Our Man in Abiko's Blog, page 17
December 5, 2012
TROUBLE WITH DOUBLES -- 2012 Japan Election Diary: Day 20
I'm flying to Zurich from London Heathrow, my telephone told me this morning.
This was news to me, having no connection to Zurich or any interest in cuckoo clocks at all. But there it was in black and white, an email confirmation of two tickets bought and paid for in my name on a Swiss Air flight.
This had to be a scam or something, I thought. But the email wasn't seeking money. And then a second email arrived with the e-tickets attached, already bought and paid for. In my name. Looks like I was going to Zurich for a long weekend in March.
Odd, I couldn't remember buying the tickets. Was it possible that in a haze of diary writing in the middle of the night (given the the thrills of this election) I'd inadvertently bought myself the tickets? Certainly, I'd knocked back a fair bit of Chile wine to get through the Day 16 entry, and it could well have happened. But Zurich? Why in God's name Zurich?
Everything was in my name, spelt just like it is in my passport. I looked again at the email details. It was sent to my gmail address, but had a dot between my first and last names.
That wasn't my email address.
So, I was receiving someone else's private emails. Someone else who happened to have the same name as me. How on earth did it slip through the ether to my address box? Then I had another thought. If I was receiving this chap's emails, maybe he was receiving mine, the poor man, no matter how well-named. So I did the only sane thing under the circumstances, I wrote an email to myself.
Dear Me,
You don't know me, but I am you. I have received emails addressed to me, but they are for you. I am writing this to you because I have no intention of going to Zurich in March. I wonder if you have any odd emails for me?
All the best,
Me
PS it is entirely possible that you are not me, but are somebody else. However, our passports have the same name, and the evidence is stacking up to the contrary.
I sent the email and drank my coffee. Then my telephone told me I had an email from myself.
So, that proved it. It was me. All I had to do was wait for my hotel booking to come. Hmmm. Who was the second ticket for? Zurich. Shame it wasn't Rio, I could have contemplated throwing caution to the wind and trying out for a second life. But I wouldn't want to jettison my current life only to end up in a convention of insurance salesmen.
I was out of ideas, so I asked twitter for advice. Apparently it's quite common to have digital dopplegangers. A friend gets regular unsolicited email updates on her digital doppelganger's infant embryo. I didn't have to work till the afternoon, so I decided to take a quick nap and see if couldn't start the day again with fewer outakes from Jose Saramago's The Double .
***
My snooze was interrupted though by loudspeakers on trucks. First there was an indeterminable woman's voice, I couldn't catch the name of the candidate. Then as I drifted off, a man's voice shouted a slogan, which I didn't catch. I closed my eyes and thought of Swatch watches and Toblerones. Then a truck pulled up outside my bedroom playing children's music loud enough to rattle the windows. It was a paraffin delivery truck.
I gave up trying to start the day again.
***
It's 10:30pm and the cover life is done. The brush with the campaign sound trucks was just a memory and now I'm ready to tackle the day's election news. That means I just did what anyone with a vague interest in the 2012 Japan Election would do, and that is type in "2012 Japan Election" into Google and check the most recent story. That happened to be a Daily Yomiuri story from 18 hours previously, which I normally would steer clear of on matters of principle, taste and bad memories of being bamboozled by their graphics. You have not been bamboozled until you have tried to follow one of their flowcharts. The Yomiuri is the only newspaper group I'm aware of that uses explanatory graphics to explain their explanatory graphics. But this Yomiuri story featured a sexy headline:
'Assassins' add edge to election
If only they were assassins. Actually, they are rival candidates who have a reasonable chance of defeating a prominent incumbent. Not exactly an assassin. But beneath the paper's surprisingly legible, if dull graphic, was a reasonable race to watch.
The Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda (remember?), who has a bit on his plate nationally, has to fight against not only a former LDP winner of his constituency, Mikio Fujita, but also his own former party member Yukiko Miyake who jumped ship and joined the Lady of the Lake's Japan Future Party. Squeezed doubly from the right and left, there's every chance Noda will lose, or as the Yomiuri would have it, be assassinated.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 4, 2012
A DAY IN THE LIFE -- 2012 Japan Election Diary: Day 19
He fought back the bile rising in the back of his throat and got on the train.
He was a moment too slow and was pushed into the centre of the carriage, but was a person too late and couldn't make it into the relative comfort of the gangway where people could stand three-deep. Instead he was hemmed in on all sides by men in suits in a mass of bodies being held up by sheer force of the group. He couldn't move his legs or his hands even if he wanted too. Just 40 minutes until he could get off.
But he couldn't complain. He was a head taller than most folk, so had a better chance of getting a fresh pocket of air, and he wouldn't be the one who had to wipe other people's sweat off his brow in the summertime. Although with the hot air heaters on full blast this December morning, his sweat would end up on the guy whose head was rammed into his armpit. There was nothing to be done.
***
Thirty thousand kept coming up today. I don't know if that means anything. Probably not, it's probably just a random coincidence that once noticed becomes a self-fulfilling trend, like noticing a large number of election posters for the New Komeito candidate and then before you know it, all you can see are election posters for New Komeito because that's all you are looking for. If I'd happened to spot the Your Party guy I'd be mentally mapping his John Lennon specs and not the pudgy face of the LDP guy. There's probably a name for this phenomenon, but in case there isn't I'll call it posterism. Anyway, instances of 30,000 noticed today:
30,000 is the number of deaths in the USA due to road accidents every year.
30,000 deaths from firearms in the USA every year.
$30,000 (actually $36,585 at prevailing exchange rates) is the cost of a deposit to run for a single seat in the lower house of the Japanese Diet.
30,000 suicides in Japan per year.
***
He sat in the doctor's waiting room and stared absently at the health and safety poster for several minutes before he realised it was the inside of a diseased intestine and not a tunnel of the Ginza Line.
"Doctor, there's something wrong with me. Why can't I do what everybody else can do so easily?"
"What do you mean?"
"I look around at the people on the train with their briefcases and suits, listening to iPods and reading the Nikkei Shimbun and I think: I can't do this anymore."
"You're just tired. Take the pills I gave you and have a few days off."
"I don't want a few days off. My whole life has been off. I WANT TO BE ON. I can't explain. Do you know what I mean?"
"Have a few days off. I'll write you a note you can show to your boss. These pills will calm you down. Everything will be OK."
***
Looking back, I can pinpoint the moment that changed my life.
If I'd arrived a couple of seconds later, or the crowd hadn't separated just as it had, I could well have missed it and my life would have continued on an entirely different trajectory to the one that led me here to this part of the world, this life, to the end of this particular sentence.
It was a copy of the Daily Mirror in a Derby Sainsbury's newsstand eight years ago.
I'd been trying, half-heartedly, to give up smoking for three years, and this time round I'd made it two days before pulling in to the supermarket car park with every intention to buy a packet of ten B&H.
I don't remember any of the details of the splash, but it was something about tobacco bosses admitting they knew their products would kill their customers. It was enough to give me the resolve to turn around and get back in my car, without buying the cigarettes.
At work on Monday, a whole department had disappeared over the weekend, moved to Blackburn, Lancashire, or someplace I'd never been and there was talk of more changes to come. We'd have to amalgamate the editorial department with Nottingham and Leicester into a super sub-editing "centre of excellence" as management called it, though even they couldn't say it with a straight face. Possibly in Lancashire someplace.
Super.
If I could give up smoking, I was in control. If I was in control, I could quit the job before I was pushed. If I could quit, I could run my own business. If I could run my own business, I could go anywhere, I'd never need to know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
Though, today, I wouldn't bet against it being 30,000.
***
He was pushed off the train by the mass of people and the trickle of cold air from the streets outside seeping down the escalators actually felt soothing until he got to the top and was out of the bowels of the ground and onto street level.
Nihombashi was a concrete grid of streets, elevated highways, steel and glass tower blocks of trapped air. He worked in a basement. In a room no bigger than his bathroom at home, but at least his bathroom had a window.
In college he'd been taught to use his hands to make things but now his hands were for pressing preset buttons on the phone and typing commands into a computer.
