I'm convinced that railing on a ferry exists mainly because the water is so damn inviting on a hot summer day.

It was more impressive to the naked eye.

My patented diagonal horizon.

Kuro digging into shrimp/meat clumps hand picked from our cup ramens.

You never know what you may find strapped haphazardly to overloaded big rigs on the Kobe expressway. This was fairly scary, but even scarier was the truck in front of it carrying a reinforced stainless steel tank labeled TOXIC that was weaving between lanes like an Indy driver. Idiots.

Mondays. I fucking hate Mondays. I am muttering this weekly mantra as I walk into a meeting with a problematic vendor yesterday morning. After greetings, bowing, and the compulsory 30 seconds of silence, I open with a blunt: "Your parts suck, Suzuki-san. One in every twenty are failing incoming testing. This is unacceptable."

"But Yoshida-san, you asked for them to be made as cheaply as possible..." he offers, weakly.

It is time to unload with both barrels: "Never at the expense of quality. Never. Did we ask you to make shitty parts, or inexpensive parts? Because if the last ten years of recession has taught us anything, it is that these two qualities are not mutually exclusive. We have 50 million Chinese vendors knocking on the door, just begging to take over any work you can't handle."

"But Yoshida-san, any such parts could not be stamped MADE IN JAPAN," he replies weakly. This is set-trip number one. He may still actually be under the illusion that sub-component origin makes any difference to anybody at all. Since the part he makes is at no point visible to the consumer this tactic is doubly weak. Plus, he obviously has not looked at his parts under a microscope like we have.

"You have raised another point we need to discuss, Suzuki-san. You are cold-stamping the MADE IN JAPAN on the parts after the molding process, which is causing hairline fractures in the underlying structure and possibly even resulting in part failure. This stamping, which we silently allowed but never gave initial approval for, must stop immediately." It is Monday and I am tired of educating these spoiled sons of rich industrialists that have never truly been weaned from the bubble days of decades ago. I find that the local mom and pop operations, lean and hungry from scrounging for any jobs for years on end in a demanding marketplace, often work out better in the long run.

"Just who do you think you are? You just happen to be handling this account on a temporary basis! I'm not used to working with people like you, I work with top procurement officers at Sony, Matsushita, Canon..." Thus begins set-trip number two, and I'm in no mood. The "people like you" remark is a thinly-veiled insult. He's calling me a dirty foreigner, the cultural equivalent of landing on Go To Jail in today's business world. His sales partner, silent until now, immediately switches into damage control mode with deep bowing and apologies, trying to over-volume his boss, who's still verbally recounting Major Corporations and Deals of Days Past. I am still in a kind of shock from the racial slap-in-the-face and find it hard to stay in the room. It is Monday, and I am within swinging distance of somebody I truly despise, close enough to smell his halitosis and watch beads of frothy spittle erupt from his lips as the bout of verbal diarrhea sputters to a violent, yet inevitable end.

If I were in a different type of organization, this is around where I would demand a finger. But this is mere fantasy. Instead, I walk out and go to Procurement, and ask the manager in charge of the account to go down and negotiate.

Later, the manager reports he was surprised to find the vendor agreeable to all of our requests. He asks what happened in the meeting before he went down, as Suzuki-san was atypically silent and his underling took control of the whole meeting. I explain what happened, including the gaijin insult. "Well," he replies without missing a beat, "maybe you should try that more often. Sure makes my job easier!" He winks and punches me on the arm. Bastard.

I fucking hate Mondays.

Hot from the inbox:

Fellow blogger,

I am sending this message to the bloggers on my blogroll (and a few other folks) in the hopes that some of you will print this, or at least find it interesting enough for comment. I'm not usually the type to distribute such messages, but I felt this was important enough to risk disturbing you.

As some of you may already know, a wing of the South Korean government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers and other websites. The government is attempting to control access to video of the recent Kim Sun-il beheading, ostensibly because the video will have a destabilizing influence. (I haven't seen the video.)

Many Western expat bloggers in Korea are in an uproar; others, myself included, are largely unsurprised: South Korea has not come far out of the shadow of its military dictatorship past. My own response to this censorship is not so much anger as amusement, because the situation represents an intellectual challenge as well as a chance to fight for freedom of expression. Perhaps even to fight for freedom, period.

South Korea is a rapidly evolving country, but in many ways it remains the Hermit Kingdom. Like a turtle retreating into its shell, the people are on occasion unable to deal with the harsh realities of the world around them. This country is, for example, in massive denial about the atrocities perpetrated in North Korea, and, as with many Americans, is in denial about the realities of Islamic terrorism, whose roots extend chronologically backward far beyond the lifetime of the Bush Administration. This cultural tendency toward denial (and overreaction) at least partially explains the Korean government's move to censor so many sites.

The fact that the current administration, led by President Noh Mu-hyon, is supposedly "liberal"-leaning makes this censorship more ironic. It also fuels propagandistic conservative arguments that liberals are, at heart, closet totalitarians. I find this to be a specious caricature of the liberal position (I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative), but to the extent that Koreans are concerned about what image they project to the world, it is legitimate for them to worry over whether they are currently playing into stereotype: South Korea is going to be associated with other violators of human rights, such as China.

Of the many hypocrisies associated with the decision to censor, the central one is that no strong governmental measures were taken to suppress the distribution of the previous beheading videos (Nick Berg et al.). This, too, fuels the suspicion that Koreans are selfish or, to use their own proverbial image, "a frog in a well"-- radically blinkered in perspective, collectively unable to empathize with the sufferings of non-Koreans, but overly sensitive to their own suffering.

