key. Indeed, even in the darkest hour of the night there are no less than two staff members.

Well, once last week I approached the gate, passing one of them who was pretending to sweep litter out of the gutter in front of the gate. I approached the gate room only to find that noone was immediately visible. I had to call out 'sumimasen' once to bring out the second guard from a back room. He literally ran out bowing, repeatedly saying 'moshiwakearimasen' ('there is no excuse for my unforgivable behaviour')

The intensity of his expression of regret made me believe for an instant that I had re-entered the world of reality, and that he was apologising for his presence, instead of for his absence. I allowed myself the fantasy that he had been reading this blog, and had realised that there was no possible justification for his job, and he was now expressing his shame to me in the form of profuse apologies.

Then I snapped out of it.

Aimi Eguchi- as real as you need.

2011-06-21T20:07:00.006+09:00

There is an idol group in Japan that is currently very popular ... more obviously vacuous and infantile than even Morning Musume. They are called AKB48, named after a shortened form of 'Akihabara' the electronic goods area of Tokyo now infamous for socially inept nerds, paedophiliac cartoon porn and maid cafes. Even though they are named AKB48, as of this month they have 58 members- which is slightly unnerving, as if they are mutliplying behind your back. They are all young cutish over-sexualised girls wearing short skirts and bikinis and posing as high schoolers - and in fact, many of them are high schoolers.

They travel around Japan putting on stage shows for dull-minded Japanese men unable to forge relationships with real women and desperate to masturbate to schoolgirls dressed like Las Vegas whores. They also sing insanely asinine songs that make you want to kill yourself; indeed their music has congealed into a solid slimy mass that will remain a dead greasy weight upon Japanese culture until the end of time, and at the end of the universe God will weigh it against bushido and kabuki and Japanese literature and find that, due to the vile and soul-destroying emptiness of AKB48, the sum total cultural worth of Japan is a negative.

Their newest member is Aimi Eguichi, supposedly selected out of a recent audition as the representative of the new generation of AKB48. However, it was recently announced that Aimi Eguchi was not selected from anything; she is, in fact, not real at all, being a CG creation. Utilizing 3D rendering tools and motion capture devices, 6 of the top-rated idols of the group had their best features graphed onto Aimi. Thus creating the perfect idol. Oh yeah, she's also 16.

So far she has appeared in several commercials and has also ... appeared in Japanese Playboy. Now that is just creepy, because it raises the question of whether it is okay to jerk off to an underage CG creation. Because, let's face it, Playboy is nothing if not a jerk-off magazine.

However the more I think about it, the fewer objections I can come up with. After all, most of the fan base of AKB48 is well used to jerking off to anime fantasies - the real thing is just too difficult, stressful and imperfect. And who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if Aimi Eguchi had more personality than the rest of AKB48 put together.

More notes from the season of madness

2011-06-13T20:31:00.002+09:00

We are in the midst of the rainy season here, and unlike most years in Japan, this one seems to be the real thing, with rain nearly every day, sometimes heavy. The humidity is rising too, which I find quite comfortable, but seems to drive the Japanese crazy with frustration, fear and fungal diseases.

The news is full of speculation about when - not if- Kan will resign. Having narrowly survived a no-confidence vote last month, he appears to be living on borrowed time. The opposition is demanding his immediate resignation. His own party wants him to name the time. Some are saying he will go as early as this month, others suggest August or at the latest sometime in Autumn. Kan himself has said he will work to ensure reconstruction in tsunami-hit areas is on target and the nuclear accident in Fukushima is under control before resigning. This pledge is ironically vague, because post-tsunami reconstruction is proceeding apace - the Japanese can clean up and reconstruct like noone else - and as for the accident at Fukushima Number 1, if it is not under control now it never will be. Kan is trying to leave himself an out.

Nevertheless it is almost certain he will go. We know the who, the how and even the when. The only thing I don't understand is the why. The opposition and many in his own party are saying things along the lines of 'It is impossible to expect the prime minister to put the nation back together; the PM is incapable of leading the country in this time of crisis.' But this is a self-serving line of thought that seems to bear little resemblance to what happened and is what happening.

The truth is, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the prime minister is taking the fall for the natural disaster itself, a Japanese tradition where the guy at the very top must take responsibility for any failure, no matter how remotely removed it is from him. The attitude of the public seems to be 'it cannot be helped'; a fatalistic approach that is also typically Japanese. In my opinion this is a sad loss. Kan didn't cause the tsunami, can't be held responsible for any real (or imagined) failings of TEPCO and didn't start the meltdown in Fukushima.

A meltdown, which, by the way, has killed or injured exactly zero people. It is true that the media has reported that six more workers (to make a total of 8) have been exposed to levels of radiation above that considered 'safe'. The unluckiest is reported to have received 497 millisieverts. However, there have been no adverse effects upon their health reported so far.

As a comparison of the 'twin disasters' as they are sometimes called:

1. Earthquake and disaster: 25,000 killed
2. Nuclear accident in Fukushima: 0 deaths or injuries

Meltdown!

2011-05-18T19:22:00.002+09:00

Recently the media has been talking about meltdowns at 1 or more of the reactors at the Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant. Specifically, a partial or full meltdown of reactor 1 has been confirmed, and partial or full meltdowns at reactors 2 and 3 are suspected. They still don't know because nobody has been inside reactor buildings 2 and 3 yet to have a look. Actually, today for the first time workers ventured into reactor building 2, to be beaten back by high levels of ... steam.

So in any case it looks like damage to the fuel rods in all three reactors has been greater than feared.

Perhaps I am yet again going against the grain of puclic opinion when I express the opinion that this is very good news. There have been meltdowns in all three reactors ... and nobody noticed! The meltdowns happened in the first few hours and days after the tsunami, before cooling had been restored to the plant, and resulted in the relatively high radiation emissions that were recorded at the time. So basically, the worst thing that could possibly have happened happened...yet nobody was harmed by radiation. No injuries, no deaths. And since then things have inexorably improved...

To me, this is yet more evidence that the danger of radiation from the accident at Fukushima has been massively exaggerated.

More Madness from Japan

2011-05-10T19:39:00.002+09:00

Some more details came out today about the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka. It turns out that its closure has thrown 2,800 people into unemployment and badly damaged the local economy. Not only that, but it looks like the Tokyo government will compensate Chubu Electric and the local economy with public funds...coming from...who knows where, maybe my pension again!

In more crazy news stuff, the first group of residents of the 20 km exclusion zone outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were today allowed to go home temporarily to collect belongings.

Evacuees were outfitted in radiation suits with masks, gloves and footwear designed to protect them from the 'dangers' around the plant. With military precision the evacuees were driven to pre-designated points inside the radius and given exactly two hours to get to their home, retrieve what belonging they could, and return to the buses. Any belongings they managed to get hold of had to be placed in plastic bags measuring 70 centimetres in both length and width. Every person was individually checked for high levels of radiation contamination on return and facilities were set aside to 'cleanse' any people who tested positive for such radiation. In what must have been no surprise, nobody did.

In typical Japanese style, none of these precautions are actually necessary. The area has been perfectly safe for human habitation for weeks, and there is no reason to suspect the situation will change. Workers are sleeping perfectly soundly in dormitories on the actual nuclear plant site. The only dangerous radiation levels are found within a relatively small area around the reactors themselves. Officials know this.

Shizuoka nuclear power plant to close.

2011-05-09T20:35:00.002+09:00

Chubu Electric Power company, which owns the Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka, today bowed to pressure from prime minister Naoto Kan to shut it down.

Over the past few weeks pressure from various sources has mounted to shut down the plant, which is fairly close to the major urban centres of Tokyo and Yokohama, and lies atop a major fault line that could be involved when 'The Big One' finally hits. On Saturday the prime minister officially requested its closure until modifications can be made in order to cope with a major earthquake or tsunami. Although the operators of the plant are under no legal obligation to close it, a Chubu Electric official said, "Although a request, it carries the weight close to an order."

To some extent I can understand the necessity of giving in to public pressure over something like this. But the decision has left Chubu in a serious bind. There is a good chance that available power supplies will not be sufficient to cope with upcoming summer demand, resulting in rolling blackouts over the Tokyo region.

The main concern about electricity supplies will come when summer temperatures reach their highest. This is when air conditioner use goes through the roof. And if this summer is anything like last year's, there will certainly not be enough power. The irony is that last year's heatwave has been blamed on global warming, a trend no one expects to abate in the near future. The nuclear power plant in Shizuoka, like all others in Japan, was doing its part to help Japan reach greenhouse gas emmission reduction targets and thus help to mitigate global warming. Those targets will likely be thrown out the window now, because as part of the attempt to make up the power shortfall, Chubu will utilise heavy oil and liquefied natural gas power plants.

Nor is this decision actually in the interests of public health. One thing that is often forgotten about the Fukushima incident is that everything worked perfectly. The earthquake activated shutdown sytems for all the reactors and all reactors shut down. The problem was in maintaining cooling water for those reactors as they cooled down. What actually happened was that diesel generators designed to do just that failed because of the tsunami. Once that problem is solved (e.g. through an external power source) there is no reason why any nuclear power plant anywhere in Japan should be especially vulnerable to tsunamis.

Meanwhile, because of this decision, efforts to mitigate global warming are adversely affected, the local Shizuoka economy is seriously hurt, Tokyo will likely suffer blackouts, and many people will be out of work.

The more I think about it the more I think I have to go against public opinion and openly support nuclear power. If anything Fukushima has led me to this. If an aging, obselete power plant can get hit by one of the largest quakes on record, be swamped by a 14 metre tsunami, survive a terrible power cut, and still shut down safely without anybody (so far) being affected in any way by radiation, well, let's build more of them. If the bulk of the world's power was supplied with atomic energy, we would have a safe, non-polluting, carbon-neutral, reasonably-priced limitless supply of energy.

Kan to go sooner or later

2011-04-27T19:17:00.000+09:00

Prime Minister Naoto Kan is under increasing pressure, from both within his own party and outside, to step down as prime minister and let someone else have a go on Japan's leadership carousel.

Today more than 60 members of his own party, the Democratic Party of Japan, met to discuss ways of ousting their PM. This is on top of the opposition attacking him for weeks for his 'failure' to bring the nuclear incident under control and otherwise deal with the aftermath of the calamities last Month.

However one of the issuse for his own party is that there is currently no clear alternative to Kan. The most likely candidate, former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, was forced to resign just before the quake due to an absurd 'only in Japan' money scandal where he unknowingly took donations from a non-Japanese citizen. It's a real shame he couldn't have hung on for another week, because after the quake everything else was forgotten for a while, and Maehara may have been able to take over by now. The only other name being thrown around is the old indefatigably corrupt and disingenuous Ichiro Ozawa. Him becoming PM would be the equivalent of Nixon being elected to the Whitehouse a year after resigning over Watergate. But hey, it could happen in the Fantasy Land that is Japan. Rumour has it that he is only interested in becoming PM because as head of state he will be immune from prosecution for all his various scandals.

The weirdest part is that there is no real reason for Kan to go. I think he's done an extraordinary job. I want to have his children. The evacuees are being housed and fed. Reconstruction is progressing. Even Tepco has been roundly castigated. Daily press conferences were held during the worst of the crisis and it was clear even to me that his government was doing the best it could. The only thing I could disagree with is the passing of the bill to fund compensation and reconstruction using...

... my pension funds.

Cost of disasters to be paid for out of what?!

2011-04-22T22:29:00.000+09:00

Japan today widened the evacuation zone to more areas outside of the 20km exclusion zone around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The new areas includes tens of thousands of people and thousands of farmers. The prime minister explained that cumulative radiation exposure posed a health risk to residents.

Except that it won't. That is, unless there is evidence I'm not aware of that radiation levels in those areas are higher than what is safe for humans. The move is merely precautionary in nature, and will cost millions of dollars.

Tepco president Masataka Shimizu today confronted angry evacuees in a shelter in Fukushima, apologising to them individually in an effort to repair Tepco's tortured public image. He copped a fair amount of abuse for his efforts; some people blamed him for their homelessness; others demanded compensation, one guy suggested he move the nuclear power plant next to his home in Tokyo. It's understandable that evacuees were pissed off, but ... really, people. None of the evacuees offered him thanks for decades of cheap, safe, carbon-neutral energy. Nobody thrust the plans for a working fusion energy plant into his outthrust hands, and nobody vowed to cut their own personal energy use by 80% so that the whole country could be powered by renewable sources.

The next news announcement really made my day. The government announced a new supplementary fiscal budget to pay for reconstruction after the quake, tsunami and nuclear emergency. It will cover rebuilding infrastructure, subsidising the recreation of the fishing industry, evacuation and accommodation for hundreds of thousands of people, compensation for farmers affected by radiation etc etc. All in all, 4 trillion yen, about 45 billion Australian dollars... to be paid for...out of funds set aside to cover the gap in the pension plan!

And just to top it off, Tokyo Disneyland is now open.

Robots in the nuke plant... fearmongering moves to North Korea

2011-04-19T19:55:00.000+09:00

For the last 3 days, U.S.- made robots have been inspecting the conditions inside the nuclear reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They have found - wait for it - high levels of radiation, which I found about as shocking as say, detecting high levels of radiation next to a damaged nuclear reactor. So shocking that I can barely raise the energy to mention it. The robots couldn't really do much - just roll in, take some video and radiation measurements, and then retreat in the face of scattered debris on the ground.

Meanwhile the centre of world fear-mongering may have moved to that most reliable and objective of medias, state-owned North Korean television. "The crisis is getting more serious," it was reported yesterday. "Even a month after the accident, we see no prospects of getting radioactive leakages under control."

There you have it, a source you can trust.

In other bad news, more examples of ugly discrimination against perceived radiation victims are popping up. The so-called 'radiation certificates' are still in wide circulation, and there have been reports that people from Fukushima have been refused entrance to hotels in other prefectures, and that children have been bullied. There is even the extraordinary case of a an eight-year-old child who lived 20 kms from the nuclear site being refused entry into a Fukushima hosptial as she had no non-radioactivity certification; her father told Japan's Mainichi newspaper that he was shocked that their appointment at the hospital had been cancelled.

Discrimination of different kinds is rife in Japan, but this kind of thing is particularly unsavoury. Haven't victims of the earthquake and tsunami suffered enough?

So they're evacuating because...?

2011-04-16T21:53:00.000+09:00

The media reported today that radiation levels in Namie, 30 km from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, were significantly higher than normal. The accumulated radiation level stood at 17,000 microsieverts since the March 11 incident. Namie is one of the areas being considered for evacuation.

But how much is 17,000 microsieverts? Well, it's 17 millisieverts. 100 millisieverts over the course of a year is barely cause for alarm...current radiation workers at Fukushima have had their acceptable levels raised to 250, though this is because of the emergency situation. And even that is not...anything that can reliably be linked to danger.

These evacuations are causing extraordinary disruption to the lives of tens of thousands of people, costing millions of dollars in the short-term, tens of millions in the long-term, and damaging the production capacity of one of Japan's largest agricultural areas.

Is it really worth it?

Another Chernobyl?

2011-04-13T19:41:00.000+09:00

The Japanese authorities declared yesterday that Fukushima was a 'Level 7' accident, on the same level as Chernobyl, on the international nuclear incident scale.

I am aware of international paranoia about Fukushima, but I am nevertheless surprised at this.

In the Chernobyl accident, an entire reactor melted down, spewing radioactive material high into the atmosphere where it spread to vast areas around it. About 30 people died directly from radiation. The number of long-term deaths caused by Chernobyl depends on what you read, but estimations range from zero to several tens of thousands Even Wikipedia, which I consider in general the best source of information on the plant, seems unsure, suggesting anywhere from 500 to several thousand. One issue is that thryoid cancer, the main cancer caused by Chernobyl, has very low incidence rates and a high survivability. Not only that, but health conditions in the region around the plant are generally not very good in any case, so it's hard to differentiate Chernobyl-induced disease from the usual alcoholism and other health afflictions of the region. But certainly mainstream experts suggest many people were adversely affected.

In Fukushima nobody at all has died from radiation. Two people were reported to have been exposed to dangerous levels but it seems like they never got sick. As for radiation releases, the total amount of radiation released is less than 10% of that released by Chernobyl, and much more localised. So I am baffled by the decision to place Fukushima in the same band as Chernobyl. '7' is supposed to be the highest on the scale: what are they going to do in a genuine catastrophe?

It was also announced that a few areas outside the current 30 km exclusion zone will be evacuated, as occupants staying for an entire year will absorb about '20 millisieverts' of radiation, which is substantially greater than background radiation. Well, okay, you might think. Sounds dangerous. But some google searching reveals that 20 millisieverts is well...not very much at all. More than background, sure. But the maximum permissable amount of radiation absorbed over the course of a year is set at 50 millisieverts for American nuclear power plant workers. And the absolute minimum amount that is said to be linked to cancer is 100 millisieverts. In any words, the amount of radiation accumulated by residents who lived for a year in these areas would be one-fifth of that required to be linked to any cancer. In addition, as work progresses at the plant, steadily but slowly, radiation levels will decrease so that residents would be absorbing less and less.

Baffling.

The emperor visits an evacuation centre styled by new fashion designer '100 yen'

U.S. revising 80 km exclusion zone

2011-04-10T21:09:00.000+09:00

In the wake of declining radiation levels and increasing evidence Tepco has the long-term situation at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control, the U.S. is now said to be rethinking its 80km exclusion zone around the plant.

In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear the original recommedation was pulled out of somebody's arse in a paranoid fit. According to Associated Press, on Thursday U.S. nuclear officials told an independent panel that the recommedation was based on imcomplete information and assumptions about the reactors' condition that have since proven false.

