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It happened in...

April

A fool in April / Always upsetting the neighbours

30 April

Somewhere in Poland, there lives a very evil architect.

And after a quick buzz around the net, I can tell you it's 'Centrum Rezydent', ul. Bohaterow Monte Cassino 53, 81-767 Sopot (Poland).
Actually, while I was off scouting I also found this Japanese one.

There's still no Ricewatch update yet, cos there's still no rice. And to prove it, look at this picture of no rice. As far as the eye can see, the eye can see no rice. But the farmers were out in force today so it can't be long now.

29 April

! Golden Week starts here! Though it's a Friday.

Golden Week is a collection of 4 national holidays that are usually run together so most people get a nice chunk of time off work.

Today is Midori no hi (Greenery Day). It used to be the Showa Emperor's birthday, and when he died in 1989 it was maintained, but as a holiday dedicated to the environment. On May 3, it's Kenpo Kinenbi (Constitution Day), celebrated since 1947 when the new constitution was enacted. May 4, this year, is Kokumin no kyujitsu (A Between Day) - the law dictates that a day that falls between two holidays is therefore a holiday. Nice one. And then the following day, May 5, is Kodomo no hi (Children's Day). Whether anyone pays any particular attention to the individual holidays, I'm not sure. Nobody seems to refer to them except collectively.

Anyway, all the tourist spots and roads and transport hubs become insanely busy this week, and prices double, so in reality, it's best to put your feet up and let everyone else queue and wait and sweat and Have FunTM.

And in recognition of Midori no hi (hope you were concentrating), I've been out in the garden. Which is really starting to do its thing, particularly now that the temperatures are pushing into the low 80s.

28 April

The early morning (3.a.m.) getting up and whizzing through town to a satellite tv was cancelled, and bearing in mind Liverpool v Chelsea finished 0-0, and I've got a 12 hour day today, perhaps that was as well. So all eyes down for the return leg at Anfield. Which I will be getting up for.

26 April

A world first to report today.

I was at the back of the queue to get off the bus today. A queue of about 20 people. And I realised I was the tallest of those people.

A surreal perspective on the world. And not entirely comfortable. It was quite a relief to get off the bus and get back into the realm of the oversized folks again.

25 April

Every TV channel has been taken over by news of the train crash in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture (near Osaka). With the death toll standing at around 70, and the injured numbering in the hundreds, Japan is reeling in shock. A country that prides itself on the safety standards of its public transport has been overcome not only by the magnitude of the accident but also the implications.

One theory is that the train derailed as it went into a bend because it was travelling too fast, in order to make up for being a mere 2 minutes behind schedule. Should this prove to be the case, the nation must ask itself if it values order over safety, and it must also ask itself whether the system really is as safe as it's famous for being, or whether that is taken for granted.

Either way, the crash and the outcome will be headline news for quite a while to come.

24 April

Day off - took a trip to Flower Hill (maaan). Which, get this, is a hill, right, covered in flowers. A bit of it's covered in pink phlox, a bit of it with these and other tulips, these ones (name of which forgotten) and just down the hill they're tending to a field of poppies. Needless to say the garden got a few more presents too.

20 April

Another big earthquake woke us up this morning just after 6. Again it was centred up near Fukuoka, measured about a 5.8 (though only about 3 or 4 here) and we've had a few more jolts through the morning.

Ah well, gets your day off to a nice early start, doesn't it?

18 April

What better way to spend a sunny spring afternoon than watching show-jumping penguins? Comedy gold.

15 April

So Open House Language School has appointed a Director of Studies. Oh yes. Who's that then? Well, funny you should ask...

14 April

Woohoo! Juventus have been disposed of. Probably the best 0-0 draw of the season. Who's afraid of big, bad Chelsea? Not us. Champions League semi-finals? Who'd've thought it...

13 April

Came bounding down the stairs this morning to check the result of a football match that hasn't happened yet.

First leg was on a Tuesday, so I assumed... Ah well. Another 24 hours of nerves then.

12 April

Today marks the first anniversary of my arrival in Japan. (I say "my" because of course Kuniko came a few days earlier.) It's all panned out nicely in that year. Though I guess if I could change anything, I would have spent more time studying the language, especially in those initial months when I had so much time on my hands. But I'm going to put that right this year and make much more progress.