I am writing this letter not primarily to criticize all Koreans (I'm ethnically half-Korean, and an American citizen), nor to express a generalized condemnation of Korean culture. As is true anywhere else, this culture has its merits and demerits, and overall, I'm enjoying my time here. No, my purpose is more specific: to cause the South Korean government as much embarrassment as possible, and perhaps to motivate Korean citizens to engage in some much-needed introspection.

To this end, I need the blogosphere's help, and this letter needs wide distribution (you may receive other letters from different bloggers, so be prepared!). I hope you'll see fit to publish this letter on your site, and/or to distribute it to concerned parties: censorship in a supposedly democratic society simply cannot stand. The best and quickest way to persuade the South Korean government to back down from its current position is to make it lose face in the eyes of the world. This can only happen through a determined (and civilized!) campaign to expose the government's hypocrisy and to cause Korean citizens to rethink their own narrow-mindedness.

We can debate all we want about "root causes" with regard to Islamic terrorism, Muslim rage, and all the rest, but for me, it's much more constructive to proceed empirically and with an eye to the future. Like it or not, what we see today is that Korea is inextricably linked with Iraq issues, and with issues of Islamic fundamentalism. Koreans, however, may need some persuading that this is in fact the case-- that we all need to stand together as allies against a common enemy.

If you are interested in giving the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture a piece of your mind (or if you're a reporter who would like to contact them for further information), please email the MIC at:
webmaster@mic.go.kr

Thank you,

Kevin Kim
bighominid@gmail.com
http://bighominid.blogspot.com
(Blogspot is currently blocked in Korea, along with other providers; please go to Unipeak.com and type my URL into the search window to view my blog.)

PS: To send me an email, please type "hairy chasms" in the subject line to avoid being trashed by my custom-made spam filter.

PPS: Much better blogs than mine have been covering this issue, offering news updates and heartfelt commentary. To start you off, visit:
http://marmot.blogs.com/korea/
http://jeffinkorea.blogs.com/
http://aboutjoel.com/
http://oranckay.net/blog/
http://kimcheegi.blogs.com/
http://gopkorea.blogs.com/flyingyangban
http://rathbonepress.tblog.com/
http://blog.woojay.net/

Here as well, Unipeak is the way to go if you're in Korea and unable to view the above blogs. People in the States should, in theory, have no problems accessing these sites, which all continue to be updated.

PPPS: This email is being cc'ed to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture. Please note that other bloggers are writing about the Korean government's creation of a task force that will presumably fight internet terror. I and others have an idea that this task force will serve a different purpose. If this is what South Korea's new "aligning with the PRC" is all about, then there's reason to worry for the future.
PPPS: This email is being cc'ed to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture. Please note that other bloggers are writing about the Korean government's creation of a task force that will presumably fight internet terror. I and others have an idea that this task force will serve a different purpose. If this is what South Korea's new "aligning with the PRC" is all about, then there's reason to worry for the future.

Note: I'll be happy to post letters for any other bloggers who ask, or help out in any other way possible. Drop me a line in the comments or at:
j@DELETETHESECAPScosmicbuddha.com

I am an avid reader of many Korea-based blogs and wrote a post about it with many excellent links here:
http://www.cosmicbuddha.com/blog/archives/000257.html

Fight the power, brothas!

My cousin Kana opened a nail salon behind Tenri station.

Made me late for work. Grrrrr.

The Awaji Armada.

Ridding society of guns does not rid it of violence. Man is a killer. Remember that the Japanese were not pacifists until they got nuked and occupied into submission. An example of extreme violence in modern Nippon.

There is a very interesting article regarding gun control in Japan up at GunCite. It's a fascinating outline including the history of guns in Japan (did you know at one time Japan had more firearms than any other country on earth?), and I recommend you read the whole thing for historical value, if nothing else.

I have actually met Americans who, after hearing that I work in Japan, make remarks about how "nice it must be to live in a gun-free country". I usually don't answer back to stuff like that. It's really tiring and rarely ever beneficial to either party to start a debate over. In class at Tenri University I once heard a lecture about how violence in America would simply "disappear" if Japan's gun control laws were adopted. I bit my tongue that time, as well. The bottom line, I believe, is covered by the article very well. Japan's gun laws (with regard to numbers of shooting incidents) work for Japan. If you want an example of a country where similar ones do not work, look at South Africa. (Ironically, the SA government's solution to the problems caused by preventing lawful ownership of guns is more gun control legislation.

One insignificant but irritating beef:

No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords

This is a ridiculously poor translation. I suspect it may have been done a long time ago by someone currently working in the field of Nigerian mail scamming.

When the ban on American beef imports rang the death knell for gyu-don (beef bowl), the most popular dish served at beloved fast food chain/icon of Japanese culture Yoshinoya, I tapped out a hasty ode to it in this post (gyu-don photos are posted here). I sure miss the emotional comfort that Yoshi-gyu provided; no matter where you were, at any hour, drunk or sober (usually the former), chances were there was a Yoshinoya within driving distance ready to serve you up a steaming bowl of tender sliced beef and onions - for a pittance. Indeed, around 3 AM the local Yoshinoya was like a beacon for night people and you could always count on hearing conversations between truckers (almost always baseball), street racers (quite often lamenting accidents or trading info about new police hotspots - very useful for avoiding random stops), or groups of people getting off the graveyard shift.

BSE and the subsequent media hype killed the Yoshi-gyu experience. Menu substitutions such as "pork bowl" and "bowl o' curry" simply do not share the status or emotional attachment of a beef bowl, so for the most part, the Cult of Beefeaters, at present, has dropped from sight. In the minds of all, Yoshinoya has lost its unofficial designation as Temple of Beef. I feel very deeply for those who never got the chance to enrich their lives with the One True Way and achieve the higher state of being that I will simply refer to as moo.