In actuality there was very little need for any exclusion zone from the beginning. On only one day (March 15th) radiation levels actually dangerous to human health were detected, and that was at the main gate. Of course, an exclusion zone of some kind was and is both sensible and appropriate. But a little perspective is in order. Nobody has actually died from radiation poisoning. Indeed, only three people are reported to have been exposed to dangerous levels, and to my knowledge they didn't develop any symptoms. In fact, nothing has been reported about them for several days, and I think it safe to assume they have either been released (to face a lifetime of discrimination) or are still under observation in hospital.

While it's true the Fukushima plant crisis is a major disaster, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions, the bulk of expense will come from dealing with public fears of radiation and relatively little will be spent because of radiation itself.

In praise of the Japanese government.

2011-04-08T21:56:00.000+09:00

There has been a lot of criticism of Naoto Kan's administration since the quake. There have been accusations that they haven't been on the ball, they've have kept the public in the dark, they have let Tepco come close to destroying Japan etc. You will even hear many many people openly doubt what the government says about radiation levels in the air and food. I find this idea particularly distasteful.

Usually I am no fan of the Japanese government but I think they are doing a sterling job. I'm so impressed, in fact, that I'm considering staying in Japan far longer than I would have.

Firstly, the suggestion that we are being lied to about radiation levels is just absurd. Radiation levels are independently verifiable, and the amount of measuring going on makes the idea of a vast shadowy conspiracy simply unfeasible. For example, radiation is being measured in over 1,400 places in Fukushima prefecture alone. Reported radiation levels in different kinds of seafood and agricultural products are so specific, so jargonized and so opaque that it would be senseless to make them up. Instead, rather than a situation where the government telling us it's safe when it's actually dangerous, what is really happening is that the media and the public is indulging in fearmongering and panic, so that danger is created where none exists, and risk is vastly exaggerated. For instance, the increased cancer risk derived from eating 'contaminated' seafood is so negligible that it is completely outweighed by the extra health risk that is incurred when an individual chooses another protein source that is less healthy - such as beef or pork.

In fact, announcements on radiation levels in food are reliable and so precise that they reflect the Japanese penchant to be anal. Considering these measurements, the government takes off the market those products that exceed the set levels of radiation - and those levels themselves are extraordinarily strict. This is because when they were set the authorities wanted to be as thorough and cautious as possible - leaving large margins of safety, mainly because the long-term effects of small radiation levels were largely unknown. In fact, there is very little expert opinion supporting the idea of any ill-effects from very low radiation doses, so in all probability those set radiation levels are, if anything, too low.

When the government does make an announcement about an agricultural product they do so with obvious reluctance. Two days ago they made such an announcement regarding sand lances caught in Kitaibaraki, which has led to a general fishing ban throughout the whole of Ibaraki. Whenever something like this happens the government takes much of the blame. They wouldn't do so unless they had to. So in a sense I enjoy hearing such news, because it means it's trustworthy.

So that's why I trust the Japanese government when they tell me this or that seafood is safe to eat. That, plus the fact I would never be willing to give up sushi.

I also believe that Tepco should not be receiving so much criticism. It is true that they have been involved in safety scandals in the past. For example, in 2002 Tepco admitted they had falsified safety records at the number reactor at Fukushima Daiichi plant. IAEA officials have also issued warnings about Japanese nuclear reactors in the past, especially in regard to massive earthquakes. However there is no serious suggestion that I am aware of that this accident could have been prevented. It was just one of those things, and the Japanese are dealing with it as best as humanly possible.

The Good and the Not So Good

2011-04-06T21:58:00.000+09:00

The good news is that Tokyo Disneyland is closed for the time being. This alone increases Japan's cultural value by about an order of magnitude. The reason is that Disneyland is very energy-expensive, as it consumes the same amount of electricity as 60,000 normal households. When electrictiy needs to be preserved to avoid blackouts, Disneyland doesn't make the cut. In addition, Disneyland suffered significant damage during the quake as it is built on reclaimed land and was subject to liquefaction. One can only hope that the whole things will be 'declaimed' and will sink into the sea.

The not-so-good news is that yesterday's unavoidable release of low-level radioactive water into the sea around Fukushima has resulted in an avalanche of paranoia about seafood. The release has put Japanese seafood at risk, at least in terms of perception. Seafood prices are down, and fish from Fukushima is almost unsellable. Japanese seafood will almost certainly be banned in foreign countries, perhaps for a long time. The situation was not helped by the revelation today that measurements of radiation on Saturday of water outside the plant showed the radiation level several million times that of normal. Now that is from a very low starting level, and will certainly be diluted by the vast Pacific Ocean. But those kind of numbers freak people out.

Tepco is talking about compensation for the fishing industry. The total cost of the Fukushima debacle, including the effect on agriculture and fishing, will likely run into the billions of dollars (already they are talking about trillions of yen), and there is no way that Tepco can shoulder that, meaning that the eventual cost will be born by the national government.

But for me it all evens out.

Because Disneyland is closed.

Tokyo Disneyland: radiation takes its toll

Do you have a radiation - free certificate?

2011-04-05T21:12:00.000+09:00

Because if you don't you may not be allowed into an evacuation centre in Fukushima.

Radiation screenings have been conducted at the entrance of various evacuation shelters since March 13th, two days after the quake. A doctor wearing a white hat, mask and gloves measure passes a radiation monitor over your chest, head, back and shoes. If you haven't been exposed to radiation you will be issued a 'radiation certificate'.

These certificates have become increasingly coveted as residents in these shelters become more and more anxious about radiation levels. Signs outside some centres proclaim that admittance will not be granted to those who don't have a certificate. Some 88,000 people have been checked, without anybody coming up as 'positive', yet certificates are becoming more formalised with efforts made to standardise them between doctors, and they are becoming a de facto 'license to exist'. Officials in Tokyo are concerned about this trend, repeatedly asking that the practice be discontinued, but doctors in affected areas have ignored their advice. Tokyo officials have said, quite rationally, "It's impossible for people from the affected area to have an adverse impact on people around them as none of them has been exposed to enough radiation to affect their health. There is no need for such certificates at all." But as some shelters are refusing admission to people without the certificates doctors have continued to issue them.

In a country as paranoid as Japan one can hardly be surprised at this. Middle-aged ladies wear white gloves so they don't have to touch door handles. My students, strapping nineteen-year-old youths, often wear face masks all day to protect themselves from the common cold. In my former workplace I was often called upon to 'be careful' if I expressed an intention to walk down the hall to the vending machine in the corner. At landmark tower in Yokohama, people on the undercover walkway are advised to 'watch their footing', not just at the beginning of the walkway, or at the end, but every 5 seconds along its length.

In the Japanese pysche the world is a very dangerous place. It can hardly be imagined what would happen if some poor sod actually tested positive to measurable levels of radiation in one of these checks.

In another 'only in Japan story', today a 38-year-old woman was caught breaking into a convenience store in the tsunami-affected area. This is one of the few reported incidents of looting. The Justice Minister responded by calling a press conference to brief the media about this terrible event, which has doubtless led to much soul-searching among politicians and law-enforcement officials. Oh, the horror, the horror.

People refused entrance to evacuation shelters may become upset.

Tepco - Japan's most hated company

2011-04-04T23:20:00.000+09:00

More stress today at the number 1 Fukushima nuclear plant. Tepco workers announced that efforts to block leaks from a cracked containment pit with concrete are not working as water entering the pit prevents the concrete from setting. Officials have still not identified the ultimate source of the radioactive water - though they suspect that the water is exiting the number 2 reactor's turbine building through a cable trench connected to the damaged storage pit. The latest suggested fix is to string an underwater 'silt fence' outside the drainage outlet in a bid to capture the bulk of the radioactive particles. This kind of fence is usually used in river and bridge construction work to prevent the spread of muddly water.

Meanwhile it was announced tonight that 11,000 tonnes of low level radioactive water had been released directly into the sea, as waste from cooling the reactors. There is a continual question of what to do with the radioactive water as cooling efforts continue.

In Fukushima prefecture itself low levels of radiation continues to be measured in different agricultural products. Today it was reported that tobacco sales from certain areas of the prefectcure would be stopped as very low levels of radioactivity had been detected in tobacco plants. The levels excede the government safety limits - it was reported that consumption of this tobacco would result in an increased risk of cancer of 0.05 percent. Well, I think a little perspective is in order here. This is verging on the ridiculous to tell the truth. Considering that smokers have a 30% chance of dying from a smoking-related illness, this kind of statistic reveals in my opinion how paranoid the situation is becoming. If the authorities were really that interested in public health, they would prohibit the sale of tobacco from anywhere.

Tepco itself is rapidly becoming the most hated company in Japan. Graffiti has been found at their public relations hall. The company has been forced to alter their signage, including signs outside company dormitories housing employees, in order to avoid abuse. Complaints about the nuclear accident and the rolling blackouts have flooded the call centre of the Tokyo branch. Because the number of calls exceeds the capacity to respond, some people have come directly to the call centre to complain to employees about failing to take their call. Not only that, but people are protesting outside the call centre because the number of people complaining to the call centre staff about staff failing to take their call has exceeded the staffs' capacity to respond to their complaints, so that they have nobody to complain to.

Okay, I made the last sentence up. The rest is true. In addition, a male employee of Tepco said, "Not only myself, but my family is also considerably troubled. My wife told me, 'I feel the neighbours are looking at me in a questionable manner.'"

I feel for Tepco. They are doing the best they can under infernal circumstances. It's not their fault they can't supply all the electricity Tokyo needs. It's not even their fault their nuclear power plant is leaking radioactive water. Shit happens, even shit like huge earthquakes and 10-metre tsunamis.

An acquaintance told me he was praying for the all the people in Fukushima. My thoughts were, if God was answering prayers, maybe he wouldn't have sent the tsunami in the first place.

Cracked Crippled Concrete

2011-04-03T15:28:00.001+09:00

Tepco workers are scrambling to seal a crack in a containment pit next to the number 2 reactor at Fukushima. They are said to be using concrete to plug the crack, from which radioactive water is spilling into the ocean, contaiminating it. The ultimate source of the radioacive water is still not known, but some suspect it may be the reactor itself.

That's the latest news coming from on-site. Cooling of the reactors is still under control.

Off-site, there was one almighty fuck-up by Tepco management when on March 31st they submitted an application to build two more reactors at the plant. Their application had been completed before the quake but apparently nobody had thought to pull it out before submitting it. Needless to say the prefectural government reaction was one of fury, while at the national level the media responded with what could generously be called bemusement. I would not like to be working with the PR department at Tepco right now. It's impossible to make predictions about the site, but I would think it almost impossible for at least four of the reactors to ever be used again. The idea that more reactors should be built there sounds pretty bizarre two week's after the nation's worst nuclear disaster.

Back to normal?

2011-04-01T20:41:00.001+09:00

Today for the first time in two weeks the nightly NHK news did not lead with a story from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Instead, the first news items were about reconstruction in the tsunami-affected areas: preparing for a new school term, trying to restart industry etc etc. When the nuclear plant did make an appearance, the focus was on continuing containment, rather than dealing with massive new radiation leaks or explosions. The main item concerned the water that was being used to cool down the reactors: now contaminated with low levels of radioactivity, authorities are debating what to do with thousands of tonnes of low-level radioactive waste water. It's a tricky one all right.

One was left with the feeling that, regardless of a lack of official announcement, a crisis had been diverted and all that is left is weeks of difficult and hugely expensive clean up. Radioactivity levels in water in the sea outside the plant are high but dropping. A 'synthetic resin' is being sprayed over surfaces to trap radioactive dust. That's where the emphasis seems to be now: containment and cleaning.

Residents of a town 40 km from the plant got a surprise yesterday when levels of radioactivity, as measured by the International Atomic Energy Agency, were double the agency's criteria for evacuation. The Japanese government defended their own advice, saying the IAEA's measuring methodology was 'not appropriate'. There was no mention of the issue on the news tonight, but I'm guessing that there are not many people in that town left to worry, they would all have evacuated.

I probably would too, even though, and it feels weird to suggest this, let alone begin to believe it, that low levels of radiation are good for you. It is even being used by some as healing medication:

http://nighthawkminerals.com/

There are small differences in day-to-day living now. Almost all items have returned to the shops, but the brands for rice, milk and tissues/toiletpaper are all different. All escalators are turned off and the shops are not well-lit as electricity is conserved. Spinach is strangely cheap as people just avoid it no matter where it comes from. You just walk over the cracks in the pavement that weren't there last month. And things just ...aren't as busy as they used to be. Fewer people out partying on the weekend. Life is trying to return to normal but in truth people are starting to realise that it will never be the same again.

28,000 people dead. 220,000 homeless. That's something that is not easy to get over.

We are not going to die.

2011-03-29T21:34:00.001+09:00

Today the news is dominated by the 'radioactive water' story. Radioactive water is continuing to leak from reactor number 2, although the exact source is not clear. Increasingly, it appears the water may be coming from pipes around the reactor itself, due to damage or partial meltdown of the rods. The immediate focus at the plant is preventing this radioactive water from entering the sea. In addition, plutonium was detected in soil outside the reactor, which also points to damage of the reactor.

All the reactors are still being cooled however, to various degrees by various means.

It's increasingly hard to be objective about all this: is there genuine danger for people outside the plant or not? Like everybody, I was concerned when the nuclear accident was first reported on the news. The very phrase 'meltdown' taps into a vague but colossal fear sourced in the unconscious. It's almost impossible to be rational when thinking about concepts such as 'radiation' and 'meltdown'. And what do I know about nuclear power or nuclear reactors? But information, all the information you want, is available from Wikipedia or other reliable sources. And when it comes down to it, there is negligible danger for Tokyo residents. I'm more likely to incur health risk from the McDonald's meal I ate yesterday than from all the radiation reported in Tokyo thus far. This knowledge, coupled with a healthy skepticism of mainstream media, has led me to believe there is actually...no danger at all. No danger except, perhaps, for the workers at the plant. No real reason for 20-50% of foreign residents of Tokyo to have left. No real reason not to come back.

Yeah, I'm thinking about another McDonald's meal. That Manhattan burger was pretty good.

So...is it safe or not?

2011-03-28T22:22:00.001+09:00

Well, the storm of excrement that is the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues.

Today massive amounts of radiation were reported in water around reactor number 2. This seems to be coming from both the pool containing spent fuel rods and the reactor itself. Although the risk of meltdown seems to have been averted, as all reactors are now being flushed with fresh or sea water, this new radioactivity is dominating the news. Nobody seems quite sure where it is coming from or how to deal with it. Personally, I'm not that surprised that a damaged nuclear reactor is leaking radioactive water: I mean, what else would it do? But it's becoming a regular shitstorm for the media, especially as yesterday there were conflicting and terrifying radiation reports (one report indicated radiation levels were 10,000,000 times normal) about the water. Eventually Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) admitted it had screwed up about yesterday's reading, but serious damage was done to its reputation and this has only fed the media feeding frenzy.

Even the pro-nuclear sources on the web are indignant with Tepco, for screwing up radiation levels, exposing their workers to radiation, and not releasing information. The information vacuum is especially damaging, as it is likely to be filled by the dire imaginings of the press.

Slowly it seems people seem to be trickling back into the Tokyo area. It's a difficult thing to decide it is safe to return. On the one hand, it is likely to be some time before the situation in Fukushima is totally resolved. On the other hand, an objective review of the situation suggests there was little need to leave in the first place. In that sense, it is not safer or more dangerous in Tokyo than it was ... two weeks ago.

The death toll for the tsunami itself is still rising. There are 11,000 confirmed dead, and over 15,000 still missing. 26,000 people is a huge blow, a massive disaster. It's difficult to see how this will impact on Japan in the long term, but impact it certainly will.

The three workers who received high doses of radiation have been released from hospital, according to tonight's news. As yet, they have shown no symptoms of radiation poisoning, but may experience burns on their legs 'similar to sunburn'.

Soon we will have nothing to Drink! Oh, wait.

2011-03-24T19:15:00.000+09:00

Today the government lifted its advisory against babies drinking Tokyo tap water, as today's measured levels of radioactivity were below those considered 'safe'

Tokyo mothers responded by having a 'Let's Give Our Babies Tap Water' party and held parades and danced through the city, guzzling tap water as they swayed through the streets, singing and laughing.

Okay, that party bit was made up. Why does my version of how the world should be always differ to the reality? I just can't work it out.

In any case bottled water was unobtainable today. If things continue like this, the only thing left to drink will be ... human blood!

Workers up at the plant have connected power to all the reactors and are currently trying to understand what systems are damaged. Water spraying operations are continuing. And for the first time, 3 workers were exposed to 'dangerious levels of radiation' when they slipped into radioactive water. They were taken immediately to hospital for treatment. They received 170 millisevierts of radiation, which according to The Japan Times is much less than can cause any symptoms. However NHK news is talking about 'burns' so I am not quite sure what is happening there.

I have also heard an explanation as to why the Japanese are hoarding tissue and toilet paper, though like many Japanese explanations it leaves one feeling somewhat unsatisfied. Apparently paper products 'require petroleum in their manufacture' and are likely to disappear in times of oil shortage. This happened during the 'oil shock' of the early seventies. Hence the locals are stocking up on toilet paper.

2011-03-22T19:56:00.000+09:00

Today minute traces of radiation were detected in seawater off the coast of Fukushima. You can add this to radioactive water in Tokyo, vegetables in Ibaraki and milk from Fukushima. The Japanese government assures us that none of this really constitutes a problem, as the levels are too low. You can hardly blame people for having their doubts though.

I suspect we will be in this realm for quite a long time: are trace amounts of radioactivity in food, far below levels reported to be dangerous to health, acceptable? For example, is it okay to eat broccoli, that, if consumed everyday, would expose you to as much radiation over a year as a tenth of a chest x-ray? The commonly repeated refrain by many is that 'there is no safe level of radiation' but only a cursory reading of scientific literature will give you doubts about this. For example, if normal 'background radiation' is not safe, then 'safety' is actually impossible. In fact, some serious sources (e.g. Wikipedia) even suggest that very low levels of radiation may be good for the body. It's hard to know what to make of such an idea, as it goes against everything I've been taught, but if I came to believe this it wouldn't be the first time I've been diametrically opposed to popular opinion.

