A Question of Cannibalism

パース通信07年6月号

2007-06-24T21:27:00.000+09:00

長い間ご無沙汰ごめん！
やっぱり大学に戻ったことで、リポートなどで多忙になったもん。でも、おととい期末試験がやっと終わって、すご～～～～くすっきりした。授業が終わってから2週間もあいてて最初の試験があった。行政法でなかなか得意なほうなんやけど、試験問題を予想してずっと勉強してた「司法権外」という問題が思ったように出なかったからちょっとショック。なんとかできたと思うけど。

そして3日間空けてダブル！法人法と犯罪学。午前の法人法には、交通渋滞のせいで間に合わないところだった。危ない！結局「では、試験が始まります」との台詞が言われたと同時に試験室に着いちゃったんや。別に損無しかな？午後の犯罪学は説明しにくいけどなんとかできた。
そして、翌日は最後の国際貿易法。これこそ、自信満々で取り組み、ええ気分で正常試験を終わらした。問題の中に、数年前の試験問題そのままが載ってて、それは自分で勉強として回答を書いてみておいてたので、比較的に楽。

で、おとといは「持ち帰り試験」形式の「原住民と法律」。家でもできるものやから簡単。因みに、単位のリポートとして、「オーストラリアと日本の原住民がそれぞれどう法律的に扱われてきたのか？」をテーマとして作文を書いた。いい勉強になり、結局20ページを超える文が書けた。興味のある方、どうぞ読んでみてください！（もちろん英語なんだけど）

まぁ、ということは、1学期が終わった！が、来週金曜日は通訳公認試験や。それはそんなに自信ないけど、一応受けてみることを決めた。どうなるのやろう？とにかく頑張るわ。

後は…　西オーストラリアＪＥＴ同窓会のイベント担当になった。まだ就任したばかりで、イベントはまだ開催してないけど、来月パースから出発する新ＪＥＴの送迎会は企画中！当日僕はおらんのにね…

そういえば、7月下旬は、友達の結婚式で通訳仕事をして、翌週からマレーシア旅行が決まった！10日間かけて、ＫＬ、ペナン、ジャングル、リゾート島など色々回るつもり。オススメのあるかた、教えてください！もしあっちの都合がよかったら、小溝先生にも会えるかもね！お久しぶり！

あと…　こっちの日本語新聞「ＪＡ　Ｎｅｗｓ」の記者にもなった！赤穂浪士の記事書いたし、こないだ来豪した日本のバンド「Ｂｏｒｉｓ」にインタビューさしてもらった。そのインタビューは　ここ　で読めるよ！どきどきしてもた！そのライブのチケットもただでもらったし！前からファンやから嬉しかった。写真はそのライブで撮った。

バンドも順調！試験まではだいたい毎週一回程度ライブしてた。曲数はどんどん増えていってるし、ファンまでも獲得できてるらしい！暇があれば、　ここ　で曲が聴けるし、歌手の彼女（アート学生）に制作してもらったミュージック・ビデオも見える！「Ｐｉｎｋ　Ｒｏｂｏｔｓ］という曲。今度は日本で遠征ツアーかな？仲介してくれる人はおるかい？ところで、バンド名はＥｘｔｅｎｄｅｄ　Ｓｕｍｍｅｒ　Ｓｕｒｇｅｒｙ　（ＥＳＳ）。「常夏の手術」で受け取れる？写真の手前で逆立ってる人は僕らの大ファン！（本当は、そのライブハウスの常連酔っ払いで、僕らがライブするときは興奮していつも逆立ったり、変な動きしてくれる！他の客も盛り上げてくれるからしね）

いま日本は暑いんやろう？こっちはやっぱり寒くなってきた！朝は冷えるわ。特に香奈が寒がりで困ってる！頑張れよ、香奈！

皮肉なことは、天気はあまりよくないのに、雨はそんなに降ってこない。そのせいで、オーストラリア中のかんばつは一層大変になっていってるそう。夏は危ないかも、週1回しか庭に水あげられない規則が課されそう。大変よ！まぁ、海は近いから人間的にはいいけど。因みに、丁寧に世話してきたゴーヤは寒さに屈服して枯れてしまったみたい。惨劇やわ、ほんまに。そのかわり、庭の唐辛子、ミント、イチゴなどがばりばり元気！

家の前の庭に鳥が水で遊べるものを置いたから、毎朝、ご飯を食べながら心を落ち着かしてくれる鳥の姿も見える、窓から。大好き！写真は小さいけど、左上には鳩2羽が隠れてる！いいね！

香奈は色んなことに取り組んでる。ジャパレス（日本食店）の店員、日本語学校の先生、日本語塾の先生を兼ねて、英語学生！頑張ってるけど家庭では日本語やからね…　にしても、僕の日本語力は保ってない気もするけど…

そんなもんかな？まだメール返事してない人には、ごめん！試験が終わって、これから書いていくよ！約束！

lovingperth.com

2007-02-19T14:41:00.000+09:00

香奈、ダンと新しいウェブサイトに挑戦した。そのサイトはlovingperthで、僕の出身地の西オーストラリア州都パースの情報源にしようと思ってる！日本語と英語の両方で内容を書いているので、英語力を心配せず、開いて見てください！
目的はパース在住の日本人・オーストラリアや英語に興味のある日本人・パースに行こうと思ってる日本人・日本に興味のあるパース人に、パースについての情報を提供すること。まだ調整中だけど、一応見て、コメントなどを寄せてもらえたらうれしい！！！
URLは lovingperth.com/ja です。是非みてください！

Hey guys! Kana, Dan and I have started out on a new project. It's a website called lovingperth, and we hope it will be a popular source of information about my hometown: Perth, Western Australia. It's proudly in both English and Japanese.
Our goal is to provide useful information to Japanese people in Perth; to Japanese people interested in Australia and English; to Japanese people thinking of coming to Australia; and to Perthies interested in Japan and what's happening in Perth that's Japanese.
We're still fine-tuning it, but we'd appreciate it if you'd take a look and let us know what you think! All criticism/comments welcome! The site is lovingperth.com/en. Check it out.

Smartest Thing I've Read In A Long Time

2007-02-03T13:38:00.000+09:00

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070203TDY01005.htm

パース通信０７年１月

2007-01-30T13:14:00.000+09:00

遅くなってごめんけど、あけましておめでとう！みんなはいい正月過ごした？寒かったやろう？暖冬といってもね。
オーストラリアはメチャ暑い！ちょうどこの２週間、どんどん暑くなってきた気がする。先週は４０度も超える日は大半占めてたもん！
そういえば、１月２６日は何の日かわかる？
そう、そう。オーストラリア・デー！建国記念日みたいなもんやね。友達とビール飲んだり、BBQ食べたり、クリケット見たりする。それはみんな毎日やってることなんやけど、さらに花火！久しぶりやね。こっちは一般的に禁じられてるしね。まぁ、夜はライブあったからどうせみれんかったけどね。

仕事に就いた！データ入力だけやけど、毎朝９時からだいたい１２時までで、ちょうどいい。自給２千円ぐらいやし、自転車で通うのは２０分しかかからない。「オーストラリア数学協会」という会社で、（より）貧乏な家族に、子供の将来のため家庭教師になるようなソフトを売ってるわけ。そういう仕事大嫌いやけど、俺は一番低いレベルなんで、あまり影響ないちゃう？と自分に言ってる。

大学もそろそろ始まる。単位は決まった！訳はちょっと可笑しいかもけど、一応：犯罪学、行政法、国際貿易法、法人法、原住民と法律、そして二学期は国際公法、憲法、法の抵触、証拠もついてくる。なかなか面白くなってるような気がする。楽しみ。

香奈子は日本語学校で週一回ボランティアしながら、日本食の店で働き、英語授業にも通ってる。忙しいけどよう挑戦してるからいい！充実にオーストラリア生活を吸い込んでる。

今日は二人でパース滞在日本大使館のお宅に誘われ、dinner partyがあるらしい。スーツ姿は久しぶりやね！

後はなにかな～？向こうは卒業、受験などの準備で忙しいんやろうね。頑張れ！いつでも、休暇とって、パースに来てもいいし！！！

体罰

2007-01-18T19:01:00.000+09:00

I just read an article on the Daily Yomiuri site that would have been very welcome about 3 years ago, and still should be to anyone teaching in Japan.

There is a lot of noise going down now about proposed changes to the Basic Education Law - mostly complaints about PM Abe's intention to include some rubric about patriotism, which makes lily-livered coffee-pot worriers fear a return to the shit that got Japan into the Pacific War. Come on! Japan is a very different place than it was 70 years ago, a responsible member of the global community, and I can't see them walking out of the UN again. On the other hand, they should have more power within it. But that's another story. The point here is that it's just a stupid, empty gesture to pander to nationalists and make people stop talking about other issues.

But the other, more interesting, point came out in the article - that the pessimistically-named Education Rebuilding Council has requested a redefinition of the "corporal punishment" that is legally prohibited - they want more leeway to punish students.

Obviously, we are not talking about corporal punishment in the Ben Dover sense. What they are more interested in is the inability of teachers to remove a student from class who is disrupting the lesson - currently illegal, in that all students have the right to learn (in class). A provision that ignores the fact that so do all the other students who are having that right infringed upon by the "bad" kid.

I don't want to get into school psychology and why these incidents might occur, but even in the best of classes, they certainly can and do. If teachers can't remove troublemakers (to the principal's office or the counselor's room, for example) then, they are, in the words of panel member Hiroyuki Yoshiie, being "told to go into battle with both arms and legs tied" - an "irresponsible" situation. Even without the dramatic metaphor, you get the point, and I think so would most teachers in Japan.

パース通信

2006-12-16T18:14:00.000+09:00

ニックより久しぶりの書き込み！怠ってごめんけど、やっぱりこっちに来てなかなか忙しい。

皆は元気？僕も香奈も健全で頑張ってる。パースのクールビニアという地区の家に暮らしてる。家というかアパートっぽくて、隣の家と別に間隔はない。写真見たらわかると思うけど。まぁ、どっちにしても、立派な所や。前にはベランダ、ハーブ・ガーデン（小松菜、ホット・ペッパーなど植えてる）、芝生で、裏には共用の物干し等。車を手に入れたが、できるだけ使わず、自転車を使用としてる。その面で日本は恋しいの！オーストラリアの運転手はあまり自転車に気を使ってくれなく、危険や。もう既に、車にひかれたんやもん！自転車の修理費を払ってもらったのに、その後自転車そのものを盗まれた。最悪！新しいの買って、気をつけようとしてる。

1/33 Adair Pde, Coolbinia, WA Australia 6050
右はハーブ・ガーデンのパセリ、バジル

クールビニアはパースの都市部からわずか５キロ前後離れた所にある。駅はまあまあ遠いが、バス停はすぐ近く、そこから20分で町まで行ける。自転車でも２０分ぐらい。香奈は今政府に提供される、町で行われる無料英語授業に通ってるから、便利や。月曜日から、香奈は「タンポポ」という日本食屋さんに勤め始めるし。時給は今の所あまり良くないが、そのうちに上がるみたい。仕事ないよりまし！

GOOGLE EARTHが使える人には：
31°55'3.33"S
115°51'20.73"E
で調べたら出るはず。

といったら、僕もまだ無職。ロッキングハムのイルカ・ツアー･ガイドやろうと思ったけど、時給は低くて、遠いし、朝7時から始まるので見送った。やっぱりまた家庭教師かな～？

もうすぐ原小の佐野先生の奥さん・娘2人がパースにきてくれるから、今は仕事を始めるどころでないかも。2週間ぐらいおるから、多分1月からまた就職活動を始めようかな？お金はちょっと厳しくなってるし…寄金してもいいよ！

帰ってきてから、そんなに暇という暇はないけど1週間ぐらい西オーストラリア州北部で旅行してきた。イルカに餌をあげたり、熱帯魚と泳いだり、砂漠のなかで遊んだりしてた。香奈が一番楽しんだのは野生のカンガルー、エミューなどを見たことかな。ホンマに、オーストラリアはこんなに面白いと、忘れてしまってた。旅路は図の通りで、往復２０００キロ程度かな？疲れた！

パースからコーラル・ベイ（珊瑚湾）

野生動物

神秘的なピナクルズ

猛威のインド洋

monkey mia のイルカに餌をやる香奈

coral bay の綺麗な海

何もないアウトバック

後はなにかな？バスケのリーグが始まった。練習不足やし、なんかちっちゃく感じるね。バンドも組んで、いくつかのライブし、もうすぐレコードを作る予定。バンド名はExtended Summer Surgery。

（いずれもニックは右側

この2ヶ月の出来事を一括にまとめるのはなかなか難しいものや。他にも色々（パーティー、結婚記念日など）あったけど、全部書くのは面倒くさいから、省いておくわ。でも、そういえば、日曜日で、結婚パイティーから一年になったね。つまり、長田先生がブーケをとってから一年。何も聞いてないけど…もしかしたら？

では、正月など楽しんで、来年も元気で頑張れ！もうちょっと頻繁にパース通信を送るよう努力する。
届いてない先生、生徒にもちろん見せたり教えたりしても構わん！バイバイ！

PS. いつでも、http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnygun というウエブサイトを開いたら、僕と香奈の撮った写真が見えるよ！定期的に見てください！全部英語なんやけど…

Bye

2006-09-13T15:51:00.000+09:00

Ex Mongol. See you Oct.

Munchen

2006-09-07T17:32:00.000+09:00

I just saw Poiter, I mean Eric Bana, in Spielberg's Munich. Sorry to be late, but I'm not a big movie person - the only thing which could draw me to the exorbitant cinema prices would be a Johnny Depp appearance. Sigh.

Anyway, say what you may, I was impressed. The film doesn't say anything new, in particular, but I do appreciate it for bringing up important issue in an approachable way - as Spielberg says in the featured interview, he wanted to make people aware of some of the factors involved in the seemingly never-ending Israel-Palestine struggle, and the easiest way to do that is characterisation and empathy. Admirably, for a Jewish-descended American (often derided as the worst of the worst when it comes to impartiality in this debate), he strives to present both "sides" of the story and the competing claims for land and security, albeit through minor characters.

Munich presents events that allegedly happened 30 years ago, but the issues raised, unfortunately, are still more than relevant today. Where does patriotism bleed into extremism? What is most important to you - your family, your country, or human life and dignity? How can you resolve two incompatible points of view? Is violence an effective response to violence? When will Bana return to comedy?

The height of comedy: 189 cm, sans coiffure.

It's a big-budget Hollywood flick, but Spielberg does them well. I cried at the end of Schindler's List. I didn't cry this time (it wasn't all that sad, really) but the background is probably more relevant to a contemporary audience. Check the film out. At worst, an entertaining, suspenseful couple of hours; at best, a reflection on trading an eye for an eye until everyone is blind.

SS06

2006-09-07T11:46:00.000+09:00

Some cool videos from the Tokyo version of Summer Sonic 06 here. Check out the Daft Punk "Around the World/Harder Better" mix especially! Robots after all.

Speaking of which, anybody know what's happening at BDO this year? All I've seen are some horrible rumours about RHCP and Muse... do tell.

Sep 20 - A Beautiful Country?

2006-09-06T12:32:00.000+09:00

On September 20, members of the governing Liberal Democratic Party of Japan will cast their vote to decide the next Party president, and, by default, the country's Prime Minister. Whoever wins, they will be replacing the radical, reformist, famous, and divisive Junichiro Koizumi as the international face of Japan.

RIP Steve Irwin

There is no question that Koizumi, during his tenure as PM, has made rapid inroads into changing Japan through his progressive and reformist policies - be it encouraging businessmen to leave their ties at home and go easy on the air-con in summer, or arguably ignoring the peace-protecting Constitution in sending Ground Self-Defence Forces into Iraq.

Koizumi's looks and personality had made him something of an idol, both within Japan and around the world. His policy was, from early in the piece, to stand up against the glacier-like Japanese status quo and force through several reforms, no matter how loathed the changes may be by the ruling elite, and, to an extent, the people of Japan. He had a strong view that Japan needed to change to keep up with the rest of the world in cultural, economic and military terms.

It's difficult to say for what he will be remembered best. As a very brief synopsis of some of his major achievements/goals:

Japan Post, while obviously also a postal carrier, handled at least some of the savings of the majority of Japanese people, and was (is), in effect, the wealthiest bank in the world. However, it was widely recognised that the bank's handling of loans and other savings-related matters was, and would continue to be, a stifling influence on Japan's economy. Koizumi's "pet project" was the reform of the postal giant, which he basically forced through Parliament, calling early elections to gain a mandate from the people and cutting off the so-called Postal Rebels within his party who opposed the reform. His stance at that stage was Bush-like: you're either with us, or against us. Needless to say, he won, and the reforms are in progress. People see this event in one of two ways - either that Koizumi was a stubborn dictator who misused his power to strike down any dissent; or that he was a strong reformist who refused to listen to the old guard and their vested interests. Without knowing his actual intentions, we can probably assume it was a bit of both.

Vote Gere 06!

He oversaw the dispatch of Japanese "Self-Defence" forces into Iraq. Article 9 of Japan's post-war constitution, drawn up under Allied occupation, bans Japan's use of force in international disputes. Arguably, only if Japan were directly attacked could it resort to deadly force. As a result, the Japanese armed forces have not killed a single enemy combatant since the Second World War. It was variously argued that the Constitution implicitly permits "Collective Self-Defence" - that is, the use of force to protect an ally; or that SDF troops could be sent overseas for purely humanitarian purposes - in Iraq, they were not involved in any combat, but at the same time they were effectively protected by other troops of the "Coalition of the Willing". Koizumi and other leading politicians on both sides of the House have called for a revision of Article 9 to clarify this issue and resolve any claims of unconstitutionality. Given the heated debate over the matter, it seems unavoidable that, at the very least, the Article will be expressed more clearly in the near future.