"I can't do this anymore."
"Don't talk nonsense."
"This life is a prison."
"You're crazy. Don't be so selfish. Someone of your age can't expect to walk in to another job like this. This is a Nikkei-listed company. Think of what you are leaving behind. Think of your responsibilities. Think of your wife and children."
"I am. I quit."
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
December 3, 2012
CASE BY CASE: 2012 Japan election diary: day 18
Our Man got married three days after arriving in Japan and narrowly avoided being deported. But then, who hasn't?
He'd observed all the rules, he hastens to add, he even went as far as travelling to the Japanese Consulate in London across the park from Buckingham Palace before setting foot in Japan to make sure his papers were in order and that he didn't need any special marriage visa to present to immigration officials.
London: "Everything is fine, you don't need a special visa. Just go there as a tourist and present them with a letter from your wife saying who you are and that you want to get married to her and you are all set."
Our Man: "Are you sure?"
London: "Yes, now stop pretending you can remember the exact conversation from 16 years ago and finish the anecdote."
Our Man: "OK. But I think you're taking liberties with readers' tolerance of this kind of ruining the suspension of disbelief that you are supposed to foster. Don't break the spell."
London: "Break the spell? They are sitting on the crapper as they read this, I think they are fully aware they are not going to be transported to 16 years ago to an event that you can barely remember and I think, frankly, they will be relieved they are not going to be transported anywhere you intend taking them. Anything else?"
Our Man: "Yes. Any idea what "Quantative Easing" means?
London: "Is it that awful Bond film, the one before Skyfall?"
Our Man: "How would you know that? That's not till a good dozen years from now. You're breaking the rules again."
London: "Case by case."Our Man got to Tokyo, got married and popped round to immigration to the ogres who lived under the stairs in the Kafkaesque warrens of the immigration bureau that used to operate in Otemachi, Tokyo. "You don't have the right visa. You entered the country illegally. You have three months to leave Japan."
"But..."
"No buts."
But there were buts. Our Woman got on the phone and found a less hostile ogre and we went to our meeting and for reasons we have both forgotten now, he agreed that Their Man in London had been correct after all. Welcome to Japan, and get on with you life, don't worry about that deportation threat. But I do remember the one phrase that was uttered throughout our ordeals with the law:
Case by case.
***
This whole Japan election diary thing is a con.
It's not that Our Man doesn't care much about the election. Well, not just that, he'd like to think he is not only a disinterested observer but a fairly uninterested one too. Cynics might suggest this is more an exercise in typing than writing and cynics are never wrong. Certainly not at this time of night when Our Woman is curled up, snoring softly under the blanket of the kotatsu heated table. And that sounds like a better place for Our Man to be than hunched over the keyboard wondering if he's got enough instant coffee to make it through to his 1,000 daily target.
No, this whole election diary is a con because the campaign hasn't even started yet. According to Japanese law, the campaign can only last 12 days. That means the darned thing only really kicks off tomorrow. So please ignore everything Our Man has written in this and the 17 earlier posts. You probably have anyway, if you've got any sense.
The Japanese have very strict laws about what politicians can and can't do in the campaign period and those very strict laws were written before the internet and rather than just, you know, writing new very strict laws to cover new conditions (the internet has only been around for what, 20 years? I dunno, I'll have to google it) our wise higher ups have instead decided that the internet is really just the same as a leaflet. And there are strict laws governing what leaflets can say and who can see them and when. As you might be able to tell from the woolliness of the preceding sentence, Our Man doesn't know what those restrictions are. You'll have to google it, Our Man doesn't have the time. Kotatsu calling, remember? As far as Our Man understands, Japanese pols are not allowed to knock on people's doors to seek votes, unless they are asked to do so, a vampire rule which seems entirely reasonable.
But these very strict laws mean in practice that Japanese pols can't solicit votes online during the campaign. So they can't use Twitter or Facebook or email folk seeking their vote, er, like leaflets. This sounds entirely reasonable to a non-eligible voter like Our Man except that instead of being pestered online, Japanese pols and their minions hit the streets in the infamous sound trucks and drive up and down shouting the name of the candidate and maybe one pithy slogan (Vote Takahashi. Ta-ka-ha-shi. Vote Takahashi) at incredibly high volume. Or they stand at intersections or outside busy stations shouting into microphones the same slogan.
But they never use the internet to solicit votes, because that would be against the very strict laws. Except Hashimoto. He said he'll continue tweeting because he is not actually running for election, just his party is. And he won't be directly asking for votes. Just tweeting about politics and if any of his million followers happen to be swayed by his points and vote for his party, so be it. And Our Man could swear Abe is still on Facebook, with his fists in guts pose. Must be for inseminating a cow, not bravely sorting out Japan's innumerable problems, as Our Man had previously conjectured. But then, isn't this whole election illegal?
Oh yeah, I forgot. Case by case.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
Do something! -- 2012 Japan Election Diary: Day 17
Click here
to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
The children cheered and the mothers cooed as I walked steadily past the soccer practice with a five-meter long bamboo trunk balanced on my shoulder.
It was 10am on a Sunday morning and I was already exhausted from marching up and down a hill just outside my daughters' elementary school where a lumberjack was felling bamboo. This grove of bamboo was one of my favourite aspects of the neighbourhood, sitting atop a winding single-track road that led down into a valley where the cherry blossoms would cover the schoolyard in a carpet of pink and white every April. Now, in early December, the road was covered in the golden brown and red leaves of neighbouring maples shedding their colours for winter.
Today the brightest red was of the masking tape tied around the trunks of the bamboo to mark which ones would be cut down by chainsaw. And here I was complicit in their destruction, an accomplice in this crime against nature.
The trunks of the bamboo, even fully grown, aren't that heavy, being basically hollow inside, but they are very hard and strong and truth be known, I was enjoying this rare moment to be thought of as having some skill other than being able to read English newspapers and understand Beatles lyrics. Yes, hard and strong, not bookish and odd. A manly man. I'm a lumberjack and I'm all ri...
"How do you say chikan in English?"
"What?"
"Chikan, er, bad sexy man?"
"Oh. I guess we'd say groper, or flasher."
"Gu-ro-pa? Fu-ra-sha?"
"The general term is pervert."
The chikan was the reason we were all there. A month ago a man had exposed himself to three elementary school girls walking home along the ridge. They were unharmed but ran back and told the teachers. A second sighting of a man hiding in the bamboo was reported the following day. Parent-teacher patrols were sent out and for a week all children walked home in groups led by teachers until the threat was thought to have passed. The headmistress, the PTA and the land owner all agreed something had to be done. Florescent signs were put at the top of the road: "Danger! Chikan!"
The fate of the bamboo was sealed.
I had joined two dozen parents and off-duty teachers for three hours of hard labour. We transformed the teacher's parking lot into a makeshift lumber yard. The men did the heavy lifting, carrying the bamboo carcasses down the steep slope into the parking lot, while the women set to work on the trunks with machetes and saws, stripping them of their chutes and leaves.
Where once the bamboo had towered over the ridge, in three hours we had turned it into a lifeless clearing, like an angry mother nature had stubbed her cigarettes out in the ground. There'd be no hiding place for chikan here. Or anything.
"I feel sorry for the bamboo," I said to a neighbour as we manhandled one of the larger trunks together.
"Ha ha, you are always so funny."As we threw the trunk onto the ground for the womenfolk to get to work on, one of the older teachers announced something indecipherable (to me) and all work stopped as we gathered around him and a makeshift table with rice crackers and hot water urns. I thought idly that this would be a ceremony saying sorry to the gods for our transgressions, maybe a formal shinto apology for crimes against nature, and my inner Pocahontas was piqued...
But it turned out to be a coffee break. I had two instant coffees with two sugars and a chocolate covered macadamia.
***
When the earthquake happened on March 11th, 2011, Abiko was spared the worst. One hundred or so houses subsided by a meter or two, sinking into the soft ground, but no-one here lost their lives. In my neighbourhood, the damage amounted to some fallen garden wall masonry in the road and cracked roof tiles. There was no tsunami here, no big buildings collapsed and Fukushima is safely a couple of hundred kilometers north of here.
