It happened in...
A back-to-front day
SAT 28 APRIL
I did Thursday all in the wrong order.The alarm went off at 3.45am. Which confused the cat, who'd probably been revving herself up for shouting in my ear closer to 7. So inquisitive as to why I was ambulant before dawn, she followed me downstairs and parked herself next to me on the sofa for the first leg of Liverpool's Champions League semi-final against Chelsea. As soon as she realised that breakfast wasn't on the cards, though, she fell noisily asleep again.
Having watched Liverpool dominate possession and do nothing with it (same old story) and go down 1-0, I went back to bed. An hour later I was up again, making coffee. "I know," I thought, "I'll go and climb a volcano."
A couple of hours later then, I was trudging up the side of one of Mt Aso's dormant craters. It was tough going, and hard on the ankles, particularly ones as unused to such endeavour, as mine are. About halfway up, it occurred to me that, with not a soul to hear or see me for miles around, and my mobile phone left back in the car, "This would be a really dumb place to break a leg..." After several stops to, er... take in the view, yes that's it, I finally made it to the top. Where I almost passed out. There was a bracing wind up there, and as I sat on the lip of the crater, I closed my eyes and just listened to the wind for a while. On a less hazy day, there might have been a view - the entire Aso crater is 25km across, the peak I was on is just one of many that sprang up from the middle of it. So instead, I went down into the crater. From the centre, there was nothing to see but sky, and sheltered from the wind it was almost silent now. It was oddly unsettling and didn't stay long. Humans don't belong in the middle of volcanoes, dormant or otherwise.
Getting back down proved only a little less work that getting up had. So back down in the meadow, I had another sit-down.
There was no wind down here, and all I could hear was bird-song. And not just one or two voices, but hundreds. There wasn't a single tree in sight, so they must have been in the short grass all around me, but I couldn't see a single one. The meadows of these foothills were alive with birds and with spring flowers.
Time was getting on though, so after soaking up some sun, I took myself back to the car, and made my way back down into the towns, and took myself off to work.
Lucie Blackman's 'killer' acquitted
WEDS 25 APRIL
I hadn't realised until
yesterday that while Joji Obara had been charged with "abduction, rape resulting in death, mutilation
and abandonment of a corpse", he hadn't actually been charged with murder. Had I spotted that, then perhaps yesterday's
verdict wouldn't have come as such a surprise.With all those other charges against him, the police didn't feel they could add a murder charge? Evidently not, and they were obviously relying on a confession, as is so usual in such cases. A confession which never came. And that fact highlighted the huge ragged holes in their investigation. Why investigate properly when a confession's enough to convict?
While they felt sure enough to send the suspect to trial, without a confession he would only be convicted on the strength of the evidence they presented. In a country that almost always convicts in cases like this, the length of the trial and the eventual outcome are a shocking verdict on the investigative abilities of the police.
So once more, questions will be asked about how the police managed to botch another murder case so badly. They don't have a good recent record when it comes to serious crime. There was also the case last year of the woman in Akita who killed her daughter and another child, which police dismissed as unconnected accidents and needed the input of investigative journalists before relunctantly doing any actual police work.
This does not bode well for the case of Lindsay Hawker, the young English teacher who was murdered near Tokyo last month. It's perhaps unfair to isolate these cases, but specifically because of these cases, the Japanese police are now under intense international scrutiny, and the fact that Ms Hawker's presumed killer fled on barefoot and shook off 9 police officers is another humiliating and inescapable indictment.
So while Obara was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of drugging and raping 9 women, he was acquitted of all charges relating to Lucie Blackman. He will be eligible for parole after serving ten years. He has already served more than 5 years, which the judge said would be deducted from the sentence. He could appear before the parole board as early as 2012.
Political assassination shocks Japan
THURS 19 APRIL
On Tuesday evening, while canvassing outside JR
Nagasaki station, the mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Ito, was shot shot twice in the back. He died in hospital early on Wednesday
morning.The assassin, Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, was immediately subdued and arrested at the scene. Various news sources reported that "Shiroo is the leader of the Suishin-kai, which is affiliated with Japan's biggest organized crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi." On the question of a motive, early reports suggested
"Shiroo had lodged a complaint against the Nagasaki municipal government after his car was damaged several years ago when it got stuck in a hole on a section of road under construction. Although the only damage the vehicle sustained was to its fender, Shiroo initially demanded 600,000 yen and ended up claiming more than 2 million yen, at which point the city broke off negotiations with him in January 2005 after consulting with police."Didn't sound likely to me, either. It was later revealed that
"Shiroo was involved in a separate dispute with the city around 2003 over a construction company to which he used to provide a large amount of funding.So a yakuza group leader, declining in power and influence and being squeezed by the guys above him, had his source of government funds cut off. Is that not far more likely to be the motive? The situation highlights the heady mix and the proximity of politicians, the construction industry, the yakuza, and the police. No wonder then that "police have yet to determine the suspect's exact motive and are carrying out the investigation with great caution." I bet.