He pushed for Japan's admission into the United Nations Security Council as a permanent member alongside current members America, the UK, France, China and Russia - all on the winning side in WWII. Arguing that the current UNSC reflects a world order that is no longer in force, and that Japan's amazing economic and political progress should afford it a permanent seat, Koizumi joined forces with Germany, India and Brazil in calling for UNSC reform. It seems fair enough that the world body should include, at the very least, countries from each continent, arbitrary as that may be (and ideally an Islamic member too - but that's another story). At any rate, Japan's appeals have so far been unanswered, except in the form of violent protests and resistance in especially South Korea and China - both victims of Japan's imperialist push and military atrocities leading up to and during WWII. They assert that a country that refuses to own up to it barbaric past has no place on the Council (see my post on Mao Tse-Tung for more on that).

Which leads to a related, but distinct, issue - visits to Yasukuni Shrine. This Tokyo site enshrines the souls of military personnel who were killed in battle fighting for their country - not such a problematic notion, it might seem, but for a few extra things. Among the war dead are included several figures who were judged by the Allied occupation to have been war criminals. Although rightist elements, including brochures available within the Shrine itself, continue to denounce these judgement as imposed by a vindictive outside power and innacurate, it is widely accepted that these people were, indeed, guilty. Some exhibits in the Shrine grounds are surprisingly uber-patriotic in this sense, which has added to the controversy.

No!! Popsicles

Koizumi made it one of his campaign promises to visit Yasukuni on the day marking the War's end, which he finally did this year (his last chance) after visiting on other dates in the past. These visits have enraged belligerent voices in China and South Korea and have effectively led to the total breakdown in high-level communication between Japan and the two countries (the Korean PM has recently offered to meet Koizumi's successor, in a rare and admirable diplomatic move). Koizumi's line has basically been that his visits to the Shrine have nothing to do with any other country and has thus deflected (in his own eyes) their criticisms, while ignoring the fact that, in reality, his actions have helped to create the current deadlock. Although Koizumi has continued to show willingness to talk to the other parties, the situation is basically one in which no-one is willing to give an inch. It should be noted that Koizumi has, on several times, publicly expressed regret at Japan's past.

While all these specific matters have loomed large over Koizumi's tenure, for me, there has been one more general issue which has the potential to be most important, at least domestically. Koizumi, as I have said, was not afraid to attack the status quo, and part of that was that heavily entrenched habatsu system, where, within the one party, exist several factions, each with their own benefactor (often a retired politician who desires to retain his influence) and own agenda. This whirlpool of mixed allegiances has been a major contributor to Japan's notorious political culture of corruption and kickbacks, but Koizumi has made a point of avoiding such traps and, to a large extent, appointing Ministers based on ablility and expertise rather than history and loyalty. I hope this continues to the next PM come late September.

A quiet day

Whew. That was quite hefty, more to clarify my own understanding than anything else, perhaps. Next episode, I'll run down (as in summarise, not as in with my car) the three candidates who are challenging to succeed Koizumi and who I predict, and prefer. Hopefully somebody, somewhere, will express some kind of interest in all this to make it seem worthwhile.

Silence the press!

2006-09-04T16:53:00.000+09:00

I was thinking of posting something about the upcoming election of the new LDP party boss (and by default Prime Minister) to replace Koizumi, and how I think the Yasukuni Shrine issue is such an important one to clarify in that context. Then I read this article on the Daily Yomiuri website. Possibly the most rhetoric-cluttered, ridiculous opinion I have seen in some time. Sure, a press blackout. That's what we'll do. Maybe if the US imposed a press blackout on news from Iraq too, Bush would be the most popular President ever!

FIBA

2006-08-30T11:55:00.000+09:00

The FIBA World Basketball Championships are on at the moment in Japan. I would have loved to see Australia play, but since: their group games were in Shizuoka, a long way away; I don't know half the players any more, and the ones I do (Mackinnon, Smith) should be on no country's national team; and in the end they only barely scraped through to the playoffs and were embarrassed by the admittedly strong US team (this for a team ranked 9th in the world)... I decided it was best to watch from home. Unfortunately Japan has made no efforts to televise the games, apart from a few matches where the national (and home) team was thrashed by various low-ranking countries, and so I have to rely on Minato's illegal SkyPerfect satellite hookup and Kayo's temperamental VCR to get anything. I did see enough to disown the Aussie national team, though. No, that's harsh. Maybe.

Anyway. It's down to 6 at the moment, with Spain and Argentina through to the semis thanks to Gasol and Ginobili et al, and Greece-France / USA-Germany on today, which I will tune in to. Germany has been impressive - or should I say, Nowitzki has been awesome. You could see him trying to get the team involved in the earlier rounds, but now it's in the clutch, he's drilling last-second threes and making 10,000 free throws at will. It will be interesting to see what happens in the game tonight. I don't think the US has anybody who can effectively match up on Dirk, and as soon as he gets double teamed he's going to find the open shooter or the cutter. To survive in international basketball, you have to have shooters, and Germany has them. Should be a good game, and a good reflection on the sport when you think that, 15 years ago, the thought that anyone would beat the USA again was laughable. Granted, that was the Bird/Jordan/Magic Dream Team era, but still, it's nice to see other countries developing strong international records. Here's hoping Australia can get back on track, and Japan decides to give the greatest sport on the planet a bit more grass-roots attention and backing.

The Chairman

2006-08-28T14:51:00.000+09:00

A triumphant return to blogging! All those whose lives have been the poorer for want of concise long-windedness and enthralling ennui, rejoice! Johnny Gun's death has been greatly exaggerated, not least by the Gun himself. Armed with a new camera, an alcohol-addled brain and oodles of spare time, he returns to embrace the blog just as it threatens to become passe. Perfect.

So anyway. I'm reading the Mao biography by husband/wife team Jung Chang (of Wild Swans fame) and Jon Halliday, as recommended by most newspapers, literary mags, and the Dirk. My low attention span loves short books with shorter chapters to allow for maximum break time, so picking up this tome was a challenge. Well met.

Although filled with meticulous research and facts, Chang and Halliday have made it very easy to read by pacing it well and allowing certain overlaps in time periods to focus more on subject matter than a direct chronology - although it is chronologically arranged too.

The reason I usually find history books uninteresting is that I know the ending. Would you sit through a 3-hour movie already knowing the story and how it ends? If you liked Lord of the Rings, you've probably done it three times, but that's beside the point. Without having done any research or special reading, I already had a rough idea of the book: Mao born, leads peasant revolt, champions disastrous Long March and Cultural Revolution leading to the deaths of millions of his subjects, dies, in hindsight officially said to have been 70% right and 30% wrong (beautifully precise figures). The End.

Turns out a little different. I harboured no illusions that Mao was anything but an evil dictator, but I never imagined how evil he was - or more accurately, how selfish, greedy and hypocritical. Rising to power at roughly the same time Stalin and Hitler did, but in greatly different circumstances, he offers an interesting comparison to those two. Using Hitler as an example, he was obviously evil and insane, but it could be said that he had an 'ideal' that he was striving for - as warped as that ideal may have been. On the other hand, Mao comes across as a man with no clear vision or philosophy, just a horrible, self-centred person trying to keep himself in luxury and hitching a ride on anyone who can help him stay there - Stalin, the US, Chiang Kai-Shek, anybody.

At the moment I am only about halfway through the book, at the point where Mao has finally risen to the top of the Party and given Chiang the boot, leaving China as his own. It has been a little repetitive in the sense that every chapter describes a different way that Mao backstabbed his benefactors, terrorised his subjects or blackmailed his colleagues, but that is Chang and Halliday's obvious intent - to portray Mao as the cold, selfish killer that he apparently was. This repetition, though, rather than being tedious, just deepens my hate and disgust for such a hideous monster, and leaves me wondering what massive sin he will accomplish next. I found myself hating Mao for his machinations during the civil war, but then I remembered that after all, it was a war, and spying and double-crossing is par for the course. Chang and Halliday's rhetoric and barrage make it difficult to objectively look at Mao's life - but when you already know how evil he was, who really wants to look at him objectively any more anyway? Having said that, the authors' reliance on random, though relevant, peasants etc, gives room for accusations of exaggeration, opportunism and lack of credibility in places. This link might be interesting.

Mao is reasonably well known in Japan, mostly thanks to his inclusion in Japanese retorts to Chinese historical criticism - eg. How can Koizumi visit Yasukuni and attempt to smooth over Japan's past atrocities? to which a common ad hominen response would be, Hey, China, who are you to talk? Until you own up to your own secrets and truths, don't push ours on us.

An interesting example I just read in the book was the claim that, in the late stages of the civil war when Mao's Communists were trying to take Changchun, a Nationalist city in Manchuria, in 1948, they, on orders of Mao and his terror advisors, laid siege to it until the city starved. Citizens would stumble emaciated to the Communist army, begging to be let out, but the army would refuse unless they had money, skills or arms to offer. And so they watched the people die in front of their eyes. The death toll ended up being more than in the infamous Japanese Rape of Nanking during WWII. It's a horrible, meaningless act to compare such atrocities, but it is not without import that while the average Japanese person can find out about both, should they wish to do so (accepting that some textbooks do brush over the Nanking slaughter), such information is not easily available to a Chinese. In the same way that it stinks for the US to criticise Iran over nuclear ambitions, the closed Chinese bureaucracy has little moral high ground to cling to as it abuses Japan over this topic.

At the very least most people know, to some extent, that Mao was certainly no hero. How absolutely empty and vile he was, though, is not so publicised - until NOW! I saw a Japanese translation of this biography in Junkudo the other day, so hopefully it will gain readership in Japan too - and one day in China, of course.

Anyway, in my usual habit of laziness and lack of editing, this is a short piece on my impressions of the book so far. Looking forward to talking to you about it in Mongolia next month, Dirk, and I urge other people to read it as, if nothing else, an account of how such a lazy, selfish man can rise to such power. As I said before, the overlap in time of Mao's rise with that of men like Hitler , Stalin and Mussolini is quite interesting in itself, and I would be keen to know if anyone knows of similarly well-researched studies of those blokes too. If Chang and Halliday can research in notoriously closed China to write such a detailed book, I'm sure there must be far more on the others. Do tell. JG

On a lighter note, I took some awesome shots at Summer Sonic earlier this month, and some OK ones from Fuji Rock too. Check them out.

BEST. PHOTO. EVER.

2006-05-26T18:17:00.000+09:00

I'd like to announce a title competition for this photo, taken on my last emotional day at school. Send your entries.

This one is also funny.

TV in Japan

2006-05-24T14:59:00.000+09:00

Ever since Takeshi's castle, Japanese TV has been something of a worldwide cult for its bizarre, seemingly irrational programming. Unfortunately, the truth is Japanese TV is actually full of baseball games, live action checkers, terrible chat shows, unfunny character, bland dramas and wacky commercials. Still, in between the dross there are those moments of treasure. If you jump over to the TV in Japan website, you can watch these moments to you heart's content. For now, check out the drama where the actors have to perform their roles without losing character while pots and pans fall on their heads. Gold.

Rape blossoms - victims of bad press

2006-05-22T15:37:00.000+09:00

After Pusan, we headed north by bus to Gyeongju, the old capital of Korea. I guess it approximates to Nara in Japan - big open spaces and ancient tombs.

The intercity bus system in ROK was awesome. Lots of buses, cheap as dirt, comfortable seats. Could have used a bit more English guidance though, but that's just my inner colonial master speaking. Unless you get a special deal with trains, I recommend taking buses around the country. The only trouble is that there's no toilets on board, which can be an issue if your gut hasn't got used to Korean food yet. Add that to the fact that most public toilets don't have paper (you have to buy it or bring it) and you've got 2 squirmy tourists.

Although there is a bunch to do in Gyeongju, I reckon you can do it in one night if you're in a rush. We stayed at the cheap (30000W for 2ppl), central, comfy, friendly Sarangchae Guest House, which was excellent.

Gyeongju was where it really became clear that Korea is only quite superficially like Japan. While Pusan was more Bangkok than Tokyo, Gyeongju was probably more Vientiane than Nara. Dusty, unpaved roads and shanty homes and stores with tattered posters. Sometimes I thought I could imagine what the North must look like.

Things were gearing up for Buddha's birthday the following Friday, so everything was colourfully decorated at the temples. This is Bulguksa in east Gyeongju.

For some reason in the centre of town there is a massive field of rape blossoms, blooming just in time for our trip, and kitted out for tourists! Check it out!

BBQ

2006-05-20T11:42:00.000+09:00

Food in Korea is ridiculously cheap, especially for a "first world" country. Eating a massive BBQ dinner with endless kimchee and various other side dishes for 8 dollars, or a traditional twenty-dish Korean meal for 6, is stupendous value. Eating awesome, massive meals cheaply can be done in NE Asia.

So why is beef so much more expensive in Japan than in Korea? Why does it cost 8 dollars for a single plate of BBQ meat in a restaurant here when that could fund an entire meal in Korea? Isn't Korea a highly developed capitalist economy too? I saw middle school kids eating $25 pizzas at Pizza Hut in Pusan while we searched for the cheapest ribs we could find. If they can afford to pay that much, why aren't they made to?

The obvious answer would be that all these places use Korean beef, eliminating import costs and tariffs. Japanese cows are so well bred (before being slaughtered) on cereals and allegedly beer that it is far cheaper to sell US or Australian beef than the local counterpart, ruling this option out over here - a big factor in the Yoshinoya-US mad cow wars.

Yet, we went by bus from Pusan to Seoul and back, passing through cities and rural areas, and I don't recall seeing a single farm. Where are the cows coming from? Imports from China? Admittedly, there would be lower costs in overland shipping than overseas to Japan, but I don't think that could account for the huge gap in prices. And anyway, surely import taxes etc are similar for both countries?

Wrong. Ironically (but quite obviously when you think about it), the fact that Korea has no cows to sell means it can import them more cheaply. With no farmers to protect with anti-free trade tariffs, importing beef is far easier. Japan, on the other hand, feels it must protect its own farmers and so makes it more expensive to import, as is the case for rice. Just another day in the life of international economics.

Questions still to be answered about Korea, and my guesses.

1. What are the little white tickets that people take free from the subway office windows?
- Old people and little kids ride free?
2. Why were there 15 riot police waiting outside the subway when we came out at Anguk?
- Trying to find work for the kids who get drafted?
3. Why is pink so popular for guys, and why are there so many couples who wear EXACTLY THE SAME CLOTHES as each other? I really found it disturbing and even offensive, like the little picture of Mickey Mouse near Dan's house that is so bad it hurts.
- No clues. Help?

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

2006-05-20T11:40:00.000+09:00

This is a link I found over at BoingBoing, to a YouTube piss-take on Charlton Heston's 10 Commandments. It's redone as a teen movie. Thou shalt check it out.

_Legal Immigrants

2006-05-17T11:58:00.000+09:00

Hey! Just to tell the world the good news - Kanako managed to conceal her chequered history of war crimes, intergalactic drug smuggling and dog-beating and be accepted for a residency visa for Australia! Parties expected!
PS. If you work for DIMA, please ignore this post. Danke!

Korea

2006-05-14T14:08:00.000+09:00

In the next of a seemingly never-ending and murkily funded series of trips, I present Korea. Kana and I went over on Golden Week, the stretch of holidays in Japan which annoyingly has two non-holidays in a row right in the middle of it. It is often "frowned upon" in Japan to take these days off and go on an extended vacation, because assumedly everyone else will be in the office working, and you might recall my issues with heading to Laos last year. So this time I just cleared it with my teachers and the principal, got on the boat, and told the BoE about it when I got back and handed them their souvenirs. I COMPLETELY RECOMMEND this as a far better way to do things. Plus my new boss is Aya's dad, who has had us for dinner many times, and been to my place in Perth on top of that, so I think it went down OK, comparatively.

So anyway. Despite the difficulties in getting away on GW, the travel companies jack up their prices because they know everyone will be trying to take holidays at this time. Is this a typical practise in other countries, and I have only noticed it since coming over? I appreciate the whole concept of making supply meet demand, but in some cases doubling travel fares just seems a little too opportunistic and cold to me. I hate it. So, we took the slightly cheaper option of hydrofoiling it over to Korea rather than going by plane. A 3 hour ride from Hakata to central Pusan sounded OK. For those who need some geography help:

I've been lucky enough to have been to a reasonable assortment of countries over the years: for posterity and for my own recollection's sake:

Australia; Japan; New Zealand; Indonesia; Hong Kong; Singapore; Laos; USA; England; Scotland; Wales; Ireland; Russia; Czech Rep.; France; Austria; Germany; Holland...

and, apart from Chunneling to la France, it's always been by plane (or train across Europe), Australia being the massive island that it is. So a brief 3-hour boat trip across to Korea just didn't hit me as being a foreign excursion - immigration procedures were brief, we walked out into the middle of Pusan, and the city looked just like any big city in Japan. What I mean is that it took me some time to realise and adapt to the fact that I was no longer in a country where I could speak the language and understand the customs. The last time that happened was Russia, the scariest caucasian country going around. I guess that's a symptom of having adapted to life in Japan over 3 years as well.

Anyway, I think this time I'll spare you the details of Pusan - let it be known that it didn't take so long for me to spot the differences with Japan. I think my nose was probably the first to realise... On the surface, Pusan was just like Osaka or Kobe, but a quick detour even a block from the main drags soon reminds you that Korea is not the almighty urban development centre that Japan is proud of being. Kanako had predicted that.

Yakushima

2006-04-27T20:27:00.000+09:00

Hydrofoil to Yakushima in the afternoon. A week later there was a massive accident on the same ship with over a hundred people hospitalised; it was thought it hit a whale (nice excuse, Japan... my harpoon ACCIDENTALLY hit a whale!) but now it looks like it was just floating wood. Anyway, glad it wasn't me.

Yakushima is a tiny subtropical island about 2 hours south of Kagoshima that seems to mainly exist on tourism. The beaches, coastline and forests are quite beautiful, but the big drawing point is the Yakushima cedar trees, or yakusugi. These trees grown to massive proportions and the oldest ones are apparently around 7000 years old. One of my teachers gave a lesson on the most well-known of these, the jomon-sugi, in an ethics lesson once, and I decided I had to get there.

Anyway, here are some shots of the Miyanoura port area.