Up at the Fukushima nuclear plant the battle continues. They now have electricity linked up to all the reactors, and what remains now is to test the cooling systems before turning everything back on. In the meantime, cooling has continued by vehicle, and now they've brought in these huge machines with 50- meter hoses attached that are designed to spray concrete, and they are using them for precision water spraying.
Some cautious optimism seems appropriate here.

Japanese Self Defence Forces are now combating Radioactive Zombies

A friendly chat

2011-03-21T21:27:00.000+09:00

This morning I got a call from a young woman named Jenny. She was calling from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Japan Crisis Centre in Japan. Nice lass. We had a little chat. She told me that the Australian government was now recommending that Aussies leave Tokyo. I told her that I wasn't thinking of it at the moment but that I was prepared to follow the lead of Japanese authorities. She told me that was fine. She seemed very young, and to know very little about Japan; for example, she didn't seem to have heard of Yokohama and asked me to spell it.

General radiation levels are down slightly at Fukushima but there was also unexplained white smoke coming from reactor building number 3. Still no detectable radiation levels in Tokyo.

I sent my family to Kagoshima today, mostly because of the nagging from my mother-in-law. And I learned one thing today. Even when they are fleeing from nuclear radiation, Japanese women do not neglect to put on their make-up.

T.V. is full of reports from the workers up at the plant and how much radiation they are receiving. The highest amount so far admitted by the Japanese authorities for workers there at the moment is 27 millisiverts, apparently not a danger to human health. Contrary to some reports, especially in the foreign media, that the workers at the nuclear plant are basically on a suicide mission, not one as yet has received a high dose of radiation.

These chips were 70% off today, I wonder why. Taste good but.

Of Salt and Spinach

2011-03-20T21:47:00.000+09:00

Aunt: Just keep away from the spinach and the milk, okay? They're poisoned with radiation!
Me: Really? That's probably why they're so cheap. The spinach pie was great tonight.

No definitive word on when the nuclear crisis will be over. Workers today sprayed reactor number 4 up at Fukushima, and radiation levels continued their slow decline. However nothing will really settle down until if and when power is linked up to all the reactors and the cooling systems fully restored. Meanwhile spinach and milk from the area has been irradiated. I genuinely feel sorry for the dairy farmers of Fukushima; nobody will ever buy their milk again and in many cases their life's work is ruined.

Life in Yokohama has pretty much returned to normal; or should I say, stabilised at a new normality. The new paradigm includes daily press conferences on disaster relief, as well as a nightly radiation level report following the weather. Just something to think about when you're planning your next picnic, I guess. 'Great, it's not going to rain, but what about insidious poison levels?'

Nowadays there is also communication between the sexes. These days, if you wife says, 'Where's that blue jacket?", you don't pretend you didn't hear her because you're reading the newspaper. Instead you help her find the blue jacket because she is packing an emergency bag that will you need in case you have to flee nuclear contamination. Sharpens things up a bit, I can tell you.

The overseas press is currently diverted by the war in Libya, but there are still reports of Japan burning sinking and exploding in a radioactive cloud. Be assured if the radioactive mutants start massing I will report it. Kind of looking forward to it, actually.

The sensationalist reporting has already resulted in unnecessary suffering. For example, there are worldwide reports of people overdosing on iodine tablets and requiring hospitalization. You could argue that people so stupid as to overdose on iodine thousands of kilometers away from radiation danger should be in hospital anyway. However, I wouldn't be one to argue that. Would I?

I also read that in China everyday iodised table salt is sold out in supermarkets as it is being hoarded by people who believe (incorrectly) that it can protect them against radiation poisoning.

Those wacky Chinese. They probably think they're going to be the world's next superpower.

Oh,wait.

Radiation battle continues

2011-03-19T22:39:00.000+09:00

Efforts today continued at the Fukushima nuclear plant, this time with a massive unmanned water truck continuously spraying seawater onto reactor number 3. That is either 'effective in keeping the temperature down' or 'as useful as using a water pistol on a bonfire ' according to which website you read.

For a sober and accurate summary the British embassy website is the best I've found:

http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=569076982

Long-term hopes are pinned on continuing work aim at restoring power to the plant and thus utilising existing cooling systems. Power has already been restored to reactors 1,2, 5 and 6. 3 and 4 are proving the most troublesome.

In overseas media criticism of the Japanese government continues. Maybe I just like being contrary, but far from being critical, every day I am more and more impressed. My sense is of a government doing the best it can under extraordinary circumstances. The Kan Naoto administration is coping with a recalcitrant media, sensationalist foreign government reports and a paranoid public. Not only that, there is also an actual disaster that they are dealing with, the humanitarian disaster caused by the tsunami. But press conferences are frequent and to me anyway seem well-informed. And today it was announced that trace radioactivity had been found in spinach from Ibaraki and milk from Fukushima. This is actually extraordinarily reassuring, as the government is not hiding anything from us. Bad news is not too bad if they tell it how it is.

Indeed this is the kind of stuff Japanese authorities are good at. There is a dedicated and professional bureacracy. A huge well of self-sacrifice and good will in the public. Well-developed transport and logistics systems. When you compare the tsunami disaster to what happened in the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina you can't help but be impressed. Where after Katrina you had looting, shooting, rape, car-jacking and murder, in Fukushima you get communal rice cooking and face mask distribution.

Geiger Counter

2011-03-18T22:15:00.000+09:00

By the way I found this link to a geiger counter in Chiba, one prefecture closer to the nuclear plant than Tokyo. I understand a normal level is about .16

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/geiger-counter-chiba

To go or not to go?

2011-03-18T21:38:00.001+09:00

"What are we going to do if there's a blackout?"
"Let's make the best of a bad situation. We'll put the baby out on the balcony until he's glowing, then if there's a blackout we'll put him in the centre of the living room and use him as a lamp."

That's when my wife started looking up flight times to Kagoshima on the net. Was it something I said?

Seriously folks, still no need to panic. Radiation levels are slightly down both in Fukushima and Tokyo. That is, a health risk actually inside the plant, and completely safe outside the 30km exclusion zone. There's some cause for cautious celebration as water trucks are being used to hose down reactors 3 and 4. Now this is not news that a week ago anyone in the world would have thought would be cause for optimism but there you go. Not only that, work is continuing on restoring electrical power to the plant, which would significantly improve the situation. Even in the worst case scenario, with a total meltdown of one or more reactors, radiation would be local and serious levels would never reach down to Tokyo. Even if the equivalent of Chernobyl were to occur, which is impossilbe, Tokyo would be okay.

So they tell me ha ha.

I understand in overseas media 50% of Japan has sunk underneath the sea and the other 50% is overrun by radioactive zombies. That explains why expats are still fleeing in droves.

As for the Japanese themselves, at the moment they seem to be more concerned with stocking up on tissues.

Japan - The place to be during a disaster.

2011-03-17T21:23:00.000+09:00

Efforts today continued at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima to cool down the reactors that are in danger of meltdown. Helicopter drops have continued throughout the day; but due to radiation they are keeping quite a distance away; even the casual observer would doubt that they are having much effect. The new approach has been to use high-pressure water cannon trucks from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, water cannons that are presumably kept for possible use in ... riot control! The drivers are said to be using radiation suits and safety equipment on loan from the self-defense force. For good reason. According to Yukio Edano, Chief Cabinet Secretary, "It has been difficult to make a decision to spray water from the ground, due to the radiation." Then on the 7pm news it was announced that police had given up the water cannon operation because of high radiation and were 'seeking shelter'. Luckily I was wearing brown-coloured underpants at the time, because that idea seemed to be last hope. Then finally, just a few minutes ago they announced that operations had in fact started, and that water was being sprayed upon the reactor. Only time will tell how that goes.

I would suggest one thing. I'm guessing those workers are getting overtime pay. Maybe even time-and-a-half, huh?

Meanwhile the atmosphere in Yokohama is one of high anxiety. In my workplace several teachers have already left or are in the process of leaving the city. Myself, I think I'll stay and watch the show. At least until I start glowing.

Japan is certainly the place you want to be during a disaster. Courtesy remains the rule rather than the exception. Supermarkets are full of orderly queues and issue profuse apologies about their bare shelves. With few people under the age of 50, there's nobody to loot. Convenience stores are open during blackouts, going through the transactions by hand while the staff apologise for being unable to offer you a receipt and say 'there is no excuse for our terrible behaviour'. Not only that, but the public is cooperating with the authorities. For example, for the last few days there has been a request to cut down on electricity use to minimise the possiblility of blackouts, and the public actually seems to be doing this. Stores and restaurants are only half-lit, while my wife has refused to use the heater today, while outside there is a noteable dearth of well-lit houses. It's impossible to imagine such civility back home during a crisis; in Australia it is every man for himself, and as for America, demonstrations are so common you are allowed to riot if your football team wins.

Japanese people wearing the latest 'nuclear radiation proof' facemasks

Apocalypse

2011-03-16T22:32:00.000+09:00

According to the French government that is what the Fukushima nuclear plant troubles amount to. They've sent an emergency relief flight to airlift all their citizens out.

Why is it always the French who are first to retreat?

Certainly there are grounds for concern. Today the number 3 reactor, which everybody had assumed was under control, started spewing radioactive smoke. Not only that, but reactor number 4 had another fire, which apparently burned itself out. The reactors seem to be taking turns daily to scare the bejesus out of the population.

The government responded by sending in self-defense force helicopters on water-bombing missions, only to...give up a few hours later out of fear of radiation. So much for that idea. Then it was announced on the news tonight that attempts will be made to cool down the reactors using "water cannon cars", possibly starting tonight. Not sure how that will go, they seem to be resorting to desperate measures now.

However it's important to remember that dangerous levels of radioactivity have been recorded nowhere except at the plant. They haven't even been recorded in the evacuated 20km radius outside. As for Tokyo, levels of radiation are higher than normal but way under the level deemed a health risk to humans. Radiation is being constantly monitored by Japanese authorities. Not only that, but the American ambassador announced tonight that the American authorities will be making independent measurements.

That hasn't stopped the local population here in Yokohama responding with anxiety approaching panic. You have to remember that the Japanese have advanced degrees in paranoia. Even in normal times it is common to see women walking down the street with gloves up to the elbow, broad-brimmed hats, thick sunglasses and full-face visors over face masks. This is for protection against sunlight. How the Japanese psyche may be responding to nuclear radiation can hardly be imagined. That's why people I know are already fleeing to the countryside, buying 300 rolls of toilet paper and preparing to eat each other.

So far not one person has been reported ill from radiation poisoning. Meanwhile, the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has reached 3,700 and is still climbing.

"Whatever You Do Don't Panic"

2011-03-15T22:45:00.001+09:00

Huge queues in the supermarket today, although deliveries seemed to be arriving as usual, so the only outcome there seems to be huge profits for the supermarket. Unfortunately there are still no supplies of the things you would want in a blackout - batteries, candles etc. The Japanese seem to be anxious about the oddest things: at the drug store I saw over a hundred people lined up stoically, almost all of whom were buying large packs of...toilet paper.

The big news is of course the continuing problems at the nuclear plant at Fukushima. At 6 am there was yet another explosion, this time at reactor number 2. Details are not clear, but it seems as if some fuel rods are still exposed to the air there, and there is a partial meltdown. It is a serious situation. Reactors number 1 and 3 had already had explosions and been flooded by workers with seawater. They seem to be stable. However at reactor number 4 there was a fire today. Reactor 4 was not actually being used, it was undergoing maintenance at the time of the quake. The cause is not fully known, and it is this fire that seems to have resulted in serious radiation leakage for the first time.

In response the government imposed has asked everybody within the 20-30 km radius to stay indoors. This is a serious decision, affecting 130,000 people. Not only that, but people are expected to seal doors and windows, turn off ventilators and air conditioners and so forth, basically avoid any exposure to the outside. Nightmare stuff. For people as generally anxiety-prone as the Japanese, it must constitue a challenge to their very sanity. I can imagine them huddling in tiny corners behind piled-up furniture and trying to breathe shallowly.

No wonder they're buying up the toilet paper around here. They're expecting to be told that they can't leave their apartments for the next 3 months.

Today radiation was detected as far south as Tokyo. Indeed it was measured in Shinjuku as 22 times the normal level. This is still much much lower than a radiation level that is dangerous to human health, but it is still something to be aware of.

Some people have been questioning whether the government reports can be entirely trusted, or even suggest they might be directly lying e.g. about radiation levels. I doubt this. There are many many places reporting radiation levels, and the coordination required to pull off such deceit seems to be prohibitive. The entire world is focused on this, and if the government was not completely honest about the whole thing the backlash would be immeasurable. My feeling is that they are trying to deal with a very difficult situation as best they can. The ad hoc nature of the frequent press conferences oddly enough gives me confidence: whatever else this is, they are not putting on a show.

Siege Mentality

2011-03-15T00:13:00.000+09:00

My local bakery today.

Shopping today was like ...well, shopping after a disaster has struck. The stuff that people look for in such situations is gone - bread, pasta, milk, rice, batteries, flashlights, bottled water. Just empty shelves.

Don't worry we haven't started eating each other just yet. We have enough food and essentials (lucky enough we seem to have dozens of candles) to last quite a while.

There's no serious reason for Tokyoites to be concerned; the real food shortages are up North where the tsunami struck. All we are dealing with here is an understandable human urge to stockpile in times of uncertainty, it's the siege mentality. And I was happy to notice that trucks still seem to be delivering to the supermarkets and convenience stores. It's the threat of rolling blackouts that has done this. Without electricity people can't see at night, can't cook, can't keep warm. The Japanese, anxious at the best of times, appear to have been driven to near-hysteria. My wife was so happy when I managed to come home with some more nappies that she jumped up and hugged me. Very strange behaviour indeed, at most I get a 'Welcome home' and at times merely a surly grunt, ah the romance of marriage. And frankly a lack of electricity doesn't bother me that much. I've lived with dodgy power supplies for extended periods before, the hardest thing is filling the evening hours; if this terror goes on for a long time people may start doing drastic things like reading books.

In any case so far the promised blackouts haven't arrived, though I understand tomorrow may be different.
Meanwhile the trains are unreliable, some lines are running, some are not, huge queues everywhere, two hours to get on your train.

Of course in the media back home it seems as if the whole country is being engulfed by another Chernobyl. It's true there was another hydrogen explosion at the #1 Fukushima plant, this time reactor #3. Efforts are being made to cool down all the reactors involved by pumping sea water into them, so far with limited effectiveness. However there is no danger as yet of radiation drifting outward of the current safety zones, and Fukushima is a long way away.

The prime minister and cabinet have taken to wearing these absurd cheap blue uniforms that make them look like school janitors. It appears particularly unsuited to the normally fashion-aware Renho.

In the press conferences they are now talking about 2,000 confirmed dead in the tsunami and an incredibile 15,000 missing. Some of those will turn up alive but there is no doubt that this is an incredible tragedy.

Grim Days for Japan

2011-03-13T22:49:00.000+09:00

Well, the death toll just gets higher and higher. Now they are talking about 10,000 or more people unaccounted for. Those people won't all be dead, but many will be. The television is showing absolutely incredible scenes of destruction and devastation. With those scenes, I am surprised that any people survived at all in the towns hit by the tsunami. There is also scene after scene of people telling stories of horror: a mother holding her daughter by the hand until the child was torn away by the waves; a man who rushed into a neighbour's house just to see them swept away; people desperate to find their children.

The Japanese broadcaster NHK put on an hour-plus news conference with the Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. I was impressed with this news conference; the mood was sober but confident. The reporters asked difficult questions and the pollies answered as best they could. The reporters pressed the hardest - and who could blame them? - on the topic of the nuclear reactors.

Two nuclear power plants in Fukushima are in serious trouble. The first plant seems to be the most concerning and a 20km radius around it has already been evacuated. Of the 3 reactors at the plant, the first one already exploded yesterday, destroying the concrete containment shell. Temperatures are rising at the other two and pumping in sea water seems not to be working. The first reactor was completely flooded with sea water. This was reported in the Australian media as 'a desperate measure', but a more measured scientist was reported in New Scientist as saying 'It's textbook practice of what to do with an accident of this type'. Who knows what will happen with that. Meanwhile, the second nuclear power plant in Fukushima also has several reactors whose temperatures are rising dangerously. A 10-km radius has been evacuated around that one. Rough times.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. The Japanese government has been guilty in the past of covering up the severity of nuclear accidents, but the stress of the current situation and the worldwide publicity surrounding this incident allow little room for deception here. They seem to be doing everthing they can. Personally, I'm in favour of nuclear power, and you can't blame Japan for wanting to diversify their energy sources. It's not Japan's fault these plants got hit with a magnitude 8.9 earthquake followed by a 10 meter tsunami.

There's a general atmosphere of seige in Yokohama. In the shops, batteries are sold out and there has been a run on staples. Meanwhile, electricity generation has been damaged and rolling blackouts have been announced, starting tomorrow.

That was genuinely scary

2011-03-11T22:55:00.001+09:00

I never want to have to live through something like that again. Here in Yokohama, we are very far from the worst hit areas up in Miyagi prefecture and Sendai and in no danger from tsunamis, but it was bad enough.

We were outside at the time, at a fruit and veggie shop, when the lights went out. At first nobody could figure out what was happening. The fruit seemed to be trembling. Then somebody said 'jishin'. Then came the shaking, which just went on and on, getting worse and worse. Outside, telephone lines were snaking and waving above the street like an octopus's tentacles. It was hard to stay on two feet, and we leaned against walls and a fence. Bottles fell from shelves and produce from baskets. I thought we could just wait it out, but it went on and on. I was genuinely scared. I huddled with my wife and child. People around us were looking at each other, faces white and shocked.

