It happened in...
And it's all yellow
FRI 30 NOV
Being a suspected terrorist
THURS 8 NOV
The latest news from the People's Democratic Republic of Japanistan is that from November 20, I will officially be a terror suspect."But why?" you may ask. "What are you planning to do between now and then?"
Well, nothing out of the ordinary. Except 'be foreign'.
The delusional government of this fine country will begin on November 20 to photograph and fingerprint every foreign national who enters Japan, whether you're a tourist staying for a week, or a resident who's lived here for 30 years.
First, there's the immediate practicality, the inconvenience. Returning visa holders will have to queue up with everyone else (foreign). Not only that, but international families will be split up in the airport, as the clean Japanese nationals breeze through immigration while the dirty foreigners joins the already long and slow-moving lines on the other side. The Japanese contingent of the family will then of course have to wait, and it's been suggested they may have to wait an hour or more as every single foreigner gets snapped and inked.
More importantly, there's the unfairness. Aside from this practicality, there's the assumption that every foreigner is a potential terrorist. It would be slightly more reasonable to fingerprint everyone, Japanese included, particularly as the only terror attacks ever to have taken place on Japanese soil have been carried out exclusively by Japanese nationals. But the Japanese government ran into problems with bringing in national ID cards (and the Juki Net database) in the shape of protest from the voters, and that plan was sharply dropped.
Foreign nationals, though, are not voters. No, we're just residents, tax payers, business owners, employers etc. Hardly important enough to worry about offending.
Then there's the enormous waste of time and tax-payers' money. In a country where a tighter control of the public purse is so desperately needed, what use is this hugely expensive system likely to be in rooting out terrorists? If someone intent on carrying out terrorist atrocities enters the country with no previous criminal record, they'll be waved through like anyone else. And all you'll have after the dust has settled is a photo, some fingerprints and a pile of bodies.
There are also the data security issues. Aside from the workability and the hideous cost of the programme, there is the fact that the immigration database of fingerprints will be saved for "up to 70 years" and will be shared with the police, as well as the governments and police of as yet unnamed (but presumably 'any') foreign governments.
Knowing what an appalling record the Japanese police have for accurate record-keeping and secure data-handling, this worries me. If they make an error, you'll be impacted wherever in the world you go. If the only fingerprints retrieved from a crime scene that come up with a match in the police's database are yours, guess who'll get a visit. And if a police officer is careless in his use of file-sharing software (sounds unlikely? - ask google how many data leaks the Japanese authorities were responsible for last year because of employees' careless use of banned software), literally any bod in the world with an internet connection could get hold of all your data.
And supporters of the scheme say, "If you keep your nose clean, you've nothing to worry about."
It's not me that I'm worried about. I trust me.
Time out
TUES 6 NOV
Relaxing is exhausting. We enjoyed a short break at the end of last month, and we decided to take drive up-country. A 1200km drive, in fact. We took in the delights of Hiroshima, and ventured over to Shikoku, where we visited Imabari and Matsuyama.
You can enjoy a slideshow of a very small selection of the many thousands of snaps I took by clicking here.
Pander to the stupid
TUES 6 NOV
My wife was given a pair of trainers for her birthday. Here's the box.
So there you have it. If you buy Puma trainers, you'll probably get two.
As in 'a pair'.
Although you might get one.
Or three.
But most probably two. On average, like.
I wonder who deemed it necessary to include this little message. It may simply be the one-off creation of a reasonably high-functioning cretin. Or it may be a symptom of the age - an age in which, rather than filtering out the hard of thinking, we actively encourage stupidity by pandering to it, making unreasonable allowances for it. In order to ensure any degree of evolutionary optimism, we really should be taking the warning labels off everything. But instead we go to lengths to inform people that a packet of peanuts "may contain nuts". Or that a shoebox "may contain" 2 shoes.
Back to October?