We hired a car for next to nothing and drove around on the first evening before getting to bed early in preparation for the 430 wakeup the next morning to go hiking for Jomon (Jomon actually refers to the period in which the eponymous cedar is thought to have shot up. It means "rope patterns", because a lot of the artefacts found from this time are decorated with rope marks).

We were staying in the Jomon Youth Hostel, which is a fine place with free washing. It also continued our run of idiosyncratic hosteliers. This time was a tiny little lady, apparently born in the Kansai area judging from her manner of speech, who talked for hours on any tiny topic but never managed to look in the same place for more than a few seconds, so it was hard to tell whether she was zoning out and about to fall unconscious or just a little quirky. The Jomon YH doubled as a yakiniku restaurant, but unfortunately the free included in the room fee were not barbecued meat as we'd hoped, but other non-stunning crap. Oh well.

The next day we drove up the mountain to the departure point and embarked on our 8-hour hike through beautiful, fresh mountains, valleys and disused train lines, with some deer thrown in for fun.

By 10am we had made it to the big daddy. It must be admitted that it was a damn big, awesome tree, but the beauty and grandeur of the surroundings and the entire hike meant that it didn't really stand out as much as what I'd been led to believe. I had imagined stumbling into a dark clearing to discover a lone giant bathed in brilliant sunlight sneaking through the treetops, but what we got was this:

Don't get me wrong: it was completely worth going to see, but it wasn't the holy experience I'd expected. On the whole, the getting there was better than the being there. Of course, the trek back was a struggle, with a huge uphill section and of course no 7000-year-old tree at the end.

After a quick stop in the smallest onsen ever and a hijack of the YH's cooking facilities, it was pretty much nighty night. We'd had a long day.

The next was back to Kagoshima for some rain-interrupted hanami and a flight back to the all-new Kobe airport. Kyushu was a real blast - over a week or so we saw a deserted island, ancient forests, an active volcano, idyllic hot springs, modern metropolises, historical links with Europe, and a statue of a hat. All written up just in time to go to South Korea this Saturday! Back with more in early May. Stay safe!

Baby Deer Island

2006-04-26T16:47:00.000+09:00

Next stop, Kagoshima.

There are two hostels I would recommend to anyone coming to Japan: K's House in Kyoto - near the station, clean as a whistle, cheap as chips, rents bikes, no curfew - and the Nakazono Inn in Kagoshima. The owner is a slightly addled, semi-English speaking old guy who is just the nicest, most generous dude in the world. Here is how one of his Jinglish conversations might go:

Me: What time will the bus come?
Dude: Bus は 2 o'clock に　come しますね。でも、you must go by 1 clock mmm... 45分かな？

He was awesome. Not only did he do our washing for us, but he even drove us to the wharf the next day _and_ let us stash our bags there a few days later, even though we weren't staying there any more! A king amongst men.

This is the cool spacious inn:

First thing was to head down to Ibusuki, a town on the southern tip of Japan that is famous for its sand baths. These basically involve lying down in hot black sand and being covered in it by young men with shovels. Apparently you will be scalded if you stay in too long, so it was 10 minutes and into the (water) baths. Worth the 2-hour round trip?

I was a big Ibusuki fan.

Back to Kagoshima for some sightseeing, including the infamous and descriptive Statue of a Hat:

Kagoshima is actually sister cities with Perth, so of course we had to stand in the middle of the road and celebrate that too.

We relied on the Hot Pepper again for dinner and found an awesome little place that discounted all drinks to 200 yen (about $2.50). The food was exciting too, especially the famous black pork... makes your mouth water...

So good it deserved fighting over.

Next day: Yakushima. Stay tuned for the last instalment in the seemingly never-ending Kyushu memoirs.

Beneath the Bear

2006-04-25T20:45:00.000+09:00

Next step on the Kyushu odyssey was heading back inland to Kumamoto:

We stayed in the Ichiban-kan, an awesome, cheap hotel just near the station. If every hotel in Japan was 5000 yen for a double and had free washing and internet, there would be some serious staying to be done. Alas.

Lunch: Kokutei Ramen.
BEST
RAMEN
EVER

Tiny, crappy, dirty store that only sells ramen. AWESOME! We arrived at about 1, just after NHK had been in to do some filming and tell the country how fantastic this place is. The Kyushu ramen specialty is tonkotsu, which basically means it's flavoured with pork bones and has cha-shu, or pork strips, in it. The tonkotsu at Kokutei is just cosmic. You can quote me on that. You could tell by the people lining up around the corner and the grannies who had probably been working there since they were hot young girls.

Kumamoto Castle was nice enough; for whatever reason, not as good as Himeji, but with the sakura blooming around it, it was tough to pass.

Suizenji Garden was also quite pretty; if I lived nearby I'd take a book down there on lazy Sunday afternoons.

In the evening it was the much-awaited arrival of Dan and Bron, fresh off their parent-entertaining trials in onsen town Kinosaki.
In most largish cities in Japan, there's a free magazine called Hot Pepper, which mostly has discount coupons from restaurants - such as the 1000 yen all-you-can-drink all-night we enjoyed at Ohayo! Score! The Kumamoto special mustard lotus root (karashi renkon) was awesome, unlike the off-milk Kahlua. Dan had a busy night between trying in vain to balance chopsticks (and getting sadly beaten by Kana) and trying in vain to beat muscular wait staff (and getting sadly beaten by them too).

Kumamoto: a nice town. Worth a visit. LP says there's a bar here with sand instead of carpet too.

Ghost Island

2006-04-20T17:29:00.000+09:00

Up at the crack of dawn - before it, even - and waking up the snoring night watchman to let us out into the sleeping streets of Nagasaki. Stock up on nigiri and water, hit the wharf, and off to Takashima - the first step in our conquest of the ghost island Gunkanjima.

Getting off the ferry, it was like turning on a light in a dirty apartment (not mine) - like cockroaches scattering for the dark corners, every last person suddenly disappeared, and we were left on a deserted jetty in the middle of nowhere. There was a billboard showing recent graduates from the island's high school - all 3 of them. It's a small island.

Wandering around, we wondered if we even needed to bother getting on to Gunkan; Takashima seemed to be a ghost island in itself. The wind was blowing a gale, and it was freezing cold, but the sunrise was beautiful - and we were the only ones around to see it.

We made it to the westernmost tip of the island, from where we could see Gunkanjima in the distance, but still no sign of life. Back at the main jetty, finally a couple of old salts stumbled down to the water, but it seemed unlikely that many of them would be heading out that day - as we'd predicted the day before, the wind and waves were brutal. Still, we'd come this far, so we co-opted an old fella to do what he could and take us around the island. He flatly refused to let us disembark there, and when we got out there it was very obvious that there was no way in hell that would happen anyway - we would have been dashed on the rocks.

The water really was wild - Kana went numb and thought she was about to die - but we did get a reasonably close - though fleeting - glimpse of the fabled ghost island. Not quite the same...

Looking at the scale map back at Takashima just made me want to get there more.

So, in summary, we tried and failed. Although we were fucking tired, it was surprisingly some consolation that we'd at least done that. I must be getting old. Anyway, I still have the phone number of the dude in Nomosaki who will apparently take us there one day. One day. I swear.

You can see some interesting photos of Gunkanjima in a few places on the net. Try this one.

Back in Nagasaki, we went to a Russian restaurant for lunch - the first time I'd eaten Russian food since my penniless backpacker tour in 2004, and awesomely delicious, if a little pricey. We followed the Lonely Planet's directions to the place, Harbin, but found it had been converted into the office of a construction company. I went in and the secretary, who was about to start lunch, was supremely helpful. She told me Harbin had moved a couple of years earlier and looked up the new site on the web, gave me an old menu she found, and even offered to take us to the City Hall to get a good map. In short, FUCKING ANNOYING. Still, I appreciate the efforts, and it was people like her and the friendly customerless barber who gave me change for the coin laundry that made Nagasaki my favourite place in Kyushu. The best chocolate cake ever at Harbin didn't hurt either.

Next we took the tram to Urakami, which is where the second bomb was dropped on Japan in WWII. Sites like the 1-legged torii and the invincible camphor trees were nice, but the Peace Museum was the bomb. So to speak.

Obviously it's hard not to portray Japan as the victim in this scenario - chiefly because it was. No matter what evidence you offer to the contrary, dropping a burning ball of death onto a city is inexcusable. However, unlike its Hiroshima counterpart, Nagasaki is far more sedate and reserved. Instead of making grotesque plastic figures of melted people, they simply show photos of charred corpses and demented buildings. They went so far as to offer testimony from the Korean and other foreign victims of the bomb, who were tragically discriminated against even in such dire circumstances. Still, the mere presence of their words was a welcome inclusion.

In addition, there were extensive video resources, in English and Japanese, of why Japan was in the war in the first place - its greedy imperialism and power-hungry forays into East Asia, basically. On the whole, the museum offered many perspectives on the issue, and I don't hesitate to recommend it as possibly the best museum I have been to; certainly in Japan.

The peace memorial at the epicentre was also reserved and moving...

...unlike the monster at the peace park.

After the massive statue of Kannon on a turtle at Fukusaiji, it was dinner at Chinatown - a very unconvincing version of everyone's favourite place to eat. Surprising, because Nagasaki has historically had a lot of contact with China, and it was well written up in the LP. We ate the local Chinese specialties, sara-udon and champon, both of which were just sloppy, cabbagey noodles. Skip it safely.

Wandering drunk around the harbour was much more fun. Nagasaki is a beautiful place.

Dockers!

2006-04-18T20:21:00.000+09:00

Just finished watching the Dockers skin Port, in Adelaide. No Tredrea, fair enough, but if the Dockers can play games like that and get good wins away from Subi, they will be tough to beat out of a finals spot. Even when Port was charging home, with the crowd behind them, the Dockers were smooth, calm, and polished out of defence, and, aside from the abysmal first quarter, good on goal from all over.
Bell and Pavlich led superbly; they just seemed to be in the right place in the tough times. Johnson, Parker, Hayden and Mundy were strong out of the back, and Farmer gave McPharlin one of the best goals I've ever seen with a string of handballs from the pocket.
I reckon Sandilands needs to clear the ball better from the rucks sometimes, but hey, it's a little thing.

Jake, do you still have Dockers season tickets? Hang on to 'em.

Battleships

2006-04-14T17:21:00.000+09:00

Gunkanjima (軍艦島, real name Hashima 端島) is a tiny island off the coast of Nagasaki.
From the 19th century through to the late 20th century, it was heavily populated - apparently in 1959 it hit 3460 people per square kilometre, which was the highest population density ever recorded - because Mitsubishi had a coal mine on the island. Eventually a school, a hospital, and some huge apartment blocks grew up to support the mine (even though it is less than an hour by hydrofoil - probably not available back then - from Nagasaki Port). So basically, you had this tiny, massively dense island society that existed for the sole purpose of extracting coal.

In the 70s, coal became less and less useful thanks to the good ol' boys who pump out Middle East petrol, and it closed down in 1974. Every last person left the island, often not bothering to clean up before they said goodbye. Now, Gunkanjima is a ghost island, with all the infrastructure of a city, but not a living soul. I'm sure you are now thinking the same thing I was when I found this out...

I MUST GET ON THAT ISLAND.

Unfortunately, getting on Gunkan is rather difficult. In the first place, there is no wharf, so on rough days you have no chance of getting a boat close enough without being smashed to pieces. More importantly, it is now illegal to go on the island, ostensibly because of the danger in doing so - were something to collapse on you, you would be as good as dead. Still, I had an idea in my head.

I MUST GET ON THAT ISLAND.

I did my research and found some accounts written by other people who had been on the island. One Japanese person had slapped some cash down in the hand of a fisherman on nearby Takashima Island (less than 10 minutes by motorboat) and made it out there, so I figured we could do the same, if we tried hard enough and looked inconspicuous enough. Nice idea, you white redhead.

We got to Nagasaki by bus in the early afternoon, planning to challenge the island the day after. However, the weather the day we arrived was awesome, and we found out the next day would be rough, so we hastily changed our plans and headed for Nagasaki wharf at about 2. The next ferry to Takashima wasn't leaving until 5:30, so we took a bus for half an hour to a port farther south, where there was another ferry leaving at 3:30, but we ended up arriving just as it was pulling away. The next one? 5:30. Fuck. The area we were in was technically part of Nagasaki, but it was such a dead-end hole that... wait for it.... it didn't even have a convenience store! Shock, horror. Well, in fact, it did, but I think the old cretin who ran it just stole the sign from somewhere else, because it was basically just the kind of general store you might find in Cowaramup or some other tiny town.

We made some surreptitious enquiries to some old men about getting a ride out to Gunkan, but the answer was a resounding FUCK OFF. One old man just ignored us. The geezer who drove the ferry told us that until recently people would take you out there for some cash under the table, but recently the island was under a new jurisdiction and the mayor of Nagasaki had explicitly ordered people to stay the hell off or face the consequences. So no go... but we did get the phone number of some old guy on the southernmost tip of Nagasaki who would take us to Gunkan anyway! Awesome!

But... we had failed to take into account that fisherman only go out in the mornings, and it was already almost 5 in the evening. We gave him a call and tried to sort something out for the next day, but he said he doubted that he would be heading out due to the weather, but that if we wanted to go, we should come to where he leaves from by 6am.

If we wanted to make it there by 6, we would have to take a taxi (no buses that early) from Nagasaki, where our hotel was by around 4:30, pay the huge charge, and pay the dude to ferry us out there. And even if we made it to his boat, we might still not be able to go thanks to the weather. Tough choice, but we decided we would head to Takashima ourselves on the dawn ferry the next day and make our own way from there. We caught the bus back to Nagasaki, and you'll have to wait 'til next time for the gunkan story.

Incidentally, this was our route down from Fukuoka. I highly recommend the Kyushu Kosoku Bus Service. It was cheap, fast, and comfortable.

Getting back to town, we went up to the Glover Gardens in the Holland Hills area. Nagasaki is a unique place in Japan in that it was the only port that was open to foreign trade during Japan's long period as a closed country - and even then, pretty much only to trade from Holland and China. There are still a lot of remnants from this heritage, making Nagasaki not just a beautiful port town, but one rich in history too.

View over Nagasaki

Parts of the Glover Gardens

We spent the evening eating at sit-down street stalls (yatai 屋台), which were, as usual, awesome and bizarre. If you're not friendly, it seems you don't go to yatai. Went to bed fairly early because we wanted to be on the 5:50 ferry the next day.

Nagasaki was the only place we stayed for 2 nights, and we beautifully ended up with the shittiest hotel of the trip. I'd like to make a point here not to stay at the Ebisu Youth Hostel. We made a booking there because it was close to Nagasaki station and looked quirky, but when we got there we found we would actually be staying in a business hotel down the road. The hotel itself was not terrible, but it wasn't what we booked, and the staff at both places were inexperienced and unhelpful. I haven't stayed at many places in Japan that I didn't like, but this was one of them. Avoid it.

Fukuoka?

2006-04-13T17:13:00.000+09:00

We had the rentacar until today, so we used it to drive back up to Fukuoka, as below:

First, though, was the best onsen I have ever been in - Yamamizuki in the hills behind Kurokawa. In your lifetime, if you were to go to just ONE onsen, this should be it (barring Kinosaki in winter - that is also gold). Perfect temperature, directly on the riverside - the perfect place to relax, get clean, and contemplate nature. Just beautiful.

Fukuoka is a wonderful city, at least from what we saw of it. A blend of typical Japanese urban modernity but a little more outward looking - the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum was excellent - and with traditional remnants like temples, inns, and street stalls, for which Fukuoka is quite well known. We stayed at the Kashima-honkan, an excellent spacious inn halfway between the city centres of Fukuoka and Hakata, and easy walking distance of both.

Lunch was at Ichi-ran, a ramen store with a long history that serves only one dish, but lets you order it exactly how you want it - you tick a menu card to show how spicy, rich, tough, etc, you want your noodles, and if you want egg, mushroom, extra onion, etc, too. Fun, and good.

Also good was the all-you-can-drink special at Cotton Fields bar, a beer-lover's paradise (if the beer lover happens to have a bottomless wallet too. Most of the buffet beers were shit - witness XXXX).

Hot Water

2006-04-12T16:34:00.000+09:00

Did I mention that Kyushu is basically a wafer-thin chunk of land separating humans from boiling water? We tested the limits of our rentacar the day after Beppu, taking it through tiny mountain roads that are only the width of a single car (if someone comes the other way, either car has to reverse until you find a spot wide enough to pass); across rolling hills of rice paddies and tiny farming villages; to the top of a volcano; and finally through the forest to the onsen-lover's paradise that is Kurokawa. Here's what it would look like on a map.

And here's some of the scenery on the way to Mt Aso, an active volcano. Apparently it was closed for a while when it erupted, killing a few tourists and destroying the cable car. Good times!

The crater itself was pretty impressive... I don't think I've seen anything like it before - at least not that I can remember. I'm no geologist, but the colours and formations on the inner walls of the crater were amazing, as of course was the steaming pit itself.

In the afternoon we showed up in Kurokawa Onsen to stay at the awesome Shinmeikan. We figured that we could excuse a little accommodation luxury for one day of the trip. It was worth it. Neverending meals of fish, pork, chicken, beef, horse, vegetables, rice, dessert, beer... and some excellent onsens. If you like onsens, Kurokawa is the daddy of them all. Wait 'til you see the one we went to before leaving the next day!

Kurokawa is a town full of onsens like this one.

Nick is a boy full of meat and vegetables like these ones.

Rotenburo at the Shinmeikan.
From this bath, you could look onto the main street of town.
Unfortunately, everyone walking on the main street of town could look onto you too!
Privacy?

The Shinmeikan Inn.

A nightcap bath. HOTTEST ONSEN EVER!
I thought I would pass out and melt.

North to South

2006-04-08T23:37:00.000+09:00

Up at 5 to get to Kokura by 9 and Oita by 10ish. Good ol' budget Rentacar foolishly trusted us with their vehicle and we set off for Beppu to begin the first leg of the two week conquest of Japan's south island, Kyushu. It means 9 states, but there are only 7. Historical details. Here's our course for Day 1.

