Report from Greater Tokyo

How do you salute your flag? Do you even salute your flag? Apparently, the original US way to honour their flag was... somewhat disturbing by today's standard. Check it out at http://members.ij.net/rex/pledge2.html.

My school salutes the Japanese flag this way on sports day. Not being Japanese, I feel no need to do the same.

So today I went to another Russian barbecue. Nothing happened there that I am going to report here, from which you may infer whatever you like. Instead, I would like to talk about my journey home.

It was a crowded train, and I happened to be standing, facing a young woman who was sleeping - there is nothing unusual about sleeping in trains here. A young man got on the train later and sat next to her. He proceeded to play with his mobile phone. In an age where mobile phones did not have cameras as standard, this would be perfectly innocent. However, from the way he was holding the phone, it was obvious that he intended to take a picture of her sleeping, and most likely at an angle that she would not appreciate. What could I do?

I accidentally dropped the newspaper I was holding on her. As far as she was concerned, it was just some clumsy oaf. She rearranged her dress to be more modest and went back to sleep. He, however, made eye contact with me, and from his expression it was clear he knew I was spoiling his photo opportunity.

Mission accomplished.

Nothing quite like the deadline of making an exam in time for it to be proof read by two different groups of people and have enough time to make an audio tape to go with it. All in saturation level humidity and temperatures in excess of thirty celsius.

Deadline met.

So I was doing some research on how old the Hagar Qim ruins in Malta actually are. It's for a trivia question in a little exercise for my students. I was fairly certain that they were older than Stonehenge, older even than the Pyramids in Egypt, but according to this site, they are 12,000 years old. I never realized they might be that old. I was thinking maybe half that. However, the way that site is written, it has all the hallmarks of folk archaeology, and I'm not sure how much to trust it. Anyone have any corroborating evidence to date that site?

This is the man who left the US army for the communist paradise that is North Korea. Or at least, that is what he said in a radio broadcast from the DPRK shortly after the event. Later, he would marry a kidnapped Japanese woman and have children.

The story would have ended there, and he would eventually have died in obscurity, except the DPRK finally allowed the kidnapped Japanese people back to Japan. Currently, the family is split across two countries. Hitomi Soga, his wife, is in Japan. Unfortunately, Mr Jenkins is officially AWOL, and the Bush administration has restated its intention to have him extradited and tried as a deserter.

Everyone says he was a deserter, and to be fair, he himself announced that he was a deserter.

But... that announcement of his was made while he was in North Korea. Am I the only one who suspects he might have been under some duress when he made that statement?

Given the choice between making that simple announcement and then living a reasonably carefree lifestyle in North Korea, or being brutalized and dumped in a gulag in North Korea (escape was hardly an option at this point), who here would give the broadcast thing a shot? I would, and that has nothing to do with "hating the US", and everything to do with simple pragmatism and survival.

So today I went in search of archery clubs. I had an address list, I just needed to go there. And I duly found one. It was quite easy to find, and it helped that a tournament was going on. The huge crowd made it ludicrously easy to find in fact.

Unfortunately, the tournament also made it hard to find anyone who had time to speak to a visitor. Eventually, I discovered that it was a school tournament, and that all the people present were from the nearby schools, and so weren't associated with the place. They suggested I go to the office of the park wherein the ground was located. So I did.

And I discovered that there isn't actually a club there. It seems that this particular ground is used exclusively for tourneys, and that ordinary practice takes place at other sites. better luck next time eh.

What are the seven wonders of the world? Bet you can't reel them off the top of your head. Don't worry, neither can I, and only one of them (The Great Pyramid) even exists today in any form. A more interesting question, is, what should they be? The original list was drawn up over 2000 years ago, and more impressive things have been produced since then. The original list was also made by a single person (how undemocratic!), and focused exclusively on the Mediterranean and Middle East. This later is perhaps understandable given the lack of cheap international air travel in those days, but in these more enlightened times, we should know better.

Hie thee down to The New Seven Wonders and make your voice heard. My choice was:

• The Roman Colosseum
• The Pyramid at Chich�n Itz�
• The Potala Palace
• The Taj Mahal
• Machu Picchu
• Petra
• The Statues of Easter Island

Vote Early! Vote Often!

Turns out that when I went to the Russian party last weekend, I left probably moments before the crowd I met from the time before came in. Always the way isn't it. No wonder I didn't enjoy it so much. Of course, there were some interesting things to eat involving garlic, grated carrot, and bread, and the company was reasonably pleasant. But unfortunately, the woman who said she was going to introduce me to all her single friends wasn't there.

I have just uploaded the archives back as far as February. Not sure if the pictures will get included. Happy browsing, if that's your thing.

What do you do when you have to give a student a speaking test, and that student utterly fails to produce any audible (let alone grammatical) English? These things happen, and unfortunately, someone has to fail the test in order for it to be considered a valid test.

It's over 31 degrees today, with saturation humidity, and something the Japanese teachers here call "inbaashon". And I'm wilting.

I've finally given up on the Wednesday evening Japanese class I was going to. It was free, which is of course nice, but I have come to believe that was a case of penny wise pound foolish. The teachers didn't seem to have any idea of how to teach; they were confused and surprised when I suggested that it was even possible to teach without an actual textbook. The final straw was that in the class last week, it took almost an entire hour - half the time period - for them to even attend to me. I have better and more enjoyable ways to waste time.

Instead, I've started a class on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Unfortunately, it costs a small fortune, but I don't really have much else to spend money on right now.

Ah well. It seems Unicode support isn't yet available in this program. perhaps in the next version it will be there.

Test post. I'm just seeing how well this program handles Maltese and Japanese characters.

C row - � �
G row - � �
H row - � �
Z row - � �

�R���͓��{��ł��B

It looks like the commenting feature is working now. The good side is that all the data is now stored on my machine, and so I have no one to blame but myself when the database deletes all the comments. The bad side is that this is implemented as email. Of course, I'm not going to steal your email addresses, and in fact that email address is read only by a machine, so unless I disrupt the normal process, no human will ever see the email address anyway.

However... I can check email addresses if necessary. I'm sure I can. Don't know how, as I haven't tried yet. If I find that the system is being abused, I might have to restrict the commenting to a pre-approved list. I hope not.

Almost forgot to mention my fight with a mosquito last night. There I was, sitting peacefully playing some wargame on my computer, when along comes this mosquito buzzing around just in front of the screen. I decide to kill it by clapping my hands on it. I didn't notice whether I killed it or not. I was too surprised at the way my glasses all but folded in two as my hands caught my glasses instead of the mosquito. Needless to say, I now need new glasses.

Tonight I'm going to another Russian social event. It seems there is a small Russian community in Tokyo, all of whom are probably more than capable of drinking me under the table.

This is my first experiment with Blog, a little program made by the nice folks at www.farook.org.