Do you doubt claims about the emotional attachment Japanese people have to a particular chain of stores slinging cheap bowls of beef on rice? I guess I really have no way of proving it to you in person anytime soon, but if you have a PlayStation 2, you may be able to have a virtual look for yourself, from the eyes of a Yoshinoya employee:

For the unwashed masses unfamiliar with the game and the Yoshinoya Corporation, allow us to bring you up to speed. Yoshinoya is a company that was founded over a century ago in Japan and that has built an empire around the simple pleasures of a bowl of rice with some thinly sliced beef and onion on top. The chain of reasonably priced foodstuffs has expanded from a family-run store, which opened in a fish market in Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, in 1899, to more than 1,000 stores worldwide as of 2001. Having conquered the food sector over the last few decades, the chain has set its sights on the video game world with the help of Japanese developer Success and the simply titled Yoshinoya for the PlayStation 2.

So how on earth could a game even hope to capture the essence of such a company in playable form? Surprisingly easily. If you've ever played the classic game Root Beer Tapper, you'll have a small sense of what Success has done. You'll take the role of a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed trainee at a Yoshinoya store who must work his way up through the ranks of the apron-and-hat-wearing set to be the best employee to ever seat a customer, pour tea, prepare a bowl, and shout "Arigato gozaimashita!"

Read the full preview done by GameSpot.

Personally, I'd pass on this game as I have no desire to come home from my job everyday just to simulate another one (wait a minute - is being a T/CT considered a "job?"), but I think it's an interesting concept and I hope it does well. If anybody who has played it reads this post, I'd like to hear what you think of it.

Hat tip to Joystiq, a new daily read.

Kevin reminded me in the comments that I left everybody hanging. Well, the kitten made it through the night. Sorry for the crappy photo, I'm not used to the new phone's focus. But you can see that he looks a lot better, right? And I have dubbed him, alternatively, Yoda, Gollum, and Kurozuke, or kuro-chan for short. Why did I give him horrible names? Well, he's completely adorable until you look him in the face. His eyes are rolled up and outward, with a protective pink sheath still covering the lower hemisphere of his eyeballs. The effect this creates is hard to describe, but let's just say this cat could be a movie star if I taught him how to say, "my preeeeecioooouus..." I have no idea why his eyes are messed up like that; the night we found him I thought it was because the raging waters had blinded him. Later, after drying him, his eyes opened a little bit but were covered with this mucousy eye-milk (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term for eye-crap), which I wiped off.

I hope his eyes heal. If it's just a minor injury or temporary affliction (could he be so young that his eyes haven't fully opened?), I think there might be a chance for his eyes to heal, because kuro-chan is a scrapper. Remember how I said he might die on the night we rescued him? He was basically in a coma all night interrupted periodically by little coughing fits. When he woke, we fed him and made him nurse water from a dish towel, and within an hour he was stretching his legs and walking around - clumsily, but with surprising vigor. His unsure footing made me realize, again, that this kitten is probably less than a month old, and some living piece of shit threw him in a storm drain... But even thinking about that just gets to me, so I'll switch gears.

I ended up calling him kuro-chan (English equivalent: Blackie?) because he's black and small and... Black. Go figure. Actually, I don't have the official naming rights. After much thinking about what to do with him, my sister decided care for him until she goes back to the states in August. We were worried about what to do with him after that, but it turns out that another teacher who lives near my sister might take him for us.

Finding this little creature has spurred a lot of thinking about what is right in the context of being a foreigner with a different set of values. For instance, if Japan were a land where cats were raised on farms as livestock, delivered to slaughterhouses in cages, and ultimately, their flesh sliced neatly and eaten raw over slabs of vinegared rice, would it be any less wrong to throw an unwanted kitten in the storm drain?

Hey, I didn't say it was coherent thinking, did I?

It was pretty goddamn sad to remember for the hundredth time that there is really nowhere to take abandoned pets in Japan. I know. I've asked policemen, animal shelter workers, and many many pet owners about this problem. They say there is usually no solution in the short-run if you find abandoned pets (which I do alost every year), but they almost all have one common observation: People need to be educated much better than they are now. When I went off on my "spay and neuter" rant the other day it was partially because I have talked with many pet owners in Japan who don't know what these terms mean; the concept of de-sexing is totally strange to them. I find this sad because it's a glaring fault in a society that is so modern and decent in many ways. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that people don't kill unwanted pets in other coutries. I'm just saying that I don't see so much evidence of it every year in densely populated and relatively affluent areas of any other countries I've gone.

It seems I can't write about the kitten without getting worked up. I'm putting myself on time out. In the meantime, I ask that you pray to your god for the kitten's eyes to heal. Quickly. I feel guilty for being a human every time I look at his face.

This new Beasties album sounds really great playing softly in the background right now - the beats are funky and I can't hear the lyrics. As far as I'm concerned that's the best of both worlds. A dog that doesn't shit, so to speak.

My aussie pal John is getting serious about Counter-strike; I think he's hooked. Last time he came over to the house he played for five hours straight and ignored everyone around him, totally absorbed in the game. Yeah, I think I hooked him good. He bought a new PC and a new video card just so he could play... Next thing you know, he'll stop eating "in real life" and be mean to his wife for trying to talk to him "when he's defusing."

I'll get some screen shots of me owning him and post later.

Well, maybe the time difference can count for something. Happy Father's Day, dad, and thank you for not selling us all to gypsies continued support throughout the years. You are a good father and I only hope I can do as well (the time is coming pretty soon I think).