A map I stole showing Kyushu at the bottom:

First was a stop off at Takasakiyama, a mountain between Beppu and Oita that is inhabited by hundreds of Japanese monkeys. It's all very humane and nicely done - if the monkeys really wanted, the could run down onto the expressway. In fact, it's amazing that only 10 minutes walk from a major highway finds you here. For some reason people love monkeys, maybe in the same way that we find retards cute. Picture a 30-cm tall retard, and you have Kanako's dream. See for yourselves.

It didn't take long for them to accept me as one of their own.

The swarm for food was more brutal than a dole day liquor store selling half price booze.

Next we drove up to Beppu, which pretty much only exists thanks to the pools of steaming water found beneath it. We did the touristy thing and visited some of the "hells", which are hot springs coloured by the minerals in the water. After visiting the White Pond Hell, the Sea Hell, and the Blood Pool Hell, I can recommend that you skip them all unless you really have nothing to do. If you really need to see one, make it the Sea Hell. It was big, and the surronding gardens and lakes were quite beautiful in their own right.

A much better idea is checking out the onsens. There are heaps around, predictably (in fact, there is steam spouting out of pretty much every hole in the ground in Beppu), but the one we went to, Mugen no Sato (Land of Illusions) was solid gold. In the back hills, out of the way of the ridiculous themed hotels (eg Jungle Banana), but within a short drive of the main drag. All private outdoor baths, like this one. If you don't want to see me and Kana in the bath, look away now.

Thank god for those blue minerals, eh?

We were staying at the Kokage YH, which I recommend (simple, wide rooms, near the station). Dinner was at an awesome place in a nearby arcade called 和楽, which I guess is Waraku. The master's recommended course was so good - three kinds of tataki with delicious citrus sauces and yuzu pepper. Check it out if you're ever in town. And try not to look this stupid.

Book-keeping

2006-04-06T20:02:00.000+09:00

Yo gang, back safe from 2 weeks down south in Kyushu.
Deserted islands, 7000-yr-old trees, pork cubes, hells. It will all be here in pictorial form soon.
First, though... gonna throw up some shots from here and there over the past couple months, since we got back from Hokkaido.

First: the camera shop on the main road in Ako, who took all our photos at the wedding ceremony last year, has put a big shot of Kana and me up in their window. All the kids at school tell me they've seen it. How embarrassing! (Secretly I love it of course)

Second... went to Kyoto last month to see Animal Collective... meh. Love the records, live show had its high points but dragged on a bit. Here are some pix, with some from the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto too, and others. One of Dave Miller's awesomely high-art tour poster I found in the Kyoto Metro toilet.

Kyushu photos next time. For now, check out the funniest video EVER, courtesy of my Taiwanese exchange student pal Ryo, and Dan's hosting. It's of someone trying to rollerblade for the first time, and it looks like a rollerblading pro intentioally looking as stupid as possible. Enjoy; I did.

Which reminds me, anyone who hasn't already seen the dubbed GI Joe safety clips should do so NOW, starting with this one. And then this one. Google "gi joe video" for the rest.

Popsicles

2006-03-19T17:20:00.000+09:00

Last day in Hokkaido. Beautiful blue skies and air so crisp you could eat it. Up at the crack of dawn.

Highest temperature: 7 below zero. We should all be ice. This is what the ocean looks like. I think we could have walked all the way to Russia. (Thanks to Yohei Nakano for the photos).

So what do you do in this treacherous weather? GO SWIMMING, of course.

The water was so cold a normal human would die within 30 seconds. Luckily, we had the benefits of the miracle tight-fitting frostbite-inducing dry suit. Completely waterproof, but unfortunately not entirely coldproof. Make no mistake, it was fucking cold. But sunbaking on top of the ocean in the biting cold has a certain charm.

All that was left was the trek back to Ako. JAL managed to foil that plan by breaking their plane, so we had to let them put us up in the Kansai Airport Hotel for a night - in a haunted room! Awesome!

So that was Hokkaido. Winter was spectacular, nothing like I've ever seen before; bracing and challenging. It's supposed to be beautiful in the summer too, one of Japan's last wildernesses. Check it out.

E'en Colder

2006-03-17T09:33:00.000+09:00

So, hope you had time to catch yr breath. Next stop is Abashiri, in far north Hokkaido, on the Sea of Okhotsk and not so far from Russia. FUCKING COLD.

The night bus was hell, stopping every hour or so for the driver to have a piss or a smoke, and me waing up AGAIN in my too-small seat and arriving at 5 in the morning to stumble out into the freezing cold. Everything was white.

All aboard the Aurora, where we cut through the ice in search of... actually, I don't know. But it was scenery I sure as hell don't see every day.

Next, the bus up to the old Abashiri Prison, famous for being one of the harshest in Japan. It was pretty tough just being a tourist there, but the free milky wine was a help. I came, happily, out of the prison after reflecting upon myself.

Next was the "Museum of Northern Peoples", which had exhibits and videos on Japan's native Ainu people, and indigenous people of Russia, Northeast Asia, and America. It was actually really well done and very interesting. Recommended.

In the afternoon we took the train across to Shiretoko National Park, on the northeastern peninsula of Hokkaido. It was real nice and cosy, with an oven that people were using to grill squid.

The hostel was miles away from anything else, surrounded by snowy mountains and icy seas. Took some terrible nature snaps before heading down to the light show in Utoro which was supposed to be a remake of the Northern Lights which were visible here 25 years ago. Corny in idea, but it was well done and spectacular.

Our hostel, behind the trees to the right.

This is a fox. I swear.

Alien attack force! ATTEN-TION! At ease.

A Japanese taiko drum troup came out and played before the lights show. FUCKING COLD! You might appreciate this one, Matt.

One day to go.

I Love Him

2006-02-27T22:19:00.000+09:00

Although the Dockers/Eagles game on the weekend was over by halftime, the last 3 minutes provided some fantastic soundbites from the commentators. Lucky, because the rest of the game they were shocking. Anyway:

"Oh, he's a great young player. I love him."
"Love's a strong word."

Beautiful. Winks in the shower room, playful towel fights, an accidental brush by the lockers. Footy fags.

The second line was either opportunistic rehearsal, or a gem of on-the-spot wit. Ben Cousins eluding a Matthew Carr tackle:

"Cousins runs away from Carr... been a bit of that lately."

Classic. Benny, you're a dog.

You've seen the animals, now eat them!

2006-02-27T19:29:00.000+09:00

Taking a night bus from Sapporo to Abashiri saves on accommodation and downtime, so the next step was back to the big city to hike out to the Sapporo Brewery/Museum. Despite appearances to the contrary, it was never used to burn Jews.

The museum was OK; lack of English translations made it all a bit much. The best, as often is the case at these kinds of places, was the retrospective of advertisements and containers through the yeats. Some of the old banners were striking and impressive, and the Sapporo girls also showed interesting changes in style and culture.

Next stop: downstairs for the all-you-can-gorge lamb "Genghis Khan" barbecue and all you-can-drink Sapporo. Their beers were really good straight off the tap. No memorable flavour, but very refreshing and crisp. Went well with the food, but tastes shit out of a can.

Back to the big city for some wandering around and checking out the fucking cold snow festival. It's the international year of exchange between Japan and Australia, apparently, and they had a massive snow replica of Flinders St Station. Which may impress you if you have ever seen it. I haven't. The dude at the front of the photo playing keys is not made of snow.

Had a coffee and a cocktail in a little cozy joint and then spent 2 hours in a bath, stole their towels, and jumped on the cinderella express to Abashiri. Where the erotic adventures of Hercules will continue.

Keeping 'em in Cages Proves You're A Man

2006-02-20T20:21:00.000+09:00

Have you seen the documentary "March of the Emperor"?

Some French guy went to the Penguin Empire, and in return for his offer of pieces of the Korean Peninsula, persuaded them to let him film them stalking the ice for their annual standing around being cold and also getting it on ritual. Breathtaking landscapes and beautiful fidelity, with the harshness of nature at its unbridled best and unexplained customs not hidden in a spiel of civilisationary propaganda. In other, less ridiculous terms, penguins v the ice.

Anyway, we saw it the week before going to Hokkaido, which meant Kana was apeshit to see the new Asahikawa zoo, which features heaps of polar animals wandering around and non-polar animals being caged up. As below.

Although I innately dislike zoos, it was pretty cool to see the penguins walking around and playing in the snow freely. They were completely blase to the gawkers around.

Next stage: the Sapporo Brewery. All-you-can-gorge draft beer and bbq lamb. Gold. Ox, you should be here.

Trev's Thirst for Knowledge

2006-02-19T10:47:00.000+09:00

To sate said thirst - part 1 of part 2 of the petit honeymoon series. Coming to you on delayed telecast from the home of football, Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Hokkaido is Japan's northern island, and is not very far from Russia. It kind of surprised me in a way to see that it was so much the same as the rest of Japan in terms of culture and people. I couldn't really detect much of an accent or anything, but maybe that's just my lack of experience.
We landed in Sapporo on Thursday evening and trained it into the city. It didn't seem so cold, but the second we walked out of the train station it hit us. Breathing was suddenly very difficult, and could only be accomplished with lots of coughing. Somebody later suggested this was the air freezing in our throats, but I'm not sure of that one.

The body-high, and constantly falling, snow was a great novelty that never really seemed to get old, unless you were trying to take a photo or something. In that case, what was worse was the freezing cold, which set into your hands as soon as the gloves come off to operate the shutter.

I bet that guy had fun getting his bike out.

We checked in at the "Classe Hotel" just off the main drag before hitting the streets. Our first non-concierge contact with humans was the rare and wonderful Hokkaido snow drunk. An odd beast, it is usually spotted rolling around on its back in ridiculous slow-motion, trying to stand up, like an overturned bug. Even when it manages to get itself back right-side up, the icy ground often ensures another tumble. And another. And another. Common decency and wildlife protection laws prevented me from taking a picture, but it was bizarre and humorous.

Sapporo is the home of the famous Snow Festival in early February, which basically means hundreds of ice and snow sculptures throughout the city centre. These ones are Doraemon and golfer Ai Miyazato.

Hokkaido ramen is well-known in Japan, so we felt we should give it a try. Great but not super. There is an alley, Yoko-cho, which has about 20 ramen shops all next to each other, and it's really just a matter of trying to decide which ramen seller looks least dirty to choose one.

Kinosaki Onsen

2006-02-18T11:41:00.000+09:00

Just got back from the sub-zero beauty of Hokkaido, but before putting up the cool photos we got there, first here are some from the previous stage of the wild Japan touring that will take place over my last few months here. North Hyogo. Heaviest snowfall in years. Outdoor hot springs! YES! All the shots are on Trev's server, but here are the highlights. And a map to show you where we went. Do you feel smarter?

Day 1 was Kinosaki via Izushi. Izushi had some cool snow-covered temples/castles/beer restaurants. I think Dan once said it, but the innate beauty of Japanese architecture and design is really enhanced by the solitude of a blanket of white and an absence of snap-happy tourists (except me, of course). Here's Izushi.

We showed up at the inn in Kinosaki (staying in inns is so much better than hotels or hostels - it makes me feel like I'm Asterix or something) ready to chow down on our Tajima Beef shabu-shabu dinner, only to find that they had prepared us a crab nabe instead. Both these dishes are very famous in the area, like burnt meat is in Australia, and I wouldn't really have kicked up a fuss if we couldn't get the beef, but we politely pointed out their mistake... and got the beef too, for free! Just to quckly recap, that's about 40 bucks extra, if not more. First time I ever really ate much crab, but it was pretty damn good. And we were pretty damn full.

If you stay in an inn in Kinosaki, they give you free tickets to visit any of the onsens (hot springs) in town. We tied up our yukatas and hit the streets in geta (wooden shoes) in the shimmering snow. Sick. After hitting the baths, it was on to the rifle range. Obviously.

Next, back to the inn for outdoor baths in the snow. This is living.

We wandered around Kinosaki the next morning before heading on to Yumura Onsen - more of the same, but a much smaller town.

Crab again in Yumura - and it was AWESOME! Fried crab, steamed crab, crap tempura, baked crab, crab crab - all there, and all so good! Nothing else seems to match up anymore.

Outdoor hot springs in the snow, with warm sake too.

The rest of Yumura.

Anyway, that was our winter honeymoon, part 1. You'd think we'd have had enough of huge snowdrifts and krazy krabs, but in part 2, you'll see that we apparently hadn't. To be continued.

Kobe. 81.

2006-01-23T18:53:00.000+09:00

Say what you want about Kobe Bryant; it's all opinions.

He wouldn't have won 3 championships without Shaq. Maybe.
He's selfish, egotistical and spoilt. Perhaps.
He is only the player he is because the coach and the awful team let him be. Doubtful.

He scored 81 points on Sunday. Including 55 in the second half.
FACT. Undisputable. Incredible.

It might have been against the Toronto Turnstiles, but this is an awesome feat, make no mistake about it. And yet somehow it doesn't surprise me all that much any more. The guy is PHENOMENAL. The Lakers could win the Finals by just letting him shoot and fouling Ben Wallace whenever possible.
Which brings in everybody's childhood basketball fantasy. The Pistons bring in a player just to have him punch out Kobe and be ejected. Or they snipe him from the press box. Or they poison his burger.
PHENOMENAL!

Kobe Rock Street 2006

2006-01-22T17:53:00.000+09:00

After enduring the JET Mid-Year Conference on how to waste government funds by getting teachers drunk on Thursday and Friday in Kobe, what else to do but head back in on Saturday night for GUITAR WOLF?
Star Club, Mersey Beat and Back Beat. 3 clubs. 5 hours. 18 bands. GUITAR WOLF!

Checked in at the fabulous APA hotel before heading for Belgian beer and free peanuts in Sannomiya, where we met up with Dan who was riding a 2-day hangover and looked like it. Meanwhile I was down with a cold, so for a change Kanako was the genki one! We tried to remedy this with vitamin-packed steroid drinks and BERRY BERRY GRAPEFRUIT?????? but only the wolf himself could save us this night.

After briefly checking in at Star Club at about 7 to hear some shitty metal band, buy tickets, and chat with Guitar Wolf's awesome friendly manager about Mach Pelican, we filled up on drinks at 7-11 and slipped into Mersey Beat to see Hatch Hatchell and the Beer All-Stars. Sounds ridiculous? It was. Drums, fiddles cello, acoustic guitar, and Hatch himself on the vox and banjo, playing what was the subject of debate but has been settled by the music god Johnny Gun as having been dixieland.

Hatch and the guys were all great musicians, and they had a good sense of humour, and took the whole thing not too seriously at all. During the set Hatch yelled out several times that everybody should be more ROCK. And then played his fiddle.

Back to Star Club for the wait for the Wolf.

Waiting around, nothing much happening, no idea who the next band is.
"There's some crazy guy walking through the crowd," says Dan.
Suddenly the crazy, shirtless, slimy guy is in the foetal position on the ground next to us, screaming "Please listen to MY song! Why won't you listen to MY song?" Kanako hides behind us while the freak picks himself up, starts flailing around and grabbing punters nearby, before stumbling back towards the stage... upon which we realise this is the singer for the Oshiri-penpens.

The photos don't do him justice, but he was basically trying to be Japan's Iggy Pop, right down to the scars across his chest, the emaciated torso, and the jeans hanging _suggestively_ low. As if they weren't suggestive enough, he stuck his hand down his pants several times during the 'set'... possibly to divert attention from his awful singing. His band, the avant-jazz-rock drummer and guitarist, were definitely not the Stooges, but they could have been interesting if he wasn't so appalling. I don't want to be a technical stickler or an anal retentive, but he was, to use an industry expression, fucking terrible. In the annoying, head-turning way, not in the crotch-thrusting, devil-stroking Guitar Wolf way. Climbing the rafters at Star Club is no longer a novelty, anyway, buddy. Weren't you here for DMBQ?

Next up, what their website describes as MOST WICKY ROCK BAND IN JAPAN.
Invisible Man's Deathbed. After the last guys, anything would have been fine, but Invisible Man were awesome! The songs had that urgent, angsty kind of sound that old Bad Religion had, but with big metal squeals and more theatrics. Continuing the trend of idiosyncratic frontmen, next up was Deathbed himself. He was kind of a cross between Danzig and Freddie Mercury, cooked with a dash of ROCK!

I really liked these guys. They were tight as hell, stage moves were excellent, down to mock guitar battles, and their sound was good. Still, they ain't no Guitar Wolf. Deathbed came out at the end of the Wolf's set (sans makeup) and you could tell he knew he had so much to learn. Although I think what the Wolf really teaches you is that you can't learn what he's got. You gotta sweat it, and kick it, and bleed it!

I only recognised one of the songs (Invader Earth), but who gives a fuck? From the moment Guitar Wolf stepped onto the stage, you knew the club's awesomeness level had gone through the roof. I can't even remember what he was saying. Everyone there knew he was the SHIT. Drum Wolf pulling out his comb to slick back his hair after every song was awesome too.

Halfway through the first set (best pit since Mastodon et al) GW pulls some punk rocker onto the stage and gives him his guitar and commands him to play while the Wolf himself howls rock commandments to us disciples. He bends over to the punk and whispers a few words in his ear, and for ten minutes, the punk becomes a Wolf. All spiel aside, the dude fitted in perfectly, not trying to do too much, just beating the axe every bar. I wonder what words of wisdom Guitar Wolf whispered to him? Only he will know.

The love-in fell apart, though, when Wolf swung the mic around too many times and cracked himself in the face. Blood started pouring down, mixing with the sweat and spit, and dripping down onto the front row. The punk kid tried to wipe the Wolf's face with a cloth, as you may do to your injured idol.

BAD MOVE, PUNK!

The Wolf was enraged by this act of friendliness, stripping the dumbstruck punk of his guitar and sending him back into the anonymous mass. Still, the glory of sharing the stage with the leather one himself has to help with that shame.

The Wolf poured out for 2 encores, flinging his sweat-drenched shirt into the crowd and performing a guitar leap from the stage (accompanied by manager and crowd control, of course!), before disappearing again into rock legend. We salute you. But we don't touch your face.