Finally it stopped. We were not far from home, so we checked to see if our apartment was still there. My wife didn't feel safe inside, so we wandered up to the main street. Others were doing the same. Everybody was trying to use their mobile, but there was no reception. Some people were running, I guess to get back home to loved ones. I could understand how they felt, was very glad I was with my family. In the main street some shops had broken windows. In one, a water pipe had burst, flooding the street outside.

At the train station people stood aimlessly, unable to get home. They milled slowly outside the ticket gate in semi-darkness, silent and grave. The convenience store was still open, with huge lines. I felt for these people. If the trains didn't come back on line, they faced a night in the cold and the uncertainty. Outside the train station there were huge queues for the buses. News updates poured out from a radio in a van at the kerb. Led by their teacher, a line of schoolchildren snaked by with foam helmets on their heads.

We walked some more. There was a terrible aftershock and we sat down on the ground, watching a wooden house across the street waver and shake, wondering if it would go down. Further on, on a train line, I saw train staff helping to evacuate people from a train left stranded between two stations. It had grown colder and it was even snowing slightly. I walked past the shopping centre and saw the cracks in the foundations and pavement. Outside the centre for aged health near our home, patients had been evacuated into the street and sat there or lay there on their beds.

Overall I feel better about Japan tonight. The coldness between people has softened a bit. And I don't doubt that tens of thousands of people are working right now to the best of their ability to rescue people, get things working again, fix the power and the gas and the trains, organize shelter for those stranded, and keep the public informed by megaphone, television, radio, and the internet.

There are still aftershocks now but it has got to the point where they are hard to recognize, because my stomach and body feels like they are moving all the time. I feel slightly nauseous to think of it.

Japanese Foreign Minister Quits - DPJ is screwed

2011-03-08T21:17:00.000+09:00

A sudden and altogether ridiculous politcal scandal claimed the scalp of foreign minister Seiji Maehara on Sunday. Maehara, one of the Democratic Party of Japan heavyweights and a potential successor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, was forced to resign because he unknowingly accepted political donations from a foreigner, which is illegal.

It's thrown the already floundering DPJ into further despair and hopelessness, the latest in a line of scandals that have seen Kan's approval ratings drop to 19%. They are almost certain to be destroyed in the next election, and Kan himself is seen as doomed sooner than that. Last week 16 members of the party aligned with rebel faction leader Ozawa boycotted the government vote for the budget, and there is increasing pressure on Kan to resign. He probably will sometime in the next few months. If there is a new PM soon, it will be the sixth in 6 years.

Why the DPJ couldn't sit this out is beyond me; Maehara's department made a mistake, but their fuck-up shouldn't result in the destruction of a cabinet member. It's not as if he did anything wrong; somebody who was doing the pen-pushing in some office just didn't know the rules. If the government can't stick out such attacks what hope have they to do the really hard stuff: revitalise the country and deal with the incredibly difficult things that must be done?

By the way, this 'foreign national' is known to be a Korean zainichi; that is, her family was taken here from Korea during the war or earlier. She owns a restaurant and donated about $500 a year for five years. She's hardly a threat to national security. She speaks Japanese, was born here and has lived here all her life: and she should have the right to make donations to any party she likes in Japan. She's about as foreign as kaiten zushi. But in Japan it's the letter of the law (even an unjust absurd law) that counts. Form over substance again.

Aicezuki arrested

2011-03-04T22:22:00.000+09:00

14 police officers shot and killed in shootout as cornered cheating ronin student goes down fighting

Okay, I made up the second line again.

A nineteen-year-old cram school student, Aicezuki was arrested peacefully on Thursday. He is reported to have told police, "I wanted to pass the exams."

His technique was to conceal the phone beneath the desk between his knees and text away. Apparently he also managed to use a scanning function, as many observers in the media were surprised that so many long maths questions were posted so quickly. During the maths exam he posted 6 maths questions at 5-10 minute intervals.

Still no mention of mental illness in the Japanese media. Assuming he was actually trying to get through these exams, he's a pretty resourceful bugger. I say he should be given a free entrance to Kyoto university just for challenging authority and successfully subverting the dominant paradigm. If I remember my Star Trek accurately, James T. Kirk was the only person to pass the last Captain's exam at the Starfleet Academy - by cheating! And he was the best captain ever. The more you think about it, the more obvious it becomes. Graduates from even top Japanese universities are said to be unable to solve complex problems, lack motivation and initiative, and are unwilling to challenge the status quo. They need this guy. He's a winner!

Mobile Phones used to cheat in exams - A real news story?

2011-03-02T22:29:00.000+09:00

A couple of days ago an interesting story broke in the Japanese news. Apparently a student taking university entrance exams had posted questions online during the actual exams, seeking and receiving answers about specific test questions. The only way he could have done this is by texting emails from his desk during the exam, an extraordinary act to perform and get away with. And not just once; there were four places involved, including the prestigious Kyoto and Waseda universities.

I was intrigued because it seemed to be an actual, genuine news story. Someting interesting was happening, a novel event compared to the usual headlines of 'Prime Minister in trouble' or 'Politician in Money Scandal' or, I kid you not, 'Snow in Winter'.

The reaction of the Japanese media and educational establishment has been shock and dismay. A raft of anti-cheating measures are being implemented or considered: exams are now being held in smaller classrooms and invigilators are being trained to be extra vigilant; mobile phones are now placed in special envelopes and kept by staff during exams; and companies that provide equipment that can block mobile transmissions are being contacted. Footage of South Korean exams with metal detectors at the doors is being aired and the possibility of something similar being introduced is being discussed. In addition, at one university all 4,898 "English literature" exams are being examined to see if specific answers are worded exactly as the answers posted on the web. All in all, a huge amount of stress is being created and money wasted.

It took one of my students to let me know what isn't being reported on the news. What you can see if you actually go to the site in question. The student who posted during the exams, who posts under the handle 'aicezuki', did not only ask questions about mathematics and English. Before the exams Aicezuki posted other questions. He asked for information about mental health hospitals or clinics. He also said that he wanted help to committ suicide. It seems that English literature is not this guy's biggest problem. My student was also of the opinion that, given the number and length of questions posted, together with the probable difficulty of doing so without being seen, online access would have been more trouble than help during the exam, taking up too much time to actually be useful. My student expressed the idea that Aicezuki's online postings were not intended to help him through the exam, but were instead ...an attempt to gain attention? A cry for help? A gesture of defiance? A giant 'Fuck You!' to society? Something not exam related, anyway.

It is telling that none of this has been reported by the Japanese media; the reality of the situation, that this is about one student with mental health problems, has not been addressed at all. Instead we have this hysterical overreaction and these draconian countermeasures. Cheating will not actually be prevented, because no real cheating has been taking place. Instead, this scandal will just create strife and pain where none is necessary. But that's okay, as seemingly the very goal of Japanese society is to make life difficult for its members. So, essentially, this is not a real or new news story after all. Just the Japanese being predictably nasty to each other. Nothing new here, move along folks.

As to how Aicezuki feels about the media frenzy he has created, whether he is aghast or delighted at the consequences of his actions, it is difficult to say. Perhaps he is consumed with shame and shock; or perhaps he views his actions as testament that the individual can still make a difference in society. I get the feeling we may find out, as it looks likely that they will track him down. For punishment they may just jail him.

Or if they're feeling particularly vindictive they may make him sit the exams again.

English in Japanese Elementary Schools

2011-02-26T21:38:00.001+09:00

Starting in April, all elementary schools in Japan will teach English to 5th and 6th graders, for at least one class a week.

It's part of a government initiative to improve English throughout the country, in response to reports that Japan is close to last in a long list of countries in terms of English ability.

There are a number of reasons why introducing these classes is a terrible idea.

For starters, for the most part homeroom teachers will be teaching these classes, using the new "Eigo note", a simple curriculum designed for the purpose. A recent survey has shown that the majority of homeroom teachers lack the confidence, ability or training to do these classes. In fact, they would prefer if the classes were taught by EFL professionals. Nevertheless these homeroom teachers will be forced, many against their will, to teach a language which they cannot, for the most part, actually speak, and which they may not have studied themselves for several decades.

Ministry of Education officials stress that the "Eigo note" will not be teaching comprehensive grammar rules, but instead greetings, games and self-introductions. I am not convinced. The title itself is enough to make one wary: 'note' (meaning 'notebook) is a particularly pernicious example of the false translation that goes unchecked in Japan; its inclusion in the title does not inspire confidence in the rest of the material.

The introduction of these classes are sure to undermine the good work that foreign ALTs have been doing in elementary schools up to now. Unlike in junior high and senior high schools, until now JETs have had most responsibility for and input into elementary English classes. However, JETs can only visit one school a day, and have several (even up to 10) elementary schools to visit, plus junior and senior high schools. A typical JET may visit a school twice a month or less. This means that their teaching will now be undermined by the Japanese homeroom teachers, who will be using 'Eigo note' for their own classes, or even forcing it onto the JETs, who may or may not want to use it. They certainly should not be forced to, as the typical JET has the enthusiasm, if not the experience, to teach other stuff. Not to mention their own materials. However the threat that Eigo note will undercut what good work has been done until now is very real.

The main problem with these classes however is that they are not addressing the real problem. It doesn't matter if you give the kids 1, 2, or 2,000 classes a week in English. The system is garbage. Serving up yet more garbage is not a viable solution. The answer is to not serve garbage in the first place. When these kids get into junior high, even if they can use greetings, numbers, days of the week etc naturally, they will have the beating heart of their motivation ripped out of their chests by the jagged rusty machete of the junior high English system. Soul-destroying grammar drills, months of dry exam preparation, no actual English usage...

Like many Japanese initiatives, it is all form and no substance.

Sumo Reforms - Wrestlers now using public phones to cancel sex club visits

2011-02-22T22:14:00.000+09:00

Japan Sumo Association hails the trend as "sign of progress."

Okay, so I made the second bit up.

The sumo match-fixing scandal has caused the March tournament in Osaka to be canceled, plunging the city's red light district into despondency. A staff member at one particular hostess club in the raunchy district of Kita Shinchi says, "Sumo wrestlers drink a lot with their huge body mass. Considering that nowadays we have been losing customers, this will have a big impact on sales."

A hostess from another club is shocked by the cancellation. "Since they have massive bodies," she says, "they do not push themselves over the limit. Plus they are good tippers. I just have to sit on their laps all night; it's not much work. They were good customers."

The area is well-known for cheap sex and quick and nasty blow jobs. 'A friend of a friend' tells me that the Chinese lasses at certain clubs can be talked down to 3,000 yen for rub 'n' tug. ~~I usually have to pay more~~ I wouldn't know about anything like that.

Apparently the wrestlers turn up in groups that includes a number of attendants (tsukibito) and at least one sekitori (a wrestler in one of the top two ranks). The sekitori goes off to enjoy some 'health' with a young lady, while the attendants stay back and drink.

According to the hostess, when this year wrestlers rang to cancel reservations, they all called from public phones. "They were told not to use mobile phones."

Obviously that makes it okay then.

Not that I have the right to criticise them for going to brothels or hostess clubs. After all, sumo wrestlers aren't that attractive to most women, I guess. So fat, that, according to rumour, the top guys employ their attendants to wipe their arses for them. And now I find myself trying to get an image out of my mind: Yamamotoyama mixing it up with one of the Kita Shinchi lasses.

Too late. What I have seen cannot be unseen. Even if only in the mind.

Yamamotoyama. A man's needs are a man's needs.

Sumo Match Fixing Update - Where are those phones anyway?

2011-02-20T20:06:00.000+09:00

Well the farce that is the Japan Sumo Association's investigative probe into match-fixing continues.

As of today 8 of the 14 wrestlers and stablemasters under investigation under match-fixing allegations have still refused to hand in their phones to the investigative panel. One wrestler said that he "needs his phone because he uses it."

Why these wrestlers have not been immediately banned for life is beyond me. In addition their stables should be suspended.

In response to this refusal, the JSA agreed to 'more strongly insist that stablemasters persuade wrestlers to comply with the panel's requests'

Yeah, right, that will work!

Honestly, putting the JSA in charge of investigating match-fixing in sumo is like asking the mafia to investigate organized crime in Italy. You're asking the people who know. You just won't get any answers.

Japan Quits Whaling - Possibly

2011-02-18T20:10:00.000+09:00

Today, finally, the NHK news had a lengthy segment on the South Pacific whaling, saying that this year's whaling activities had been suspended. The Japan Fisheries Association cited "repeated harassment by the Sea Shepherd organization", a description of which Sea Shepherd would probably be quite proud. Though they're probably really depressed, as they have nothing to do anymore.

The NHK broadcast made little effort to present both sides of the story, saying that Japan has been conducting "whaling research in line with international agreement, in order to find out facts about whale numbers."

Indeed.

Japan's foreign minister Seiji Maehara was quite open about the whaling season being cut short because of Sea Shepherd, labelling the group's activities "dangerous, illegal and unforgivable."

When asked about next year, he replied "continuing research is quite difficult and the ministry will study what to do."

He also complained that despite repeated requests, foreign governments had done nothing to control or restrict Sea Shepherd's operations, allowing them to continue to "obstruct legitimate research."

Well, looks like there'll be no more whale cutlet in the cafeteria for me.

At least there won't be after they run out of whale meat. Which may take a while, as currently there are over 6,000 tonnes stockpiled. In Japan, that is, not in the cafeteria.

Although you never know. Lot of space out the back there.

Japan Quits Whaling - Or does it?

2011-02-16T19:50:00.000+09:00

Reports in Australian media today about the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antartic giving up and heading home.

An official of the Japanese Fisheries Agency is quoted as saying "The Nisshin Maru, which has been chased by the Sea Shepherd, has suspended operations since February 10 so as to ensure the safety of the crew". The Nisshin Maru is the main Japanese whaling factory ship, the centre of the fleet.

If these reports are true they represent a major victory for conservationists. For Japanese officials to actually admit that Sea Shepherd played a part in making them stop cannot be viewed as anything but a major admission of defeat. The tree-huggers at Sea Shepherd will be having a major party, lentil burgers for everyone.

I don't know how this will turn out, but I doubt that Japan would give up whaling so easily. The Japanese government thrives on adversity, and they don't stop doing something just because it is unpopular and doesn't work. On the contrary, ineffectiveness and unpopularity seem to be prerequisites for many government initiatives. Possibly the Japanese government and the JFA will revise their whaling policy in the face of unfavourable reality. But I would be surprised.

I don't think Japan should continue whaling, but not because the whales they hunt are endangered (they're not) or especially intelligent (they're not) or killed cruelly (they're not, or at least not more cruelly than other animals). Japan should discontinue whaling for different reasons. It's unnecessary, as Japanese rarely eat meat, and whale meat is just being stockpiled in warehouses. It's also unpopular overseas, and Japan, which has enough troubles in international diplomacy, shouldn't make enemies when it has no need to. In addition, whaling loses money. It's an expensive business and nobody is really interested in eating the stuff. Finally, this "cetacean research" excuse reflects very poorly upon the Japanese. Nobody likes a hypocrite.

Some Japanese argue that Japan has a tradition and history of whaling. Well, so does Australia, so does the U.S. The U.S. also has a history of slavery, and nobody is suggesting they bring that back.

Whaling Research - Pretty Tasty

Valentine's Day in Japan

2011-02-14T18:08:00.000+09:00

It's well-known that on Valentine's Day in Japan, girls give chocolate to boys. I'm not sure why this is, but a cynic might suggest it's part of a general pattern of exploitation and submission of women in Japan.

On the other hand, I would never complain about beautiful women giving me chocolate.

Too bad Japanese chocolate is pretty ordinary. Overpriced and tasteless, give me Cadbury any day.

I can't help picturing the thousands of stressed women lining up in crowded department store confectionary stores to get their 1200 yen box of chocolate wrapped and packed, only to take it home to hubby or bring it to the office and get it largely ignored - Japanese men don't like chocolate much.

Most Japanese men casually accept and forget the 'giri' (obligatory) chocolate given to them by female coworkers, students, daughters-in-law, only being interested in the 'honmei' (genuine) product handed over by women who are serious about them.

Of course the favour is supposed to be returned one month later, on White Day, when guys give chocolate to girls.

Recently the trend is for women to cut out men altogether, buying chocolate for themselves and each other. According to the Japan Times, this year 74% of women plan on giving chcolate to a female friend, called 'tomo' (friend) chocolate, but only 32% plan on buying something for a boyfriend.

I was very tempted, I confess, to twist that report and say that 74% of Japanese women indulged in wild lesbian encounters on Valentine's Day, using chocolate as an erotic stimulant.

Luckily I managed to restrain myself.

Snow in Tokyo

2011-02-11T21:15:00.001+09:00

Some have tried to claim that it doesn't snow in Tokyo but it does every year. Right now there is five centimeters outside on the street. It snows every year. I've seen it snow in April twice.

Tokyo. Uninhabitable 4 months of the year. 6 months are just about bearable. It is only pleasant for a few short weeks in July and August.

It even snows in Kagoshima, it's like Tokyo above, but the ratios are different, only two months are unfit for human habitation. The first year I had no idea what to expect: extreme cold in Sydney is 10 degrees celsius, where people die freezing in the street and news broadcasts warn people to stay indoors unless they have run out of food and are in danger of eating each other. So in Kagoshima with the first snowfall I suffered terribly. My office told me to turn on the gasoline heater but I only had the vaguest idea of what such a thing might be and no idea how to use it. When I eventually figured it out I closed all the doors and windows to my bedroom and turned it on full bore. My goal was survival. Boy, I had strange dreams that night. Only months later did I hear that the fumes could cause brain damage. Funny, I learned a lot of Japanese that winter.

The Japan Sumo Association must go

2011-02-09T21:16:00.000+09:00

It was announced yesterday by the JSA that the March bashyo in Osaka has been cancelled as investigations into match-rigging continue. This is the first time that a sumo bashyo has been cancelled since 1946.