But Abiko was a hotspot for radiation. Though hotspot is a relative term. Relatively hot. The radiation in my garden a few months after Fukushima was about three times the imagined background level, though we don't really know the background level, nobody bothered to measure it before Fukushima. Nobody knows the effects of this increase in radiation, but I like to think of it as smoking cigarettes. If we normally smoke one cigarette a day, now we are smoking three. Or perhaps it's more akin to sugar in your coffee. One sugar or three probably isn't good for you, but neither amounts would have any measurable affect on your health. Yet.
The school has already dug up the top soil in the schoolyard that the kids play soccer on every weekend and dumped it in the corners of the yard. Whether this has any beneficial affect or indeed was necessary in the first place, who can say? But it was doing something instead of nothing.
***
The lady of the lake's Japan Party of the Future is looking more and more like an ego trip for Ozawa . Their supposed green policies mean a reliance on fossil fuels in the short term as the long term goal of sustainable energy doesn't add up yet.
As China grows, Africa grows, India grows , we talk about putting up little windmills but still move to the suburbs, commute to work, buy our consumer toys from China, outsource our undesirable jobs to India and insist that we shouldn't pay more for power, pay more in taxes or think of flights to the other side of the world as anything less than what we deserve and not as a perversion.So we watch and complain as the world burns, at once only able to make ineffectual personal gestures or blame our politicians or the system for another year of hot air. Ho hum.We will either make the necessary changes to our lives or not, global warming will do what it will Whatever. Nobody has been able to solve the basic problem: alternative sources of energy still require more energy to put in than we get out. That's a long-term problem whether we throw reams of freshly printed money at it or not. Not that Our Man has the answers. But he's pretty sure our politicians don't either.
"Do something!"
But what?
Go to DAY 18
The children cheered and the mothers cooed as I walked steadily past the soccer practice with a five-meter long bamboo trunk balanced on my shoulder.
It was 10am on a Sunday morning and I was already exhausted from marching up and down a hill just outside my daughters' elementary school where a lumberjack was felling bamboo. This grove of bamboo was one of my favourite aspects of the neighbourhood, sitting atop a winding single-track road that led down into a valley where the cherry blossoms would cover the schoolyard in a carpet of pink and white every April. Now, in early December, the road was covered in the golden brown and red leaves of neighbouring maples shedding their colours for winter.
Today the brightest red was of the masking tape tied around the trunks of the bamboo to mark which ones would be cut down by chainsaw. And here I was complicit in their destruction, an accomplice in this crime against nature.
The trunks of the bamboo, even fully grown, aren't that heavy, being basically hollow inside, but they are very hard and strong and truth be known, I was enjoying this rare moment to be thought of as having some skill other than being able to read English newspapers and understand Beatles lyrics. Yes, hard and strong, not bookish and odd. A manly man. I'm a lumberjack and I'm all ri...
"How do you say chikan in English?"
"What?"
"Chikan, er, bad sexy man?"
"Oh. I guess we'd say groper, or flasher."
"Gu-ro-pa? Fu-ra-sha?"
"The general term is pervert."
The chikan was the reason we were all there. A month ago a man had exposed himself to three elementary school girls walking home along the ridge. They were unharmed but ran back and told the teachers. A second sighting of a man hiding in the bamboo was reported the following day. Parent-teacher patrols were sent out and for a week all children walked home in groups led by teachers until the threat was thought to have passed. The headmistress, the PTA and the land owner all agreed something had to be done. Florescent signs were put at the top of the road: "Danger! Chikan!"
The fate of the bamboo was sealed.
I had joined two dozen parents and off-duty teachers for three hours of hard labour. We transformed the teacher's parking lot into a makeshift lumber yard. The men did the heavy lifting, carrying the bamboo carcasses down the steep slope into the parking lot, while the women set to work on the trunks with machetes and saws, stripping them of their chutes and leaves.
Where once the bamboo had towered over the ridge, in three hours we had turned it into a lifeless clearing, like an angry mother nature had stubbed her cigarettes out in the ground. There'd be no hiding place for chikan here. Or anything.
"I feel sorry for the bamboo," I said to a neighbour as we manhandled one of the larger trunks together.
"Ha ha, you are always so funny."As we threw the trunk onto the ground for the womenfolk to get to work on, one of the older teachers announced something indecipherable (to me) and all work stopped as we gathered around him and a makeshift table with rice crackers and hot water urns. I thought idly that this would be a ceremony saying sorry to the gods for our transgressions, maybe a formal shinto apology for crimes against nature, and my inner Pocahontas was piqued...
But it turned out to be a coffee break. I had two instant coffees with two sugars and a chocolate covered macadamia.
***
When the earthquake happened on March 11th, 2011, Abiko was spared the worst. One hundred or so houses subsided by a meter or two, sinking into the soft ground, but no-one here lost their lives. In my neighbourhood, the damage amounted to some fallen garden wall masonry in the road and cracked roof tiles. There was no tsunami here, no big buildings collapsed and Fukushima is safely a couple of hundred kilometers north of here.
But Abiko was a hotspot for radiation. Though hotspot is a relative term. Relatively hot. The radiation in my garden a few months after Fukushima was about three times the imagined background level, though we don't really know the background level, nobody bothered to measure it before Fukushima. Nobody knows the effects of this increase in radiation, but I like to think of it as smoking cigarettes. If we normally smoke one cigarette a day, now we are smoking three. Or perhaps it's more akin to sugar in your coffee. One sugar or three probably isn't good for you, but neither amounts would have any measurable affect on your health. Yet.
The school has already dug up the top soil in the schoolyard that the kids play soccer on every weekend and dumped it in the corners of the yard. Whether this has any beneficial affect or indeed was necessary in the first place, who can say? But it was doing something instead of nothing.
***
The lady of the lake's Japan Party of the Future is looking more and more like an ego trip for Ozawa . Their supposed green policies mean a reliance on fossil fuels in the short term as the long term goal of sustainable energy doesn't add up yet.
As China grows, Africa grows, India grows , we talk about putting up little windmills but still move to the suburbs, commute to work, buy our consumer toys from China, outsource our undesirable jobs to India and insist that we shouldn't pay more for power, pay more in taxes or think of flights to the other side of the world as anything less than what we deserve and not as a perversion.So we watch and complain as the world burns, at once only able to make ineffectual personal gestures or blame our politicians or the system for another year of hot air. Ho hum.We will either make the necessary changes to our lives or not, global warming will do what it will Whatever. Nobody has been able to solve the basic problem: alternative sources of energy still require more energy to put in than we get out. That's a long-term problem whether we throw reams of freshly printed money at it or not. Not that Our Man has the answers. But he's pretty sure our politicians don't either.
"Do something!"
But what?
Go to DAY 18
December 1, 2012
All the president's men: Japan Election 2012 diary: Day 16
Click here
to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
"Where the heck were you? You just missed meeting the President and First Lady."
"Sorry boss, nature called."
Actually, I'd been outside the school auditorium smoking a Basic Lite, but let's not get mired in the details of the past when there are broad historical brushworks to be admired. I was aware even then of what a historical moment I had failed to be privy to -- Not Present at the Creation would be my treatise. What if Napoleon hadn't invaded Russia? What if the US aircraft carriers had been at port in Pearl Harbor instead of safely out at sea? What if I had hit Bill Clinton with such a great one-liner that he had hired me on the spot as Presidential Speech Writer at Large and whisked me off with the rest of the White House press corps on Air Force One away from the decade that was to come of finding synonyms for "meeting to take place" headlines.
Ahhh, the what ifs of history.
Actually, I was pretty pleased with myself just to be in the same room as the Washington Press Corps. Who sat bored scribbling notes, or more often than not, not doing anything other than being present as this was just an unimportant Clinton trip to the hinterlands. They were just on gaffe-watch, much like the Japan news services have a night duty editor on call just in case the big one hits, which is about the only way the country can make the global news agendas these days. Well, what are the chances of that, eh readers?
