Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Add a Comment

This is where we are heading tomorrow - the Shimokita Peninsula which is the axe shaped peninsula at the top of Japan’s main island of Honshu. It isn’t winter now, so it wont be too much like that video.　Will spend a couple of days up there, and even visit hell.

Add a Comment

2 Comments

Dear Alan,

I have just finished reading your Looking for the Lost: Journey’s Through a Vanashing Japan, and I must say I thouroughly enjoyed it. Your tongue in cheek and at times cynical sense of humour certainly saw you in good stead as you battled your way through the byways and back roads of rural Japan.

Looking for the Lost is divided into three parts, three walks through the hinterland of Japan, and each walk is coupled to an historical tale or series of events which give your story more impact. And the search itself for “Japan” is one that rasies many interesting questions. I think that all of us who come here from other countries (in your case England) are searching for something, something special amongst all the concrete, the castrated rivers, the detritus of advanced (and know semi-retired) capitalism. We may find it, we may not, but the thrill of the adventure drives us on. Perhaps in one of the little liquor stores way up back in the back of beyond, over a bottle or two of beer, chatting to the locals, you found it.

The first of your tales in this book is Tsugaru, a place I have visited a few times, a place where the wilds things are up at the tip of Japan’s main isle of Honshuu, on the Japan Sea coast. You follow the path Osamu Dazai followed in his Tsugaru, a useful vehicle that gives your writing a greater depth, something to bite into and masticate heartilly. Dazai has been described as a writer full of irony and possessed of a gloomy wit. A writing style you seem to have taken to heart:

The stretch between Minmaya and Tappi offers an especially good opportunity to compare what Dazai saw with what exists today because it is one of the few stretches of road along which Dazai actually walked and on which he chose to exercise his talent for describing landscape, a talent that was not his forte any more than it is mine …. wrote Dazai, “I could see how serene life can be in the cheerful atmosphere of those trim, well-appointed harbours,” and if any part of that sentence represents an honest description of what Dazai actually found here, then the change wrought upon these pitiful places in the fourty-four years between our visits is hardly less than that wrought by an ice age. pp. 22-3.

After Tsugaru, it is a hard slog through the wilds of Kyushu following the roots of that hero much loved by the Japanese: Saigo Takamori. You follow his escape from the overwhelming government forces in 1877 in the last stand of samurai against the coming age. Oh, and how it ruins your feet! Those adders and the wasps. Quite a hike, and quite a story too. Then finally heading up and out of Nagoya from its concrete monstrosities into the mountains and rivers where remnants of the Heike clan may have escaped too after being driven out of Kyoto by their arch enemies the Genji.

The amount of beer you drink is legendary. And even if your feet stink as badly as you make out I would be honoured if one day I run into your ghost in an out of the way liquor store. I’d love to buy you a beer. And then maybe one more for the road.

Yours,

S

Alan Booth’s Looking for the Lost: Journey’s Through a Vanashing Japan was published by Kodansha in 1995, two years after he sadly passed away from cancer of the colon at the age of 46. You should be able to find a copy at your local library if you live in Tokyo.

Add a Comment

# Title: Tokyo Underwold: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan
# Author: Robert Whiting
# Publisher: Vintage (September 26, 2000)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0375724893
# ISBN-13: 978-0375724893

No, Tokyo Underwold isn’t an announcment for yet another visit by British electroheads Underwold tour to Japan to play yet another version of Hello Slippy to all their Japanese fans, rather it is a fascinating look at the seedier side of Japanese life and business.

In 1945 when the Allied forces began their occupation following the surrender of Japan, the country was in a right and utter mess. This left the field wide open to all sorts of dodgy entrepreneurs to set up shop. Tokyo was in ruins after heavy bombing by the allies, and food supplies were very short. The black markets which sprung up within days of the surrender being announced served in many ways to keep the population of Tokyo alive during those very difficult times. Tokyo Underworld starts from this point, and develops by recounting the mindboggling corruption and nefarious goings on in the post war period, including tales of both Japanse gangsters as well as the GI’s of the occupying force who stood to make a great deal of money at this time.

