Justice, interrogation and Japan

I am glad I am an upstanding citizen in this country, my home for the past five years. I have heard of things like this about the police and have seen it in the movies.

But people and culture everywhere have these kinds of problems, not just Japan. It is the hidden side of things that need to be looked at most. Beauty is only what is shown, never seen is the process behind all things.

Growing fuel?

Question: What do Dolly Parton and I have in common?

Absolutely nothing.

I thought I’d put this in just to start my post on why I am not posting much these days. I am as flat-chested as a man can be, I don’t speak with a Southern twang and I work from five to nine instead. Well, not exactly work work, but something akin to it. Having two children under three certainly takes a lot of effort and time. As a write from my PC in our bedroom my daughter is crying because the keyboard taps are disturbing her sleep. The placement of the computer in the house is something that cannot be helped as we only have two rooms in our house (the other is the kitchen-dining-living room).

So for those wondering why I blog so little – the answer is here.

This plus the fact that I barely have time to get online (or read the daily delivered newspaper) these days writing a thesis and all. And teaching English at night three times a week doesn’t help my “blog cause” either. Not that I need the work but I started classes in my little town a year ago and now they need me to continue, especially my high school students.

So to my few regular readers – please forgive me.

What I have found then is that blogging isn’t for parents with kids or people with lots to do (that’s me and me again). Life is more than blogging. But that is not to say blogging is a useless pursuit. Far from it. It has helped my writing tremendously and has let me meet people with similar interests, ideas and thoughts which I would not have found if not for the internet. I am glad to have met these people and have the opportunity to share my thoughts with them as well as read about theirs.

Enough (again) about blogging.

This article caught my eye: Finally someone from the UN has openly condemned biofuel. Actually I think many people do but they go unreported. I, for one, have complained about this issue. As an ordinary concerned citizen I will not be heard. As I have always said you do not need to be a math genius to see that using crops to fuel the millions of cars on the planet’s roads means a lot will need to be grown. This will mean a lot of land now used for growing food will instead need to be used for growing fuel. That’s pretty irresponsible since we have not rid planet of hunger. The sad thing is, of course, hunger could be solved today if we only distribute this food more equitably. But that is not about to happen, is it. Our selfish ways simply will not allow this.

And if we do try to have our “growing fuel” cake and literally eat it too we will need more land to do this. And of course we all know about the problem of deforestation.

No, the only way we will solve this problem is (a substantial) reduction of our current rate of consumption – less driving, less cars to drive, more even distribution of food. No math was involved in this conclusion, but only an image in my head of what it takes to feed six billion people and fuel millions (if not billions) of cars at the same time.

Sports Day… Japanese style

There are two things which are very different about Sports Days back in Australia and here in Japan.

Firstly, not much sport goes on Sports Days in Japan. Sure they run around and stuff but it isn’t sport. In my Australian school days we would do the usual track and field – 100m, hurdles, high jump, even shot put. But here they just do mini-versions of short-distance running and play various games… even at junior high-school level. Rather childish.

Secondly, parents go watch their kids on Sports Days here. They also participate somewhat. Back “home” neither would be done. At my kids Sports Day last weekend I had to run a relay with the other fathers. Just my luck that I had to be pitted against a teacher friend of mine, a fit soccer-playing mad guy. I took it easy for the first corner until I realized he was coming up fast. Didn’t want to look the idiot-father that I am so I put legs into fifth gear (something I hadn’t done in at least ten years) to get to my relay partner ahead of him. After that we had a good-ol’ chat.

The point I am trying to make is that Sports Days are not really for sport – they are social events. Who cares how the kids go (well we do a little) but mostly it is about how getting together and working together.

In a society like Japan where the group takes precedent over everything else this makes sense. But to the outsider, the uninitiated, this can be quite stressful. Not being used to say ‘no’ to these things is so unnatural to the Western mind-set. But like some line from a movie benefit for the many outweighs the benefit for the few.

If anything the Japanese are truly socialist without know it.