I turned to the New York Times reporter and said: "I deliver you on Sundays," seriously expecting him to engage me in conversation, rather than the silent sneer of a king of his profession beholding an alley cat with a scrap of offal from his table.
I couldn't complain though, I cleared $50 for delivering 100 copies of the NYT and a handful of the Dallas Morning Post, the literally biggest paper in the US. It was so huge and full of discount coupons you couldn't fold the paper. It was invariably delivered to the McMansions being built at the Western end of I-630. But the Times was for the doctors and lawyers in Pleasant Valley, the professors in the leafy Heights of Little Rock and even one reader on the black side of town, over the tracks past West 12th and Roosevelt.
The front section of the Times -- the breaking news and sports -- would be flown in Saturday night from New York, while the inserts, the features on jogging and John Updike and such -- would set off from printing presses in Chicago, 500 miles north, by 18-wheeler on Wednesday. I'd arrive at 3:30am Sunday morning, as the trucks pulled in to the parking lot of a bakery and I'd put the newspapers together, get a printout of the addresses on my route and a fresh Danish and a coffee from the bakery. Load the papers in the back of my Chevrolet Metro (as Suzuki Swifts were marketed in the States) I'd hit the road by 4:30am or so and be back at my apartment just after midday if I was lucky, if the the weather was good and I didn't get lost looking for new addresses.
Now you just click here .
***
I clicked on Slate today and they had a report about how the likely new Japanese prime minister was going to be Shinzo Abe and how he was going to be the Roosevelt of Japan and all because he believes in quantative easing.
There was more to Roosevelt than just printing money, my grandmother could have told Slate that. She lived through the Depression, raised my mother and her two brothers with more hindrance than help from her alcoholic husband and never forgot how Roosevelt's New Deal policies had given her family an income in the darkest hours.
I'd meet her at her old folk's home every Wednesday and after supper, we'd sit down and watch McNeil-Lehrer Newshour together. She'd scowl at the Republicans and smile at my articles I'd cut out and show her of my week's efforts.
On the mantelpiece was a signed Christmas card from Bill and Hillary Clinton at the White House. That was something.
When she died, she'd kept every throwaway article I'd given her. That was something else.
Shinzo Abe is no Roosevelt, by the way.
***
"I'm crossing over the tracks, come and meet me."
I usually delete such emails when I see them, but this one was from my wife. She'd been out for a drink tonight with the girls and had made it back to the allotments near our house before she got nervous. They talked foreign adventures, husbands and politics. It would be inappropriate to print off-the-record tittle tattle. And actually, I have forgotten it. But what all four ladies agreed was the Liberal Democratic Party was the same old deal.
"We can't go back there. Please, no."
Go to DAY 17
"Where the heck were you? You just missed meeting the President and First Lady."
"Sorry boss, nature called."
Actually, I'd been outside the school auditorium smoking a Basic Lite, but let's not get mired in the details of the past when there are broad historical brushworks to be admired. I was aware even then of what a historical moment I had failed to be privy to -- Not Present at the Creation would be my treatise. What if Napoleon hadn't invaded Russia? What if the US aircraft carriers had been at port in Pearl Harbor instead of safely out at sea? What if I had hit Bill Clinton with such a great one-liner that he had hired me on the spot as Presidential Speech Writer at Large and whisked me off with the rest of the White House press corps on Air Force One away from the decade that was to come of finding synonyms for "meeting to take place" headlines.
Ahhh, the what ifs of history.
Actually, I was pretty pleased with myself just to be in the same room as the Washington Press Corps. Who sat bored scribbling notes, or more often than not, not doing anything other than being present as this was just an unimportant Clinton trip to the hinterlands. They were just on gaffe-watch, much like the Japan news services have a night duty editor on call just in case the big one hits, which is about the only way the country can make the global news agendas these days. Well, what are the chances of that, eh readers?
I turned to the New York Times reporter and said: "I deliver you on Sundays," seriously expecting him to engage me in conversation, rather than the silent sneer of a king of his profession beholding an alley cat with a scrap of offal from his table.
I couldn't complain though, I cleared $50 for delivering 100 copies of the NYT and a handful of the Dallas Morning Post, the literally biggest paper in the US. It was so huge and full of discount coupons you couldn't fold the paper. It was invariably delivered to the McMansions being built at the Western end of I-630. But the Times was for the doctors and lawyers in Pleasant Valley, the professors in the leafy Heights of Little Rock and even one reader on the black side of town, over the tracks past West 12th and Roosevelt.
The front section of the Times -- the breaking news and sports -- would be flown in Saturday night from New York, while the inserts, the features on jogging and John Updike and such -- would set off from printing presses in Chicago, 500 miles north, by 18-wheeler on Wednesday. I'd arrive at 3:30am Sunday morning, as the trucks pulled in to the parking lot of a bakery and I'd put the newspapers together, get a printout of the addresses on my route and a fresh Danish and a coffee from the bakery. Load the papers in the back of my Chevrolet Metro (as Suzuki Swifts were marketed in the States) I'd hit the road by 4:30am or so and be back at my apartment just after midday if I was lucky, if the the weather was good and I didn't get lost looking for new addresses.
Now you just click here .
***
I clicked on Slate today and they had a report about how the likely new Japanese prime minister was going to be Shinzo Abe and how he was going to be the Roosevelt of Japan and all because he believes in quantative easing.
There was more to Roosevelt than just printing money, my grandmother could have told Slate that. She lived through the Depression, raised my mother and her two brothers with more hindrance than help from her alcoholic husband and never forgot how Roosevelt's New Deal policies had given her family an income in the darkest hours.
I'd meet her at her old folk's home every Wednesday and after supper, we'd sit down and watch McNeil-Lehrer Newshour together. She'd scowl at the Republicans and smile at my articles I'd cut out and show her of my week's efforts.
On the mantelpiece was a signed Christmas card from Bill and Hillary Clinton at the White House. That was something.
When she died, she'd kept every throwaway article I'd given her. That was something else.
Shinzo Abe is no Roosevelt, by the way.
***
"I'm crossing over the tracks, come and meet me."
I usually delete such emails when I see them, but this one was from my wife. She'd been out for a drink tonight with the girls and had made it back to the allotments near our house before she got nervous. They talked foreign adventures, husbands and politics. It would be inappropriate to print off-the-record tittle tattle. And actually, I have forgotten it. But what all four ladies agreed was the Liberal Democratic Party was the same old deal.
"We can't go back there. Please, no."
Go to DAY 17
November 30, 2012
Boss coffee -- 2012 Japan Election Diary: Day 15
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
She had just poured the eggs into the skillet when the yakuza sat down.She'd been warned that this would happen. You don't open a coffee shop in this part of Osaka and not expect a visit from one of the men in black. In the movies they were gruff warriors, modern samurai who followed their own rough code of justice. Sure they were violent, heavy drinkers, but they had hearts of gold."Coffee!"He slammed his hand onto the counter, rattling his Zippo lighter and making his pack of Lucky Seven cigarettes jump into the air. Instantly the sounds of a lively lunch crowd dropped dead, no-one daring to clink a cup or miss what was going to happen next. She turned the gas off, wiped her hands on a greying white towel and straightened her apron. It was the only material left from her marriage. She didn't even have her mother's wedding kimono that she'd hidden beneath the futons. She thought she had hidden it well, but her good-for nothing husband's one skill was to sniff out money. He found it one morning and sold it for cash that afternoon. That evening he blew the lot on pachinko and chu-hai. The coffee shop was everything she had in this world, she thought, before correcting herself. Not quite everything. Her eight-year-old daughter sat on a stool in the kitchen door doing her homework, between chewing on a pencil. She smiled."Coffee!"She had only seconds to make a decision. She could serve the yakuza and she would come to no harm. Or risk her own daughter's safety and the shop's fixtures and fittings by chucking him out. She couldn't afford to start again.All eyes from the four tables darted between her and the yakuza.She walked out from the counter to his seat and smoothed her apron."I'm very sorry, sir. But we do not serve yakuza in this coffee shop," and bowed her head.The yakuza looked around. Saw the fear in the customers' eyes. Saw the girl in the kitchen. And saw the waitress's smooth apron.He scooped up his lighter and smokes with one sweep of his fist and looked her in the eye."My mistake, miss."He eased off the seat and walked out into the street. She smoothed her apron and walked into the kitchen."Mama, why are you shaking?""I had to throw a bad man out.""Why?""If I didn't do the right thing now, I'd never have the chance again."