Two characters from Tokyo’s colourful past stood out in particular. First was Rikidozan, a former sumo wrestler who was almost at the top of the sumo ladder when the end of the war brought the sport to a crashing holt. He became a professional wrestler and for many Japanese an icon of the rebuilding as he fought and won against many much larger and stronger American opponents. Little did the populus know, or want to know, that both these fights were fixed, and also of his Korean parentage. Such are the machinations of a defeated nation.

The other character who provides much of the backbone of Robert Whiting’s well-written book, was an American from New York’s Italian East Harlem, Nick Zappeti. An amazing character who was once known as “the King of Roppongi and the Mafia Boss of Harlem” he seems almost to have stepped out of a Martin Scorsese film. Involved heavily in black market trading during the occupation, and then later moving out into more legitimate business Zappeti’s risa and fall, mirrored in an oblique way much of what has befallen Japan in the post-war era.

I particularly enjoyed reading this book and learning a lot about what went on back then, as well as picking a great deal of information about our local areas history. That this is non-fiction, and not fiction, makes it all the more worth reading.

Add a Comment

Surfing Al Gore’s interwebs and came across the following interesting Japan related news stories.

From the British Times website: Ochone! Japanese whisky is voted the best in world. I find that a bit hard to believe, but then I have never really been a big fan of whiskey. I remember on the ferry to China that a couple of Japanese backpackers, long-haired and already a little smelly had a large bottle of Nikka whiskey which they were sharing. Very kind of them. Anyway the Californian photographer who had the bed next to mine had a few too many and ended up passing out on the ferry’s helipad. It was a little disturbing when the ships stewards carried him in around 3 am. He wasn’t in good shape, but luckily he kept it all down.

The BBC news website has a story Japan PM’s party in poll defeat.

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has been defeated in a key by-election, dealing a fresh blow to the leadership of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

LDP candidate Shigetaro Yamamoto was easily defeated in the vote in Yamaguchi prefecture.

Senior opposition MP Kenji Yamaoka told Japanese media the result was “the beginning of the end of LDP rule”.

Hopefully this will mean a return to a Japan lead by people with interesting haircuts.

Japan detects bird flu in four wild swans from Reuters. I think I can discern the beginning of a newly revised Tchaikovsky ballet in this story. The swans were discovered near Lake Towadako which is in Akita, closish to where I used to live. Quite sad really.

Lastly the most disturbing of the stories: Japan: Where has all the butter gone?

No butter = no toast = no breakfast….

7 Comments

Well spring is sprung, the rat is out of the hat, and no amount of platitudes could really fail to convince you that you need:

a freakdance records t-shirt

They only have a 100 of these, so get in quick.

Here is what they have to say about all this it glows in the dark goodness:

NEW FREAKDANCE RECORDS SKULL CRACKER T-SHIRTS ARE HERE!

The good-ole Freakdance skull logo has been revamped, reborn and brutally sodomized by label hustler Jere Häkkinen (Luomuhappo) - he has handpainted & re-sketched our company logo by hand and transformed it into a brand new level of fartistical approach!

These brand new Freakdance Records (TM)(C)(R) skull-cracker t-shirts are now internationally available from our webshop in colours such as … well, as Glenn Danzig would put it: “Black, black, The black is back, I am the blackest of the black of time!” - But don’t you worry, in the midst of all this blackness, the beautiful white print on these babies does not only glow in UV light alone, but THESE SHIRTS GLOW IN THE DARK AS WELL! Now how cool is that, you can spook out your acidhead friends in dark rave caves?? HUH ??