Best Gigs of 2005 (that I went to)

2005-12-23T14:34:00.000+09:00

1 SABOTEUR at spooky - of course. the singer is HOT

2 MASTODON at quattro - sick. blew the shit out of weak cocktail party goths isis.

3 ARCADE FIRE at summersonic - just a real joyful time. they were having fun and everybody appreciated it. should have watched the whole thing instead of slipping out to see interpol like the lackey i am.

4 SHINS at quattro - the first leg of the 3-gigs-in-osaka-in-a-week-a-thon. wasnt substantially so fantastic, but they were cool guys and came back to play some new tracks they hadnt intended to coz they loved us so.

5 SONIC YOUTH - lee freaking out: I CANT PLAY RAIN ON TIN! I CANT PLAY RAIN ON TIN! and thurston being all, WHATEVER. lets play rain on tin!

all you guys out in TV land?

Things I've Read

2005-12-01T22:14:00.000+09:00

While wading through a book by Akira Yoshimura, 破船 (shipwrecks), in which I can only go about 20 pages in a sitting, I have also managed to churn through Junky by William S Burroughs and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. If anyone else has read them, I'd be interested to hear your take. Do write in.

I thought Junky was excellent. Although purporting to be an explanation/expose on mid-century heroin culture, it was never dry or analytical, thanks to WSB's writing (unlike his pal Allen Ginsberg, who is equally eloquent but just not as captivating as the poetry of the fine fag). WSB mentions any number of zany characters and wild, underworld scenes, but describes them all just enough that you can imagine the rest for yourself, which is really what you want to do when reading a book, right? That a guy who writes such vivid yet controlled stuff here could also write Naked Lunch is phenomenal... and a reflection on mid- and post- addiction.

It's interesting to get a perspective from an addict who is intelligent and as far under control of himself as it is possible to be while always scratching his eyes out for the next hit; as opposed to the fuck-offs from Trainspotting/Requiem for a Dream etc. And the best bit was that it was short enough to polish off in no time. It's always quality over quantity - WSB couldn't have spat it better himself.

As for Tiffany's... tough to take it at face value, without thinking about either the movie or that song by Deep Blue Something that everyone hates but secretly loves. Again, short enough to read through in a sitting, but this time I thought it could have used a bit more padding. It's got the wild, individual, romantic, doomed woman anti-hero and the more pragmatic male narrator as in Hemingway, Faulkner, etc, but this time the girl, Holly Golightly, is harder to sympathise with due to her callousness and disregard for those who care for her, at least at first glance. As the book goes on, she shows other sides of her personality, but she never seems as concrete and beautiful as others like her. The only times she really seems like a person worth wanting is when she asks for the St Christopher's medal the narrator gives her, and even when she takes control of his passions and says..."Hit me. You wanted to a minute ago. I could feel it in your hand, and you want to now..." Of course he can't. She's a hypocritical lead that preaches honesty to oneself, but it's never quite sure whether she practises it. Your typical false idol. In all, nice, but short. Could have used more padding. If you're gonna cut it short, Truman, only do 20 pages or so, or you waste my time. You should read JD Salinger (Banana Fish! GOD!)

In other news, there was a big scandal at my school when a kid was supposed to go get weighed for a checkup in the medical room but he'd forgotten his sports clothes. The teacher jokingly suggested he go naked... so he did, running down the halls. The newspapers even came (to quiz the teacher about sexual harassment... whatever). Funny, funny.

Hunter RIP

2005-10-24T20:55:00.000+09:00

One of my favourite photos.
Thanks Dan.

Nup it Up

2005-10-22T20:59:00.000+09:00

Angels cry! Devils dance! Allah sucks on his hookah!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is big news.
For some strange reason, Mr Johnny Gun and Cocaine Hayakawa have decided that the world IS big enough for the two of them, and have hitched the knot!
Join us in our black celebration!

Thanks to all who sent congrats. See you in Dec!

MONEY

2005-09-26T17:07:00.000+09:00

Hey, props from Karasaki.

I'm on the banks of watery Lake Biwa in Shiga-ken as a student at the JET Translation/Interpretation Course. Only 100 or so people got chosen to come. How sick am I?

Anyway, spent the weekend hamming it up around the Lake with Kana, checked out some cool beer halls (Nagahama beer is the SHIT), visited the infamous Maibara and Yasu (you know what I mean) and watched the football on Sunday night via the net. What a fantastic world we live in.

Today rocked in to the Japan Intercultural Academy of Municipalities (ouch... try JIAM) near Otsu City. It's a pretty cushy place. Got my own cell, some gruel every now and then, the rats are my friends... seriously, it's swish. We pay for everything with a little red super card stocked up with 100 bucks for the 5 days... if you don't use all the cash, it disappears on Friday, so I'm gonna be living it up in the campus cafeteria OH YEAH!

A guy, I think he's the duke of translation or something, gave a speech which was pretty good; he was ALL ABOUT making MONEY from interpretation etc. Not really the reason I'm interested in it, but some nice info to carry around. He was all clued up, rattling off anecdotes and jokes, and the best bit was when he asked how long he was allowed to speak for, like he had no idea of the timetable or what was going on past his mouth, his mic and his glass o' water. Quality.

And now off to the welcome party. A fun time will be had by all.

Bruiser in Japan

2005-09-03T17:12:00.000+09:00

Hey folks. Just to announce Bruiser's safe arrival to, and imminent departure from, Japan.
It all started in Tokyo on Sunday night, where after a brief 4 hour ride on the bullet train and a 2 hour wait for Brian's delayed flight, we hooked up at Narita and then hit the town around central Tokyo. Unfortunately there's actually nothing that exciting in that area; mostly just office buildings. So we just got some beers and some chow at an izakaya (pub-restaurant acc. to Hiro) and downed some tequila before gettin' ready for a big Monday. And it was big.

Started out at the Imperial Palace, where we got a glimpse of the Empster himself, and his wife. Probably heading out to hit the slot machines.

The Budokan:

Some Young Guy:

Then it was on to Yasukuni Shrine, which is quite interesting in that many Japanese who have died for their country are enshrined there. Including many deemed by the American post-WWII occupation (and often denied by nationalists as US insolence) to have been Class A War Criminals for their actions in Korea and China, etc. PM Koizumi sometimes visits the shrine, which gives his Asian neighbours opportunities to attack Japan's imperialism and arrogance. So it was interesting to make an offering and contemplate the whole affair in the inner shrine. No photos inside unfortunately.

Then we took the train to Shinjuku, got some lunch and checked out the red-lite district.

Next was Harajuku, the coolest place in Tokyo, where kids go to show off their ridiculously extravagant costumes and generally be fucking cool.

Then on the meet Dan and Tracey in Shibuya, home of the busiest intersection in the universe, even at 4 in the morning (as we were later to discover).

Wandered round to a few bars before those guys headed back to their inn about 12 and Bruiser and I hit the streets. We walked into a tiny dark alley and stumbled upon a little oden restaurant that seated 8 people and a fantastically drunk owner who was about 60 but sporting the fashion of a 15-year old. Disturbing. Having been to Yasukuni earlier, I was all beefed up on war and imperialism and argued for about an hour with a girl about WWII, war in general, and why Brian didn't speak Japanese, while her husband was teaching him how to say "My name is Brian". It was really quite a fun argument and although Brian thought she hated him, we stumbled out of the shit-hole and into a wine bar where they bought two bottles of $200 wine. It was fucking awesome but we spent another hour or so arguing before mellowing out and giving tourist tips on Australia, and finally left about 330.

Our inn didnt open until 5 so we hung out in a diner til 430, then took a taxi and loitered around before crashing to bed at 5.

Woken up by the fucking phone ringing at 1030, then 1040, telling us to get the fuck out. We stumbled nauseously onto the bullet train for Kyoto, fell asleep and missed the stop and ended up in Osaka. Retracked, met Kana at K's hostel (big recommendation if you ever go to Kyoto) and vegged out before heading to the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) and wandering along the Philosopher's Walk through a really quiet, idyllic part of outer Kyoto.

Then walked down to get the famed wild boar at Okariba, and some free bee larva and locusts!

Next to the floating world of Pontocho by the river, more drink and chat, then back to sleep.

Next day: the 1001 buddhas at Sanjusangendo, the holy water at Kiyomizu Temple, and old Nijo Castle. 800 yen all-you-can-eat vegetarian lunch, and back to Ako.

Wednesday night, so Minato's and then Rengaya. Start work the next day so I went home at 11, and the others stayed til past 1.

Thursday was shopping for Brian, work for me. He came down to basketball club in the afternoon and we shot around, then Yuka's farewell party (she's going to Oman) and then some drinks at Hyotan.

Friday was Hiroshima for Bruiser and Kana, and then we hit the town at night: kushi, yakitori, tataki and tempura at various dives around Ako. Somewhere along the way Kana's bike got stolen so we stopped off at the cop shop, where I became agitated at missing person notices.
Karaoke to finish the night.

Today was pretty tame. Morning service, Ako castle, kaiten sushi. Bri, Kana and Kaz are off to the Himeji beer garden tonight, and I've got basketball training, and a tournament tomorrow morning. Gonna drop Bri at Himeji station and hope he makes his plane to the US and then misses out on any hurricanes. Peace.

Electric Limosine

2005-08-26T12:20:00.000+09:00

This can't go on any longer. The world must know about Perth band Electric Limosine. They can't spell, but they make excellent Fischerspooner/Ladytron - style electropop. Check it OUT.
Five thumbs up. Nice work, Jimmy Swift (distant, more dashing relation of Johnny Gun).

Okinawa

2005-08-25T17:36:00.000+09:00

Ow. Broke my promise to keep writing on this thing, but only because I suddenly got shot down with a cold and drank too much at the all-u-can-drink wine night at Rengaya and became unable to string togther a sentence. All-u-can-drink is such a blessing and curse at the same time. It dares you to push your limits ridiculously, to redefine that little word "can". Even after several bottles, I still feel for some reason that because my ever-expanding stomach can physically fit more alcohol, I won't get my 30 bucks worth unless I drink til I drop.

It was actually a really fun night. Despite most of the patrons being over 40, there were some interesting conversations, and a guy forgave me when I spilled red wine all over his jeans while in some argument over... fuck, what were we even talking about?

Next day kills. Woke up with a deadly hangover, slept til 4, then my headache went away but my stomach was killing me. Plus the whooping cough. Had a date to have dinner with a girl who'd just got back from Australia, and it was juice all night. Never tasted better.

But anyway, here are some photos from Okinawa, Day 1. We rented a little car, set the navi, and let the radio tell us how to get to Nago.

Stopped by at some places of historic/aesthetic interest on the way, the Nakamura House (old Okinawa-style home) and the Nakagusuku Castle, which was very empty.

Had Orion beer, goat stew (now with extra stomachs!) and goya, and called it a day.

Summer Sonic

2005-08-23T12:55:00.000+09:00

Yo, back safe from Okinawa. Good times, good times. I'm going to try to put up some new photos and stuff every day for the next few days (until Brian gets here on Sunday I guess). For you, it'll be like you actually went to Okinawa yourself. And for me, it'll be like reliving the past week all over again, which is pretty passe anyway.

Right then. First, Aug 13-14. Summer Sonic, Osaka. Saw a bunch of bands, some I didn't know and were mostly unimpressive; some I did and were awesome. I'm not going to write it up coz Dan did such a nice job. He has some good photos of it too, so if you think mine suck then go stab me in the back like the rats you are and look at them.

The Caesars. Crappy picture from too far back, but they're a shitty band and I didn't want to get any closer.

Death Cab for Cutie were excellent. Cool personalities, excellent voice.

Some jokers called Him. The singer was the lovechild of Bowie and Ozzy, but it was kind of ridiculous to have the whole vampire look going when the other members of the band are Korn-a-likes.

Yeah baby.

Bloc Party were really good too, mostly because everyone was really into it.
I'm still not entirely convinced how much I like them.

Weezer! They're old.

Oasis. Liam Gallagher was a dick. Before a song, he calls out... "This one's for all you Japanese. Get out yer chopsticks." Dick.

Orange Range! I went to see this just so I could brag to my students. Of course, this photo could be anyone, really.

TV on the Radio were good too. The low end was fucking scary. Sound better on record though.

Arcade Fire were excellent and hilarious. They started with Wake Up, and the sing-along chanting was a perfect way to get the crowd into it. Really good.
Then they played Laika, and two dudes on the left of the stage started doing percussion on a football helmet and then put on the helmet, climbed the scaffolding beside the stage and banged on that too.
See these guys.

Interpol were Interpol. Same set I saw in Osaka earlier in the year, but sound wasn't as good and I didn't have the chance to blind Paul this time.

Last was Roots, who were all absolute virtuosos and make me cry, and then my boy Q-Tip!
MY NAME IS Q!!!!
He was so stoned it was almost not funny. The most random, disconnected, nonsensical gig I've ever seen. But it was quality when there was actually something happening.

Answering Machine

2005-08-12T20:03:00.000+09:00

Dudes! Taking a well-earned rest in Okinawa for a week after Summer Sonic on the weekend.
Don't die while I'm away and I'll resist the urge too!

Sabotage Ako

2005-08-09T13:00:00.000+09:00

So we FINALLY played another gig here in Ako, at Spooky. It was our 3rd, and last, since Matt goes home tomorrow. Kaz's band, Inkon, played before us, with their new sax player, Kazu 3, and then we tore through this list:

Saboteur outside Spooky. Who said fashion is important?

Inkon. Yas-san, Kazu, Kazu 3 (bassist out of pic). Thanks guys! Especially Y, who lent me his guitar when I inevitably broke a string.

I think this was Pavement's Stereo.

SICK!

This was definitely Malkums's Baby Cmon, coz I'm still using my guitar.

Saboteur in action.

Our adoring fans! Kaz dancing on the amps was cool.
I think was the encore anthem Come Together.

Hiro and Nate.

I hope they were laughing with us. Maybe at my Japanese.

The bands. SICKSICK!
Thanks Ko-chan for letting us put the gig on and party!

This is Living

2005-08-09T12:54:00.000+09:00

On Sunday one of the teachers invited me to his house for dinner. He's a pretty old dude, and I wasn't sure what we would talk about, but it was a good time, and they broke out heaps of cool ultra-Japanesey food; sushi, sashimi, whole fish, prawns, steamed egg custard... I know it wouldn't have been cheap or easy. Thanks, Mr and Mrs Kashino!
His house is out in the countryside in Une and, although it was a bit decrepit in places, I thought it was really nice and comfortable. See what you think.

Rice paddies outside the house.

Inside. All the dead relatives are in photos above the door.

Kashinos.

Mrs Kashino and the house.

市民の夕べ

2005-08-09T12:43:00.000+09:00

The Ako summer festival down by the river was last Saturday night. It's always a great atmosphere, but the whole 'rock star' thing of knowing basically everyone under 16 and saying hi and making conversation for 3 hours gets old. Now I know how Britney feels...

Anyway, it was cool. Greasy festival food, dancing, fireworks. Kicked the ass thru Aioi's festival.
Then of course we kicked on, had massive joyous arguments over planetary definitions, dehydration, stretching and Regurgitator, heard many opinions on who was the least-not-hot chick in a japanese porn mag, and generally had a good time in yukatas.

Kanako getting kitted up in her yukata, camo style.

A bunch of lovely shy geishas.

Fireworks, obviously. At the bottom are the many food stalls.

This was a cool curtain/waterfall firework? that stretched across the river.

Everyone was having a good time until this guy's head started exploding.

Check it out. I have my own FAN club. I slay me.

So Long, Thanks For All The Headaches

2005-08-09T12:16:00.000+09:00

It's that time of year again. Old friends going back home, disillusioned with red-light-running, no-attention Japan, carting their ill-gained wads of cash and pension checks. New kids coming to town, fresh-faced and full of vigour, like newborn tadpoles before they are eaten alive.

Anyway, thanks everyone for a great 2 years. It was good to meet y'all; I think we were (I was anyway) lucky we got quite a few cool people in our load from Perth way back in '03, and then managed to suck in others on the way. Good luck everyone, stay in touch. Thanks.

Here are some photos to remember us by (plus other shots from the past couple weeks of debauchery). First, the sky buffet ("fake" going away party).

Nate and Hiro. Only time I have ever seen Hiro in a shirt. If he gets married, it will be in a bright yellow T-shirt and a garish bandana.

Mel in her finery.

Shit goes down in the elevator.

Ape man gets loose.

Aaron and Bron. They're not going anywhere but Bron pulls some cool faces in photos.
So does Aaron, actually.

Becak. Of course.

Matt having a Twinnings.

Fish face gets furious.

And now the ridiculously fun dare party. I got off pretty lucky; just had to drink a glass of grog jumping up and down (painful) and walk around kobe with my finger in my nose (passe).

I think I look like some kind of chipmunk here.

Nick in zen-trance mode in a bar. He had to ignore all extenal stimuli, including having water poured all over him.

And then Dan was his hands for 5 minutes, like that skit on Whose Line. I wouldn't have left my camera there, with Nick taking a forced tequila shot over the top.

Hiro had to challenge randoms to thumb wrestle and buy shots accordingly.

Lorna walking Mel through Kobe.

Rob is a lightweight, apparently.

And the last time I saw these guys. Cheers!

Shrine to Zhaoxing

2005-08-05T10:32:00.000+09:00

I have been inspired by Dirk's posting of my Li Zhaoxing photo in the "ugliest politician of the year" contest. This page is now officially declared the shrine to Li-Li, who manages to look ever more ridiculous in every photo op. There was a fucking excellent one in the Daily Yomiuri of him facing off with the Israeli foreign minister in "ping-pong democracy", but I can't get a digital copy of it - maybe the Red Army burnt down the house of anyone who owned one.

Anyway, here is Dirk's winning entry. That weird yellow swirly mic at the front makes it look even better, like a surf comp or something.

And this one is good too.