As for the investigations themselves, the JSA has established 'an investigative panel' whose job it is to thoroughly ~~cover up~~ probe the match-fixing.

The only concrete action performed by the investigative panel so far? They sent out a survey to active rikishi and stable masters asking if they were involved in match-rigging. Well, that's bound to work! Talk about a no-prisoners attitude! Match-riggers will be quivering in their boots, wondering how on Earth they can continue to elude the JSA's iron-willed determination to pursue justice at all costs!

Meanwhile the sad degrading affair of the mobile phones continues. Police are attempting to get mobiles from the 14 wrestlers involved in this affair, and say that retrieval of deleted messages will take 1-2 months. However, so far, none of wrestlers have complied with requests to turn over their phones. Apparently, some wrestlers have bought new phones and destroyed their old ones. Can you believe it? One said that he had dropped his in water so he bought another one. Another claimed that "My wife stepped on it."

I am not making this up.

This is a real danger here, a real probability that sumo may be allowed to escape with as little loss of faith as possible. The Machiavellian beauracrats of the JSA may be prepared to sacrifice the long-term future of the sport for the protection of their short-term vested interests. Many suspect that officials may merely make cosmetic attempts at cleaning up the sport, such as firing some of those 14 wrestlers and not probing into the deeply dark desperate and disturbing underbelly of sumo.

The truth is that the inaction of the JSA demonstrates that the sport is rotten from the top down. What needs to be done is that every mobile phone and bank book belonging to every sumo rikishi be confiscated and investigated. Management and organisation of sumo should be turned over to an outside agency.

The real tragedy of this scandal is that it reflects poorly on Japan and the damage is almost impossible to undo.

Sumo: In for a rough landing

Do Japanese have longer intestines?

2011-02-07T22:54:00.001+09:00

The short answer is no.

But a surprising number of otherwise well-educated Japanese people believe this. The argument is usually presented as something along the lines of "The Japanese were traditionally agricultural people. Our ancestors didn't eat much meat, so we evolved a longer intestine to digest grains and vegetables." The idea is usually presented as a contrast to Westerners, especially Americans, who are said to eat much more meat. It is also sometimes used as part of an argument that Japanese should eat less meat. In general, the Japanese intestine is said to be one metre longer than other intestines, or even 1.5 times longer.

Well, where to begin with such a claim? There seems to be little definitive information available on racial differences in intestinal length on the net, though plenty of people have been asking the question. There used to be a wikipedia article, but it was deleted, seemingly because of lack of evidence. The belief is certainly a prime example of nihonjinron, the theory that Japanese are in some way unique, and by implication superior, in various cultural, physical and mental characteristics.

It seems (to me anyway) to imply that people in other countries are more carnivorous, and by extension more aggressive or violent. It was famously presented as a given fact by the Japanese minister for agriculture in Tsutomu Hata in 1987 when arguing against American beef imports. Although in the resulting furore he lost his job, he was possibly only repeating what most Japanese perceive as common wisdom. Around the same time it was claimed that Japanese snow was different, which was used to justify slapping a tariff on imported French skiis.

The theory that Japanse intestines are longer as an adaption to eating more grain and less meat seems superficially plausible. Westerners do, in fact, eat more meat than Japanese, who even today tend to have a diet rich in seafood and vegetables. However, the theory is actually specious and pretty easily dismissed.

For one thing, the adaption aspect of this is decidedly dodgy. Although human evolution has continued since the invention of agriculture (for example the spread of lactose tolerance through European populations), the lengthening of the human gut by a metre or more seems to be quite a stretch (as it were). Gut tissue is metabolically expensive. An extra meter of it would require considerable resources, and some other body organ would suffer to provide the space. Even if this were possible, it would imply massive selection pressure. Actually it is theorized by some evolutionary scientists that reduction of the gut associated with increased meat consumption may have allowed early evolving humans to devote greater metabolic energy to brain growth and maintenance, thus preciptating 'a great mental leap forward'. This is known as the "expensive tissue hypothesis". Funnily enough, no Japanese person has ever suggested to me that their intestinal lengthening may have been accompanied by brain size reduction. You probably won't find many references to brain shrinking in popular Nihonjinron books and articles.

Secondly, it is not as if the Japanese diet was really that peculiar. Sure, recently American or European populations have been eating more meat, but go back a few hundred years and common people in agricultural societies all over the world were subsisting on grains, vegetables, and much smaller amounts of protein. Meat, in Japan and elsewhere, was reserved for the nobility. This idea of Japanese 'uniqueness' just doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

Going back further, none of the various human populations in the world are especially suited to to eating a large percentage of their diet in grain form. Hunter gatherers didn't. Indeed, if you follow the Japanese reasoning to its conclusion, the Egyptians and Sumerians (now Iraqis) should have the longest intestines in the world, since they live where grain domestication started. Indeed, farming didn't come to Japan until substantially later, in about 300 BC with the Yayoi people, several centuries after the Golden Age of Ancient Greece and some 5000 years or so after domestication of the first grains in the Fertile Crescent.

All this is not to say, strangely enough, that many individual Japanese do not actually have longer intestines than Westerners. There seems to be some evidence that intestinal length may depend on an individual's diet in their lifetime, with longer intestines associated with less meat consumption. However this would be a cultural phenomenon, not a racial.

The issue is kind of frustrating because it seems like the kind of thing which should be easily testable. However it could be quite difficult research to do. Living or dead people? How do you exclude cultural factors such as diet and body size? Who do you include or exclude? Do you exclude Chinese or Koreans from the long intestine sample? If so, why? What is the standard variation in normal intestine length? How many individual guts do you need to measure to arrive at a statistically valid conclusion?

In the absence of definitive medical evidence, I would hesitate to say that the Japanese are definitely wrong about this. But it seems very likely to me that they are, and certainly a case where an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Sumo will never be the same - I hope.

2011-02-05T22:14:00.000+09:00

After the 'retirement' of Asashoryu, I thought I had finished caring about sumo completely. So I was surprised to find that I still have a reservoir of outrage and disappointment to be directed at this match-fixing scandal. It produces so much ill-will. The insult to the meritocracy of the sport, the debasement of past victories, the gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal. It is the simplest of angers: why should you support someone if you know they're not even trying?

Today it was revealed that the incriminating test messages that have ruined the careers of 14 wrestlers were obtained from two mobile phones - mobile phones confiscated from two wrestlers back in July as part of an investigation into illegal gambling. Police have announced that they will seek to obtain mobile phones from those fourteen for further investigation. And If the proportion of seven further guilty names turning up from each phone stays true, these phones could potentially implicate around 100 more wrestlers. An extraordinary number. If something like this actually happened, sumo as we know it would be over.

We can only hope. In Japan, scandals are always the tip of the iceberg, and the Japanese response is to cut off the tip and ignore the unseen ice. As for the tip itself, by the way, the traditional Japanese remedy is seppuku, ritual suicide.

Those days are over. Mostly.

It is worth noting that the baseball betting scandal only started because one rikishi, having got lucky with a number of baseball games, had the temerity to ask the yakuza for his money, because he'd made the bets through them. Funnily enough the gangsters weren't keen to pay up, instead hitting the wrestler for more dough instead. His response was to go to the police for help. So it's safe to assume that those two guys weren't the swiftest steeds in the stable, so to speak. Maybe their behaviour with bout-rigging was similiarly extreme and idiotic, and little further information will be obtained from the other 14 phones.

Maybe. Or maybe it's the tip of the iceberg.

In which case there is a chance for real reform from the Japan Sumo Assocation. Well actually, real reform will come from outside the JSA, because the JSA has known about match-rigging forever, and if the truth really comes a new organization will have to emerge.

But a chance exists. A chance to drag the sport, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth - first century. Hell, most people would settle for the nineteenth. An opportunity to reconcile the contradictions in the sport: A morally pure ascetism riven by money and drug scandals; professional athletes set up to be avatars of ancient culture and ritual; a money-making organization with tax-free status. Why does sumo pretend to be something it isn't? The sport itself has enough to offer. The excitement of the bout, the clash of the behemoths, the attraction of the ever-chaning banzuke. These things are enough. Seriously, setting yourself up as some kind of ethically infallible, quasi-religious cultural asset is always going to cause strife.

My 3-month old son expresses his anger at sumo cheats

Match-fixing Scandal in Sumo

2011-02-03T22:27:00.000+09:00

The ancient sport of sumo, already racked by a number of debilitating scandals, was yesterday rocked by a massive body blow as incontrovertible evidence for massive match-fixing came to light.

It has been an open secret for a long time that some level of match-fixing was occurring in sumo, even though the Japan Sumo Association consistently denied all allegations.

But this time the evidence is so strong that the sport may never recover.

Text messages clearly referring to match-fixing were found on the mobile phones of wrestlers which were confiscated in July during the police proble into the last scandal - involving wrestlers making illegal bets on baseball games with yakuza involvement.

The texts, which had been deleted but were restored by police, involve 11 wrestlers and 2 stable masters. And by the way, considering that the phones were confiscated in July last year, we can be sure of one thing- the Japanese police are either extremely incompetent, or extremely good at keeping secrets. Can there be any doubt that if it was technologically possible, deleted messages would not have been immediately restored, read and understood by the police?

I wonder what was happening between July and February in the offices of the National Police Agency.

Well, regardless of what took them so long, the end result is damning. One message reads, "Have I borrowed any wins from anyone? I have loaned wins only to grapplers Koryu and Yamamotoyama, right?"

Another says, "I will hit you straight in the initial charge today." Others quote amounts of money - 20, 30 50, 75, where 20 refers to 20 man, 200,000 yen, about 2300 dollars.

The faux shock displayed by the Japan Sumo Association is a wonder. Hanaregoma, the head of the JSA, who has certainly known about match-fixing his whole career, kept a straight face when he said that an emergency independent investigation would be launched. It is this level of hypocricy that is particularly galling- as if this is the first time the JSA has heard of match-fixing and will now unleash its full and pure attention.

The wrestler Koryu, implicated directly, said, "I know nothing. I have nothing to do with it," a lie so colossal that it may have knocked the Earth slightly out of its orbit and caused volcanos to erupt in Kagoshima.

This one is going to go on for some time.

Kaiten zushi - it just keeps getting better and better

2011-02-01T20:59:00.000+09:00

Kaiten zushi. For me, the most enjoyable dining experience in Japan, possibly the world.

It's cheap, nasty and the purists hate it. It's been blamed for bringing down the reputation of fine Japanese dining.

But it gets even better.

As deflation continutes its slow inexorable progress in Japan, kaiten zushi chains may be entering a price war. Currently, three major conveyor-belt sushi chains offer plates for 100 yen: Kappa sushi, Kura sushi and Akindo Sushiro. Kappa sushi recently broke the 100 yen barrier with a temporary special offering of all plates for 90 yen, Mondays to Fridays. Will the other chains follow suit?

One thing to take note of is that, even at high volume, these chains lose money on their most popular item: tuna. They make up for this by bulking out other cheaper seafood with mayonnaise and avocado. This means that when you eat tuna you are getting excellent value, value indeed that would not be sustainable if everyone just ate ...tuna.

The Japanese have been accused of over-harvesting worldwide blue fin tuna supplies. I have been told that wild tuna supplies may collapse within a decade or so if drastic cuts are not made in fishing levels. I don't know what to make of this issue. If I couldn't eat tuna I would probably leave Japan. Then again why would the Japanese government and the fishing industry jeopardise such an extraordinarily successful industry?

I've always thought that we are actually lucky to be able to eat wild fish. How often do people get to consume protein obtained from wild land sources? Not very often. Why should marine resources be any different? The idea that there is, or should be, this vast mass of wild fish out there for human consumption just seems to be absurd in the face of increasing global human food needs. In that sense, it would seem inevitable that at some point the bulk of fish consumed by people will be produced in fish farms. That seems perfectly acceptable and natural to me. Blue fin tuna has proved notoriously difficult to produce this way; for example, at one stage in their life cycle they need to chase and eat live fish. However research is continuing and is said to be promising. I look forward to the time when wild stocks will be limited and completely protected.

My favourite Japanese euphemisms

2011-01-30T20:52:00.000+09:00

Japan is a land of euphemisms, some obscure, some humourous, some insulting.

The sex industry has produced many. In a country where prostitution is actually illegal by law, but is worth 1% of the national GDP, a whole bunch of eumphemisms have emerged to prop up the facade:

Japanese word or phrase Actual meaning

health salon brothel

soapland brothel

pink salon blowjob brothel

cabaret lapdance club

delivery health outcall prostitution

love hotel                                                             sex hotel
gift dating                                                            teenage prostitution
lolita con                                                              paedophilia
telephone club                                                     teenage prostitute club
entertainer visa                                                     sex industry visa
water business                                                     hostessing
image club                                                           fancy dress sex club
happening bar                                                      orgy club
pipecut (this makes me cringe)                              vasectomy

Then there are a number of phrases whose meaning only becomes apparent over time:

language exchange                                               cross-culture dating
education                                                             brainwashing
construction                                                         make-work
restructured                                                          fired
university                                                              killing time
Yes                                                                     No
Maybe                                                                 No
It's difficult                                                           No
We'll think about it                                                No
No                                                                       Fuck off

Of course, Japan has been doing this for a long time. Here are a couple of gems from the Second World War (Of course, other governments are not immune to this kind of doubletalk, witness collateral damage):

Co-prosperity sphere                                            Empire
Comfort woman                                                     sex slave
Nanking incident                                                   Nanking massacre

Japanese T.V. Production Staff Stink

2011-01-28T21:42:00.000+09:00

Because they don't get to bathe very often.

That's the word straight from somebody in the business, a friend who works at one of the major TV studios, a production assistant who helps set up on-air interviews with economic experts. Japanese work culture in general is so severe and unforgiving, the T.V. industry in particular so competitive and cutthroat, program budgets and schedules so tight, that shows are completed in a blur of pain, stress and sleeplessness.

While the celebrites that appear on gameshows and talkshows are fresh to the studio, scrubbed and glistening with forced smiles, for the people behind the cameras it's another story. Sound and camera operators, decorators, makeup artists, production assistants, editors and directors often do 48 hour shifts. My friend described a scene where one of the floor staff, crying, begged the director for a few hours off so she could go home and sleep, as she had been working 70 hours straight. She was refused and told to work harder.

As well as a lack of sleep, production staff often have no time to eat or bathe. They live off cigarettes, coffee, and drugs. They run frantically around studios like haggard shambling zombies on meth, lurching from one excruciating deadline to the next. Mental breakdowns due to stress, fatigue and ill-health are common.

And in the Japanese summer, they start to reek pretty quick. It is not unusual for first-time 'talents' just being introduced to the business to recoil from the stench when they encounter production staff for the first time.

That's what I remember when I am exposed to the thick ocean of silliness that pours out of the tube into my living room. That's what I can't help but picture. That just off-screen, behind the camera and off to the sides, is a small army of walking undead, cadaverous and gaunt, their eyes ringed with black weariness and a homeless-like stench of sweat, stress and despair coming off them in waves.

Japanese TV 2: Being slim is the only important thing in life!

2011-01-26T23:02:00.000+09:00

Of all the terrible dross on Japanese TV, one of the worst genres has to be the "I succeeded at massive weight loss pretend to have convulsions when you see me" celebrity program.

A typical example is Majotachi no niju niji, "The Witches at 10 o'clock",which takes a collections of Japanese 'celebrities' who talk about 'personal transformation' and 'improving lives', and then demonstrate such transformation by dragging into the studio sad diseased middle-aged women who have managed to achieve massive weight loss. These women are then presented and paraded as the epitome of success and achievement. First the life story of the woman is given, with extensive presentation of 'before' pictures and videos. Then the curtain begins to raise on the 'now' reality. Next you see the celebrities responding to the transformed woman, reacting with exaggerated and concocted excitement, that, if genuine, would have to be associated with demonic possession or methamphetamine overdose. Just when the curtain is rising above the knee level, and presumably the anticipation and excitement of the home-viewing audience is rising to fever pitch - that's when they go to a commercial break!

The horror, the horror.

When you come back - if you haven't died from anticipation in the meantime - you can see the curtain rise to reveal its pitiful show, an overdressed and over made-up middle aged woman, surrounded by glitter and flashing gaudiness. A woman who, it is claimed, has lost some ridiculous amount of weight ("23 kilos in 13 weeks!") and is now beaming with beauty and happiness.

And that's the show. For all the talk of transformation and achievement, there is no mention of things that could really help women fulfill their lives- self-acceptance, education, independence. Instead success is equated with weight loss and 700 dollars worth of makeup and hair gel. Far from empowering women, such displays of desperate achievement and bulimia merely perpetuate their powerlessness, because, in the final analysis, this obession with superficial beauty panders to men and their shallowest desires. Which in Japan is the accepted path towards material security- bagging a guy to support you.

Unfortunately shows like this offer false hope, false for two reasons. Firstly, such transformations are impossible for the vast majority of women. But most importantly, men aren't looking for such absurd showgirl displays. Believe it or not, they value other things.

My wife's arse is not on fire

2011-01-24T23:38:00.000+09:00

Last night we went to a Thai restaurant in Yokosuka that we have been known to frequent. We both had the green curry, which was pretty hot for something in Japan.

So today I do my business and boy, do I have a Ring of Fire going on. Spicy going in, and spicy coming out. I mention it to the missus and she doesn't know what I'm talking about.

"That's never happened to me at all. I've never heard of that."

I thought everybody got that. But maybe the Japanese don't, or maybe only some Japanese do.

Pretty good curry though.

I don't know who I am

2011-01-22T21:00:00.000+09:00

Sometimes. When I talk with my Japanese family.

The Japanese in general refrain from using pronouns such as 'I' or 'You'; to determine who did what to whom you often have to rely on context. In this way the national preference for indirectness and ambiguity can be maintained. So for example, somebody might say, in Japanese,

"Went to the bank" which you would interpret as "I went to the bank". This practice alone can be tricky enough for a non-native speaker to deal with. I have had many a conversation with my wife where I was never quite sure who the agent was.