Take a look at the shirt here: http://www.freakdancerecords.net/images/fdpaita2_large.jpg

The price is 15 euros a piece and the total print has been limited to 100 copies, so get yours before they disappear from the face of the earth. The shirts are only available for men for the time being, but we will get some models for the ladies very soon! Be patient, o’ titted ones! <3

For our Finnish customers / HUOMIO SUOMALAASET PEOPLE!!!: order two CD’s, get the shirt for 10 euros. It doesn’t get any cheaper than that, and if any of you hippie bums still have the nerve to complain about the prices, we’ll hit you in the face with a hammer. Offer valid inside Finland only, sorry.

Our international web shop is at http://www.freakdancerecords.net -> mailorder

If you don’t want one, you can always order one for me for my birthday. It is only 6 months away you know!

Add a Comment

Just finished switching back to Ubuntu. I have been using Linux for a long time now it seems, starting out with Redhat back before they went “professional” and turned into Fedora, then I used Mandrake for a while, until they too went “professional” and became Mandriva. I think there is a pattern there.

After that I started using Ubuntu, and then when we moved to China, I bought a Mac and used OS X. I thought it would be easier and more reliable to use in China where I wasn’t sure how good the internet connections would be. As it turned out Linux would have been a better choice as Apple still haven’t made much inroads into the Chinese market (at least not in the province we were in), and the internet connection we ended up getting was faster than Jesse Owens.

After a bit over a year using OS X, I went back to Ubuntu. Using OS X was Ok, never really had a problem with it, but it was a bit like waltzing across the floor with a stylish but slightly forbiding great aunt that one didn’t really want to get ones hands dirty with. So, back to Ubuntu. Used that for a while before feeling adventerous, and missing KDE, I installed KUbuntu. Not a bad operating system, but I had a lot of problems getting Japanese input to work (as others have had), and not finding a solution, went back to Ununtu.

I toyed with giving Fedora 8 a run, but the install DVD I have has a lot of problems and kept crashing at different points during the install. Funny really that even though it has been such a long time since I have looked at that American offspring it really hasn’t changed that much - at least in terms of the installer. Not the prettiest thing out there.

Ubuntu’s installation is pretty easy. One thing though, if you are in Japan and wish to give it a go and you have a fibre optic connection from a provider like Plala through to NTT (like any self-respecting space-cadet) you will need to open up your synaptic package manager and install the pppoe tools which are on the cd, but aren’t installed by default, to get your internet connection working. Running pppoe-config as root from the command line will get things working.

All in all, it is nice to be back. And nice to have Japanese input again. I should catch up on some email now.

2 Comments

Found this Japanese doll set for sale on the Japanese shopping site Rakuten.

The price quoted is 100,000,000.00 JPY which converts to roughly $970,718.970 USD. Is this for real????

You can check it out for yourself here: 闇市（特定客様用の特設ページです）.

The first 2 characters mean black market…

Add a Comment

This video of Japanese commuters on the Chuo Line which runs into Tokyo’s busiest station Shinjuku. Not sure which station this is but it looks like a feeder into Shinjuku which was used by an average of 3.52 million people per day in 2006. Watching it makes me feel really glad I live in central Tokyo, not out in the sprawling bed towns.

How to Load People on Trains in Japan - For more funny videos, click here

I have only ridden on trains that packed a couple of times, and yes, while the video is a bit old, people are still employed in the mornings to push people onto the trains. They make a little over $10 an hour for the pleasure.

Imagine if all these people decided to drive to work - wouldn’t that be even crazier. Not that there would be enough places for them to park. Japan’s public transport system is really great for the environment, especially if you don’t have to use it.

Pickpocketing isn’t a problem that I have heard of, although groping is, and a number of lines now have women only cars at the front of the train to give Japanese women a bit of a break from the marauding hands of Japanese salarymen.

Interestingly there have been recent calls for mens only cars - this to stop men being accused of sexually harassing female passengers - here is an article from the Mainichi newspaper about this: Train companies close doors on men’s only carriages, giving free pass to groping scams. There have been quite a few cases of people being questionably arrested for groping. Some people will do anything for money!

And another news story I saw today that looked interesting: President of IT firm arrested for stripping on bullet train.

I don’t think stripping would be an option on the train shown in the video!

2 Comments