HEY MR GEORGE BUSH JUNIOR! HA! When I look at you through my fingers like this, you appear so small! HA! LIKE YOUR SHARE OF THE TEXTILES MARKET! HA! PROTECTIONISE THIS MR GEORGE BUSH JUNIOR!

Please send in any amusing photos of Li or other politicians immediately!

So, what's going on in Japan?

2005-07-21T14:22:00.000+09:00

I hear you ask.

Ummm... not much. Since the whole Chinese/Korean textbook riots calmed down, things have been pretty tame as the focus is on domestic politics. Koizumi's bitch is the reform and privatisation of the postal system. Privatising those kinds of companies is always a touchy issue, cf Telstra, and lots of people get pissed off and circulate propaganda showing how people would lose their jobs and if you didnt live in Tokyo you wouldn't get mail any more. I don't really know enough about it, but that's the shit over here at the moment.

The push for UN reform is still on. Japan was a bit shocked when the US declared outright that they werent supporting it. It's like, cheers for being a token non-Western society and attacking Iraq, but we don't care about that now. But don't pull out! We also need your help with uncle Kim Jong Il. I'll tell you what, we'll help you out with the whole abduction issue. Coz, I mean, that could be taken so many ways, you're gonna need all the help you can get. It takes two for an abduction, you know. One to abduct, and one to be abducted. Watch yr step.

Apart from that, just the usual stories:
1. Middle-aged guy kills his parents, saying they nag him too much to stop reading comics and get a fucking job.
2. 4 high school students and 2 adults gas themselves to death in a car.
3. Police fail to apprehend violent criminal / child abuse / domestic violence / litterbug. Still find time to shake down foreigners.
4. Guy in debt kills self, family.

This is Japan!

As for me. On holidays now, passed the level 3 kanji test, my grandmother died, going to Okinawa, need a haircut. See ya.

Bizarre and New

2005-07-19T19:50:00.000+09:00

Bizarre : this ad for Don Quixote Travelling Bakery.

New: Johnny Gun's posthumous EP (actually finished in 2004, but NEW on the web!), plus my/his Don Caballero tribute track, on trev's website.

2 Down, X To Go

2005-07-19T19:29:00.000+09:00

So tomorrow is the last day of my second contracted year here in Ako. Although I have another year, it really seems like time is ticking away and I want to get a lot done here while I have the chance. On the other hand, I'm also looking forward to spending some time back in Perth and not having to pay 10 bucks for half a steak. Got some trips to Okinawa / Korea / Mongolia / Peru lined up and in planning, too. Especially for Mongolia, let it be known, hear ye hear ye, that I am looking for some folk crazy enough to brave the frozen plains next January or April.

On the other (third) hand, general laziness has a large effect on day-to-day affairs. Hopefully I can get some music done over the summer holidays. It might even be time to turn on the air conditioner soon - I can only dodge the sweat-induced sparks shooting from my keyboard for so long. Dan is the only person to have used the air-con in the last eight months; I would have thought living in an un-air-conditioned, no-hot-water apartment, you would have adapted to extreme weather conditions. Pussy.

Anyway, here are some shots from Sakoshi JHS. I'm going to miss a lot of these kids when they graduate. Not the eagerest bunch on earth, but in between persuading me to smuggle them in dope seeds, they're good kids. I couldn't really ask for much more in an outlying area of a country town, where 90% of the time there isn't even anyone checking tickets at the train station. Score.

The 'bad' kids. They're good kids.

Some of the volleyball club. Real nice girls.
I think a lot of these kids will do something really special one day.
I hope they all can.

They pretend they are cleaning diligently for the photo.
I don't think Tomo on the left has ever wiped the window before in his life.

Staff room. My desk is the clean one in the middle, with the shitty chair.

I surprised her cutting up some coke.

I don't know if you can make out the mullet I am working on.

Nuns in training.

I'm really getting interested in kendo recently.
I don't really understand the rules so well, but basically:
you smack the enemy with a big wooden sword, in either the face, hand, or side.
You don't get any points unless you first tell them where you will hit them, then hit them there, and scream as you are doing it, and stamp your foot effectively.
No joke. It's cool.

And pretty serious. The kids spend time meditating before each training.

Sabotage Ako Sabotaged by God

2005-07-17T15:33:00.000+09:00

Showed up to the Bombay bar in Akashi on July 1, about 815pm, ready to start playing about 9. A little surprised to see the place completely closed up and shutters down. Not good.
Matt: Oh, right. The dude said he might not be there. I'll call him.
Beautiful organisation, got a bite with Kana and Kazu and when we got back the place was indeed open, and with free Coronas for the band. Sick. Cheers Gordon, my favourite blues-soloing deadpan bartender in Akashi.
How famous are we? Check out our high-quality tour poster. Coming soon to a toilet near you. Thanks Jen.

Broke a string doing a Rapture cover ("Out of the Races") and while changing, some old Jap guy wanders into the bar (which was now wide open and pretty much anybody walking by would be savaged with the Saboteur) and points at me sitting on stage.
Guy: "Are you the master? Hey, are you the master?"
Nick: "Yeh! I'm the master!"
Guy: "Come here! Too loud! Turn it down!"
Hiro: "Fuck off! Sayonara!"
So then Gordon goes off to calm the dude down/kick him onto the street, we turn down the volume switch on the drums, and back into it.

Staring down the crowd.

Impromptu Cold Cold Night rendition... nice one Mel!

It was good to play again. Didn't sound as well as we could have... thanks heaps to the Bombay guys for letting us come... the tiny little stage was cool, but it made the sound setup difficult. I thought we did OK, and was geared up for Sabotage Ako the next week.

Until it decided to fucking RAIN and we had to call it off. All our amps were coming from a dude in Kakogawa, and he wasn't going to come down unless we were going to play but we needed to decide the night before coz we were scheduled to meet in Ako at 930am for an 11am start. So it went kaput, with 80% chance of rain and death by electric shock. Turned out it barely rained the next day, which pissed us all off, but on the other hand it was shitty weather. Even if we had played it would have been a bad vibe.

So hopefully next week at Spooky. Have to hit up Ko-chan and see how it looks. Tentatively going for July 30, to send off Matt and tear down Ako. See you then.

Sabotage Akashi

2005-06-24T16:35:00.000+09:00

Hey, sorry about the long Laos album and boring descriptions, but there you go.

Now, it's time to sell myself.

SABOTAGE AKASHI
FRIDAY JULY 1, BOMBAY BAR, 5mins from JR AKASHI.
Starts at 9pm, free entry, half-price drinks for chicks.
If you want to know more, mail me or check the Hyogo AJET list.

SABOTAGE AKO
SUNDAY JULY 10, AKO SEASIDE PARK
5 bands, starts at 11am, free entry.
Check out our flyer (thanks Dan)

Finally, Laos

2005-06-24T16:05:00.000+09:00

So you probably know I went to Laos for a week or so in May.
I'm just gonna stick up a few photos with some captions, I'm too lazy at this point to do a whole write-up. In general, Laos is a great place. Good, cheap food and accommodation. Nice people, a lot of English, and a lot of unspoilt countryside. If you get a chance, I'd recommend it.

Pha That Luang in Vientiane

Novice monks.
The dude in the middle had fluent, natural English despite being only 20 and having never left Laos. Most monks learn English at the temple schools.

Beer Lao. It's not the best beer in the world, but when it's cold it tastes pretty damn good.

Excellent cheap local restaurant.

Small village we stopped at during the 9-hour bus ride from Vientiane to Xieng Khouang. Next to the bus driver, there was a dude with an AK. Cool.

Traditional mountain Lao village.

Xieng Khouang markets.

Sign warning of land mines.
During the Vietnam war, Laos became the most heavily bombed country in history, and it's still very dangerous. The Hmong forces were allied with the US and when they lost the war, they became an insurgent army that, until recently, has made many strikes on the ruling Communist regime.
In the last month or so a lot of the remaining Hmong tribes have surrendered.

In between the mines is the Plain of Jars.
Kind of in a similar vein to Stonehenge or Easter Island, a bunch of ancient stone monoliths that remain shrouded in mystery.
More recently, they were used as firing holes in the Vietnam war.

Cave in the Plain of Jars.
Dude on the right is a writer from England who has written a bunch of stuff for the Australian literary rag Quadrant. He goes by C A R Hills.

Tiny village.
Rare in that it has electrcity and telephones.

The villagers' livelihood is noodle-making.

This crazy old hag was babbling Lao to us while picking feathers from a dead chicken.

But her family was really nice.
They gave us dodgy snacks and soy milk, and some ridiculously strong Lao fire water, called Lao Lao. I felt fucked-up drunk after two shots.

More jars, more plains.

Morning in Xieng Khouang.

Temple in the old capital, Luang Prabang.
Luang Prabang is one of the most beautiful, relaxed places I have ever been to. Despite the unrelenting heat and humidity, it was always comfortable.

On top of the hill in the middle of town.
That's the old palace in the foreground and the Mekong to the rear.

Southern part of town.

I snapped some corny effect shots of the sunset over the Mekong.
Really beautiful.

On the Mekong riverside near our hostel.

Waterfalls half an hour drive out of town.
We met a dude who claimed to be a political refugee from China trying to get to help in Thailand. He was fluent in English and Japanese and wanted us to help him fake a visa.

Delicious Lao barbecue.

Tiny weaving village down the Mekong.

Temple in a cave.

Lao kids.

Slow boats outside the temple.

Vinay was by chance working in Laos so we caught up in Vientiane.
Same old Vinay, but now with limited-time-only beard.

Bangkok, Wat Pho.

This is one of Bangkok's lesser attractions, but it was so intricate, like a labyrinth, and beautiful.

On the Chao Praya.

The food was SO good.

Khao San Road.

Une Junior High

2005-06-24T15:59:00.000+09:00

For 3 weeks I was at Une JHS, in an outlying part of Ako. A teacher offered to drive me there and back every day, but the weather about this time (May) is just so beautiful that I decided to ride the 35 min trip. Ako is really flat so it's perfect for leisurely biking around.
Here are some shots of the school and its immediate surroundings, mostly mountains, rivers and fields. It's really great, I don't know if the pix will do it justice.

Une JHS

Behind school

To school

School's over the river, on the left

Aioi Peron Festival

2005-06-24T15:41:00.000+09:00

Aioi, the town next to Ako, has a big festival which spans two days and features dragon boat racing and fireworks. It began because back in the day pretty much everyone in Aioi worked for this one boat-making company, and they were rich as hell (which is why they have a shinkansen stop and we don't), so they started a big party to celebrate their lucre, but now Aioi is a hole.
It's a Springfield-Shelbyville thing.

The gang, getting sauced up for the big event.

The fireworks are really good, better than the good ol' Skyworks.
Only thing is, they go for about 45 minutes, so by the end,
you're kind of like, fireworks are _so_ 45 minutes ago.

We hadn't reached that point yet.
L-R
Nick, Susanne, Dan, Carla, Bron, Hiro, Jo

Lines of food/drink stalls down by the riverside.

SO MUCH FRIED CHICKEN.
It's a pity it tastes good, coz it's fucking disgusting.

During the festival we were suddenly under attack from Pyongyang.

Dan and Bron being weird.

Japanese cops.
The most pathetic, worthless job on earth.
There was an incident a couple months ago where the cops pulled over
some guy who was speeding and smashing into other cars, and he got out of the car, got into the patrol car, and drove away.
It's not common, but it's not a shock.

It's kind of dim, but this is me taunting them.
Come on, they have RIOT POLICE at the festival.
What are they afraid of, the fried chicken will run out and
the grannies will take the place down?

Back at Rengaya.

This is just a strange, strange photo.
Aaron on the prison break.

Higashi-Chu

2005-06-24T15:38:00.000+09:00

Just before we went to Laos, I had a class on open day. Nerve-racking.

My Australian brainwashing classroom.

How cute is the girl on the left?

We Love You, Kakogawa

2005-06-24T15:24:00.000+09:00

Kaz's buddy Yas-san is this ridiculously rich kid who lives in a massive blue house near Kakogawa. Although he lives alone, there are two storeys and about 10 rooms, most of which are filled with junk, comics, cocktail equipment, videos, or tools for his obsessive-compulsion with music. He has a kick-ass mini-recording room setup, and he lent us his equipment so we could all go and get drunk and play some tunes in the middle of nowhere, next to the highway, outside a shrine, with nobody to watch us and surrounded by fields. It was cool.
And I don't want to give you the wrong impression. Yas-san is by no means a spoilt bitch. He is the nicest guy in the world, really quiet, and he made us all heaps of sick food and spot-on cocktails. So yay for him. Here are some photos.

Saboteur's first ever gig. Nick, Kana, Matt on drums.

Matt looking bored.

Is he even awake?

Kaz looking kind of uncomfortable with the attention.

Kaz was playing drums in a band that plays covers of a band called "The Peas".

Katsue straining a muscle.

Learn How

2005-06-24T15:19:00.000+09:00

So it was Kana's birthday way back in April, and I booked us in at all-you-can-eat/drink shabu-shabu in Kobe. How good does this look? The trouble is that it's only for 90 minutes, and I always believe in getting my money's worth at these things, so we ended up very full of meat and beer.

Becak

2005-06-24T15:13:00.000+09:00

Becak, the Kobe club that sounds like a projectile vomit.
Probably because of the barman's propensity to have ridiculously cheap ($30) all-you-can-drink dance nights that last about 8 hours. And he knows how to make a good cocktail, which is the rule for most good places in Japan. So it's not like you pay your cash to drink fucking water-and-gin-and-tonics all night. He'll make you anything, and he worked on Club Med or something for several years so it's all quality. Dan has a bunch more photos, but here's a taster.

Ako Heights

2005-06-24T15:01:00.000+09:00

Yo. So I think it's been about 3 months since I put anything here, which is probably a relief for those of you who felt some deranged duty to read the page, and a disappointment to those who had taken my absence to indicate my death. No dice.

So I'm gonna clean out my photo vault first of all, in roughly chronological order. For those of you who haven't been to Ako, here are some shots from the mountain behind my house. On the one of me hiking up, you can see some ultra-sicko cherry blossoms on the right. Most things that are all hyped up as being representative of a country and beautiful, like English customer service or Russian hospitality, end up being duds. But cherry blossoms (sakura) are the shit. They're really pretty, especially when they start to fall off the trees after only a week or so. It's like pink snow. Then they're gone for another year. Which is why they are such a symbol of transience to the Japanese and fit in the whole Buddhist outlook. Omm.

The other shot is out east, over the Chikusa river and towards the Seto Inland Sea, which you can see in the background, and is full of tasty fish.

Higher learning or slave to society?

2005-04-10T16:45:00.000+09:00

Yo, don't stop reading and writing about the posts below, but here's a new one, an open question, or series of questions really.
The more opinions the better, I promise I personally will not abuse any.
Working as a teacher here in Japan, education and the school system have become, naturally, an interest. Often other teachers ask me, "in Australian schools, do you have X?" or "do the students do Y"? And, having no systemised teaching experience back home, and coming from a single private school, often I don't really have an answer.

So, over to youse guys.

1 What do you think of the Australian school system (this one especially directed towards those of us in Japan, having built, I suspect, something of a critical eye)?

and, more importantly,

2 What function(s), if any, do you think school provides, or should provide?

OK. I expect at least a slight degree of intelligent comment from you all here, otherwise it will be pretty apparent that the 12 years + tertiary education you all probably have was a complete waste of time. At least that will probably answer question 2: no function.

Anyway, write whatever you like. Cheers.

Inventing Japan - Part 2

2005-04-07T13:15:00.000+09:00

OK, I finished the book, and it certainly was penetrating, oh yeh, and thankfully concise.

I think history is for the most part empty facts and figures useful only for trivial pursuit games, but it obviously also offers us the chance to learn from our mistakes. What is history if not a series of seemingly never-ending mistakes? I guess it's pretty frustrating when you can see the same mistakes repeated time after time. I think some smart guy once said, "Experience is that wonderful thing that lets us recognise a mistake when we make it again".

So I think I left off just before a minor skirmish known as WWII.

Around the time Japan was moving further into China, nationalism was once again boiling over thanks to the press and the 'national polity', which was the idea i mentioned before about japanese people all being as one with the emperor and standing for the nation. There was still a lot of mostly imagined grudges towards Western bullying, and then the US stopped supplying military materiel to Japan to stop it from completely killing China. Japan got pretty pissed off and joined the Axis. They still couldn't do much without oil etc, so some bright spark came up with the plan of attacking the US before it became impossible, leading to certain defeat. In fact, most of the planners knew that Japan couldn't win but they wanted to hammer the Allies as hard as they could to push for a more favourable settlement/peace treaty. In typical Japanese fashion, anyone who was quite strongly against this idea was too unsure of themselves to speak out, and so the hawks won the day and they bombed Pearl Harbour, leading, worst of all, to a terrible movie 60 years later. At the time a lot of Japanese people were pretty chuffed about having finally scored a big blow against the Western bullies.

AFTER KEIKO'S GOING AWAY PARTY

Ironically, Japan then tried to enforce its own uniqueness, as expressed in the national polity, on its foreign subjects, in order to create some kind of pan-Asian empire. For example, Koreans and Taiwanese were forced to take Japanese names and Burmese/Filipinos etc were fed the samurai spirit in textbooks. (More on this in the reply to Dirk's post in Part 1 below).

It wasn't working so well, because the US was right on Japan's doorstep and bombing the shit through its front door. Tokyo was very badly hit, in many parts reduced to ruins. The pride of the Japanese didn't waver, though (officially, anyway). The great Japanese suicide attack came to the fore here, and even civilians were expected to kill themselves rather than surrender. Nationalism was being milked for all it was worth, not for the first, and not for the last time in Japanese history (or history anywhere in the world, for that matter. A lot of people have won a lot of elections based on conservative scare-mongering).

YO, I THINK HE MEANS US!

The emperor, by this stage, was considering offering peace, but the US declined to guarantee the continuance of the imperial throne (although they did promise, as they often do, democracy and the Japanese people's right to choose their leaders), and obviously surrender might have been seen as a weak option, so he held out. Then the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Faced with the most devastating attack ever (which, to look at the bright side, at last gave him an excuse), Hirohito surrendered.