***
Today, 11 of the candidates who would be prime minister faced a grilling from the media. I know this because I read it on the Japan Times website. I didn't actually witness the grilling as I was at my mother-in-law's place and the TV was showing a primetime variety show. Several people in giant company mascot suits were facing off in a running race.I drank my coffee and tried to busy myself with twitter. Apparently all the running in the debate was about nukes. Ishihara doesn't want to phase out nukes until he's 120 years old, Noda does by 2030, Dr Dr Kada, the lady of the lake, wants them out by 2022, while Abe thinks Japan is doing just fine with them because if the country got rid of nukes, the country would have no nuke scientists. Which would be bad, he reasoned, because Japan would need them to dispose of all the nuke waste that his policies would create. And his party is leading in the opinion polls. My attention was briefly distracted as the TV programme switched to four middle-aged wives of company presidents who were filthy rich. The studio audience of selected 'B' rate celebs and their fawning fans oohed and aahed as one at how many ¥10,000 notes they carried in their wallets, how expensive their garish homes were, how many power-hungry toys they had in their lives. I tried to get my head back into politics. Dr Kada said her party would stimulate the economy by giving women more jobs and more money.I looked up at the TV. Now the variety show flipped to a segment on obese foreign women who battled to lose weight.
***
The girl stopped Our Mother-in-Law as she headed out the East Exit of Kashiwa Station along the elevated pedestrian walkways beneath the giant TV screen."Could you sign our petition, please? Everybody is!"Our Mother-in-Law looked around. Everybody was."What's it for?""To reject the consumption tax increase. They want to double the rate.""What's the rate now?""Five percent. They want to make it 10 percent. It's outrageous!""Well, it doesn't sound too bad to me. I lived in England where the rate was 17.5 percent.""That's terrible!""Yes, but they do have free health care. And you've got to pay for things somehow.""Yes, but the money is being wasted by the politicians...""Maybe so, I don't like paying taxes, but I'm retired now. One day you will be too, and how will you pay for your pension if no-one does what is necessary now? If you leave the tough decisions to someone else later?"
Go to DAY 16
She had just poured the eggs into the skillet when the yakuza sat down.She'd been warned that this would happen. You don't open a coffee shop in this part of Osaka and not expect a visit from one of the men in black. In the movies they were gruff warriors, modern samurai who followed their own rough code of justice. Sure they were violent, heavy drinkers, but they had hearts of gold."Coffee!"He slammed his hand onto the counter, rattling his Zippo lighter and making his pack of Lucky Seven cigarettes jump into the air. Instantly the sounds of a lively lunch crowd dropped dead, no-one daring to clink a cup or miss what was going to happen next. She turned the gas off, wiped her hands on a greying white towel and straightened her apron. It was the only material left from her marriage. She didn't even have her mother's wedding kimono that she'd hidden beneath the futons. She thought she had hidden it well, but her good-for nothing husband's one skill was to sniff out money. He found it one morning and sold it for cash that afternoon. That evening he blew the lot on pachinko and chu-hai. The coffee shop was everything she had in this world, she thought, before correcting herself. Not quite everything. Her eight-year-old daughter sat on a stool in the kitchen door doing her homework, between chewing on a pencil. She smiled."Coffee!"She had only seconds to make a decision. She could serve the yakuza and she would come to no harm. Or risk her own daughter's safety and the shop's fixtures and fittings by chucking him out. She couldn't afford to start again.All eyes from the four tables darted between her and the yakuza.She walked out from the counter to his seat and smoothed her apron."I'm very sorry, sir. But we do not serve yakuza in this coffee shop," and bowed her head.The yakuza looked around. Saw the fear in the customers' eyes. Saw the girl in the kitchen. And saw the waitress's smooth apron.He scooped up his lighter and smokes with one sweep of his fist and looked her in the eye."My mistake, miss."He eased off the seat and walked out into the street. She smoothed her apron and walked into the kitchen."Mama, why are you shaking?""I had to throw a bad man out.""Why?""If I didn't do the right thing now, I'd never have the chance again."
***
Today, 11 of the candidates who would be prime minister faced a grilling from the media. I know this because I read it on the Japan Times website. I didn't actually witness the grilling as I was at my mother-in-law's place and the TV was showing a primetime variety show. Several people in giant company mascot suits were facing off in a running race.I drank my coffee and tried to busy myself with twitter. Apparently all the running in the debate was about nukes. Ishihara doesn't want to phase out nukes until he's 120 years old, Noda does by 2030, Dr Dr Kada, the lady of the lake, wants them out by 2022, while Abe thinks Japan is doing just fine with them because if the country got rid of nukes, the country would have no nuke scientists. Which would be bad, he reasoned, because Japan would need them to dispose of all the nuke waste that his policies would create. And his party is leading in the opinion polls. My attention was briefly distracted as the TV programme switched to four middle-aged wives of company presidents who were filthy rich. The studio audience of selected 'B' rate celebs and their fawning fans oohed and aahed as one at how many ¥10,000 notes they carried in their wallets, how expensive their garish homes were, how many power-hungry toys they had in their lives. I tried to get my head back into politics. Dr Kada said her party would stimulate the economy by giving women more jobs and more money.I looked up at the TV. Now the variety show flipped to a segment on obese foreign women who battled to lose weight.
***
The girl stopped Our Mother-in-Law as she headed out the East Exit of Kashiwa Station along the elevated pedestrian walkways beneath the giant TV screen."Could you sign our petition, please? Everybody is!"Our Mother-in-Law looked around. Everybody was."What's it for?""To reject the consumption tax increase. They want to double the rate.""What's the rate now?""Five percent. They want to make it 10 percent. It's outrageous!""Well, it doesn't sound too bad to me. I lived in England where the rate was 17.5 percent.""That's terrible!""Yes, but they do have free health care. And you've got to pay for things somehow.""Yes, but the money is being wasted by the politicians...""Maybe so, I don't like paying taxes, but I'm retired now. One day you will be too, and how will you pay for your pension if no-one does what is necessary now? If you leave the tough decisions to someone else later?"
Go to DAY 16
November 29, 2012
Back to the future -- Japan election diary 2012: Day 14
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
A spring in his stepIs less youthful nonchalanceThan fear of what's next
Our Man has been known to go running. He supposes the more correct term is jogging, but that conjures up images of leggings, '80s big hair and Olivia Newton John, and Our Man can't be doing with any of that. Running is not so much a matter of vanity, except that he just wants to cheat death a little longer if he can. And having only quit smoking in his 30s, he's got a lot of distance to make up.
He's lucky that within five minutes of the bunker is Teganuma (snapped above with his phone), which makes for a good running track, 18km all the way round, even if he can rarely make more than 10km before collapsing in a heap back at the bunker. The lake, which is fed by the Tonegawa river, the Mississippi of Japan, used to be the most polluted in the country, but the wise old city fathers got round to stopping pumping the lake full of Kashiwa's sewage, and now it is eighth or ninth most polluted, an achievement they have up in lights, literally -- the ranking is displayed above the city library car park.
Some of the locals will tell you that Abiko is the Kamakura of the north and manage to keep a straight face, and now that it doesn't smell of sewage every time you get off at Abiko Station, Our Man supposes that claim is less preposterous than it sounds for a modest commuter town a couple of kilometres from Tokyo. Though, strictly speaking, Teganuma is not a lake, it's a swamp. Which would make Abiko more the New Orleans of Japan. Our Man can dream.
