Report from Greater Tokyo

Once upon a time there was an elf, or possibly it was an orc. The race isn't particularly important to the story, except to note that this person was not a human. Anyhow, he, or possibly she (again just a minor detail) lived in a forest near a human village.

One day our protagonist thought a while. "I need to know who I am! I shall go down to the human village and ask them. Perhaps we can discover together!"

So off our hero (or heroine) went down to the village. Unfortunately, neither elves nor orcs got on particularly well with humans much (see? I told you it was unimportant to the story!), and the feeling was often mutual. In fact, this particular village of humans got on so badly with elves (or was it orcs?) that it emigrated en masse and invited a band of orcs (or was it elves?) to live there instead.

As we all know, while there may be some animosity between humans and elves (and orcs), that is nothing compared to the sheer hatred that exists between elves and orcs.

So our hero (or heroine) elf (or orc) went down to what he (or she) supposed to be a human village, but was really an orc (or elf) village.

The results were somewhat messy.

So the new batch of JETs have arrived on the Japanese government sponsored school rent-a-foreigner scheme. And once more they fail miserably to improve the image of foreigners in Japan.

According to Nikkan Sports (Japanese), Melanie Walsh from Britain had cannabis sent to her by post from Britain. Not the smartest of moves. Obviously, intelligence is not a prime consideration when JET recruits people to act as teachers from abroad.

One interesting point is that the newspaper values 23 grammes of cannabis at 200,000 yen, or about GBP 1000. This is 43 quid a gramme. Which suggests someone somewhere has their sums wrong.

Few things are truly funny these days. Even most comics have lost their appeal. But last night I discovered a new Internet comic - Elf Only Inn. This one actually made me laugh out loud (for real,not merely typing lol) several times. This is the real deal. This is funny.

Go read. now.

I now have both email commenting and Haloscan commenting available - just in case some people are shy about giving their email address away to my blogging robots.

I have just made my first RSS feed. This blog is now available for RSS readers through this link. Have fun. Naturally, this is going to mess up my site's hit count.

If a Russian friend invites you to join him in a vodka drinking contest, it is bad form to politely refuse. Instead, you should run screaming. My head still hurts, and I accidentally missed my station coming home.

One of the high points was probably trying to explain to a Russian guy that Afghani, Iranian, and Indian cooking are all different. This was of course done entirely in Japanese, and liberally irrigated with vodka.

Everything is booked. Visas in place. just last minute shopping for stuff now. That'll be done on Monday. But for today, I'm off to the Russian barbecue again.

Rich! Rich I tell ya! I checked my bank account today, and I am officially a multi-millionaire! So where are all these young ladies that are supposed to find money an aphrodisiac? Someone's been lying to me all these years.

Anyhow, to celebrate, I am enjoying smoked salmon in French bread and equally French white wine.

Yesterday i went to the Australian embassy and got my visa. The whole mendokusai aspect of getting it, such as voicemails systems that repeatedly try to get you to use their online application/payment, staff that suggest you get your information from the website instead of from them, staff that think it is simpler to go home and apply online rather than get it done at the embassy when you are already at the embassy... I almost decided to throw in the towel and go elsewhere for the holiday.

Hey, Australia? If you want tourists, you really ought to think about making the administrative bit a bit more tourist-friendly. Like telling people how long the application takes. Your website doesn't mention that at all. Given that some countries take a month or more, people like to be reassured on this point. And some people either don't have credit cards, don't have web access, can't print your application forms at home, won't print them on principle, won't use credit cards online, or just plain prefer face to face contact for bureaucracies.

Yep. Another one. Nothing serious this time, just a wobbly building.

Had some weird coffee-milkoid drink on Monday night. All day on Tuesday I was feeling blargh. Had to go to a welcome party for a new teacher on Tuesday night. And now I feel even more blargh than before.

Someone should tell Japanese motorist that tailgating is not a nice thing to do. Especially when the person being tailgated is on a bicycle. Especially at night, and across a bridge and two sharp bends. It is the kind of thing that would make the more paranoid cyclists among us apt to think that we are being followed. Being paranoid, I slammed on the brakes.

Fortunately, he missed.

Observations in no particular order...