General MacArthur showed up in his aviator sunglasses (the image was so striking, to this day I get called MacArthur if I dare to wear any) in August 1945 to supposedly educate the poor children of Japan. He got to it quickly, setting up a parliamentary democracy, although leaving in place most of the bureaucracy. Free speech was one of the pillars of the new order, but predictably it didn't happen so smoothly in practice, as any criticism of the new domination was banned, as was such diverse literature as Steinbeck, for portraying American poverty (I mean, your new colonial dominators can't be seen as having faults, surely?).

HERE'S THE GRAPES, HERE'S THE WRATH.

There were lots of war crimes trials and executions, but Hirohito escaped any blame, probably because MacArthur wanted to use his imperial legitimacy to make his own position more respectable. This made the trials somewhat farcical, because all the war had been conducted under the national polity of which the Emperor was the embodiment and standard. He did later, as Buruma puts it, 'renounce his divinity', and allowed for a new constitution to be written. The most controversial parts wer Article 1 (about the status of the Emperor) and the infamous Article 9, which proscribed Japan from having any armed forces.

Article 9 has been a very problematic issue for Japan. While it does promote the idealistic notion of a completely pacific nation, it also means that that nation has to rely totally on external sources for defence. In Japan today a lot of opinions are getting spouted around of how to amend this Article, and it looks like it will be changed in the forseeable future to allow not only for self-defence, but now also for collective self-defence, such as pre-emptive wars into other sovereign states as required by certain countries upon who Japan has seen as its 'foster parents' for nor arguaby 150 years and has to rely upon for protection. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Korean war began in 1950, and although Japan, having no army, couldn't take part, it did supply US forces with materiel. Despite the wishes of MacArthur and seemingly in opposition to the new constitution, a Japanese 'police reserve' was created by the US, which was basically a self-defence force, and in fact became the capitalised Self Defence Force that still causes legal trouble today. In 1951, MacArthur fell out of favour with his political masters, and got the boot, and Japan and the US signed peace and security treaties later that year.

This meant that although Japan now had the reins in its own hands, it was still officially totally reliant on the US for protection, so it allowed US forces to hang around effectively for ever and keep the peace. Today US bases in Kanagawa and Okinawa are producing no end of scandal and controversy: rape, helicopter crashes etc.

Although liberal politics were rife immediately following the war's end, by the late 1940s, and certainly by the 50s, they were falling out of favour as there was backlash against socialist economic policies. Voices from the right began growing and denying that Japan had been so bad in the war after all.

The aforementioned Mr Yoshida was in a constant battle with a former war criminal and nationalist, Nobusuke Kishi, for head of the powerful conservative party, ironically named the Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP quickly learned about party politics and how to win: ie, corruption, graft, and keeping the fat cats in big business happy. The LDP even today remains a seesaw of various factions supporting various interests, and for the large part has stifled much political debate. Recently the Social Democrats did a bit better in elections so maybe there is hope for the future.

Anyway, eventually (1957) Kishi became PM, and he didn't much like the constitution or the fact that the US looked like they would be around for ever as a military presence. He did what he could to get more favourable conditions, but in the end his own efforts came up to off him, because the conditions weren't favourable enough to suit radical patriots he himself had stirred up, and he was forced out in 1960. In came a dude named Hayato Ikeda, who would sort some things out that continue to both haunt and comfort Japan today.

IKEDA

Ikeda, in great Japanese tradition, wanted to avoid difficult issues, so he attempted to brush consitutional politics aside and keep the people happy with that most addictive of drugs: money. He did this by initimidating leftist unions and setting up the much-maligned modern system of lifelong employment for loyal workers, as well as the equally maligned phenomenon of never-ending public works projects. This stimulated the economy while keeping the people quiet.

Ikeda's policy in large part led to Japan's huge economic revival and leap to superpower status. But it also led to an allegedly valueless, nihilistic android population, which in turn led to sarin attacks on the Tokyo subways, intended to wake up the dead Japanese and revive their proud heritage. The feeling that the people have lost something important comes out in conversations with many Japanese adults, who, spurred by ranting politicians around the bubble years, seem to find that youths of today lack sufficient national pride. Which of course was one of the carrots thrown by earlier militaristic leaders to spur their people to war, especially in times of comparative economic stagnation. Does this bring us round full circle? Again?

Although, like I said, Japanese politics tend to be pretty dull, there are a lot of things on the table at the moment that could have big political effects. PM Koizumi's pet project, the privatisation of the postal industry, is always a big talking point in economic terms and as a radical tradition-breaking reform, but I think its real value may lie in its effects on politics. People seem to finally be getting annoyed at the LDP and its factionalisation that results in political stagnation, and Koizumi's attempts to force through the privatisation against grumpy bureaucrats might give people the impetus they need to realise this and vote in somebody else. Whether this will change anything at at all, you can only wait and see.

Japan is gunning for permanent member status on the UN, which is interesting but I don't know how important it will be or what effects it might have. It is giving anti-Japanese in Korea and China an excuse to mouth off about past events and the perennial textbook issue, though. Check out Dirk's post below (Part 1) for more there.

Anyway, thanks for sticking around this long. I basically wrote this to clarify my own comprehension of the book and also hopefully to stir a bit of debate. You've got to be careful sometimes being the only pinky in a room full of Japanese and telling them why their country is crazy. So write in. It's not Dr Love, but it might be interesting.

Inventing Japan. Part 1.

2005-04-05T14:21:00.000+09:00

So. Last day of holidays, apart from recording Don Caballero tribute tracks celebrating the death of the evil man in white who caused so much trouble around the world while supposedly being such a saint, I am reading a book called Inventing Japan by a dude named Ian Buruma. He is one smart cookie, I became aware of him at uni and saw his book going for cheap in Junkudo bookstore in Himeji.

"A concise, penetrating examination."

Not US customs officials, as it may seem, but the NY Times giving Ian a good rap.
The book is about, to quote The Economist, "the process of Japan's engagement with the Western world" from 1853 to 1964. Having lived here for almost 2 years now, I feel like I am fairly familiar with the modern Japanese psyche, but this book has shed some light on some interesting stuff. I wasn't sure how many people would be aware of a lot of this stuff, so brace yourselves. Here is a summary, for those interested, of the first half of the book. For general knowledge if nothing else, I suggest you check it out.

So in the 17th century Japan was getting pretty antsy about Christians, as you would, and decided the best thing to do would be to kick out/kill all Westerners, apart from those crazy Dutch, who were more interested in commerce than religion. Isolated from the rest of the world, most of their ideas and systems came from Chinese traditions. A lot of folk were pretty intrigued by the West, so they somehow learnt Dutch and started picking up Western thinking from Dutch books. Some of the stuff was obviously pretty cool, so they started considering Western medicine, science, etc., while keeping it distinct from the more 'important' traditional philosophies that they lived by. So no democracy just yet.

Then in 1853 Commodore 64 Perry shows up in the Black Ships and forces his way in, and basically pushes Japan into accepting trade with the US, and other Western countries later. Japan starts accepting more and more Western ideas, but only really cluey people would consider them, and only in private, coz if you didn't you were still likely to get offed by ultra-right wing samurai zealots.

For a while it had been the case that you had your emperor hanging out in Kyoto, being figureheadly, and the shogun (like head of the most powerful clan) dishing out the orders from Edo (Tokyo). After Perry came in, a lot of samurai and other nationalists started getting pissed off with the shogunate for allegedly giving in too much to the Western dogs, and also because economic booms were making the rich richer and the poor poorer. So in 1868 they went mental and forced the end of the shogunate, and the Emperor was installed in Edo as the holy incarnation of the sun god, and as the one true source of wisdom. If you fought for the Emperor's team, you were enshrined at the new Yasukuni shrine, which remains today as a big source of trouble between Japan and other E Asian nations, coz war criminals from WWII are also enshrined there but the PM goes there anyway.

A lot of these psychos were quite smart, though, and they were incorporating utilitarian ideas of people power and parliamentary representation with this god-worship of the emperor. So they sorted out a constitution in 1889 with the Emperor at the top, with his hands clean of political affairs and the pollies basically interpreting His will. Far from being democratic, however, it was in practice a deal whereby the political powers would make backroom deals with the economic powers to keep the status quo (not so dissimilar to modern Japan really) and that led to the huge zaibatsu corporations that still exist today, like Mitsui and Mitsubishi. The idea was that it was too dangerous to give the people too much power - if you look around the world today this is still being played out through various devices.

Western culture was quite heartily consumed around this time and up until the early 20th century, in ridiculous ways like eating meat for the sake of it and learning the waltz, etc etc. Again, though, if anyone spoke out too loud about Western democratic political ideas, they were pretty quickly killed, if they were powerful, or just told to shut up, if they weren't. Basically you had to just 'be one with the Emperor/nation'.

Another issue here was that the army was answerable only to the Emperor, not to the government. But the Emperor didn't really say much, so they basically had free rein. Also, one Western idea that was very hihgly thought of was the notion of the Empire. In 1895 the Japs (using a lot of Western battle techniques) sorted out the Chinese in Korea and annexed it in 1910. This stirred up a lot of nationalist pride, leading to the Russian War that started with a surprise attack in 1904. Lots of soldiers on both sides were killed, but Japan got a lot of commercial rights in Manchuria, bordering Russia to the south.

Up to the 1920s, Japan, having stayed out of WWI, was having a boom and people, in the big cities at least, were living the high life. As for overseas, Japan brutally suppressed some rebellious movements in Korea and China. Liberal ideas were becoming a little more common within Japan (at least in theory... government was still basically a wing of the zaibatsu) but even liberals were pretty comfortable with Japan looking to start foreign empires, assuming that the superior Japanese could help the poor savages. Especially Koreans were vilified as sub-human.

In 1928 the Showa era, with good old Hirohito as Emperor, began. In 1930, although China was in charge of Manchuria, Japan, stirred up by nationalism, staged a bombing in order to give themselves a pretext to attack Chinese forces there. China basically said, whoa, easy big fella, and complained to the League of Nations, but Japan didn't care, and they walked out on the League. None of the PMs of this time were pleased with what was going on, especially from an international reputation perspective, but they couldn't do anything because the army claimed to be fighting for the nation and the Emperor. The army fomented nationalist aggression by claiming to be bullied by China and the West, and by claiming that Manchuria was necessary for Japan's economic well-being, and that the people there were in need of enlightenment.

So the Japanese looked after Manchuria, but after an incident in the DMZ with China in 1937 which was basically hot-headed Japanese looking to pick a fight, Japan really started advancing on Chinese territory. They attacked Chiang Kai-shek (who was later to form the Republic of China, ie Taiwan) at Shanghai and killed lots of Chinese civilians, largely owing to their lack of interest in caring for prisoners. Much easier just to kill them, after raping them if female (although Chinese forces became very resilient upon hearing of rapes, so later Japan started forcing Koreans and other subjects to serve as 'comfort women' for the soldiers). The worst incident here was the infamous Rape of Nanking, where hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in an orgy of Japanese bloodlust that lasted over a month.

Then in 1938 Japan started another war with Russia, in Nomonhan in northern Manchuria. After the slaughter of many soldiers on both sides, the Emperor called his dogs back, but they were too riled up with the smell of blood and they kept going. In the end nobody really won, but the Japanese decided to concentrate more on expanding southwards.

.....whew. So that's the fun-filled Japanese history of assassination, chauvinism and war for you. And we haven't even got to WWII yet.
It does give you a good idea of why so many Asian nations are still pretty pissed off at Japan (although obviously those living today have no direct responsibility, and at any rate have officially apologies on numerous occasions), and also why there is a lot of outcry about recent plans to change the Constitution to allow for more liberal use of the Self-Defence Force, for example in peace-keeping missions in Iraq etc. People who can remember some of this stuff and who have seen the error of the ways are none to keen to go anywhere near the nationalistic fervour of the past 2 centuries. History is something that obviuously still weighs very heavily around the necks of the Japanese.

Public Nuisance

2005-03-31T15:35:00.000+09:00

I love spring holidays. The cherry blossoms are blooming, the skies are sunny, the pollen count is low and I can sleep in every day.

Oh wait, no, that's all a complete lie. Due to crazy weather patterns, it is cold, raining, the blossoms are still hiding in their mother tree's tree womb, people everywhere are exploding from hayfever and i can't sleep in because EVERY MORNING I GET WOKEN UP BY POLITICIANS.

If you wanted to get votes, would you drive around early in the morning screaming from a loudspeaker? I sure wouldn't. In fact (although it is a moot point because I can't vote here), if I could I would vote for the guy who makes it his main platform not to annoy the citizens.

HELLO! I'M NANTOKA RANTOKA! I WILL FIGHT TO THE END! THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! I VERY POLITELY AM EXISTING! THANKYOU!

Um. You are a noisy fuck. Very politely cease to exist.

It's even worse when you're riding down the street on your bike and one of the campaign cars is driving along behind you (slowly of course, so as to maximise annoyance). It's like being tailed by a police helicopter. I was so afraid I swallowed all the acid I was carrying and so now I am likely to seven return blood poored flying falling .....

Anyway, just to prove how ubiquitous these things are... I will now go outside and take a photo of a car. I will remain outside for only 2 minutes but I guarantee to see one of these mobile fuckwagons. Back in a jiffy.

OK, more like 5 minutes, probably because I wasn't trying to sleep at the time. Thanks, Mr Komeguchi.

Still, not as bad as the roast potato man who comes past in the middle of the night playing some fucking siren. I guess the fact that such little things irritate me means my life is generally pretty tame? Perhaps.

On the other hand, Japan also has good points. Like a strange addiction to raw ham (prosciutto) and grapefruit flavouring. EVERYTHING is grapefruit flavoured: kleenex tissues, sports drinks, soap, even the grapefruits are grapefruit flavoured. I think that's all.

Nara

2005-03-25T15:09:00.000+09:00

Today is the first day of spring holidays. Although the past few days have been freezing cold, rainy and generally pretty bleak, today the sun is shining on the advent of two grand weeks of relaxation and heavy drinking.

Nothing huge to report. Went to Nara last weekend, which was a very calm, beautiful area. A whole bunch of holiday snaps below, if you can be bothered.

Had the end-of-semester staff party last night. Very typical Japanese gig, with plenty of unspoken rules and formalities for interaction. Always follows the exact same route; arrive, take a card to find out which seat yr in, make polite conversation, kanpai, pour drinks for other teachers, out comes the crazy marine life revenge entree, then sashimi, then tempura (it's all very good of course), get progrssively more inebriated, share a few laughs with the principal, find some interesting conversations and be interrupted by drunks, clock hits 8 and we out. Normally the male teachers will rope in some chicks and it's off to party #2 in some karaoke joint, where the 45-year old men go all scaly and be as seedy as possible to the young girls, eg. open their pants and encourage them to "pull my tassels"... thanks Nick for that one.

Last night, none of that. All the kids were already plastered enough without kicking on, so just me and two other young English teachers went on for some Coronas, the 'purest beer in the world' etc etc. I think we finished early coz all the others, unlike your humble correspondent, have to hit up school tomorrow. Ha!

So anyway, here are the photos youve all been waiting for. Now that theres plenty of free time, expect replies to yr emails and more frequent ranting. Cheers. Oh, I don't know how to put these in some separate page so just check em all out here. First up: Sonic Youth, Friday March 18, Namba Hatch, Osaka. The band opening for them, 'Psychobaba', as I recall, was this hypno-sitar trio with a real 'technical' kick-ass drummer, the sitar kid, and this screeching keyboardist. Without being on any particularly interesting drugs, they were not so enthralling.

Unlike my boy Thurston and the Yoof. They were really good for most of the time. Opened with "Golden Blue" and "Stones" from the new album, and did a few other new ones, as well as some oldies... but most of the non-Nurse tracks I didn't really know, and considering that I own and am familiar with all their good albums, that part of the night kind of dragged. Funny bit was when Lee started getting all this static electricity eating up his mic like some deadly killer bee swarm... he yelled out really earnestly, "I can't do 'Rain on Tin'! I can't do RAIN ON TIN!!!" I don't know why it was that particular song which was the problem, but Thurston just yells back, "Whatever, man!" and totally dissed him. I don't really know the normal band ch-ch-chemistry but that was kind of harsh. And entertaining.

So after some crazy Ethiopian food, we found ourselves in Nara in a dodgy little hotel. Hired some bikes and checked out Nara park, which includes:

Crazy coked-up deer junkies. They could smell the crack in Kanako's pockets and couldn't resist. Check it out, they even pashed each other like real crack whores trying to turn you on so maybe you'll give em some small change.

This is the south gate of Todai-ji, which contains the fabled Big Buddha. Really imposing wooden deal. Moving.

And that's Todai-ji in the background. And some random in the foreground.

No, it's not Scarborough Chinese restaurant. It's the outer walls of Todai-ji.

And this is me ruining an excellent photo of the temple itself.

The Buddhster him/her/itself. Doesn't look all that big but...

Some crazy grin, and this is a hole which is apparently the same size as the nostril of the Big Buddha. No way in hell could I fit through that, right?

Right? No way!

Oh the humanity. I did it!

This is a photo which I think is really nice. A cool garden called Isui-en. When I 'earn' my millions by inventing some rad personal hover device or whatever, I will definitely have a big zen-trance garden like this.

Horyu-ji, another temple just outside Nara.

This is right outside our hotel (you can see the doors in the back).
First time I ever ate in one of these dodgy outdoor food stalls, but it was really good (gyoza and oden) and I was able to wake up the next day so power on.

Outside Kasuga Taisha shrine in Nara Park. Those deer are fucking everywhere.

One of the hard-and-fast rules in Nara is that you must never, never get pac-man drunk.

These spring things are at every shrine in Japan but I thought, why not get a photo of this one for posterity. This being at Nigatsu-do in Nara.

So on Sunday we hotfooted it out of Nara and met up with Kanako's friend Miki and her new husband Takahiro, who live in Mie-ken. The most famous place in Mie is Ise-jingu, which is the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan. The complex is amazing, so pure and clean, and once you cross a massive wooden bridge and traverse a big rocky yard, you get into this massive solemn forest.