When I was dating my wife, she would not only use no pronouns, she would not use my name. Far from calling me "My darling", "Snugglepumpkin", "Love Rocket", "Orgasm Machine" etc, nicknames which I believed I had the right to expect, she would refer to me...not at all. This left me rather confused at times.

After marriage she has begun to use my name a little more frequently, but now she also occassionally refers to me as 'I'. That is, the Japanese masculine word for 'I', boku. I can even get away with calling her watashi, the Japanese feminine word for 'I'. So a conversation may go something like this:

"What video do I (you) want to watch?
"I'm (you're) okay. It's up to you (me).
"So what about me (you)?"
"That's what I (you) want to know"
"Why can't I (you) make up your (my) mind?
"Whose mind?"
"This conversation is going round in circles"
"I think that's the point"

Her whole family is confusing. They refer to themselves in the third person. For example,

Sayaka: "Sayaka likes this. Sayaka wants to eat this everyday."

But at other times she rufuses the third person when it seems most appropriate. For example, when my son was born, and the family was gathered around the hospital bed, my sister-in-law expressed the opinion the baby looked like his mother. But she didn't say "He looks like his mother", or "He looks like your wife", while gesturing to me, or "He looks like you", while looking at my wife, or "He looks like Chizuru", which is what I would have said. She merely said "He looks like my older sister", when said sister was sitting right in front of her nursing, as if her older sister lived in England and had been estranged from the family for two decades following a scandal involving a one-legged Vietnam veteran.

I don't know the source of all these confusing idiosyncrasies. Maybe it has something to do with the toilets.

Japanese is leading the world...in toilet technology

2011-01-20T23:30:00.002+09:00

Recently I attended an academic conference where the keynote speaker had just arrived in Japan for the first time. As a way of warming up her audience she told them how much she had been looking forward to all the high technology that Japan had to offer, and indeed, she said, she had not been disappointed.

As I waited for her to continue I wondered what Japanese technology could possibly have impressed her. Perhaps her image of Japan had been robots, flying cars and Artificial Intelligence. But Japan is actually behind the rest of the world by a decade or more. Manufacturing, Japan's greatest industry, peaked about 1995 and will continue to decline as China builds more and more of everything in the world. The country is decades behind in developments in education, finance, politics and the environment. And as for culture, philosophy and social science, Japanese progress stopped in about ... 1615.

Even in areas like phone technology, where until recently Japan has led the world, domestic companies have been rattled by foreign innovations like the Iphone. So given that the landscape here is more 1984 than Bladerunner, I wondered what could have impressed our keynote speaker.

Turns out it had been the toilet in her hotel room.

The Last Bastion of Japanese high technology. Well, she had a point. A Japanse toilet with all the wingdits is certainly a technological wonder. A panel on the right hand side has so many buttons you can have fun for hours, and a complex instruction manual is often printed under the lid of the toilet. There's bidet for your bottom, another one for the ladies, both with adjustable pressure, some with 'pulses', some indeed with pulses of different patterns. A deodorizer. Sensors to detect when you have finished, so the loo will flush automatically. If you are lucky, a blast of warm air will make toilet paper completely unnecessary.

And now, apparently there are now increasing numbers of 'toilet games' attached to male urinals. These games include a virtual display that the man must 'erase' by using his urine stream as eraser; and a machine that measures the pressure of urine and judges your performance against the previous user. There's also a game with a 'target' that you have to aim for; scores are kept and displayed above the urinal.

I have yet to encounter any of these games but rest assured when I do you will get a full report.

Back to the standard toilet. There's also a 'Sound of the Princess' button, ('ote hime') which has to be one of the weirdest things on the planet. It seems that Japanese women were embarrassed by the sound of ...their pee hitting the water...and were continuously flushing the toilet in order to cover up that sound. So, in the interest of water conservation, toilets are often installed with speakers that play a recorded flushing sound; this is the Sound of the Princess. Nowadays you can even find them in male toilets.

I have always found the 'ote hime' abhorrent and ridiculous. For one, designing, building, installing, using and servicing these machines must be expensive in money and resources. The resources used would certainly include water, as, for example, considerable amounts of water are used in energy production. Secondly, it doesn't even sound like real flushing, it just sounds like a kind of computer-produced white noise half blurred by static. It could never fool anybody.

But the worst part of the Sound of the Princess is its sheer naked absurdity. Who are these women who are embarrassed by the sound of pee hitting water? Why aren't they getting treatment and counselling? What do they want us to believe? That they don't pee? That they are going into the cubicle to read a novel or meditate or smoke a joint or escape through an air vent because they are being chased by Chinese spies that want to steal their DNA and combine it with that of a chimpanzee and make a monstrous hybrid with superhuman strength that can take over the world? What kind of women are they? Do they believe that other women can be convinced that they don't have bodily functions, that they are angels or androids?

This absurd primness, this affected modesty is a cancer in Japanese society. Fear of embarassment affects not only toilets, but sexual and social relations, marriage rates, even language learning success. It helps explain why the Japanese put up with so much and complain so little, and thus end up with such substandard housing, education, working conditions and governments.

On the other hand, you do get great toilets.

Sex-crazed Japanese women?

2011-01-18T22:49:00.000+09:00

As my old karate teacher, Mr Miyagi, repeatedly told me:

Every action results in an equal and opposite reaction.

He was referring to the practice of using an opponent's momentum against them during a fight, but he may as well have been talking about the rise of the carnivorous woman, the nikushokukei joshi (肉食系女）, the natural counterpart to the herbivorous man.

Japanese media is running reports of the growing propensity for Japanese women to to freely enjoy sex just as men do. According to sex writer Yukio Murakami, "Even with steady boyfriends they'll still approach men at train stations as the evening's last train approaches. The rationale behind such behavior is rooted in simple sexual desire..."

"Most of these ladies", he continues, "aged in their late 20s to late 30s, do not ask for financial compensation. They are simply looking for excitement."

A similiar typer of woman can be spotted in Shibuya, especially the center-gai area. According to one female writer, "Girls with flexible jobs roam around during the day and give signs, such as a wink, to handsome guys. They approach boys of their liking by saying, "I don't need money so let's go straight to a love hotel."

While it has been known for a decade or more that Japanese women are becoming more assertive, socially confident and financially independent, Murakami attributes this recent upsurge in carnivoralism to a specific cause: “While they say it is due to sexual liberation, that is nominal. The reality is that they see the unease with North Korea and China’s aggression and find it worrisome. Their maternal instinct is making them aggressive in wanting to leave behind more offspring.”

Well, obviously. Ask not what your country can do for you, but...

By the way, I am sure I am not the only one who experienced frustration at the lack of naming of those train stations.

Robots teaching English in Korea

2011-01-17T23:29:00.000+09:00

Deep in the South Korean countryside, in the town of Daegu, 30 robots are now teaching English to elementary schools.

Only not really.

They are about a metre high with a TV screen for a face, and they move around the room singing songs, playing games and reading books. The robots, which display the avatar face of a caucasian woman, are remotely controlled by teachers in the Phillippines, who can see and hear the children at the same time.

So what it comes down to is...outsourcing.

Which is not a bad thing. Just economics.

The students are responding well to the friendly-faced machines, and administrators are pleased that the robots don't need sick leave, insurance, holidays, and won't "leave in 3 months for a better-paying job in Japan." In addition, officials who want to expand the program say, the machines can be an efficient tool for many people who feel nervous about conversing with flesh-and-blood foreigners.

Which is a clue as to why the whole program is a farce.

In Korea and Japan, there is already a huge gap between classroom English and real life communication. Having non-humans teach the class turns this gap into an unbridgeable chasm. If students feel uncomfortable with sympathetic, trained human teachers whose goal is to lead students to language understanding, then they will be completely lost in the face of real world communication complexities. Intimate, human to human interaction is crucial to learning a foreign language. It's a difficult slog, two steps forward one step back, a world of embarrassment and miscommunication where social skills are as important as language aptitude.

That's not to say that robot teachers may not become more and more popular in countries like Japan, where actual communication with native speakers is rarely the goal. In the Japanese English education system, efficacy is not necessary. Hence the growing popularity of computer-assisted language learning in general, expensive programs which are designed to remove the human element and inevitably lead to failure.

Japan Then, Japan Now

2011-01-15T21:35:00.000+09:00

Tokyo 1860

Ii Naosuke, de facto ruler of Japan, and architect of the shogunate's recent resurge in power, was leaving Edo castle through the Sakura gate on a snowy March morning. He had been warned his enemies sought his death, but he had a retinue of 26 swordsmen, followed by 40 foot-soldiers.

Outside the gate the procession was ambushed by 18 pro-emperor lordless samurai. In the ensuing melee most of Ii's men were slaughtered. Ii was stabbed through his palanquin; and his head was cut off and displayed on the point of a katana by his assassin, Arimura Jizaemon, a young samurai from what is now Kagoshima.

Tokyo 2010

Yasuhito Sekine is a member of a new generation of mild-mannered, sensitive Japanese men known as "herbivores." His eyebrows are perfectly groomed. He works for an Internet service provider and operates Sweets Club, an online group for men who like desserts. Set up in January last year, it already has over 1,000 members who congregate - online and inperson - to debate the virtues of different brands of strawberry shortcake.

Japanese men not interested in sex

2011-01-14T21:19:00.000+09:00

The sexual drive, one of our most basic biological urges, and a species survival imperative, is becoming increasingly absent in Japanese men...

According to survey research recently released by the Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry, Japanese men of all age groups are becoming less and less interested in sex. Among men aged 16-19, 36 percent are not interested or actually averse to it. Among men 20-24, the figure is 21 percent. This is weird enough. The really alarming thing is that the percentages have doubled since the last survey was done, in 2008. At this rate there will be no sex in Japan at all in 10 years...

I don't know why Japanese guys no longer have the urge to chat up beautiful women, woo them with wine, wit and flowers, invite them back home, lick every inch of their gorgeous nubile curvy creamy little quivering bodies, and then shag them until they make noises like Chewbacca and quiver like it's 20 degrees below zero.

I certainly do.

The phenomenon of guys who are not interested in sex is apparently linked with the trend of the soshokukei danshi, young men who live passive lifestyles and are not interested in chasing women, preferring more feminine pursuits. Soshokukei danshi is usually translated as 'herbivorous men', though personally I prefer the term 'a bunch of hopeless pansies who need to be given 40 lashes and made to fight off packs of starving wolves in a 9000 BC wilderness, then be forced to kill and eat each other in order to survive.'

That will teach them what it is to be men.

Maybe.

To me Japan is a country where men and women can't relate to each other, or don't know how, or don't want to. Or something.

In my classes of 18, 19, 20 and even 21-year-olds, men and women sit on opposite sides of the room, as if they were 14-year-olds at a school dance. On trains, hot girls, impossibly hot girls, girls so hot they break the laws of physics, will walk down the carriage attracting not a glance from the young men, a lack of libido and level of obliviousness or disinterest that in a heterosexual male could be explained only by...I don't know, perhaps late stage cancer or an imminent suicide attempt.

And these guys are not gay. Or at least, not gay in the sense of sleeping with other men. If they were, there would be so much bum-shagging going on that the entire country would be doing nothing else. Yokohama would have a bigger gay scene that Sydney, San Francisco and the entire Catholic priesthood combined.

It's not as if they have much to look forward to I guess. Their fathers, their role models, come home at 11 burnt out and exhausted from a day and a lifetime of small dreams and smaller achievements. And in Japan that is success, what you strive for in a rigid and unforgiving system, what you are told will be your future if you work hard and you are lucky.

So in that sense it is hard to blame Japanese men if they seem to lack motivation.

But still. To not be interested in sex. With Japanese women.

Just about constitutes a crime against humanity that does.

Mommy's Boys

2011-01-13T20:46:00.002+09:00

Japan...land of gorgeous women...and mommy's boys.

According to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 79.4 % of Japanese men aged 20-24 live with their parents.

For guys aged 25-29, the figure is 64 percent.

Men aged 30-34, 47.9 percent.

And even for men aged 35-39, 41.6 percent still live with their mommies and daddies...getting their mommies to wash their underwear for them...unable to take a girl back to their place for seduction, with no knowledge of household finances or how to pay a gas bill, probably unable even to cook for themselves.

No wonder the fertility rate is so low.

When will these chumps grow up and get a life?

Not moving out of the family home delays adulthood indefinitely. The trials and tribulations that accompany the first hesitant steps of independence are a necessary trial of passage for your twenties...if you don't experience them, you can never really attain the maturity necessary to form adult relationships; you will not discover your personal strengths, weaknesses and inclinations; and you will be unable to develop the confidence and abilities to assume your place in society, let alone cope with adversity. The process takes a decade or more.

The phenomenon where many Japanese get to avoid this phase in their lives accounts to a large extent for the infantilism of many Japanese individuals. The average 30-year-old Japanese man is unable to comment on politics, unable to flirt with a woman, unable to assert his own opinion, unable to cope with violence or emergency, unable to make eye contact with a stranger, unable in many cases to use a washing machine.

The Guys At The Front Gate

2011-01-05T15:53:00.002+09:00

Whenever I am tempted to imagine that Japan is not a desolate hell of waste, despair and useless stupidity, I simply picture The Guys At The Front Gate.

By the front gate of the unversity where I work there is a building that functions as a guard house. Inside there are a number of men. When the university is open that number is never less than 2 and usually 4 or 5. Even when the university is closed there is at least one.

There function is to greet visitors and hand out keys. Officially, office keys are kept with them (on a large hook-covered board in the guardhouse), and handed out to academics as they come in in the morning, and taken back at the end of the day. Naturally the system is meaningless as everybody actually has their own copy of their room key (actually a necessity if you share rooms as I do). Nevertheless TGATFG derive immense satisfaction from handing out and taking back in these keys and placing them onto the correct numbered hook.

Apart from that they do nothing. They are dressed in suits and provide an appearance of professionalism (noticeably in contrast with what I know of class content). Oh yeah, they also help with directions. But most of the time they literally do nothing except fight off boredom. They even appear to be too braindead to perve at the pretty students walking by. And even at the busiest times, when somebody is coming into work every five minutes at 8 o'clock in the morning, there is never enough 'work' to occupy more than one of them. I have seen them spy me, 100 meters away, on the other side of the railway tracks waiting for the crossing gates to open; one of them will take my room key off the hook, hand it to his assistant standing 10 centimeters away,who will then pass it to the designated 'key distributor' who is waiting for me. Then they will wait for me to walk up, greet me and hand over the key.

I used to be upset at the waste of time and money this was, that half a dozen middle-aged-men receive full-time employment for doing something so superficial and so unnecessary. For providing a service to visitors that could be more simply provided with a good map. To me it seemed to scream a failed enterprise, a level of institutionalized inefficiency that would make me refuse to send my own children there.

But nowadays it becomes increasingly difficult to care.

So this evening I spent 15 minutes on the web. According to Wikipedia, there are 923 million undernourised people in the world, and every 5 seconds a child dies of hunger. And according to worldlegacy.org, half a cup of food (two meals) can be provided to a starving person, including transportation and administration costs, for less than 1 cent, by the United Nations World Food Program.
I don't know exactly how much these guys are paid, but the average salary in Japan is 3.7 million yen a year, about 45000 dollars. Even if we assume their salary is significantly less than that, say $35,000, well, with the salary paid to just one of these guys...

You could feed 9589 starving people. Every day.

Just something to think about tomorrow as I greet TGATFG with a sunny 'Good morning'.

My baby sees ghosts

2011-01-03T17:10:00.002+09:00

According to my wife anyway.

Apparently my boy has been known, for minutes at a time, to stare intently into space, as if looking at someone who can't be seen by anybody else, and often accompany this staring with laughter or happy gurglng sounds.

This behaviour, claims my wife, can readily be explained by the presence of ghosts. She told me that at these times my baby boy is being visited by the spirits of his dead ancestors. Or to put it slightly less shamanistically, by his grandma (on my side) or grandpa (on hers), who are coming to say hello and get to know him. When I asked why she or I couldn't see the ghosts, she told me matter-of-factly that our baby's soul or spirit was still 'pure' and thus able to see spirits of the dead.

Although obviously I have my doubts, it's a remarkably satisfying idea. I would very much like to introduce my child to my absent parents and grandparents. To see them get to know him and contribute in their own way to his upbringing and his experience.

I've come across this idea in various forms in Japan, the belief that a child can be introduced to deceased ancestors, or that those ancestors are physically present in some way. For example, it is common for newborns to be brought to graves and formally introduced in a little speech. And during obon, the festival in summer, spirits of departed ancestors are supposed to visit household altars. I also vividly remember a student who told me she took a radio to her family cemetery on the same day each year, so that her grandfather could listen to the baseball final.

My wife's story, and perhaps some intuition of my own mortality sharpened by the birth of my son, has reminded me of Carl Jung's theory that belief in the Afterlife was necessary for human psychological health after middle age. He was very big on the 'personal journey' that ended in 'individuation' and to him somebody approaching his own death had better believe in the Afterlife if they were to be happy in any way. Makes a kind of sense. If just blackness awaits, seems a bit grim after all.

Don't buy this myself, but.

A New Year and a Baby

2011-01-01T16:02:00.002+09:00

Well, I am still in Japan and still have reason to write. Japan remains peculiarly repellent, infantile and intellectually vacuous. But personally, I have much to be happy about.

We have a baby. Born a couple of months ago, he has turned me into a walking cliche - I am shamelessly devoted to him, guilty of speaking hours of baby talk, convinced he is the cutest and most lovable thing in the world. My feelings have genuinely surprised me, because I had thought, inasmuch as I had thought about it at all, that I would more or less ignore him until he could do something...like talk or walk or learn. But I have found that even his current modest abilities- the power to cry, feed, poo, pee, laugh, gurgle- seem to me sublime achevements worthy of global recognition.