The mainline to downtown Tokyo is called the Tojo line. No doubt I would have found that far more amusing when I was younger.

It's election season, and canvassing consists of breaking all noise pollution laws whilst saying things like, "for the children", "thank you very much", "It's a beautiful day", "[whatever the election day happens to be]". Strictly no mention of actual policies is made. Oh, and they also successfully shaked my hand, even though a) I can't vote in a Japanese election, and b) I made no attempt to respond to their outstretched hand. These canvassers are expert shakers.

Spiderman II is a good movie. Go see it.

And to round the day off, we just had a small earthquake. I felt the apartment building wobble a bit.

'Nuff Said.

Today I had a little compulsory overtime. Yep, working on a Sunday. It was an open day for prospective students and their parents. Which meant lots of speeches for the parents, most of whom were already sold on the idea. Two things would sell the school to the children: how tasty the school lunch is, and how fun the demonstration English class is.

They seemed to enjoy it.

Hie thee down to the Bush Game, and tell Bush and his robotic sidekick Voltron what you think of him.

And don't forget your Howard Dean Scream special attack!

The Student Loans company is evil. They recently sent me a letter stating that because I had not paid, they were charging me a penalty fee. From reading the material I have sent me, I know I am eligible for deferment of payment. However, despite my requests, they have so far failed to send me the necessary forms to apply for deferment.

I refuse to consider myself liable for failing to apply for deferment when they have failed to provide the appropriate application forms.

So Saddam Hussain is finally on trial. But the trial is a farce.

This may shock some people. I do not defend Saddam in any moral way at all. His regime oversaw thousands of needless deaths, is known to have possessed WMDs at one point, started wars of aggression, and stifled free speech.

The problem is, he wasn't breaking any laws. No international court held jurisdiction over Iraq. By the standing Iraqi laws of the time, he was not breaking any laws. Possessing WMDs is not yet on any international law books as a crime, and the only evidence provided is the receipts. If Saddam were smart and declared a one-Iraq policy, it would easily justify the Kuwait war, and make the US acceptance of the one-China policy look hypocritical. The primary accusation of which he is likely guilty is genocide, but only the ICC has the necessary jurisdiction to try anyone under that law. Neither Iraq nor the USA are signatories, and because the crimes were committed in Iraq, a non-signatory, the ICC cannot legally try him.

The only way any law could be used against Saddam is if it is enforced retrospective of the law being made. And doing so makes a mockery of the whole concept of law.

If we do this now, there is a precedent for a government to retrospectively make any action illegal and imprison people for doing things which were perfectly innocent at the time.

Yes, in the case of Saddam, he would fall through a hole in the idea of the proper legal code. But it seems this trial isn't about justice; it is about revenge. As such, the usual legal conventions don't apply.

Cut and Paste Job here, but highly relevant to today's world. Read it and weep for mankind.

Is It Safe?

by Larry Beinhart

A few years ago I was traveling in a remote part of South America, a spot where the jungles blur the borders so that I can't really say if we were in Brazil or Paraguay. We were traveling by boat and one member of our party fell overboard and was attacked by savage biting fish.

There were no hospitals or clinics or regular doctors in the region but our guides spoke of some person who had medicine two days away, one day in the canoes, then another on foot.

The second day was virtually hallucinogenic. My companion was feverish and raving. He was had to be carried on a makeshift stretcher and I was, on and off, one of his stretcher bearers. The track was narrow and difficult, the heat was intense, the insects were ferocious and my fear of jungle creatures and tropical diseases and for my friend nearly overwhelmed me.

Then this bastion of civilization - or should I say Europeanization - appeared. It was a plantation with a mowed lawn and a large house that had square corners, glass windows, screens, fresh paint and a generator that produced electricity. The owner was a very, very old man. He introduced himself as Frederich Hoffmann and seemed delighted to have American visitors in any condition whatsoever. He was German and when he found out that I was a writer he couldn't do enough for us.

We struck up a friendship and remained in contact, at first by mail and then later, when he got satellite phone service, by email.

He had a great admiration for high culture and he desperately craved educated conversation, so the fact that he chose to live in such isolation, along with his age and nationality, gave rise to certain suspicions about his past. I could never bring myself to ask him about it and the matter was never mentioned, until Tuesday when I got this email from him.