I am sitting in the dark well aware that I have brought this upon myself and yet cursing fate for having been put in this position again. I haven't slept because someone is keeping me awake:

Let's not kid anybody, this is one of the un-cutest kittens I have ever seen. Skanky, weak, and noisy. My sister and I fished him out of a rain gutter last night, where he nearly drowned in the torrent of rainwater flowing down the hill. He was shivering and weak with exhaustion. I wish I could be more positive but I don't know if he's old enough to make it without his mother, and he mewls when I let him go... So if he dies tonight, he will die in my arms and he will not die alone.

I made a joke about stir-frying a kitten the other day because it was a make believe kitten and anybody who knows me knows I really love animals and say that shit without meaning it. But I still feel guilty for writing those words now that I hold this sick ball of fur against my chest.

So now I am sitting in the dark fantasizing about somehow finding out who threw this kitten in the gutter and doing painful things to them. And I can honestly say, after having seen this kitten half-drowned, that I would enjoy it to some extent.

The way that Japanese treat their pets, overall, is fucking wrong. Knowledge is pitifully low, yet the numbers of pet owners seems to be ever-increasing. YO. ASSHOLES. IT IS FUCKING WRONG TO THROW UNWANTED PETS IN THE GUTTERS. SPAY AND NEUTER, SPAY AND NEUTER, WORDS TO LIVE BY, SPAY AND NEUTER.

My day started at home on monster island (Awajishima). Woke up at nine. Picked up my new cellphone at the nearby AU shop with Nam (will write review later - it's a Sony/Ericsson A1402S, an upgrade from my trusty old Hitachi). Went to the high-speed boat terminal down the street and caught the hydrofoil to KIX. Met up with none other than deep thinking shitblogger extraordinaire, Kevin Kim, on a day trip from Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms in the "sea of Korean tourists lugging many tape-patched boxes around" scenario alluded to in my previous post (link).

Hopped on the very Nemo-esque Nankai rapi:t train to downtown Osaka. Feeling hungry, we homed in on a forgettably-named okonomiyaki shop across from Namba Parks and I dutifully snapped the obligatory nerd blogger photos with new phone.

From the heavens, a seed crystal fell into my bowl. As structure took instant form from the nether edges of velvety nothingness, I watched the world exist apart from myself and stole a glimpse of the Path. This is how I achieved x-ray vision.

In my heightened state and unfettered by the bonds of sanity, I instantly realized that Kevin is indeed an alien construct like I suspected all along. However, also as predicted, we got along very well since my girlfriend and I as well as the entirety of the Asian continent (and for that matter any lines of text appearing on your screen) are merely figments of my blog's imagination. There was way too much ice in our cokes.

Walked up the shotengai (covered arcade) to nanpabashi (pick-up bridge), where they have drained the stinky canal quite a bit and apparently plan to beautify the river... It just warms my heart to see my taxes spent in this purely symbolic effort, I mean, remind me again, how do you turn mercury into gold? But I won't go into that today. A bald, scary-looking man dressed in shorts/white t-shirt approaches us after hearing us talking in English, and turning to me, loudly asks, What do you think takoyaki? I find myself strangely unable to answer, but I smile and the guy half-grins back in such a way that raises the hair on the back of my neck. Something is not right in there, behind his eyes, which would usually put me on guard. But today I am dwelling on a different plane and feel a strange need to help this guy in some way. So I have a brief conversation with madness and in a short time have confirmed that there is no answer to his riddle, it is a genetically modified logic bomb. Yet I must give some sort of answer. I stall by talking about the hot weather, then throw a loop back at him by teaching him the phrase, How about some hot takoyaki?, which seems to please him immensely. After practicing his pronunciation on me a couple times, he wanders off into the crowd chanting this new incantation over and over and over again. The crowd parts to let him through, this man with a new mission in life. (Note: If homeboy ends up stabbing someone important while yelling about hot takoyaki tomorrow, I'm really very sorry.)

We had dessert in Kirin Plaza at the far end of the bridge, on the 4th floor. Nice place. They have a brewery on the first floor, so I had a pint of their ale - yum. We saw an art exhibition on the 6th floor, which started out interesting but kinda fizzled out for me at the end. Too many neon fish-headed creatures. Plus, I hate galleries that ban photography outright. Many of the paintings were labeled as digital proofs, so I found the photo ban a bit ironic. But it was cool inside and hot on the street, and too many neon fish-headed creatures is, by definition, preceded by just enough neon fish-headed creatures, so I had my moment of equilibrium - which is definitely redeemable for an Hour or Two of Thornless Respite come Armageddon.

Nam took off for a dinner meeting with friends, and I walked with Kev back to Nankai Namba station. We parted ways there and I presume he is now locked in a room at the Korean customs office for trying to smuggle Japanese centipedes into the country so he could make them publicly surrender and admit that his centipede really kicks ass...

DVD Bonus: The toilets on a Nankai rapi:t train look like this.

UPDATE: If Kevin's always going to let the Japanese version of history stand, I hereby declare the official spelling of his name everafter as "Cevin". Also, I predict he may appeal (in vain) with minor technicalities (i.e., "it's just a bug"), when he hears his pet centipede is now officially classified as a Japanese territory.

If you are picking up someone with the last name "Lee" whose flight from Korea disembarks at the exact same time as three others, it might not be terribly helpful to hold up a sign with only "Mr. Lee" written on it. I'm partly saying this for the benefit of the tour guide who did so and got bumrushed by fifty different Lees today, although he eventually learned from his mistake and scribbled in a first name and flight number as well.

Kevin praying for a horny stewardess on his return flight at the Aoinari Okami shrine.

Kevin's rendition of "dragon" with squeeze-bottle mustard; edible okonomiyaki canvas.

Okonokiyaki at Namba Parks.

Owner and proprietor of Anger Poultry House.