Tonight is also the second leg of Liverpool's Champions League quarter final tie with Juventus. Very, very nervous. (Won't be staying up to watch it of course. Don't be daft.)

11 April

The political temperature in the Pacific Northwest is rising. It certainly boiled over this weekend, with the state-sanctioned demos in Chinese cities, where the normally hardline police were spectators as mobs attacked the Japanese embassy and businesses. The fact that the demos happened at all was a sure sign that they enjoyed, if not support, then certainly the approval of a government not previously known for tolerating any sort of dissent. At least, not when it's directed at them.

And today the Chinese premier announced that Japan "should face up to history". Hmm. Can you spell irony? How many Chinese school history books tell of Mao's incarceration, persecution and starvation of millions?

So how many of Japan's nearest neighbours does it actually get on with at the moment... China, no. South Korea, nope. North Korea? You jest. To me, that spells the need for a bit of bridge-building, but all we're seeing in the Japanese media is hand-wringing. Someone needs to stop whining and get on with the job.

10 April

The whole country's gone Cherry Blossom mad this week. There are pink trees everywhere. And picnic groups carousing underneath them. In parks, along rivers, even next to dual carriageways. So it's been another week of hangovers for many.

We had our own Hanami (translates as "Flower viewing", but the emphasis usually much more on the party than on the flowers) yesterday evening (Yozakura - nighttime hanami), in the park across from the outlaws' house, where some years ago, a 12-year-old called Kuniko and her little friends planted the very same cherry trees we had our barbecue under.

We can confirm that the idea of a playground swing when drunk is far better than the reality, and that football in the dark is not to be recommended either.

9 April

So Charlie's finally married his true love. Good luck to the pair of them, hopefully he'll stop being such an unbearable old misanthrope now.

6 April

Not being superstitious in the slightest (and aided by the fact that the game started at 3.45a.m. Northwest Pacific time), avoided any attempt to tune in to Liverpool's Champions League quarter final. And it appears Liverpool produced one of their best displays of the season. So it's all off to the Stadio delle Alpi next Tuesday, where again, I won't be watching.

Liverpool 2 Juventus 1

5 April

Oh dear. The JP government have gone and done it again.

Just as they seemed to be repairing their relationships with their neighbours, they've blown it again. And in an instant burned most of the bridges they were attempting to build.

It's all about history books. Of course text books used in secondary schools have to be approved by government. So when a series of books outraged neighbouring South Korea and China 4 years ago with their particularly revisionist view of the Second World War and post-war era, you would imagine the JP government would ensure they didn't make that mistake again.

But no. Again, these texts, which make no mention of atrocities (some authorities agree that 300,000 people were massacred in the Chinese city of Nanking, as it was then. The books say it was "some") or occupations (of Korea and islands inbetween - the source of subsequent land disputes), have passed the scrutiny of whoever is in charge, because they can apparently only be withdrawn "if they contain factual errors". Ah yes, the old "Withholding the truth isn't lying" argument. Hmmm. Even the fact that the most problematic of the texts was written by a nationalist group called the Society for History Textbook Reform seems not to ring any alarm bells in anyone's ears in Japan except mine.

Now, even though these books are currently only to be used in 0.1% of schools (yes that's 1 in 1000, folks. A little bit of context there), the fact that Japan has never sought to atone for war crimes committed in the region is a source of extreme anti-Japanese feeling. This was also deemed to be the reason behind the rioting of tens of thousands of flag-burners in Chinese cities this week, in protest at Japan's attempts to gain a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Rhetoric from China states that an apology would cover it. But the fires of extreme nationalism have been stoked for so long there that any truce would be uneasy at best.

So where does it stand now? China and Japan not talking because Japan won't issue a long overdue apology, and Korea and Japan not talking because they're still fighting over the ownership of a couple of rocks in the sea which make the Falklands look like Las Vegas.

Meanwhile the JP media has gone into a reactionary 'everyone hates us' frenzy, with no acceptance of any blame, and no suggestion of solution. So on it goes.

2 April

The handwriting on the label is clearly my mother's. And the parcel is most certainly of the Red Cross variety. Contained therein is more chocolate than you could shake a diabetic stick at.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Well, all except Terry (of Chocolate Orange fame), as I have definitively demonstrated that "it's not his".

1 April

The world is safe (for a while at least). I got up too late to play any cruel interesting pranks. Ah well, there are 364 more days in a year and plenty of gullible folk.