It seems there has been updates on Justice Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his claim of being friends with a friend who has friends in Al Qaeda. In my last post i mentioned the Minister of Justice who claimed that he had a friend who was friends with someone in Al Qaeda and that they had warned him about some attacks. But after the media picked up the story and people started to question him more, he gave up and said “I myself am not a friend of anyone who is thought to be a member of [al-Qaeda] and I don’t know them personally. I can’t verify the authenticity of what my friend said.”.

Though over the weekend he was found to say “all my statements about public safety have been totally devoid of lies.” And so it seems that the the episode will start up again. Which is a good thing as it will make the minister look more of like an idiot and hopefully make it less likely that they stupid new immigration policy of taking photos and scanning finger prints of all foreigners will die. Though that is more of an impossible dream.

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Lately in the media there has been many articles about the collapse of NOVA corporation. This has resulted in a unique situation in Japan where a large group of foreigners have found themselves unemployed and rather then lay down and return to their home country they are trying to fight it. Whether this is a smart move I do not know, I would feel a desire to fight something that i feel is unjust, but at the same time Japan is not the greatest country to go unemployed with the high cost of living. Plus with so many teachers not being able to make rent payment many landlords are going through the process of evicting them. This may create a further backlash against renting apartment to foreigners.

When Natasha Steele came to Japan from her native Australia earlier this year to teach English, she was looking forward to immersing herself in a foreign culture while earning a little money on the side. Now, after the spectacular collapse of her employer, Japan’s biggest English language school chain, Steele has found herself jobless, threatened with eviction and hungry. “I was taken out and afterward, she took me to a bakery and told me I could have anything I wanted,” she says of one charitable student. “She just wanted to know I had enough food for at least two weeks.”

For many college graduates from English-speaking countries, spending a few months in Japan teaching English is a time-honored tradition. But after Nova shut the doors of its more than 800 locations worldwide last week, that tradition is looking precarious. The closure has left over 300,000 Nova students deprived of their prepaid English lessons, and many of its 5,000 foreign language teachers, like Steele, unlikely charity cases.

Continue article: Times

This is a great story about the Japanese Justice Minister and how he got caught up in a lie. He was trying to justify finger printing and the taken of photos of all foreigners entering Japan on the grounds(initially) that he knew that an known terrorist in the bali bombing had entered Japan. Do you know how he knew he entered? Well he said initally that he was friends with someone who was friends with a member of bali bombing terrorist group. But later goes on to retract it when people start to question the story.

I find this article amusing considering it is the justice minister harboring information about terrorist attacks. This is the person trying to create a credible argument for the use of ID. But instead shows that the government is willing to say anything to create a false sense of need.
Highlights from BBC story:

- Justice minister Kunio Hatoyama said the man was a “friend of a friend” who was involved in a bomb attack on Bali.

- The minister also claimed his friend had warned him of the Bali bombing.

- Later, Mr Hatoyama cast doubt on all of these claims, saying he had been “unclear and misleading”.

- “I myself am not a friend of anyone who is thought to be a member of [al-Qaeda] and I don’t know them personally. I can’t verify the authenticity of what my friend said.”

Source: BBC News

I am thinking of starting a new series of posts about the interesting news happening in Japan. It will just be a collection of links to different articles about the weird, the wild and the wonderful happenings in Japan. Please enjoy.

Our first story is about a P.E teacher in Fukuoka who was forced to resign because he got in trouble for writting sexually harassing comments on tennis balls and throwing them in a swimming pool and making junior high school girls collect the ball and answer them. If it wasn’t so sad to seeing a teacher abuse his position of trust, then it would be fun.
Source: Mainichi News 

The second Article talks about how Japan is going through a dietiery change as younger people move from rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner to Bread, French fries and pasta. According to the article the consumption of rice has dropped by about half from the 1960s. This has created a crises with the Japanese rice industry as they try to find new ways to attract customers. A lot of shops have moved up market and tried to attract consumers with more specialized rice, such asrice with more fiber. Though most of this rice is just un-milled rice grains.   Which still attracts some distain as many Japanese associated un-milled rice with the food scarcity found after World War II.

Source: Washington Post

While the last article is about the Japanese love of hot springs (onsens) and how in a desire to find new and exciting ways to enjoy them, that they have created onsens where you can enjoy sake , ramen , coffee, green tea, wine and beer onsen. Please click on the source to find more wonderful photos.

Source: Inventorspot.com

Well that is all, hope all enjoy the interesting happenings in Japan. I will likely post more pictures this week from my trip to both Shiretoko and Asahi-dake. This weekend I will have school festival.

