I saw these photos a few days ago and I knew as soon as they were published online I just had to link across to them. The photographer in question is Chris Willson from the website travel67.com, who’s cracking behind the camera and takes shots I could only dream of snapping. On his latest trip [...]
Read this story at work and couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes. The story revolves around Ichiro Ozawa (see right), former LDP politician who then defected to the DPJ where he was president for a year (the usual duration a leading Japanese politician stays in office) before resigning from his post due to a scandal. He still holds a lot of power though in the ruling party in Japan.
If you’ve read articles I’ve written on this page over the past couple of years, you’ll know how Japanese politicians have a wonderful way with words. Whether it’s a health minister describing women as “birth-giving machines”, a prime minister declaring that nukes were secretly kept in Japan being merely “regrettable”, or a current Tokyo mayor Shintaro Ishihara defiantly claiming that, “People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie”, they are always good for a soundbite or two. And so it was that Ozawa called a press conference on August 25th. In it he stated that “I like Americans, but they are somewhat unicellular”. Am still trying to work out if that’s a compliment or not! He then followed up by saying that “I don’t think Americans are smart”. Just the bluntness of that makes me laugh, and that doesn’t seem to be something lost in translation. Hearing it in Japanese is as clearcut as that pretty much.
Ozawa then realised he was on a roll though, and decided to have a go at the British. “I don’t like British people” he claimed, although didn’t seem to give any reason for it. However, he did compliment British soldiers on their marching in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Yup, I’m as confused as you on that one!
Am pretty sure Foreign Minister could be his next role, as he certainly seems adept in international diplomacy! Although he might get a chance to be Prime Minister again soon as current Prime Minister Naoto Kan is facing a challenge from Ozawa two months into the job! This could be a spectacular record for a Prime Ministers’s tenure in Japan. Usually they give them 12 months before the party throws them under the bus but this could be shorter than usual. Stay tuned for more.
Sad news to report in this update, from the hot and humid shores of Okinawa. On Thursday a 58-year old Okinawan dive instructor was killed in the north of the island after being stung by a stonefish. This marks the first death in Okinawa from a stonefish in over 27 years and any death in the diving community affects people and their thinking. The cause of death sounds like it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man was giving students a lesson in shallow water on the morning of Thursday August 7th. He was standing barefoot in the water when he felt a sudden pain in his foot. Unconsciousness quickly followed and 90 minutes later he had passed away.
Whether he has other medical issues is a case for the coroner to determine. Stonefish stings are always serious, but not so often life-threatening. Now sometimes I’d be critical of people for touching the marine life, but in this case I’ve nothing but sympathy for the guy’s family as it’s most likely a freak accident. Even if you’re looking carefully where you’re putting your hands and feet while in the water, stonefish are hard to spot. My regular dive buddy is damn good at seeing these things, and I’m sure I just swim by plenty of them without noticing them. Just take a look in the photo below.
So once again, a sad day for all involved in the diving community here in Okinawa. It’s times like these you realise that the environment under the waves isn’t all Nemo and mermaids.
I hate being right all the time! OK, so those who know me well know that you should read “all the time” as “once every blue moon”, but in this case my scepticism was pretty well founded. Some of you might recall that in my previous post about the anti-US “Sexual Terrorists” protest at the end of April, I stated that it really didn’t look like there were 100,000 which was the figure thrown about by the media. No coincidence that this was also the figure that was said before the protest at how many they thought would attend. Not wanting to admit far fewer shown up, it was always going to be a number of news outlets, including the BBC, who ran the story with the headline “Mass rally in Japan against US base on Okinawa“. When the BBC initially put this story on their website, they asked if people were in the area and if they would send their comments. Having seen footage from the air on TV of the people at the protest, I sent them a comment saying that it was clear the number of people attending was far lower than the figure being put out on the official press releases. I questioned whether they had a reporter in Okinawa who was covering this story, or whether they were just relaying information they’d read, second or third-hand. No surprises but my comment wasn’t chosen to get published on the site!