Small wooden fishing boat with motor tied up inside, probably in preparation for coming typhoon.

GOO.N - I never really found out what this product was because this display was next to a shelf full of mysterious products at a drug store that I pass by everyday but never bother to look at. Just background noise, you know. But GOO.N caught my eye. The small Japanese subtext says, "goon."
This photo is significant in that is the last photo I took with my first camera-equipped phone. I bought a new phone today, the Sony A1402S. I'll write up a review for it on my main blog soon.

Fox News Channel To Sign Off In Japan
This was inevitable I think. When they changed to paid subscription in the aftermath of the their first announcement of quitting in 2001, I was happy because the option was there to add the channel to my SkyPerfect TV (satellite broadcaster) plan. The thing is, I half think that they must have wanted an excuse (low subscription numbers) to bail entirely, because the monthly fee was set at 1,000 yen. Not a reasonable amount when you consider that CNN and BBC international editions (in English and Japanese) are free with most basic plans.

So I bookmarked channel 740 as a favorite and it showed up every day (except the 20th of every month, when SkyPerfect unlocked all channels as an incentive to subscribe to more channels) as the single black screen in my slideshow channel surfing routine. Every month for the past year, when my statement for the service would arrive I have considered just making the jump and adding Fox News... In fact, I was thinking about it just yesterday, so this sucks in a way - but then again, I'll never have to think about it again. It's not even an option. Nice and clean, black and white, oh so Zen in that it Is or Is Not. And now it Is Not. And I am stuck with Japanese news channels, CNN, or BBC.

I want my news "Fair and Balanced." (Wow, I almost said that with a straight face.) Let me state that a little better: I'm sick and tired of Paula Zahn in the morning asking people if "Abu Grabe" should be a deciding factor in the continuing existence of the universe as we know it and would like to subscribe to an alternate news channel (other than the Beeb since they are just like CNN in, but blimier). However, 500 yen a month is the maximum amount I'd be willing to pay. I only watch TV news when I'm not in the mood for computers or my hands are busy when cooking, etc. 1,000 yen a month is OK only if there are no commercials (and those 5 minute interval splash screens are in the same category as commercials).

Until today, I had always been under the impression that there were no civilian casualties as a result of Japanese attack on the US mainland during WWII. Wrong:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102499/

Sure, I'd heard of the largely ineffective shelling of oil fields in Santa Barbara, a telegraph station in Vancouver (Canada), and Fort Stevens in Oregon by Japanese submarines, as well as forest fires caused by incendiary bombing done by a sub-launched plane (which were fought by the predecessor of modern smoke jumper batallions, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion). I'd also read about the balloon bomb project fugo launched on the emperor's birthday in 1944. However, most of the reports I had read until now lacked in detail regarding effectiveness of these weapons, or simply stated they had caused forest fires in Washington or Oregon.

Starting from the bibliography in the article linked above I will begin researching this subject further as I find it interesting that a minister's pregnant wife and children could be killed with so little consequence (although the media blackout convinced the Japanese to stop the program, which may haved saved many more lives). Oh, and that the Japanese could have caused a nuclear accident and prevented or delayed the nuking of their own country with paper balloons floated in the airstream. Read the article, it's a revelation in many ways.

Using piranhas for bait!: Fishing for vampires.

Via Fishing, Drinking, Stinking, the best fishing blog I have ever seen.

How about the ever-popular *hugs* ? (>_< )( >_<)

My intellectual offering for today is a short story written exclusively in the *hugs* format (as in, "You broke up with Brandon? You poor thing! *hugs*"):
*wakes*
*wipes shit out of eyes*
*hungers*
*stir fries kitten with soy sauce*
*savors*
*eructates*
*breaks wind*
*soils pants*
*grins*

You know those yakuza flicks where they roll out the ultra right-wing buses to intimidate politicians, extort businesses, and generally act like assholes by holding up traffic, blaring their horrible anthems and ranting over stadium PA systems? This is a real life example of a Black Bus. I could theoretically get in a lot of trouble for posting this photo (which is at least one reason why I'm posting it; there are plently of people who talk about this kind of shit but the lack the guts to call attention to it). I think everyone should know specific examples of criminal and inherently evil elements of Japanese society that are consistently ignored by the media and law enforcement - which perpetuates the very existence of said elements, of course.

This photo was taken in front of Nara JR station where this bus and two others like it came close to causing accidents several times over the course of an entire afternoon. The cops sitting in the police box in front of the station wouldn't even get out on the street to direct the traffic overflow. They sure looked nice and cool in their air-conditioned little box, though. What a fucking joke. Almost as funny as the propaganda spewing from the loudspeakers mounted on buses like this. Yeah, take back all the disputed islands from the Koreans and the Russians! Restore the Emperor to power! Return the proud warriors of the Rising Sun to their rightful place in the high court of the Golden Chrysanthemum... Or some such bullshit... Nobody understands or really gives a rat's ass what their message is anyway. The message is not the point.

The purpose of their noisy crybabying is to draw attention, through being a major pain in the ass to their immediately targeted area, as well as society in general. It's absolutely amazing to me that these fuckers aren't even stopped or cautioned by the cops when pedestrians are jumping out of the way and scurrying just to get across the street for fear of being run over.

The saddest thing is that the Black Bus tactic must work, because they seem to be increasing in number every year. We even have one on my island (actually not so surprising since Awajishima is like a yakuza retirement community).

Making space for new development at Sumoto's Ohama beach.

Can you say illegal dumping? It costs $50 to throw away old TVs in Japan.