Fatherhood is a funny thing.

So the wife went back to her hometown to have the baby, which I highly recommend. In fact, the whole experience of the hospital stay, support and nurse care was very positive. The Japanese know what they are doing in this area. Possibly because they have so few babies in her hometown, they were very prepared for mine. The hospital faciltities were excellent. She had her own room, a marvellous room, twice the size of our living room in Yokohama, with attached toilet and sink. The clinic seemed to me to be superb. The staff were professional, kind and attentive - they seemed to have unlimited time and unlimited patience. The nurse who attended my wife the evening after she gave birth, well, I am in awe of her support, advice and practical help. I am, in general, suspicious of things Japanese, but this clinic put me completely at ease. She stayed 5 nights, I was in the room for 2 of them. As for the cost, the usual practice in Japan is for the fee of about 4500 dollars to be taken straight out of the government grant of the same amount.

As for the babe himself, I am happy he has no obvious defects, no third ear, no flapping cowl, no tail, no alien implant under the skin behind the ear. Hard to ask for more at this stage.

The wife's relatives and friends, who came in droves, all had their initial (and in my opinion, absurd) opinions about who he resembled and in what way. His father's eyes, his mother's lips, 30-years-dead great uncle Tsutomu's left ear. Many of these first ideas were cheerfully contradictory but nobody seemed to mind or notice. I guess it's a worldwide woman's birth hobby, this playing with guestimate looks. To me he looked (and still does) merely like a baby, less Japanese than those around him.

My suspicions that the 'who does he resemble game' is a social exercise rather than empirical observation were further confirmed during the visit of Tomiko, the clan's middle-aged and influential social matriarch. She looked at the lad and exclaimed, 'He's the spitting image of his dad'. Her three adult daughters all immediately backed her up, and by the end of the day this idea had become so fixed in the minds of my wife's relatives that it is almost impossible to locate anybody who will admit to ever having a different opinion.

When I pointed out to the boy's grandma that previous to Tomiko's visit she had maintained he looked exactly like her other daughter, the boy's aunt, my mum-in-law matter of factly said,

"That was yesterday"
"So he's changed appearance since yesterday?"
"Of course. They change every day."

Whatever. Considering the fact that there are hardly two people on this green Earth who are more dissimiliar in appearance than myself and my wife's sister, the overnight metamorphosis is noteworth indeed. Myself, rather than believe in the daily magical facial tranformation of infants, I would suggest that the belief that my son is the spitting image of me can be traced, not so much to his actual appearance, but more to the influential social position that Tomiko holds in the family.

I've even wondered whether the whole incident was just a way for Tomiko to inform me as to where the real power lays in the clan.

But I've been told I think too much.

When I sent a pic back to my mate in Yokohama, who is nothing if not an objective observer, who responded, "He just looks like a Japanese baby to me."

Sometimes I like Japan

2010-10-10T18:22:00.005+09:00

...but only when I don't leave my gaijin shell.

When I do, I invariably come across grotesque and offensive deviations of human behaviour.

Yesterday, on a trip to Yokohama and its station environs to have lunch with a friend, I was brutalized by any number of deviant and creepy manifestations, including, but not limited to...

1. An 'information counter' just outside the station, staffed by young women who were trying fervently to become mechanical automatons. They would stare meaningless into space until a member of the public approached them, then reel off their inhuman, blindly-rehearsed spiel. When the person left, they resumed their mummy-like appearance, primly inspecting the empty air about 2 metres in front of them. The whole effect was akin to some souless clockwork-driven machine, dedicated to sucking the blood and spirit out of all humanity.

2. Many instances of shallow, prim midde-aged housewives with their pampered, tiny doll-like little show dogs in their handbags. These little labrats cost thousands of dollars to buy and their owners are taking them for a 'walk'. As I walked I entertained fantasies of Japan collapsing just before Chinese takeover. When this happens, I dreamed, and the riots sweep the train stations, I will grab one of these rats and cheerfully cook it on a stick.

3. A temporary shop opening up and selling 'memorabilia' for some train station anniversary - Chinese made junk of calendars, notebooks, gadgets and toys. The creepy, geeky nerdy 'otaku' types rushing and crowding around made me think of that photo...

Japan arrests Chinese fishing boat captain...Japan releases Chinese fishing boat captain

2010-09-24T21:05:00.003+09:00

Early this month there was an incident near the disputed (and uninhabited) Senkaku islands between China and Japan. Japanese Coast Guard vessels first collided with and then impounded a Chinese fishing boat fishing within Japan's self-declared territory around the islands.

At first the fishing boat fled the scene of the collision, forcing the Japanese vessel to pursue and board the Chinese ship, and assault the crew with samurai forces.

Ok, I made up the samurai bit.

So the Japanese Coast Guard arrests the captain and crew. The crew were quickly released, but the Chinese captain was detained for the next 17 days.

Unleashing a hellfire shitstorm.

In China the islands are known as the Diaoyu islands and considered to be Chinese. In fact one of the interesting aspects of the affair is to read newspaper editorials from either side of the China Sea- or is it the Japan Sea. In Chinese newspapers the islands are "indisputably Chinese from ancient times." In Japanese editorials, however, "there is no question at all that the islands belong and have always belonged to Japan".

Which allows me to make one obvious point, a point that has not been made by the media of either country: there is a dispute and there is a question about the ownership of these islands.

So anyway in China the issue becomes a patriotic and nationalistic flashpoint. There are demonstrations outside the Japanese embassy. Internet forums explode with abuse. Several thousand people cancel tourist trips to Japan. A Japanese group is forced to pull out of a cultural dance exhibition because of security concerns. The Chinese suddenly cancel joint mineral and resource exloration plans for the islands. The Japanese ambassador is summoned repeatedly for official complaints. And just yesterday China announced the beginning of trade sanctions against Japan starting with the suspension of rare earth exports, necessary for the production of cars, mobile phones and other electronics. Chinese news reports are full of coverage of the "illegal and immoral detainment of the patriotic Chinese fishing captain."

So just today the prosecutors in charge of the case in Japan announce that the captain is to be released without charge or further prosecution of the case.

Well, to me this is

1. Very obviously the best thing to do, and

2. Very obviously due to the pressure from China on the Japanese government.

So the issue is set to dominate Japanese politics for some time. The opposition parties are saying it shows Japan to be weak-kneed and that the decision compromises its national security. They say that the decision is 'very regrettable'.

Which is easy for an opposition party to say. They don't have to deal with the second most economically powerful nation in the world, feverously nationalistic and rabidly anti-Japanese at the best of times, howling with fury just across the water and launching trade sanctions faster than you can say 'Nanking massacre'.

The funniest part of the whole business is how Japan has handled the inevitable. Even I noticed that in the last couple of days the media has been emphasising the negative aspects of detaining the Chinese captain: pictures of empty hotel rooms, frantic company employees calling rare earth suppliers in China, videos of protestors in Beijing. They were telegraphing the punch.

So when the Secretary General of the governing DPJ announces with a straight face that the decision to release the Chinese captain was 'the result of investigations and not political', well, you just have to smile at the attempt to save face.

Because if you believe that, well, maybe the Nanking massacre didn't happen after all.

In which I am a guy and about 80 years old

2010-09-19T13:42:00.002+09:00

According to Urlai at http://urlai.com/url/captaincassowary.blogspot.com

I am between 66-100 years old.

In terms of cynicism perhaps.

A guy, and most upset.

I guess they got that right

Japan's Missing Centenarians

2010-09-05T20:05:00.002+09:00

In a country famous for its long life expectancy, the dark side of longevity is emerging.

Many of Japan's oldest people, 100 years old or older, are missing.

People are officially registered as alive until proven otherwise, and with Japan's Byzantine family register system and the limited investigative powers of local governments, it is often not possible to determine if somebody is dead or alive.

At last count there were over 350 missing centenarians.

The growing scandal around the true fate of Japan's centenarians began in July when a visit by ward officials to the house of Sogen Kato, a Tokyo man believed to be 111, led to a police search of the house which revealed his mummified remains in his bed.

According to family members, about 30 years ago he had declared he wanted to become a 'living Buddha' and had retired into his room. His family had not heard from him since.

A possible explanation for the apparent lack of interest on the part of the family in the well-being of their elderly member may be related to the fact that they were drawing on pension funds that continued to be directed their way, to the tune of over 110 thousand dollars over the decades.

Kato's family are now under investigation.

No kidding.

The discovery led local government officials to search for and generally attempt to verify the existence of centenarians all over Japan.

Since then there have been nightly reports on the drama. The remains of a Tokyo woman believed to be 104 were found stuffed into her son's backpack, where they had been for more than a decade. Rumours abound of sticking grandma in the freezer so her pension can be collected.

Local media are blaming the false records of living centenarians on sloppy bureaucratic paperwork.

Among other centenarians still registered as living are a 186-year-old man in Yamaguchi prefecture.

Officials said: 'He may be dead.'

Indeed. Love the Japanese penchant for caution. After all, he may be alive, which would make him 70 years older than the second oldest living human, as old as Japan's last shogun.

New PM for Japan?

2010-09-03T07:54:00.002+09:00

Well, the revolving door prime ministership continues for this great country.

On September 14th the Democratic Party of Japan has a presidential election, with incumbent Naoto Kan (already the fifth prime minister in 5 years) facing challenger and party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa.

Nobody seems to know why Ozawa is doing this. Monumentally unpopular and rotting black with funding scandals, Ozawa nevertheless is the most powerful man in the party and a good chance to win and thus become prime minister.

Naoto Kan has had four months, and has gotten in strife merely for mentioning the possibility of raising the consumption tax. Not that more consumption tax is needed...Japan's budget could be easily balanced if they stopped concreting the countryside. Weird but true.

Ozawa is an old school bureaucratic tool, desperate to rewind the Japanese postal services privatisation process, and in general further the slide into stagnation and cultural death.

Just thought you should know.

Hatoyama goes bye bye

2010-06-02T19:31:00.002+09:00

Well, the prime minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama, resigned today. The merry-go-round of Japanese politics continues. His likely successor, Naoko Kan, will be the fifth prime minister in 4 years. It remains to be seen how long he will last.
In truth, Hatoyama had himself to blame for his disastrous run. He made a pile of unfulfillable promises while in opposition, only to fail to deliver almost all of them. The most disastrous pledge was to shift the Futenma military base out of Okinawa- how could he have thought that could happen? The Japanese have such a terminal case of the Nimbies that that base is either closing or staying in Okinawa forever.

To be fair, though, Hatoyama is a victim, just like his predecessors, of an absurd and unstable political system, with little executive power, massive gerrymandering, and inbuilt resistance to change. Resistance, that, if anything, is even more entrenced that when Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's most successful prime minister in recent history, spent all his considerable energies on the hopeless quest for real reform in Japan.

Real reform that is, unfortunately, looking less and less likely with every ineffectual and temporary leader that comes after him.

Japanese TV 1

2010-05-11T18:28:00.002+09:00

A line of B-grade T.V. talents and comedians line up to taste some soup from a spoon. The soup is being served out by an overweight unattractive woman wearing 37 layers of makeup.

As each talent comes us to taste the soup, she demands,

"Say you like me."

"I like you", he says obediently

The audience titters and giggles, the lining talents pepper the field with comments,

"He said it!"

"Unbelievable!"

"He said he liked her!"

"Really??!!"

And that was the show

A new base in Tokunoshima?

2010-05-03T17:33:00.003+09:00

The Japanese media has long been obsessed with the issue of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. And over the years simmering discontent in that prefecture was periodically heightened by a various unpleasant incidents- U.S. servicemen involved in a rape case with a local teenage girl; a helicopter crashing into a building. So when Yukio Hatoyama made an election pledge to 'look into' moving U.S. facilites out of their present locations, specifically the marine base in Futenma, many people expected...well they expected some the base at Futenma to be closed. Which is unfortunate because it is campaign pledge that Hatoyama looks unlikely to be able to keep.

Because regardless of the feelings of local protestors in Okinawa it seems unlikely that U.S. forces will be leaving the area anytime soon. Nor is it clear that they should, in the interests of both Japan and the United States. Bases in Japan provide a vital presence in North Asia for American interests. And the U.S. military umbrellas covers Japan for a fraction of the financial and social cost that would be incurred if Japan were forced to...actually provide their own defence. Not to mention the huge direct injection of money that into the Okinawan economy that that the bases represent. Unfortunately there is such a strong case of 'Not in My Backyard' fervour in Okinawa that the political and media pressure upon Hatoyama has been relentless.

The latest chapter in this sad saga is the proposal by the Hatoyama government to shift the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to the island of Tokunoshima.

Tokunoshima, 200 kilometres to the NorthEast, is actually part of Kagoshima. I've been there. Lushly tropical, it's famous for bullfights, where the bullfights square off against each other and people make bets on the winner. Naturally the whole island has erupted into vociferous protest and immense rallies are protesting the destruction of the local culture, the crime, the dirty foreign invasion

I spent a week there in the company of other JETs, cruised around, drank local shochu and sat on beaches. It's beautiful, but it's also increasingly concreted and just as closeminded as the rest of the country. And like all of Japan, slowly depopulating and rusting.

And as for those two girls I met at the cafe on the beach, those two lithe but snaggle-toothed beauties, Izumi and Harumi, those little lying two-faced flirting vixens who wouldn't return my calls and broke their promise to call me when they visited the mainland, well...

Those little slappers will get what they want when a few thousand bored and horny U.S. servicemen descend upon their little faux paradise.

The Shameful Penis

2010-04-28T19:27:00.003+09:00

So today I went to an onsen for the fist time in several months.

God it was good. Several different baths, with different solutions of mineral salts with various beneficial effects upon a tired teacher's body. Outside bath. Massage pool. Sauna.

But it occurred to me that Japanese men are ashamed of their penises. 90% of men, though otherwise completely naked, were walking around with a face cloth held discreetly over their genitals. Funnily enough, I don't seem to remember this practice when I first came to Japan some 10 years ago. Is it really a recent phenomenon?

Well, it is only relatively recently in Japanese society that the bulk of onsens have been divided into mens' and womens' sections. Pre-war it was very rare. Everybody just washed up together, a healthy and open tradition compared to the Victorian prudery of the West. But in recent decades mixed bathing has become the exception rather than the rule. Who knows why. Maybe it was in unconscious emulation of the West. Maybe a consequence of the post-war consumerist objectification of women - after all, if a woman's body is so special, you can't just give away the sight of it for free! Maybe it was a response to the growing perversity of Japanese men ... let's face it, I wouldn't want wanking lecherous 40-year-old virgin underwear-stealing mummy's boys leering at me either. Whatever the reason, mixed onsens are few and far between these days.

But why should men, Japanese or otherwise, be ashamed of their penis? Doesn't every man have one? In a room full of men, who are you gonna offend? Is each individual really of the belief that his penis is so much smaller than his companions' that it must be covered up in shame? Surely that can't be possible. There is only one possible conclusion. There must be something inherently shameful about the penis itself, so shameful that it is covered up even in a Japanese bathhouse.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that the penis is the most shameful part of the body. It is the last thing to be exposed to a lover; the most inappropriate thing imaginable to show in public, an object so taboo that I feel mildly embarrassed just writing about it. In most places in the world you'll be arrested more quickly for bringing a penis out in public than for bringing out a gun, sword, knife or rocket launcher. Hollywood movies will depict murder, assault, suicide, slavery, genocide, torture and Sarah Palin becoming president. They have no shame. Yet they won't show you a penis. Go figure.

I don't want to be ashamed of my penis. I want it to swing free. I want to feel the breeze. I want to glory in my genitalia.

I want to liberate the penis.

Running a marathon in Japan

2010-04-27T16:43:00.002+09:00

So three weeks ago I ran my first full marathon.

It had been, of course, a dream for some time.

But running a marathon takes a combination of elements that are often not always available. You need to be ready to make a big committment to training. 42 kilometres is a distance that demands respect - it cannot be done without the training. And the training takes time. A lot of time and energy and psychological wherewithal.

So you need to make that committment, a committment for several months. Running several times a week. No late Friday or Saturday nights on the booze, because you know you will just not get up the next day and train.

Yep, the training is the hardest part. 200 hundred hours or more. I have often felt sorry for people who do shorter sports- sprinters, polevaulters, gymnasts. All that training and 1 mistake can ruin it all come competition time. A figure skater who trains for years to make the Olympics only to slip on a patch of rough ice, fall over and lose years of her life. That's not an issue in the marathon, as the hardest work is done in the training and the actual day is just the inevitable result, good or bad.

So my job gives me free time, back early enough most afternoons to run, and each glorious Tuesday all my own. That became my long run, starting at 10 kms and eventually weekly in the 30s. My longest was 38. Everything after 30 hurts.

Every time.

When the day came I was confident I could finish, just keen to do as well as I could. When you put in those hours, you start thinking about what your finish time will be, because you inevitably want to get the most out of your training that you can, get the most return on the pain you have invested.

The marathon is popular in Japan. It fits well with the Japanese psyche, the paradigm of grim endurance. And make no mistake: long distance running is about putting up with pain. And the solo aspect works well too; despite their much vaunted reputation for teamwork, the Japanese are hopeless at teamsports. Teamsports require leadership and flexibility.

So on the day I was one of a mere handful of foreigners amongst 10,000 Japanese running the Sakura marathon in Chiba. It was very well-organized, staffed and serviced.

And extremely cold. The temperature never topped 6 degrees and was often close to zero. Cold even for a marathon, when in general you want it to be cold.

The start was at a stadium. The feeling in the air was quite sober, unlike the atmosphere at Western races. A few people had funny costumes or hats, including a trio dressed as Ultraman. The gun went off. We were a couple of minutes behind the starting line but microchips we were wearing recorded the exact time we cross the starting line. I was with my friend Dave. We had often trained together, and planned to stay together for a large part of the race. Unfortunately that was not to happen, as Dave has toilet troubles and after the first 5 kilometres he stepped off to pee and I never saw him again. It was like he had been taken out by a sniper in mid sentence. I shall miss him.