Around this lake as Our Man gets physical, physical, he can hear the old men's camera bodies talk. If you go running at dusk, you will see dozens of elderly men flocking to the eastern edge of the lake to take pictures of the reflections of the disappearing sun. He'd like to think this was a reflection of some deeper spiritual meaning, something Buddhist or a reinterpretation of the native Shinto religion of nature worship. But it's hard to see much of a worship of nature in the paparazzi scrum of pensioners, lovingly manipulating their equipment. Our Man has been around newsrooms for the better part of two decades but he has not seen as big ones as the old men have poking over their tripods. When not staking out the planet's biggest star, the old boys are out in force snapping cherry blossoms, as if recording and collecting signs of life were the same as living it. Ho hum.
***
While out running it struck Our Man that he hasn't explained any of that dull stuff about the nature of the election, you know, seats and constituencies and stuff. This is partly, of course, because he didn't know until he looked it up on wikipedia just now, and partly because in the age of wikipedia, why does he need to know anything?
He can't answer that, but for completeness, he'll rehash the entry here. But he'll keep it brief. There are two houses in the Japanese parliament, known as the Diet. This election is for the stronger of the two, the House of Representatives, which has 480 seats, 300 divvied up in single-seat constituencies, 180 in 11 regional blocs for proportional representation. Citizens get two votes, one for their prefered candidate and one for their preferred party which dishes out the PR seats. But constituency maps still heavily favour rural areas: a member from hicksville Tottori represents 242,484 voters, but a member from downtown Yokohama represents 493,147.
What do all the numbers mean? They mean any election is skewed toward the countryside and not the cities where 75 percent of Japanese live. It means that the reactionary parties who play well in rural areas have a leg up. It means party bosses hold sway over which candidates can sup from the proportional representation teat. It means that the whole election is illegal since all votes are supposed to be of equal value, not dependent on where you live. The Japanese supreme court said so. Ho hum.
***
Looking for meaning in life is somewhat pointless, looking for meaning in the Japanese elections is entirely pointless, Our Man concludes after reading these two quotes from a link on twitter he clicked on today:
And finally, it looks as if that nice Dr Kada, head of the no-nuke Nippon Mirai no To -- Japan Party of the Future -- now has her very own centre left umbrella party. She can allegedly claim loyalty from 60 likely diet members, though Our Man can't remember where he read that. She's also big into cleaning up lakes, particularly Lake Biwako, Japan's largest lake, so that would play well with Abikans.
A final note, that may or may not be relevant. Her party has a fax number featured prominently on its website , which is decidedly '80s for a bunch of folk calling themselves The Japan Party of the Future.
Until tomorrow.
Go to DAY 15
A spring in his stepIs less youthful nonchalanceThan fear of what's next
Our Man has been known to go running. He supposes the more correct term is jogging, but that conjures up images of leggings, '80s big hair and Olivia Newton John, and Our Man can't be doing with any of that. Running is not so much a matter of vanity, except that he just wants to cheat death a little longer if he can. And having only quit smoking in his 30s, he's got a lot of distance to make up.
He's lucky that within five minutes of the bunker is Teganuma (snapped above with his phone), which makes for a good running track, 18km all the way round, even if he can rarely make more than 10km before collapsing in a heap back at the bunker. The lake, which is fed by the Tonegawa river, the Mississippi of Japan, used to be the most polluted in the country, but the wise old city fathers got round to stopping pumping the lake full of Kashiwa's sewage, and now it is eighth or ninth most polluted, an achievement they have up in lights, literally -- the ranking is displayed above the city library car park.
Some of the locals will tell you that Abiko is the Kamakura of the north and manage to keep a straight face, and now that it doesn't smell of sewage every time you get off at Abiko Station, Our Man supposes that claim is less preposterous than it sounds for a modest commuter town a couple of kilometres from Tokyo. Though, strictly speaking, Teganuma is not a lake, it's a swamp. Which would make Abiko more the New Orleans of Japan. Our Man can dream.
Around this lake as Our Man gets physical, physical, he can hear the old men's camera bodies talk. If you go running at dusk, you will see dozens of elderly men flocking to the eastern edge of the lake to take pictures of the reflections of the disappearing sun. He'd like to think this was a reflection of some deeper spiritual meaning, something Buddhist or a reinterpretation of the native Shinto religion of nature worship. But it's hard to see much of a worship of nature in the paparazzi scrum of pensioners, lovingly manipulating their equipment. Our Man has been around newsrooms for the better part of two decades but he has not seen as big ones as the old men have poking over their tripods. When not staking out the planet's biggest star, the old boys are out in force snapping cherry blossoms, as if recording and collecting signs of life were the same as living it. Ho hum.
***
While out running it struck Our Man that he hasn't explained any of that dull stuff about the nature of the election, you know, seats and constituencies and stuff. This is partly, of course, because he didn't know until he looked it up on wikipedia just now, and partly because in the age of wikipedia, why does he need to know anything?
He can't answer that, but for completeness, he'll rehash the entry here. But he'll keep it brief. There are two houses in the Japanese parliament, known as the Diet. This election is for the stronger of the two, the House of Representatives, which has 480 seats, 300 divvied up in single-seat constituencies, 180 in 11 regional blocs for proportional representation. Citizens get two votes, one for their prefered candidate and one for their preferred party which dishes out the PR seats. But constituency maps still heavily favour rural areas: a member from hicksville Tottori represents 242,484 voters, but a member from downtown Yokohama represents 493,147.
What do all the numbers mean? They mean any election is skewed toward the countryside and not the cities where 75 percent of Japanese live. It means that the reactionary parties who play well in rural areas have a leg up. It means party bosses hold sway over which candidates can sup from the proportional representation teat. It means that the whole election is illegal since all votes are supposed to be of equal value, not dependent on where you live. The Japanese supreme court said so. Ho hum.
***
Looking for meaning in life is somewhat pointless, looking for meaning in the Japanese elections is entirely pointless, Our Man concludes after reading these two quotes from a link on twitter he clicked on today:
A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.
Arthur C. Clarke
The human species has inhabited this planet for only 250,000 years or so-roughly.0015 percent of the history of life, the last inch of the cosmic mile. The world fared perfectly well without us for all but the last moment of earthly time–and this fact makes our appearance look more like an accidental afterthought than the culmination of a prefigured plan.
Moreover, the pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable. Human evolution is not random; it makes sense and can be explained after the fact. But wind back life’s tape to the dawn of time and let it play again–and you will never get humans a second time.
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher’ answer — but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers ourselves — from our own wisdom and ethical sense. There is no other way.
Stephen Jay Gould***
And finally, it looks as if that nice Dr Kada, head of the no-nuke Nippon Mirai no To -- Japan Party of the Future -- now has her very own centre left umbrella party. She can allegedly claim loyalty from 60 likely diet members, though Our Man can't remember where he read that. She's also big into cleaning up lakes, particularly Lake Biwako, Japan's largest lake, so that would play well with Abikans.
A final note, that may or may not be relevant. Her party has a fax number featured prominently on its website , which is decidedly '80s for a bunch of folk calling themselves The Japan Party of the Future.
Until tomorrow.
Go to DAY 15
November 28, 2012
On with the show - 2012 Japan Election Diary: Day 13
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
Today began with some genuine showbiz news, rather than the daily showbiz for the ugly that is politics.
NHK, the BBC of Japan, announced it would not be featuring any South Korean pop bands on its flagship New Year's Eve reds and whites pop programme where talentless manufactured boy bands compete against talentless manufactured girl bands. But the tedious programme holds a dear place in most Japanese families' light entertainment hearts as a symbolic farewell to the year that was. It certainly is full of symbolics, and Our Man usually uses it as an excuse to go to the pub.
NHK's excuse for dropping the Koreans was "public opinion" concerns, and that K-pop bands haven't had any big hits this year. Though the Kyodo news report Our Man read cited arguments over the Takeshima/Dokudo islands, that both nations claim rights to, now that symbolic battles are still more prevalent than real ones.