I've got just enough time for a quick rant in between meetings today so - 3... 2... 1... Today's rant is aimed at stupid drivers who won't admit they lack multitasking capability: If you don't have the mental capability to yap on the phone and drive at the same time, STOP DOING IT - YOU ARE A FUCKING MENACE. Coming to work this morning, this fucking guy in a black Mark II (Toyota, what else?) is trying to reach somebody on his cell and I can tell he has a major problem using both sides of his brain at once because every time he raises the phone to his ear, the car drifts to the left... Waaaay left. At first he is conscious of the danger he is posing to pedestrians and bicyclists so he stops fucking with the phone till he gets to the light. Then as he's dialing or whatever the light turns green but he doesn't notice. So I sound off with my horn, just a short "wake the fuck up, moron!" beep and not a full "GETTHEFUCKOUTTATHAWAY!" blast, and homeboy panics while shifting because, of course, as a full-fledged Toyota owner he has put the fucking gear in Park. So I start to sweat as his reverse lights come on and he steps on the gas, lurching toward my front bumper, then stopping just as suddenly about 0.117 inches from it. Then - I love this part - he gives me a dirty stare in the rearview as if the whole thing is my fault. He takes off, I follow. And thirty seconds after narrowly avoiding an accident, the guy is fucking with his phone and drifting left again...

My single greatest achievement in the area of anger management/road rage is my conscious prevention of escalation. I credit myself with great foresight because it's been nearly two years since I stopped carrying a wicked-looking handmade scythe from Kyushu, a brushed metal pull saw, a hockey stick wrapped with black duct tape (nickname: "The Castrator 2000"), and a long-handled sledge in the trunk of my car. It's not as if I ever really needed that stuff where it really made a difference... And it was much too fun having it in the car. I mean, what the fuck would YOU do if someone came after you with a scythe?

And you guys back in the states have to take this all in context - this is Japan. Ain't nobody gonna pop a cap in your ass and make witty "don't bring a knife to a gunfight" remarks. Plus, real katanas are too expensive to keep in the car (fake ones lose against the scythe - I have yet to give it a nickname but it stands in my house's entryway to ward off the NHK toll collector once every year).

I was shootin' the shit with a salesman from TUV (a safety standards certification company) a few years back and found out he was a long time student at a local Shorinji Kenpo (Japanese shorin = Chinese shaolin) dojo. We went out drinking soon after. A few too many beers and hours of talking about favorite kung fu movies and martial arts/fighting in general led to a sloppy session of chop-socky in the parking lot behind the bar. It was just good-natured fun and a testament to how well we got along, but ended with a bloody nose (his) and torn suit pants (mine) because, like I said, we were pretty toasted, and I got in a lucky shot when he challenged me to try to get in a hit. His nose didn't break or anything, but it did start dripping blood and he got that crazed look in his eye so I used my failsafe technique - the Sir Robin - and ran away... Then promptly tripped over a parking cone, skinning my knee on the gritty pavement and tearing my pants. We both ended up laughing pretty hard at that and it ended the night on a good note.

Our conversations that day stirred up childhood memories of Tae Kwon Do class and our sensei, Master Shin. Master Shin was a former ROK marine hand-to-hand fighting instructor who immigrated to the US in the hopes of hooking up with, in his words, "a fine white lady." Before deciding on Tae Kwon Do, my mother had taken me and my sibling to several different dojos and I remember very clearly choosing Master Shin's dojo because he ran the tightest operation. Even through eleven year old eyes, Master Shin was clearly a good teacher, and knew his subject very well. I remember Tae Kwon Do lessons with much fondness, because it was the only time all of us kids were in the same class, so to speak. We are all two years apart in age, with me at top and Merin (the future doctor - maybe) at the bottom (four all together - Justin, Mika, Adam, Merin). I think Merin was around five when she started, and she ended up being Master Shin's pet student, because she was the youngest in the dojo and an absolute terror. I'm sure she would have ended up biting her opponents to capitulation if she had been old enough to enter tournaments. She was an absolute doll on the dojo floor, still wobbling around on the unsure footing of post-toddlerhood, yet delivering perfect block-feint-roundhouse combos on a munchkin scale.

Master Shin knew how to bring out the killer in us, which I suppose is not a surprise for man who made his previous living teaching soldiers how to kill with their bare hands, and I cannot speak for my sibling, but I basically saw him as a god among men. You know that scene in the Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi breaks the beer bottles that the rednecks put on his truck? Master Shin did that in real life, before that movie ever came out. There was a picture of him doing it in the LA Times, a split second where his ridge hand is chopping through the fifth bottle of eight or nine in a row, his face scowling with fierce concentration. When I saw that picture, I just knew that he was picturing those bottles as enemy soldiers, because he had the gift of being able to channel his anger. Years later when I saw Emperor Palpatine harnessing the power of the Dark Side and shooting energy bolts from his fingertips in Return of the Jedi, I thought, that's Master Shin. Perhaps that's not the best analogy, because I never really thought of our sensei as being a bad man, just a real life bad-ass, in every aspect. He would scream at me when I was sparring and I could beat bigger kids several belts above me simply because my fear of getting hit was a lot less than my fear of disappointing my sensei, wasting the training he put us through. I would later carry this attitude into high school sports where it served me well.

Master Shin was from a different culture, a culture of tough guys, and this was one of my first glimpses into Korean culture. I learned from him that a man must back up what he says. This was back in the eighties, I guess, and discrimination against minorities was still out in the open. Local rednecks would sometimes jump students from our dojo who had done nothing more to deserve it than wear a gi out in public. Master Shin vowed to get back at these guys, and I heard from one of the senior students that he did it in a particularly nasty fashion, especially after one of them threatened to pull a gun after they intruded the dojo during an advanced weapons course at night. We never heard the specifics of that situation and never asked, either. I was present when a bodybuilder from a nearby gym came in and wanted to arm wrestle with Master Shin. Guess who won? It was all over in an instant. Master Shin could channel his energy into the "one inch" later alluded to by Mr. Miyagi. While lecturing, he would sometimes hold pine boards at arm's length with one hand and splinter them in a blur with his free hand. "Always remember," he would say, "the most important things in a fight are: Speed. Power. Focus. Hit faster, harder, and more accurately than your opponent, and you will never lose. SPEED. POWER. FOCUS."