That left me and the entire nation of Japan. Dave had been thinking that we had been starting too fast and should slow down. Left to myself, I decided to let my body follow its own pace and speeded up slightly. I settled into my stride. I was not yet tired and I was passing people. To my surprise one of the people I passed was the 4 hour 30 minute pacemaker. One of the disadvantages of competing in a country where you miss a lot of the language is that you miss things. If I had known there were pacemakers things may have gone differently. I resolved to keep passing people until I reached the 4 hour pacemaker and stick with him. In the event I never managed that.

I passed a lot of people. Up ahead I could see one of the costumed entrants, a young man in a yellow full body lycra suit and an umbrella hat. He was my next target. I did not want to be beaten by a cartoon character. For a long time I held him in sight, but he was passing people as I was and I gained on him only slowly. At about 15 km I stopped to pee and lost a lot of ground. My pace at that time was good. I was thinking I would keep the same pace until the 30km mark and speed up if possible, finishing in a negative split. At the halfway mark there was a timer displayed on the road that read 2:03. I was cautiously optimistic about finishing in under 4 hours.

After the halfway point I started to take drinks and sweets at the rest stops regularly. Until then I had only drunk once. After about the 25km mark I was still gaining slowly on Yellow Man but now I was starting to hurt. I was familar with the feeling but I was worried about how long there was to go. After a while the gap between me and Yellow Man grew no closer even though I was still passing people. By the time I passed 30km I was in pain; my goal was merely to maintain my current pace and then see if I had anything left at the very end. I stopped to pee again; it seemed to take a long time and when I rejoined the pack the Yellow Man was 400 metres ahead.

It really began to hurt. Each kilometre marker seemed much further than the previous one. Were they lengthening the kilometre as the race went on? I concentrated on maintaining my pace. In my mind I went through quotes from the movie 300, imagining myself holding the line against the enemy. I can do this. I can do this. It was still gruesomely cold. After 35 km the pain became agony. All around me the Japanese were moaning. It was the first time I had ever heard Japanese express pain; normally they are a stoic, reticent people. I had ceased to pass runners and concentrated on holding my spot; next to me an old man grunted "Oi!", "Oi!" with every breath. The strain was etched on every face around me. I knew I would finish now and exerted all my effort into not slowing down, holding the pace. Some minutes were easier than others. I swore I would never do this again. My left knee, never in good condition, was a ball of flame. The last 3km seemed to take forever. People were lining the course cheering us on. I just wanted it to end. The last 400 meters was a hill climb back up the stadium. It was Hell, but it was a short Hell and a different Hell to the flat. I shift and place my weight on the balls of my feet and keep running.

My finish time was 4:05. I wonder if I could have done better but I doubt it. When I finished I had nothing left. Nothing at all. I don't know if there will be a next time but if there is I would like to get under 4 hours. But I am not sure; when I started writing this I was excited about doing another marathon but near the end the memory of the pain came back and I have my doubts.

After the race I waited for Dave to finish (toilet stops had cost him 25 minutes) and we ate and ate. One of the good things about a marathon is you can eat anything you want when you finish. You have just lost 2 kilograms after all. And the fast Japanese food available was good: fried chicken and fried noodles, hotdogs and okinomiyaki pancakes.

I think I'll start training again.

More on whale meat

2010-04-05T09:33:00.003+09:00

...being served in the university cafeteria.

I took this pic of クジラカツ (whale cutlet) at my university cafeteria. Didn't taste bad either; better than the curry. It cost about 6 dollars, a bit pricier than their usual fare of noodles and sliced beef on rice.

In universities in the West it would be inconceivable to serve up whale meat in the cafeteria. There would be riots and demonstrations. You would probably get less of an outcry if you put baby meat on the menu.

Part of the difference is the Japanese attitude toward whaling, but another part is the political atmosphere at universities here. There is none to speak of. No gender studies departments pushing political correctness. No campus clubs advocating action to protect the environment. No schools of thought, inside or outside classrooms, looking at society or history or politics from a leftist perspective.

The whale cutlet was consumed on a table surrounded by other tables full of students from the kendo club, the football club, the dance club, students studying chemistry, students applying makeup, students sitting in their class groups, students glancing shyly at me, students talking about teachers or tennis or the food or their boyfriends.

It is true that the combative atmosphere of the 80's, let alone the 60's, is fading from Australian universities. Full fee paying students have sacrificed for their place in the system and are therefore invested in protecting that system rather than rocking the boat.

But my Japanese university is ridiculous. Can't somebody be upset about something?

Please???

A good thing about Japan - it's not religious!

2010-03-13T23:12:00.006+09:00

Yes, Japan has many good points and I've just remembered one of them!

Japan is not a religious country.

Well, that's not entirely true. A vague but deep sense of superstition pervades the culture. Many people believe in ghosts, spirits, and good luck charms. They will go to a shrine to pray for health, or assistance is passing university exams, or help in getting pregnant.

But their beliefs are not dogmatic. A typical person will cheerfully go to Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple in the same month without seeing a contradiction. Nor is there one. Indeed there is a kind of informal overlap between major religions here...Shinto looks after birth and childhood; you get married in a church with a (usually fake) Christian priest, and your funeral is a Buddhist ceremony. Nobody gets angry. And then, if asked, people will say 'there's probably no God anyway.' I have even read that most Buddhist and Shinto priests don't actually believe in God or an afterlife - it's just a job.

Nobody really takes religious belief seriously here. The conflicts of the Middle East and the ravings of the American Bible Belt are viewed with bemusement or dismay. And best of all, religion has not forced its hypocritical slimy tentacles into government, or education, or morality. Sex doesn't come with the religious guilt it does in the West. You will not go to hell for sleeping with the soccer team - you will just get gossiped about.

The lack of strong religious belief in Japan is one of its best points. Probably contributes to low levels of violence and a general feeling of physical safey.

And I think this is funny:

Japanese Unsatisfactory Answers to Simple Questions

2010-03-05T22:31:00.002+09:00

.

This happens a lot, and is very frustrating. Something comes up, arouses curiousity. You ask why something is the way it is, but the answer you receive...never fails to unimpress, and is so seemingly unconnected with what the real explanation must be that you are left bewildered that such an answer could be given. You gradually begin to realise one important aspect of the bigger picture: Japanese don't ask questions, and if they do, they don't question the answers. They just accept them.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

"Why are there so many vending machines?"

"Because they are very convenient."

Ten for every block? Three selling cigarettes and drinks...outside a 24-hour convenience store?

"Tokyo has 20 million people. Whey don't the trains run 24 hours? It would stimulate the economy."

"They need to do maintenance."

I suspect the limited train hours have more to do with the influence of the taxi industry than maintenace schedules.

"Why does the beach close at the end of August? It's 36 degrees celsius."

"Because it's cold."

Maybe cold has a different meaning in Japanese.

"Why can't I swim at the beach at the bottom of my street?"

"Deep water."

This was the answer I got on my second day of JET. It took 20 minutes of 4 office people looking through dictionaries to come up with it.

"Why can't I teach this class English?"

"Because they are studying for their English test."

The saddest thing is, once you understand the system, this makes perfect sense.

"Why does the principal spend all his time doing the gardening?"

"Because he is very busy."

"Why can't the kids bring food from home?"

"Because they can't bring food from home"

"Why do I have to carry this gaijin card around with me?"

"Because many foreigners are criminals."

That makes me feel great

"Why do Japanese people spend so much time at the office?"

"Yes, it's difficult."

And my favourite:

"Why did Japan attack America duing the war?"

"There was a war with America?"

Japanese Hobbies #4: Sleeping

2010-03-03T21:45:00.002+09:00

Z
Z
Z
ZZZZ

"What did you do on the weekend?"
"I slept."

If I had a dollar for every time I have had this conversation, I would have enough money to sleep every day for the rest of my life myself.

I am not sure why the Japanese sleep so much and do other things so little. Perhaps it's because so many things were organised for them when they were growing up that they never had a chance to find out what they really like to do. Or maybe it's because there isn't much else to do (pachinko anyone?). Or maybe what they claim is correct, that they are so tired from studying or working that any free chance they get is spent sleeping.

But I am skeptical of this claim. Partly because housewives and students (who hardly lack free time) also confess that sleeping is a hobby. And partly because a lot of the time they are not really working, just pretending. Indeed, workers often combine sleeping and working. The head of the Board of Education in my old town Nejime would sleep the afternoon away, his soft snores drifting through the partition from his office. At 4.30 I would head out the door, asking if he was going to go home soon himself.

"I'm sorry. I have to do overtime."

As an aside, it is truly extraordinary, a genuine Wonder of the World, that the Japanese can sleep so easily. Not only do they sleep on trains coming home at night, dozens in a carriage, head lying against shoulder in a cute and slovenly row, they also sleep on trains at 1 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. They sleep on trains standing up, one hand holding the strap, swinging around 360 degrees and back again as the train goes around corners.

My adult students tell me they sleep through business meetings.

"Why?" "How?"

"Because it's warm and I'm tired"

My lover will sleep one metre from the TV blaring full blast. Her mouth lies open and I take photos and put them on my screensaver. She gets angry, but she laughs as well.

My students are so good at sleeping through my class that they can do it while holding a pen the whole time, thus diverting suspicion. I swear to God that I have seen several of them do this and take notes at the same time.

I have seen my friend in Kagoshima hold a conversation while sleeping. No words, just murmurings, but the intonation is spot on and he responds to questions. He even repeats his murmur if he receives no reply.

All this talk of sleep has led me to believe that I will go to bed. I leave you with a quote from D.H. Lawrence:

"And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created."

No Tsunami in Japan this week

2010-03-02T18:37:00.002+09:00

Well, on Sunday the approaching tsunami from the Chilean earthquake unleashed... a tsunami of media panic. At the very least emergency broadcasts dominated half the screeen of the program you were watching on TV; and most stations were devoted entirely to tsunami reports.
The broadcasts repeated again and again the list of prefectures expected to be hit as well as the expected time of arrival and height of the tsunami. I kept missing the details for Yokohama (if they were given) but the height estimates ranged from 3 metres to 1 metre. But all reports stressed one thing in common: noone, under any circumstances, was to go near the water; you were to 'seek shelter' until told otherwise. Even the prime minister was brought on to tell everybody to stay away from the sea.

So of course I go down there to have a look. Not only is there nothing to see, the beach the seaside park are buzzing with the usual fishermen, joggers, and walkers.

Japan disappoints once again. When I get home I find all the size estimates have been downgraded to '60 centimetres', even a life-threatening '20 centimetres'.

Meanwhile there was no mention, in the midst of this paranoid media panic disaster meltdown, of...Chile, where upwards of 700 people were killed and hundreds are trapped under the rubble. But hey, who cares about them?

Sumo R.I.P.

2010-02-06T12:18:00.003+09:00

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the last Japanese yokozuna reigned and the years of the slow, irrecoverable decline into irrelevance of this ancient and noble martial sport, there was an age undreamed of, when gleaming behemoths clashed across the land like shining gods beneath the stars - Kaio, Kotomitsuki, the iceman Hakuho with his steely grace, sad-eyed Bulgarian Kotooshu, Harumafuji with his supreme craft, the giant Baruto with incomparable strength. Matching their skill and power against each other in the eternal quest for greatness and immortality. But the proudest warrior of all was Asashoryu, reigning supreme from the dreaming steppes of the west. From the land over the sea he came, the Mongolian, black-topknotted, fire-eyed, mawashi-clad, sword in hand, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic girth, to tread the sacred clay of the dohyo under his bare feet."

We shall remember him.

The Day Sumo Died

2010-02-05T12:07:00.004+09:00

Sumo died yesterday.

Asashoryu, the yokozuna grandchampion, was forced to retire yesterday.
After a meeting with the Japan Sumo Association he announced his retirement at a press conference. And though at the conference he said he was retiring as he "had caused a lot of trouble in the world", there can be no doubt it was pressure by the JSA that brought on the retirement against his will.

On January 16th Asashoryu was involved in an incident at a nightclub in Tokyo. Turns out he got drunk and punched someone, breaking a guy's nose. Admittedly this is inappropriate behaviour for someone in his position...but being forced to retire is hardly fitting punishment. It is just more evidence of the JSA being unhappy with the reality of modern sport.

The truth is that Asashoryu has been 'a bad boy' for a long time and the conservative JSA (not to mention conservative Japanese in general) have always been unhappy with him. In 2003 he was disqualified in a bout for pulling the hair of an opponent (probably accidentally). The disagreement continued in the locker room and apparently he smashed the guy's car mirror. He also drew condemnation for raising his fists in triumph after a recent tournament victory.

Asashoryu is a spirited guy. He gets angry. He often throws opponents out of the ring instead of pushing them. He has a big ego.

In other words, he is kind of like...a top athlete. And God knows that sumo, a dying sport trapped in meaningless ritual, ignored by Japanese youth, and straighjacketed by declining revenues, needs a bit of life. A bit of bravado. A personality. In any other sport his normal behaviour would receive little comment and his worse excesses would get him warnings or a fine. In Australia, cricketers abuse each other and umpires regularly. As for footballers, newspaper headlines are full of rapes, bashings, and drug orgies. And those guys get warnings and suspensions. Sumo has lost its greatest athlete because one guy got punched.

Of course the Japanese media is claiming this latest incident is the final straw after years of behaviour not befitting a yokozuna. But some of the things Asashoryu got in trouble for in the past are ludicrous, and reflect more on the punishers than the punished. For example last year he committed the unforgivable, mortal go-to-hell sin of playing golf with other Mongolian wrestlers just before a tournament. And his most famous transgressiion was 'feigning injury' and missing an unimportant regional tournament to go back home to Mongolia for a visit, where he was filmed playing soccer and seemingly not so injured after all. For this he was banned for the next two tournaments. This is a punishment akin to banning Roger Federer from two Wimbledons for failing to turn up to the Queen's tournament. The suspension led to a bout of depression and poor performance from which Asashoryu only recovered last year. Then he staged a come back and the bouts between him and rival yokozuna Hakuho were the highlights of each tournament.

The biggest loser in this sad epic is not Asashoryu, of course. It is not even the JSA, whose members must live with throwing away the best wrestler they will ever see in their lives. The real losers are sumo fans and the Japanese public in general, who are faced with yet more evidence that their leaders and role models are atavistic and out-of-touch dinosaurs dooming their culture to irrelevance.

Asashoryu was an incredible talent. Speed, strength and skill in perfect balance. At his best he was untouchable. In 2005 he won all six tournaments, several without losing a single bout. He also won the first tournament this year in decisive form, making the iceman Hakuho look decidedly fragile, and moving into 3rd place on the all-time list for most title wins. He is only 29 years old, and certainly has several years of top form potentially in him. Now we shall never know if he could have been the greatest sumo rikishi ever. Who will take the next tournament seriously, when Hakuho or Harumafuji lifts the Emperor's Cup, and the huge ghost of Asashoryu looms over everyone, unfought and unforgotten?

Shame, Japan, Shame.

Japanese Hobbies # 3: Playing pachinko

2010-01-01T16:17:00.007+09:00

So what is your image of Japan?

A romantically beautiful garden in tune with the surrounding environment, with cherry blossom trees sighing in the soft wind next to a carp-filled pond?
How about a wooden training dojo, alive with the thuds of kendo sticks and the thwacks of archery shafts hitting home in their stuffed-straw targets?
Or perhaps an exotically beautiful kimono-clad girl, playing a shamisen and singing in a clear high voice of love and loss?

All images of Japan, and all false.

The one thing that sums up Japan, that underlines the chasm between the image and the reality...is the pachinko parlor.

A pachinko machine is what you might get if a slot machine, a poker machine and a pinball machine had a threesome and engended some misbegotten mutant child. Knobs whistles and dials. Flashing lights. Cigarette-filled ashtrays. Sirens and blaring music. Hundreds of tiny steel ball flying around, bashing into each other and driving their noise into your skull like a hammer wielded by a meth-addict. Filling the parlor with a desperately unpleasant mix of loud noise, bright light and tobacco smoke. Pretty much my personal idea of hell.

Oh, and you have to pay. A lot. It's gambling Japanese-style. And just as the Japanese army doesn't actually exist according to the Japanese consitution, and thus passes itself off as the /Self Defence Force/; the pachinko parlor rewards its few lucky winners not with money directly, but with cigarettes, radios and lighters, which the patron drags around the block to the secretive yakuza-run pawn shop and exchanges for hard yen.

The most popular pastime in Japan. They are everywhere, from the smallest countryside town to the huge Shinjuku and Shibuya parlors with hundreds of machines.

On Saturday afternoons, when you may wonder why the parks and beaches in your city of 20 million or your town of 6000 are empty, you will find the answer when you walk by the open doors to the local parlor and see the lines of captive men inside, tied to their machines like the worst pokie-addict back home. Not only that, you will often find men in large numbers early in the morning, lining up outside waiting for the parlor to open. I can understand this, it gives the Japanese an opportunity to combine two of their favourite activities.

In fact, it is so popular that parchinko parlors are often the largest and most conspicuous buildings in a town or neighbourhood. Some theorists, observing that a society's largest buildings are often places of worship- cathedrals in Europe, temples in South-East Asia, mosques in the Middle East, have concluded that pachinko is actually Japan's real religion. Certainly its most popular.

Many magazines, books and internet sites are devoted to pachinko, where readers learn hints, tips and strategies. Many pachinko players are convinced it is possible to win long-term, by, for example, finding out which machines are programmed to pay out more winnings. In fact, many people have ambitions to achieve the Holy Grail of Pachinko Life, that is, to become a Professional Pachinko Player. Unfortunately I do not share their ambition.

In fact, I think it is fair to say that the very thought of the shuddering horror entailed by such an occupation is enough to make me doubt the existence of a benevolent deity.

Yeah- I don't get it either.