Our Man's 11-year-old daughter would dispute NHK's reasons, being a fervent K-pop fan, but Our Man pleads ignorance. He can barely tell the difference between K-pop and J-pop. As far as he can tell, K-pop groups must have fewer than eight members and J-pop groups must have more. All sound the same, can't sing and... OK, OK, I am turning into my Dad. While I do talk back to greetings and thanks from automated toll gates, I haven't started driving into the country at weekends and rolling down the window to fill the car with the smell of manure to exclaim, "Ahhh, the smell of the country," quite yet. This, Our Old Man would do on trips to abandoned railway embankments to pick raspberries with my grandmother for jam and wine-making. A fond memory is of the occasion he went through two bottles of raspberry wine and the only way to get him in to bed was to cajole him in German. "Wir mussen auf die Treppe gehen!" is still about the only German I can remember to this day, thanks to him. I could go on, but there is a small chance he could read this entry, and he deserves to be immortalised in virtual print for far more worthwhile achievements than improving Our Man's schoolboy German.
***
Now Our Man is going to break through the fourth wall and address you directly, dispensing with the fiction that this diary is his own inner-most thoughts that he just happens to have left open on the back seat of a the double-decker bus that is the internet. The fact is that everything he writes here is informed by the knowledge that this is public. It is harder than it looks to keep the competing factions, to borrow a political metaphor, checked and balanced. How much of the personal and private should he reveal? How much fact? How much fiction? How much of the public record should he rehash? Do you really care what Our Man has to say about the goings on of the day, when he barely cares himself? All substance and no flash makes for a dull read. But all flash and no substance fails to satisfy even the lightest of appetites.
George Orwell had it right in his essay Why I Write (Google it, it's free takes about 15 minutes to read) that all folk who willingly put pen to paper are motivated to varying degrees by egotism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. And all these motivations are present in Our Man's virtual head. Probably.
In the end, all Our Man can do is make a decision of what to write for the day and follow it through and hope he can live with it in the morning, that you will get something from it (even though he has little idea what that could be) and his family will still talk to him at dinner. His only defences, and they are flimsy ones at that, are to wrap himself in a shroud of anonymity (although that's showing severe wear and tear) and to distance himself from the truth or dare of his words with a heavy air of irony and third person grammatical gymnastics, although he reserves the right to drop those when he feels like it. Though he really should keep it consistent for the book, I suppose (you're not making my life any easier with that sentence -- ed.) It's the only way he knows that he can tell the truth.
It may be disjointed, and make for an uneven ride when it's pasted together into a book, but if Our Man thought of the enormity of the project -- to write a book ostensibly about the Japanese election, one of many subjects he is woefully unqualified to write about but still does, he simply couldn't make it. But break the book up into manageable daily chunks, he just might be able to get to the end. And you never know, when he cuts out the crap all the chunks might make a hearty meal. Whatever. This is Our Man's diary, not George Orwell's.
Our Man is probably thinking too much (you've never been guilty of that before -- ed.) and he should take Keith Richards' advice to Pete Townsend on writing ("think less, and play your guitar more") and just get on with the show.
And so he shall, without fear or favour.
Go to DAY 14
Today began with some genuine showbiz news, rather than the daily showbiz for the ugly that is politics.
NHK, the BBC of Japan, announced it would not be featuring any South Korean pop bands on its flagship New Year's Eve reds and whites pop programme where talentless manufactured boy bands compete against talentless manufactured girl bands. But the tedious programme holds a dear place in most Japanese families' light entertainment hearts as a symbolic farewell to the year that was. It certainly is full of symbolics, and Our Man usually uses it as an excuse to go to the pub.
NHK's excuse for dropping the Koreans was "public opinion" concerns, and that K-pop bands haven't had any big hits this year. Though the Kyodo news report Our Man read cited arguments over the Takeshima/Dokudo islands, that both nations claim rights to, now that symbolic battles are still more prevalent than real ones.
Our Man's 11-year-old daughter would dispute NHK's reasons, being a fervent K-pop fan, but Our Man pleads ignorance. He can barely tell the difference between K-pop and J-pop. As far as he can tell, K-pop groups must have fewer than eight members and J-pop groups must have more. All sound the same, can't sing and... OK, OK, I am turning into my Dad. While I do talk back to greetings and thanks from automated toll gates, I haven't started driving into the country at weekends and rolling down the window to fill the car with the smell of manure to exclaim, "Ahhh, the smell of the country," quite yet. This, Our Old Man would do on trips to abandoned railway embankments to pick raspberries with my grandmother for jam and wine-making. A fond memory is of the occasion he went through two bottles of raspberry wine and the only way to get him in to bed was to cajole him in German. "Wir mussen auf die Treppe gehen!" is still about the only German I can remember to this day, thanks to him. I could go on, but there is a small chance he could read this entry, and he deserves to be immortalised in virtual print for far more worthwhile achievements than improving Our Man's schoolboy German.
***
Now Our Man is going to break through the fourth wall and address you directly, dispensing with the fiction that this diary is his own inner-most thoughts that he just happens to have left open on the back seat of a the double-decker bus that is the internet. The fact is that everything he writes here is informed by the knowledge that this is public. It is harder than it looks to keep the competing factions, to borrow a political metaphor, checked and balanced. How much of the personal and private should he reveal? How much fact? How much fiction? How much of the public record should he rehash? Do you really care what Our Man has to say about the goings on of the day, when he barely cares himself? All substance and no flash makes for a dull read. But all flash and no substance fails to satisfy even the lightest of appetites.
George Orwell had it right in his essay Why I Write (Google it, it's free takes about 15 minutes to read) that all folk who willingly put pen to paper are motivated to varying degrees by egotism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. And all these motivations are present in Our Man's virtual head. Probably.
In the end, all Our Man can do is make a decision of what to write for the day and follow it through and hope he can live with it in the morning, that you will get something from it (even though he has little idea what that could be) and his family will still talk to him at dinner. His only defences, and they are flimsy ones at that, are to wrap himself in a shroud of anonymity (although that's showing severe wear and tear) and to distance himself from the truth or dare of his words with a heavy air of irony and third person grammatical gymnastics, although he reserves the right to drop those when he feels like it. Though he really should keep it consistent for the book, I suppose (you're not making my life any easier with that sentence -- ed.) It's the only way he knows that he can tell the truth.
It may be disjointed, and make for an uneven ride when it's pasted together into a book, but if Our Man thought of the enormity of the project -- to write a book ostensibly about the Japanese election, one of many subjects he is woefully unqualified to write about but still does, he simply couldn't make it. But break the book up into manageable daily chunks, he just might be able to get to the end. And you never know, when he cuts out the crap all the chunks might make a hearty meal. Whatever. This is Our Man's diary, not George Orwell's.
Our Man is probably thinking too much (you've never been guilty of that before -- ed.) and he should take Keith Richards' advice to Pete Townsend on writing ("think less, and play your guitar more") and just get on with the show.
And so he shall, without fear or favour.
Go to DAY 14
November 26, 2012
ELECTION FEVER -- 2012 Japanese election diary: Day 12
"I have some bad news for you," Dr Kondo said to me.
Our Woman had been prepared for this moment. She'd come along to the consultation armed with her Japanese to English dictionary. Although she hardly needed it. Over breakfast coffee she'd already memorised the Japanese and English for all the malignant forms of cancer in the book, knew what our medical insurance would pay for and what it wouldn't and had a better idea of where my spleen was than I did.
I was prepared too. I took out a crisp ¥10,000 note from my wallet and handed it under the table to the doctor before he could announce his diagnosis.
"Doc, I don't care what it is, just don't tell me to give up the alcohol, OK?"
I could see the nurse's eyes crease above her surgical mask and busied herself straightening the curtains.
Dr Kondo removed his half-glasses and used them to wave away my money. He spoke rapidly and incomprehensibly.
Our Woman sat attentively, nodding, in serious-face mode until he stopped talking, and then she looked around, lost.
"Well, what did he say?"
"He said you're a bit fat and have bad eyesight."
I wiped my glasses on my T-shirt, tort over my belly.
"Next he'll be telling me I'm middle-aged and a foreigner. I know."
The doctor laughed. He could speak English too, I diagnosed.