Yes, we were taught the art of breaking in our classes. It is often frowned upon by purists these days, but it was definitely one of the most fun parts of training. I guess the downside of this is the various fist-size holes in the walls, broken doors, and other war scars our house accumulated over the years as tempers flared and anger manifested as destructive kinetic energy (sorry, dad).

Back to the musing on culture I started above, I think one should imagine Master Shin in context as having come from a warrior society (specifically, the ROK marines) when I relate stories like the Pig or the Bunny Rabbit:

The Pig:
Master Shin taught us the spear-hand technique, but banned us from using it in practice. Too dangerous, he said. Only a technique for killing. He told us that to pass his advanced course in the old days, one had to kill a boar with his bare hands. This was where the spear hand was employed, a linear strike with fingers extended and slightly curved, designed to penetrate flesh. Apparently, the hardest strikes sometimes result with elbow-deep penetration into the pig's head.

The Bunny Rabbit:
I have always regretted not having been able to go shooting with Master Shin, because this was before the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Bill and all that other hoplophobe bullshit and he apparently had quite an arsenal - full auto Tommy guns, Uzis (Did you know these were classified as obsolete in Israel last year?), etc. Anyway, Master Shin decided he wanted some realistic target practice, so he bought a rabbit at the pet store. Which is kind of horrifying from a typical American viewpoint, except that it doesn't end there. The rabbit, in fear, would not budge, no matter how it was prodded, screamed at, frightened. I have this mental image of Master Shin turning red with anger and screaming at the top of his lungs, maybe firing off shots to scare it into motion, and yet the furry little bunny not moving an inch... A rabbit is not a boar, I guess. Interestingly enough, I don't remember what happened to the rabbit, but it would be really touching if Master Shin ended up keeping it as a pet... Somehow, I doubt that, though.

I wonder what happened to Master Shin. We never kept up through the years, but I hope he is still teaching. Maybe I'll look him up the next time we take a trip home. It would be cool to hear some more war stories, I reckon.

Yesterday being "big trash" day, when one can dispose of the unnecessities that clutter life, liberty, and the, um, American way with impunity - you know, old furniture, broken appliances, the big stack of bathroom reading material that's been piling up for eighteen months - I made a major life decision and threw away all of my frying pans. Five, to be exact. They were all used extensively over the years and starting to sport bald spots in the Teflon coating or rust spots at the handle joint, so I threw them out. People who know my packrat ways will not be surprised to hear that I found it extremely difficult. It was like parting with old friends, or shooting Old Yeller at the end of the book. Tragic, unforseen, yet in retrospect, inevitable. For that is the sad-but-true way of the world - all good dogs die too soon.

These were, after all, the tools that enabled me to provide fine fare for myself and those I care about for several years. Some of these pans had followed me around since college, you see. One funny thing is that more than anything I couldn't bear to stand the thought of someone else finding them in the trash and for some digusting reason deciding to take them home and use them. I guess I'm just extremely possessive in that sense - I would have melted them down into stainless steel ingots if I'd had the equipment. As it was, I did the next best thing by cooking garlic-heavy dishes in each one, methodically creating smelly carbon buildup on the frying surfaces, and then throwing them out without washing. Jesus, tossing that shopping bag full of frying pans on the garbage pile felt like drowning a sackful of kittens in the river.

Now that I have used both cat and dog analogies, perhaps we can move on.

My house hasn't been panless for many a year and as the designated Fryer of Meats, today I could think of nothing except what kind of pans I would buy after work finished. I mean, I know I can be a weird, lonely introvert at times, but I'm pretty sure this was a new low. But hey, I figure that life is short and if getting older entails being excited over the choice of new cookingware, then true feelings I must express. I was really happy to go shopping for new pans.

For the past hour I was browsing the kitchen section of Jusco, feeling the heft of each and every frying pan they had for sale. I compared stainless steel to cast iron to titanium, and coated to non-coated to dimpled, ridged, and scalloped. I evaluated the top contenders mentally on a point scale, and almost ended up with a mixed set of the winners. Then, craving unification, I almost broke down and shelled out 150 bones for a set of T-Fal pans because they have some nice shapes in the right sizes. In the end, I bought a cheapie pan and am doing the nerdiest thing imaginable. I'm doing research on the net before investing in a matching set. And yet, it makes me immensely happy. It somehow provides me with purpose in life.

I am turning 30 this year. This whole aging thing is getting pretty scary. By the time I'm forty I'll probably be collecting spoons and driving a white Toyota. So if you love me like I love you, you will shoot me sometime before then.

Behold the bold statement of my camera-pic in the sidebar (if you are a late comer see it here), gritty resolution and all... Beach, blue sky, familiar-yet-slightly-changed beverage container (as people in countries that the Mekong river flows through are fond of saying, "same same but different"). What does it all mean? Say it with me now: Guarana!