And right in the middle of the forest is the shrine, which you're not allowed to enter unless you're the Emperor or a religious-dude. Being neither, we could only take photos from afar (you couldn't take them up close). The shrine is over that wall.
Every 20 years, according to tradition, they demolish the shrine and build a new one somewhere else in the forest. Typical Japanese government measure to keep people employed, no doubt.

So if all that was a bit solemn for you, how about 4 LITRES OF BOOZE FOR 20 BUCKS?
It's not like they tried fucking around and packaging it nicely, they're just like... "well, it's turpentine, so just stick it in the turps bottle but stick on a different label." Many Japanese folk must have had very very bad hangovers after drinking this crap. Which may go to explain why the Japanese hangover-cure-drink industry is so big.

On Monday, which was the holiday to mark the 'vernal equinox'... which I think is the day when it officially becomes spring... we went to Asuka near Nara to check out some old kofun, or ancient tomby/shriny things. Apparently in ancient Japan, like 7th century, the emperors were buried in these. Then the Buddhists came in and decided, no way are we messing around with the chance that they will all come back as royal zombies, so cremation is the shit now.
Under this mound you could enter a subterranean cavern. Fuck knows what the deal was here, but you gotta take some snaps, you know?

The end. Sorry about all that, but I know some folk will be interested in it, and you gotta play to the audience. I bet Metallica always plays Nothing Else Matters.

Next time.... well, Dirk has been working the whole 'furious political commentary' gig lately, so I'll try to catch up with some Japannery. If anyone cares.

Some Photos

2005-03-05T14:32:00.000+09:00

Here are some snappy snaps for y'all to enjoy.

Let's play with Nick!
Seriously, that is a good picture. The caterpillar, I mean.

This is Nate.
He is smiling because controls the world's oil supply and he knows electric cars are fucking stupid.

This picture is the famous Ako Kompa cocktail bar. If you come to Ako, you MUST visit this place. It needs to be seen to be believed, but here is a teaser. Check it out, it stretches on forever. The master is wearing a WHITE SUIT! And he can make any cocktail in the world, even if you make it up on the spot just to test him. His knowledge of cocktails is so vast that he even knows cocktails that HAVE NOT YET BEEN INVENTED. And yes, there is absinthe. And about 20 different types of rum, but no Bundaberg, fortunately. I recommend the Matador. The master's wife has to climb to the second floor to get the fresh mint from their garden.

Nick and I doing the old classic, "Shingo-Mama's Oha Rock".
We adapted it slightly for the crowd. Always goes down well as a closer.

Australia Day 2005. We were stuck in some tiny town so we went to the river and slid down the hill on cartons of VB. Doesn't this photo look gravity-defying or something?

Someone left the door unlocked and the handsome horror is OUT!

But don't worry, the merry spaceman police, corporal Kanako and lance-insane Keiko, are on hand. I love this shot.

At primary school when kids are bad, we stand them against the blackboard and taunt them mercilessly until they cry and are never bad again.

Japanese Dick

2005-03-05T13:40:00.000+09:00

So kids, I know it's been a while since my last rant and all. I'm sure you've all spent many a sleepless night, tossing and turning in pools of your own rancid sweat or the rancid sweat of a loved one or random fling, chewing your nails to the quick and eagerly anticipating a new post. And as proof of the fact that I'm still thinking of everyone, even little Jake, here is a gift to you.

Speaking of Jake, thanks for the book. Churning my way through it now. I'm kind of over the whole "amusing" thing in literature these days, but Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by your boy Tom Robbins is quite funny, and the humour provides a good contrast to the more profound things he says via various characters. Enjoying it. Does it remind you of a less cynical, nihilistic Chuck Palahniuk? Anyway, I'll send it back when I'm done, and fix you up for your troubles. Cheers for the photos too... there was one really nice one of the whole gang on my birthday out the front at my place, everyone big smile, chummy, chummy. Stuck it up on the wall... Kanako is tanned as black as the child of Robert Mugabe and a(n attractive) piece of charcoal.

So what's going on here, you scream?

Finished my stretch at the various primary schools of Ako. Tiring work, but very easy to keep kids entertained, and much easier than motivating 40 kids in a junior high class, so I appreciate it. Plus some of the kids will graduate to high school next month so I can see them again; makes it easier when you have a previous background with them.

So now I'm at East Ako JHS. The English teachers there are all good people, so it's good in class for the most part. One guy speaks fluent Spanish too, having lived in Bolivia for a while, and he's also on my basketball team, so I know him pretty well. Another guy lived in the Middle East and also Washington for a few years, and he's a real gentleman too. I think one of the biggest issues with English teaching in Japan is that so few of the teachers have ever studied in a foreign country, let alone lived there - thus their English is inevitably textbook-style. Which is OK, because there's not much "what the fuck are you looking at, geezer?" in the high school entrance exams. But I try to be the foil and teach them a bit more natural English. Which I think, essentially, is my job, anyway.

The last regular English teacher at the school is a lovely girl, about 25 I think (got to be careful on that whole issue... it kind of fucks me off when some of the teachers refuse to admit in class how old they are... we're trying to get the kids to be open and outgoing but they clam up like... clams). This girl is pretty new to the whole gig, and the other teachers in her grade aren't particularly helpful, and she cops a lot of shit in class. One kid in particular swears at her and even goes to the extent of pushing her or throwing things at her. Since it was my first class there, I didn't want to get too involved, but I went and stood between them, hoping the presence of a somewhat large foreign male would calm him down a bit. Worked a little, but in the next class he left his classroom and came into ours just to be a cunt again.

The deal over here is that the kids have a "right to learn", which sounds quite noble and admirable, but in reality it means you can't kick them out of class because it violates their "right to learn". Never mind about the other 39 kids who can't learn a thing with a fucking monkey screaming around the class all day. Of course my first instinct would be to grab the kid by his collar and throw him into the hall, but I' m not entirely sure what the repercussions would be for me there. Hence yesterday I went to talk to the Board of Education about it.

Although I know this was not nearly the first case of violence towards this teacher, apparently at the BOE they had no idea anything was wrong. I really hope I haven't pissed everyone off by singing to the fuzz, but fuck, you can't shove it under the lino forever. My boss and his boss were interested to hear the news, and then I paid my rent, and I thought I was pretty much in their good books. Preparing to leave, I made a passing comment about how I was going to Laos over the Golden Week holiday. And shit blew up.

Golden Week, as you may know, is a long stretch of several holidays over one or two weeks in Japan. Ridiculously, right in the middle is a non-holiday, where classes are scheduled. Obviously it would be a little difficult to fly back from Laos for that day and then return the next. So I took one of my allotted 20 annual days of paid leave for that day. The boss at my current school OK'd it, and I thought it would be fine. I mean, it seems pretty standard?

My boss's boss didn't think so. Thundering that "you're not in Australia any more" and "you must learn the Japanese way", he stormed out of the room. I was so sure I hadn't done anything wrong that through his whole tirade I thought he was joking and was laughing. Then when he left in a huff it kind of hit me that something was wrong. My boss obviously couldn't just go "oh, don't worry about him; he's 50 and has never been married, possibly never spoken to a woman, and gets a little tense and pissed off that you get such a sick salary and cushy apartment". So he agreed with his boss, but a lot more restrainedly and conversationally. I made my points: that even though I had had a bad flu during winter, I went to my primary schools every day because at most I was only there a week, so missing even a day cuts a big part of the time there; that I would have far preferred to go during the official school holidays but Kanako doesn't get time off during the year apart from Golden Week and other national holidays; that the principal had said OK; and that, assuming it would be no issue, I had already bought the tickets.

My boss is a very cool, calm guy that is always nice, and he appreciates what I do here. He said he would get back to me next week with an answer, and I can only assume it will be a positive one, because he's that kind of guy. Nonetheless, I am kind of pissed off because the other guy was such a dick about it. It's ONE FUCKING DAY, grandpa!

Anyway, here's hoping we can get to Laos. Intending to ride a motorbike around the countryside there, I have been taking illicit bike lessons from a friend (all that stuff is very heavily regulated here), have already bought tickets/maps/guidebooks etc. So I won't be happy if I don't get permission. I will probably also quit. Maybe after next payday.

Anyway, if anyone read through that whole essay, thanks. I promise I will reply to those of you to whom I owe replies. And post your opinions here, thanks.

On The Road Again

2005-02-10T15:45:00.000+09:00

I just finished Jack Kerouac's first published novel, The Town and the City. I thought it was fucking excellent... a book spanning 500 pages and 20 years that had characters complex and realistic enough to keep an ennui fiend like me engaged throughout. Jacko was trying for his dream, to write "The Great American Novel", and this is a pretty damn fine effort. The ideas he talks about and the way in which older generations see younger ones as being anarchic and amoral, and vice versa as out-of-touch optimistic failed gods could very easily be applied to any era. I know I'm one anarchic amoral surly mixed-up sonofabitch. The clash of friends, family and modernity, and the inescapable yearning for innocence but lust for danger wrung out from the story are universal.
The start of the book is Tom Sawyer-ish and very heartily American, gradually changing through various perspectives to a grungy Burroughs big city lament. Where more recent family epics like Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections have shown a tendency to becoming very cutesy and almost gimmicky, The Town and the City is from a time when wholesomeness and evil were not just cliches or Bushisms. I recommend it.

Australian Advertising Standards

2005-02-08T16:28:00.000+09:00

I don't have a problem with this, but I'm kind of surprised it slipped through the sticky hands of the censors. Go low-brow Aussie go!

In other news, happy to have finally got word that I passed the national Japanese proficiency test level 1... go me. Does this mean I'm fluent? And I can't even English speak.

Aioi Invitational Round 2

2005-02-06T16:38:00.000+09:00

We lost. Johnny Gun, playing through injuries, was prominent, but fouled out late in the fourth on a suspect block-shot/foul call on fellow import player Dennis Fullerton. Jr. A late surge was cut short by average defence and the result wasn't really in question. Cheers to Jun for the 1st-quarter half-court buzzer-beater and likewise Mr Gun for the fadeaway off the inbounds to beat the 3rd quarter. All for nought.

Take One For The Team

2005-02-05T18:33:00.000+09:00

Cool. I have two sprained ankles, am bleeding from three different places and am having trouble breathing from the flu. But we won, and winning's all that matters right?
Aren't I a hero? Don't you want a photo of me to stick above your bed and look at in times of trouble... "There is a true man. He took the knocks, from players and from walls, and got back up and got swatted. "
Next round tomorrow.

I Am Ahab

2005-02-05T13:27:00.000+09:00

I get metal now. Metal = Mastodon = Intense Insane Masculine Face-Punching Release.
On Wednesday I trekked back into Osaka to see Extreme the Dojo Vol 11. Arrived just after Isis started, and was amazed at how a band could play for an hour without looking at each other or the crowd, or even speaking. Now that's insularity. Isis were kind of average, even for a metal band. None of their songs really interested the crowd all that much, but some of their hypno-drone things were kind of cool. Incidentally, sorry about the quality of most of these photos. Can someone give me some tips on taking good gig shots? I played with exposure and ISO and stuff, but it just doesn't happen. Help!

Then Mastodon came on. It was like my clone family reunion. Four guys with scruffy red hair and beards and big amps. Somebody near the front said the word "metrosexual" in conversation, and the guitarist reached down and pummeled his face in before sacrificing his skull to Poseidon, or something.

Mastodon were really fucking good. I'm not really in on the scene, but I think they mostly played tracks from their latest moby-dick-crashing-seas-concept-album Leviathan. Blood and Thunder (WHITE WHALE! HOLY GRAIL!!!!) and Megalodon were excellent, the crowd went crazy and it was pretty obvious the band appreciated it; I think they were kind of surprised. Mastodon actually did occasionally look at each other, and the frontman/bassist had some great onstage banter lined up : eg "Let's hear it for ISIS!!!". Also had a strange habit of saluting or doing the namaste thing to the crowd like some cross between the Dalai Lama and Commodore Perry, with a bit of Cro-Magnon man thrown in for full historical span and metal credibility. They were all very good players and I am all about the 'Don from now on.
Went and got a drink and prepared to dash for my last train, but listened to a bit of Converge from the back of the pit first. Kind of glad I wasn't in the mosh, coz suckers must have died. Real hardcore motherfuckers, are Converge. Frontman is like a ADHD kid, jumping around with his hooded jumper and pumping his fist. Hardcore's not really my thing, but it's good as a spectacle.

Anyway, definitely worth going, so cheers for the tip Evo and Scottford. I still expect reimbursement for the ticket, 5000 yen, but I might even send you a souvenir in return.
No more gigs scheduled til Sonic Youth in March. Nice to have a break.

Next on the agenda: Aioi invitational basketball, 4:30 pm today, vs South Himeji. Wish me luck.

Japan Controls The Weather

2005-02-01T16:20:00.000+09:00

Japan has some pretty wild weather conditions. Tsunami had entered the English language long before the big`un late last year. Actually I think Japan just creates lots of tsunamis just so that wide-eyed Westerners will use the word more often so they can try to sneak some Japanese vocab into the English language, instead of the other way around. Japanese is, I fear, slowly becoming a dialect of English, but cuter of course.
You could so get by here just by speaking English, especially for more modern words like `cd player`, `terrorism` and `bush`.

Maybe robo-lesbian Miss Fraize only told us it to scare us, but apparently in France they have these vocab-police who fine you, or strip-search you, or make you take off your veil, or something, when you use English for words that have a French equivalent, like `le walkman`, which apparently is not French. Can someone clarify this?

But anyway, and this isn`t even the point of this whole rant, Japan is very much the opposite. Since they love us civilised warmongering Westerners so much, they slip English in all over the place. Shame! I would imagine the older folk are a little bitter about this, as I would be if I was a bitter old folk.

So we got `tsunami` in return. Japan also has typhoons of course, and good old earthquakes (this month was the 10th year since the Kobe earthquake, obviously of 1995). There is also the less recognised, but equally terrifying, bizarre weather condition translated into English as BEING FUCKING COLD. There is always so much moisture in the air here too that instead of just being some pansy little chill, it digs deep into your bones and makes everyone feel like a giant popsicle, and you want to lick anyone wearing bright-coloured clothes.

Today I had to ride 30 mins to school in the snow, and managed to slip over in the middle of the highway too. The good bit was getting to school and finding out that first period had been cancelled and replaced with SNOWBALL DEATH MATCH, 30 kids vs Nick. And of course even when some cunt cracks me with a watermelon-sized brick, I gotta play the responsible adult and hit them back with gay powdery ones. Still, it was a bunch of fun. The best bit was when the kids ganged up on the deputy principal instead. He loved it.

Why Japan is Good. #1.

2005-01-31T17:53:00.000+09:00

Coz lots of bands come here. Fuck, in Perth we were lucky to see a couple of good bands a year. Here, if you don't mind taking the train for a couple of hours, you can see a couple every month. And they play tiny little venues like Club Crust in Osaka where we saw Legowelt and DJ TLR cut sick in front of about 25 people. Legowelt even played Himeji, which is not a big town at all.

So anyway, saw Interpol at Club Quattro on Australia Day. Really, really good. No support band, which is always a plus for the punter in a rush. Opened predictably with Next Exit, played most of the new album and heaps from Bright Lights too. Tight as a Japanese schoolgirl, and the sound was spot on after a bit of refinement. PDA was excellent, and the band also gave Say Hello to the Angels a working over, normally a pretty average song. My favourite bit was when Paul was gentleman enough to look straight at my camera for the money shot, and I'd forgotten to kill the flash so he was blinded for about ten seconds. Didn't fuck up though. Sorry, man.

Then on Sunday, after some discount bulk shopping at Costco in Amagasaki (pasta sauce, fruit leather, tortillas, scones... just the essentials), we had the Shins. Not before an encounter with a crazed muffin zombie though.

Before the Shins was Shonen Knife, who are a lot older than I remember them. I guess that's what happens when you fall asleep for 10 years. They sure did play Banana Chips though.

Shins were really good, at least for the songs that I knew. They're a band with really good lyrics, so if you can follow the words the experience is a lot better. The songs I didn't know, from the first album (coz cheapskate Dan 'forgot' to lend it to me), were kind of boring, actually. We were definitely lucky, though. Got played most of the songs from Chutes Too Narrow, a bunch from the first album, and a bunch of new tracks that they were playing for the first time live coz we called them out for a second encore and they had nothing else. Same kind of sound and progressions as Chutes = good. Waiting for album #3.

The singer/rhythm guitarist was nothing like I had imagined him. He was really quite shy and stagestruck, letting the keyboardist/bassist do the onstage banter, and he was a pretty funny kid, so good choice. The singer has a fucking excellent voice, didn't drop a note anywhere, but has a weird playing pose like he's recoiling from a punch instead of kicking the guy's ass, or maybe like he's trying to take a shit. Seemed like a nice guy though, no disrespect. Here are some mid-shit shots, cheers to Dan for the classy one:

So lastly, this is for Evan and Scott. Going by myself to Quattro again on Wednesday to 'Extreme the Dojo Vol. 11', starring those pansy-ass flower girls from Converge, Isis and Mastodon. Haven't heard Converge, don't really like Isis and Mastodon have some comic/intensity value. I think I just don't get metal, guys. It's like... I just don't get that angry. I'm more the frustrated, moody type. By the way, I fully expect you to honour our bargain and pay for my ticket, and go see the Wednesday society.
Post your rants.

Eating People Is Easy

2005-01-31T17:40:00.000+09:00

Yo, so welcome to the big question. I think I waited just long enough to make a blog so that I don't look like I'm jumping on the Screaming Napalm Mccormick bandwagon, but also so that blogs are still "cool". I really have no idea what's gonna happen here... most likely this will be the first and last ever post and the page will die a righteous death. Maybe, in time, it will out-wit Dirk, out-rant Napalm Revenge, out-gossip Jas, out-be-Irish Dermot, out-cute Aya and out-be-a-fuckoff-design-student Mr Woods. All those brave souls who have whored themselves out before me.
Anyway, enough pandering. Read what I think and become smarter.