Take care,

Patrick

I just watched the show “Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese”. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is the daughter of Ozzy Osbourne who was the lead singer of the heavy metal group Black Sabbath. The have become famous in the last few years for a reality tv show. I never watched that show as I am not a fan of the whole reality tv genre. But this show caught my attention.

The show is about her experiencing Japan and all the many quirky jobs that there are. The reason she starred in this show was that like many people who have never really been to Japan, she had a some what glamorized view of the country and was not sure if she would truly like the real Japan. So she decided to come to Japan work in many jobs that are some what unique to Japan as, working in a Maid Cafe, being an English teacher for a day, samurai acting and finally as a geisha.

When my friend told me about this show I hesitated to watch as I had a some what negative opinion of her, I thought she was a loud mouth girl who had no manners and then deciding to come to a country that is so much about rules was a recipe for disaster I thought. An at first I was correct as the first job she took was as a maid in a maid cafe and she did not really like all the rules and such that she had to follow in serving the customers. But the thing that really made her angry was the massage place that was run upstairs, she thought that was just too sexual and she left abruptly.

This lead to her complaining about her job. I thought it was amazing here was someone who has traveled the world but probably has never experienced a country as she was always with other English speaking people. So at first Japan was quite a shock for her, but she would slowly learn that the uniques of Japan was not all bad.

The next job was working at a love hotel i think, she was the people at the front desk. It was amusing to watch her, and it showed some what how gross it is to work in such a place and how funny it can be. So many people wanted Cup Noodle and beer. Then there was the people who would order sexual products and she had to deliver them to the customers. Then afterwards she had to clean him and that was tough. As love hotels are mostly used for people to have sex and so you know the place is not that clean. I could not imagine having to work there and nor could she.

I will not talk about all her jobs as that would take a while and spoil the show so i will just spend the rest of my time commenting on the show.

By the end of the show I started to really like her, she is a person that accepts who she is. She says she knows she is spoiled and she is not ashamed of that, nor that she is not thin. She has accepted who she is and I think that is important for everyone to not strive to be someone in a magazine but someone who is happy of who they are. Then the other thing i respected about her was that she tried things, she may not like them later on but at least she tried things and I respect people for that.

I really liked how she was not shy to try new things as sometimes I think i try too much to ruffle the feathers of Japanese people and try to fit in that sometimes not ask awkward questions in the realization that i might offend the Japanese people. But she does not seem to mind, but she does it in such a way that it is more pure and naive then someone who does not care.

By the end of the show she has gone from hating Japanese for how weird it is, to enjoying the uniques of it. I think this shows the many cycles people go through when they enter a new country. That when you move to some where new it is a journey and not a single experience. I think by the end she has started to really get Japan and I hope she does come back for more.

At the moment the show is on youtube, but for how long I do not know. Here is the first episode, but you can find the rest by looking in the related area and finding the next clip in the show. There is 3 episodes, so make sure to click on episode 1 part 1 and so on, so that you can see the entire series.

Then please come back and tell me what you thought of the show, I am really interested to hear.

Patrick

Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese Episode 1 Part 1

Hello everyone, I probably should have posted this before but i was in a rush to pack my bags to leave Japan for Europe. But I am in Europe at the moment on vacation and will be on vacation until Jan 16th. So if i don’t post it is not because i quit but because i am not here and i will start again after I get back.

So I was thinking, i know most people do it and that is what are your new years resolutions? Mine are to study Japanese more, pratice kendo and piano and to also be more organized with all the stuff in my apartment. What are yours? tell me, i might not blog but i will check my comments.

Again, take care, and happy new year

patrick

I was just on the engadget.com homepage and noticed an article about Hokkaido. It was talking about a new dual mode bus, which would be able to run on both rail and the road. The reason is that in Japan many of the small towns have decreasing populations and as a result it is hard to keep many of the train stations financially viable. So supposedly this dual mode bus would be able to continue to provide service in these smaller towns.

This sounds like an interesting concept, as my town is not dying but has had the train station closed a few years back. So the only way to get to a train station is to drive or to take a bus that does not run that regularly. So if this dual mode bus were to come to Hokkaido, it may help to reduce the population drain to the large cities, as people could commute easily to the larger metro areas from the smaller towns.

I love trains, hate bus and liking my car.

Patrick

I read over at Joseph Williamson’s Blog about a quiz you can take at BBC on your Sex I.D. It is a bunch of questions to see whether your personality is more male or female. I had the thought before I took the test that mine would be more feminine then masculine and i think my results prove that.