That's right, Coca-Cola's new C2 drink tastes like a watery guarana-based drink. I have no idea if it actually contains guarana or not because I only had the patience to read the first line or so of the ingredients in heavily katakana-ed Japanese. It listed the usual suspects, you know, sucralose, phenylkeurolepticemphasemiatidisestablishmentitariffic acid, and the common marigold, so it didn't really capture my attention, so to speak. One sip was all I needed to determine that I had tasted a similar soda pop before: Antarctica Guarana, a product of Brazil. I am quite sure of this because I remember downing a six pack of it mixed with a fifth of cane sugar alcohol, then getting sick in a garbage can all night with Los Fabulosos Cadillacs jamming incessantly in the background. Ay. Anyway, C2 tastes like a watery version of Antarctica Guarana. As in, not quite ass but not very good, either. As such, I predict C2 will be a failure because of the numbers:
Calories: Half
Sugar: Half
Carbs: Half
Taste: Much less than half as good as regular Coke.

Coca-Cola is apparently after the fence-sitting target segment of consumerland with this product - people who can't decide on Coke or Diet Coke. A possible indication of failure to come is this: I would rather drink half a portion of regular Coke than a full portion of C2, and surprisingly, I also prefer the taste of Diet Coke to C2. In fact, I'd rather STICK MY LEFT NIPPLE IN THE BLENDER WITH TWO HEAPING TABLESPOONS OF ABORTED MONKEY FETUS AND SET THE BEER BONG TO "STUN" THAN DRINK C FUCKING 2.

Note: In the middle of the last paragraph I bit the inside of my mouth pretty hard while chomping down on a cough drop. Could ya tell? Sorry. Those are just the breaks. I'd edit it but - time constraints, you know? (If you are an influential member of the Great Cola Conspiracy, I might be able to find the time to rewrite it before the US release. For a Small Fee. If you make me bite myself again, however, I will retaliate by changing the title of this post to: C2 Review: Low-carb Felchwater!.)

The next big flop?

"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."
- Ronald Reagan

Without a doubt, that's the most useful leadership advice anyone has ever given me. My own tribute is simple:

I cried for you with my classmates and my teacher the day you got shot. The principal came by the classroom to make sure everyone understood what had happened. He said, "a very bad man tried to kill our president." I'm not sure we all understood the full meaning of this statement. What I do know is that you were a hero to us, and none of us wanted to see you go.

Rest in peace.

I may have gone to university with this guy... Jeff, is it really you?

Nighty night, scumbag. Hope you leave this world fully comprehending your failures. The society you tried to destroy is still running strong - it will in fact be destroying you - and I hope that leaves an ironic bitterness in your throat. Right before the noose is pulled tight, that is. Is it wrong to laugh at a condemned man? Ha-ha, motherfucker. Because when I think of how bad it could have been, I feel relieved that you were so inept in some areas. The fact that you failed so miserably overall AND will be sentenced to death anyway is somehow very satisfying. Mostly, I hope your death can be healing for those who survived or were left behind. Closure, you know.

/

I remember the terrified faces on TV, picture bobbing as the cameraman scrambled for better shots of despair.

Summary of main incident: Years of planning and well-funded operations enable deployment of sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway but only produces the kill count of, say, a lone gunman. Pretty fucking pathetic for what has become commonly known as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (the original definition only included nukes). Yes, there were thousands hospitalized and I know that weapons of terror do not have to be lethal so long as people fear them, but gimme a break - my country is currently at war partly over the threat this stuff presents. On a scale of what could have happened, we were lucky that Aum made some key fuckups.

This was not their only attempt with WMDs. Far from it. (Link is a .ppt file). Did you know that Aum released anthrax over Tokyo, multiple times? These sick fucks were lucky enough to live and operate in a country as exploitable as Japan was at the time. They manufactured or procured the kinds of chem/bio agents that even state-sponsored terrorists have difficulty getting - sarin, VX, anthrax. Luckily, the effectiveness of these were compromised because their delivery systems and storage conditions were inadequate. They went to all the trouble of acquiring their arsenal but never learned to use them correctly. Lucky for us! Lucky for Tokyo!

In my mind, the Supreme Truth is that anyone who thinks that poking holes in a bag of nerve gas with the tip of an umbrella is a feasible delivery system has watched too many B-movies, didn't read the instruction manual (maybe it was in Cyrillic), or is a COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOT. (The fastest way to deliver to a Japanese crowd is to infect a bunch of pocket tissue packs and pass them out at rush hour. Duh.)

It would be a small comfort if at least all the senior members of Aum die as a result of their own egomania. They believed killing a bunch of innocent men, women, and children could trigger a change toward a better society (for them, at least). I shudder to think what they envision as an ideal society. The world will be better off without them, and by "without," I mean dead and suffering in a coward's hell.

I mean, come on, in the end all these fucking hypocrites ran away from the cops, hiding in the folds of the very society they were bent on destroying (and leaving their blind and bat-shit crazy guru alone in a hidey hole at the cult compound). A real death cult would have at least had a last stand or something. A group tribute to Yukio Mishima with kitchen knives would have been a lot less wussy and saved us from waiting for the courts to decide their fate for so many years. As decisions go, I'm happy the judge turned over the original ruling. I wonder what the chances for an appeal are - judging by the headline of the article I linked to at the top, Aum cultist to hang for role in sarin gas attack, I didn't think there would be one.

This quote from the defense is amusing:
"It is regrettable that the judge only considered objective facts and not his individual circumstances."

Heh. Please don't punish my client; he's basically a nice guy, who, under pressure from his peers and the eeevil mind control of his blind prophet mentor, was coerced into something he might not have done if society wasn't so cruel and his parents had loved him when he was little. And now he has changed! These days, he is fond of kittens, loves Jesus, and is a completely different man from the one who coordinated a sarin gas attack on a subway system filled with innocent people.

I think the Japanese government should specially institute the gas chamber as an alternative to hanging in this case. The instant release of a proper hanging is too humane for these fuckers. They should be gassed with the court evidence, spending the last lingering seconds of consciousness in a paralytic haze as the darkness spreads and eventually swallows them whole.