Sources said the construction company, which had tried to use the city's lending system for small and midsize companies, was not eligible for a loan after it failed to pass screening by a financial institution."
In 1990, Ito's predecessor as mayor of Nagasaki, Motoshima Hitoshi, was shot and wounded by a right-wing extremist for saying in a speech that Emperor Hirohito was partially to blame for World War II.
The popular Mr Ito had been seeking his 4th term as mayor in the election to be held on Sunday. A private funeral was held today.
Patissier Takagi has gone missing
TUES 10 APRIL
Being one of the greatest consumers of KitKats in Japan, naturally I hold a great deal of influence in the corridors of power at Nestlé Japan.The release of a special edition KitKat, splattered with the name of Takagi, used to mean a deep sigh and reading a long list of unlikely claims about 'seamlessly blending' the flavours of tarragon, saffron, 3 types of newly-discovered Patagonian citrus fruit, gold leaf, and inevitably, white chocolate. Well, I'd had enough of that. So Takagi's out, I'm in.
Keep it simple, I tells 'em. More decadence, and less bovine droppings. And booze! Yes, let's fill KitKats with booze! And so, here we have it, the very lovely 'Torokeru Zeitaku' Brandy & Orange KitKat, a KitKat so special it has its own tagline - "For a moment of precious indulgence". Quite.
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Happy Easter
SUN 08 APRIL
And of course it wouldn't be Easter without a...
Courtesy of those wonderful souls at the Higham branch of Red
Cross
The last of the sakura
SUN 08 APRIL
With the cherry blossoms 'on the turn' here in central Kyushu, it was possibly the last chance for most families to get out and see the spectacle together. With this consideration in mind, along with the fact that the Aso region is served by no major roads whatsoever, Mrs C and I decided to hit the road early, for fear of spending the day in a mountainside traffic jam.We had initially come out to see one of Aso's biggest, oldest and most famous cherry trees, Isshingyouzakura, but as you can see from the picture below, the blossoms had "peaked" a day or two before we got there.
First pests of the year emerge
WEDS 04 APRIL
Next Monday, all over Japan, there
will be local elections. You would know this even without the aid of radio, television, newspapers or the internet. Firstly
because the local candidates are having a pre-election competition to see whose minions can stuff the most junk into my
mailbox. The winner of this competition gets... no votes.Secondly, because for the last fortnight they've been violating the single most important law of Japanese-ness - they've been messing up the wa.
You see, prior to an election, it isn't an imprisonable offence to hire a gang (are they paid? are they volunteers?) of locals, load them up on truckers' coffee, stuff them into a Toyota Hiace with megaphones attached to the roof and have them drive around the neighbourhood from dawn until after dark screaming and hollering the name of their puppetmaster and excusing and thanking.
In the face of this hideous aural abuse, I've been remarkably controlled. I've muttered, I've chuntered, but I've yet to occasion actual physical harm on anyone. I'm doing very well. But I can't promise that I'll last until Sunday.
For a culture that places so much importance on calm and tranquility, it's surprising how difficult it is sometimes just to get some bloody peace and quiet.
O-hanami
SUN 01 APRIL
The cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom, so it's time to have a Hanami (Cherry blossom viewing) party.We chose to have ours last night, up at Kumamoto castle. It had been cloudy all day, but it was warm and the promised rain hadn't materialised, so we were hopeful. So laden down with beer, sake and food, we made our way into the city, and of course five minutes into the bus journey, the heavens opened. We weren't to be deterred though.
We carried our provisions across Ni no Maru park which, instead of being populated by hundreds of revellers, was completely deserted. Everyone else had evidently cancelled and found something else to do.
Down in San no Maru park, however, there was a covered picnic area which served as a perfect base of operations. It had all worked out rather splendidly.
We had the whole place to ourselves...
...and there was no shortage of sakura.
The usual suspects
By this stage everyone was getting a bit blurred...
...aided by two litres of liquid brain damage...
...after which, all bets were off.
Back to March?