Our Woman was still incredulous. "Are you sure doctor? There's nothing else wrong with him? Are you quite certain?"
To some extent, I shared her disappointment about such a mundane diagnosis after so much effort. It wasn't just my memory that was still raw from the thorough ningen dock examination the doctor and his staff had put me through a week earlier. As well as the innocuous blood pressure and height and weight tests, they even gave me an ultrasound. Not to mention the pint of barium shake I had to consume, the vial of spit I had to provide, the two test tubes of piss and a cotton bud of shit. And it takes all the accumulated knowledge of 4,000 years of civilisation to be able to make polite small talk with a man who has stuck his finger up your backside, let me assure you.
"Quite certain. He has 'A's in all other categories. Lung capacity, EKG, blood pressure, stomach, intestines..."
"What about alcohol? He drinks too much alcohol, right?"
"Yeah, what about that doc?" I patted my wallet and gave him a wink.
"He shouldn't drink too much, but there's no need to abstain from all alcohol."
"So there's nothing wrong with him?" Our Woman was deflated.
"Well, he could do with losing five kilos. In Japan he is considered at risk of metabolic syndrome, but in America he is still within average weight."
I didn't tell him I was British.
***
You have to respect doctors, particularly in this country. They retain their honorific titles sensei (teacher). Our Mother in Law went to him when she had lost her voice six months ago. As Kondo-sensei examined her, there was a great wailing and screaming from outside the surgery window. The doctor, nurse and Our Mother in Law all stopped to listen.
"I can't tell if that's a cat or a baby in distress, " he said. All agreed and the wailing continued.
"I do believe that's a baby," he said.
"No that's a cat," my mother in law whispered. The nurse walked over the window and pulled back the curtain and looked out the window.
"Ah, not to worry doctor, it's a cat."
"Nurse, what are you doing!"
"Well, you said that it might be a baby..."
"We don't have time to be conjecturing about whether something is a cat or a baby, we are a medical establishment, get away from the window and remember you are a professional!"
"Yes, sensei. Sorry sensei."
***
The term ningen dock "Human dock" was popularised by the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1954 as an annual check-up for salarymen like a ship coming into port to have the barnacles scraped off, ready to return to voyage safely around the world. 1954 was also the year that the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was irradiated in US atomic tests that led to the newspaper working with the CIA throughout the 1950s to promote the use of nuclear power to damp down Japan's understandable anti-Atomic instincts that were flaring up again.
Fast forward to post-Fukushima Japan and nothing has changed. A nuclear accident irradiated innocent victims, the Yomiuri Shimbun is campaigning to keep nuclear power, calling all other options utopian, and their preferred party, the pro-nuke Liberal Democratic Party is leading the polls, with the tepidly anti-nuke DPJ all at sea and cruising straight for an electoral iceberg. Are there any good men left to steady the anti-nuclear ship of state?
No, but now there is a woman. Shiga Prefecture governor Yukiko Kada (an academic doctor) announced today that her party Nippon Mirai no To was going to campaign for a nuke-free future, more benefits for women and improving the work-life balance, according to the Japan Times. I don't know what that means, but if it means I don't have to work, I'm all for it. And so is Ichiro Ozawa of the People's Life First Party who promptly disbanded his party to join hers, which makes the campaign poster of his pictured here that I spotted yesterday in Abiko a collector's item.
Only two rocks on the horizon that I can see: her party has no official candidates and polling day is in three weeks.
Still, she could be just what the doctor ordered.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.[image error]
SCOTCH ON THE ROCKS - 2012 Japan elections diary: Day 11
Democracy never tasted this sickly sweet.
Sure, Our Man joined the hipsters on Twitter mocking Richy Rich Romney and decrying Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama's drone wars. Sure, he concluded that American democracy came down to a choice between Coke and Pepsi. And sure, he argued how wonderful it would be if only people had a real choice, real variety... why, just imagine what that would look like.
It would look like a Japanese drinks vending machine.
Should you go for incumbent Noda's Democratic Party of Japan's frothy cafe latte? The only problem is it's passed its sell-by date and is only served cold. Then there's that new drink in a flash container, but we're not sure what's in it. Is it a yogurt drink, good for the old tum or a dynamic sports drink? With Ishihara-Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Association Revitalising Hot Sports Yogurt Drink, it's the new flavour for all. Consume at your own risk. There are a variety of other drinks of course with appealing packaging, some calling themselves wonda or boss, but inside they are all cans of vile black coffee.
Except one.
Abe's Liberal Democratic Party is a traditional green tea. You've tried it before. It's hard to recall now, but it was pretty bitter, not exactly what you were after, but it's warm and passable refreshment on a miserably wet day, given the alternatives.
And Abe's pretty bitter about the constitution. At least, that's the taste he wants to leave in your mouth. In the rabid world of blind nationalism, the one-eyed statesman is king. That is, when your biggest rival is talking about simulating nukes and is willing to push the country to the brink of war with an armed superpower over a few rocks in the middle of the ocean (yeah, it's not like they are important, like the Falklands - ed.) the least you can do is talk about revising Article 9 of the Constitution renouncing war and dropping the term "self-defence" from the Japanese armed forces. I'm not sure what Abe's getting at, but if it means a nation that can look after its own defences thank you very much America for all that you've done for the people of Okinawa, that doesn't sound so unreasonable.
As long as everyone with their fingers on the simulated button is of sound mind and body. Because, you know, Abe and the rest have learnt the lessons of history, remember?
Oh, and a Japan that can stand up for itself sure plays well on the streets. Japan is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore from a rising China and a bossy America. Just, someone has to pay for the cost of doing all that. You know, with taxes?
A simulated nuke doesn't grow on trees you know (are you sure? It might do -- ed.) and you know, if you want to keep building dams, concreting coastlines, turning the nuke plants back on it's going to take a lot more than the 5 percent sales tax increase whose passage sent the DPJ into a death spiral. You could always just print more money, I suppose. That wouldn't have any bad consequences, would it?
Our Man has tried his best to avoid talking about this general election as a horse race -- assessing who is in front, who is behind, who fell at the first fence and had to be shot and turned into glue that kindergarten kids can use to smear on old tissue boxes to cover in crepe paper to give as gift tissue boxes to their fathers who will keep them for the foreseeable future on the shelf above the washing machine as they don't have any use for tissue boxes covered in crepe paper, no matter how adorable the person who made it is -- because that can get tedious. Hey editor, do something about that sentence. Where is your red ink when it's needed? (Sorry, I'd drifted off. Have you hit your 1,000 words yet? If not, can you hurry up and get to the point please?)
Anyway, I didn't want to talk percentages, look what happened to Romney's campaign when he talked 47%, but they are unavoidable. You remember that nice Michael Thomas Cucek from the other day? Well, he has rounded up the latest opinion polls from this week (and last week in brackets). And they make for uncomfortable reading for anyone hoping for a sane, capable prime minister emerging from the electoral mash:
Kyodo
Liberal Democratic Party 19% (24%)
Democratic Party of Japan 8% (11%)
Japan Restoration Association 10% (8%)
New Komeito 4% (4%)
Your Party 3% (2%)
People's Life First 2% (1%)
Don't know 45% (43%)
What Our Man takes from these numbers:
1) Almost Romney's fabled 47% of voters are undecided. Or more accurately, they have decided that these guys are not their cup of tea.
2) The Liberal Democratic Party is unpopular, but half as unpopular as the Democratic Party of Japan.
3) The Japan Restoration Association could actually push the DPJ into third place.
4) Whoever wins will actually lose because they won't have a mandate to rule.
As a horse race, this thing is over. But as a Molotov cocktail, there are a few more ingredients to throw in the mix. Who would bet against the North Koreans lobbing a missile into the sea? Will the electorate wake up and remember how corrupt, inept the LDP were? And if they do, will they vote for the JRA? Is anyone interested in the folk still struggling to put their lives together after the tsunami? After Fukushima?
Whatever. See you at the bar, Noda. Mine's a scotch. You're paying.
Click here to go to Day 1 of the 2012 Japan Election Diary.