Anyway, it seems like I may not have been far off the truth. Last weekend an interesting story was published by the Daily Yomiuri newspaper, a Japanese national newspaper based in mainland Japan. I’ll let the article do most of the talking:
Doubt cast on number at antibase protest rally
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Doubts have been raised about the number of participants at a recent antibase protest in Okinawa Prefecture, with suspicions the figure of 90,000 announced by the organizer might have been considerably inflated.
The April 25 rally was held to protest a reported plan by the national government to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station within the prefecture.
The rally venue in Yomitanson can accommodate up to 50,000 people. The organizing committee estimated 90,000 participants because it also counted people who gathered outside the venue or could not arrive because of traffic jams.
However, immediately after the protest, some government officials suggested the actual number of participants might have been much smaller than 90,000.
A Tokyo security firm counted 11,569 participants based on aerial pictures. While the firm did not include people under trees or tents, it said the number would be “far fewer than 90,000″ even if they were counted.
The Okinawa prefectural police did not count the rally participants.
(May. 15, 2010)
While Yukio Hatoyama isn’t really doing much in the way of changing Japanese politics (despite his declarations of change in the run up to last year’s Japanese election), he is certainly making waves in other ways. Shockingly, he’s being criticised for some of his fashion choices in recent times. Looking at one of the latest examples, I’m sure you’ll be wondering as I do why he is getting slated for it.
Now I don’t profess to be anything like a style expert, being that my usual casual wear consists of a Wigan RLFC shirt and a pair of ageing and most likely oil-stained jeans. But with that being said, wow. Who knew that plaid was making a comeback, and with such ferocity? Nope, me neither! But apparently the Prime Minister did and is at the ripple on what is surely going to be a huge wave in Japanese fashion. When it does he will be able to say “I was there first”.
Maybe it was his wife that got him into this uber-fashion. This would be the same wife that said the following:
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
And the same woman who said this about the sun in an interview:
“I also eat the sun,” Hatoyama said on the program, looking up with her eyes closed, raising her arms high as if she was tearing pieces off an imaginary sun. “Like this, hum, hum, hum. It gives me enormous energy.”
Whatever, it certainly adds some colour (pun intended) to the Japanese political scene!
Woke up this morning to find a haze over the hills in Southern Okinawa. Put it down to a little cooler air and some mist to start the day. But the mist didn’t lift and if anything got worse throughout the day. Finally got home this evening with a hell of a sore throat to find the cause of this haze was our friends from the north in China. The BBC is reporting that dust storms from Northern China have engulfed Beijing and covered an area of 313,000 square miles on Saturday. However, it now looks like winds have pushed the dust as far south as Okinawa. Everything was covered in a light dust at the end of the day and driving home at night was like driving in fog.
I’ve heard about these dust storms coming to Japan before but in over 5 years this is the first time I’ve experienced it this bad here. Left the windows open here this morning when I left the house so have come back to a dusty apartment. Have now got the A/C on full blast trying to clean the air in this place. Really hoping it dies down tomorrow – am not liking this one bit
Has anyone else in Okinawa or mainland Japan seen this, or experienced it before?
I heard about this a couple of weeks ago but only found the story recently. It not something I wanted to comment on without seeing myself but now it’s here for all and sundry to take a look at. Those in the diving community know that multiple dives per day are allowed by all major diving organizations in the world, with most people doing 2 or 3 dives per day. There are considerations to take into account when planning multiple days per day and/or multiple days of diving, but as long as you adhere to these instructions then you are pretty much going to be fine.
Well it looks like an Okinawan doctor has decided he wants to turn the recreational diving world on its head, as you can see.
Forum educates doctors on diver decompression sickness
Date Posted: 2010-02-11
A noted medical doctor who specializes in diver’s decompression sickness warned “if divers dive three times in one day, and continue two or three days in a row, divers will get sick with decompression sickness” during a forum at Ishigaki City’s Civil Hall.
Doctor Masato Uehara, who works with the Prefectural Hospital in the Yaeyama District, was keynote speaker at the forum on ocean leisure. He says many divers don’t recognize decompression sickness, pointing out that between 1997 and 2009 he treated nearly 100 patients with decompression sickness at the hospital. The frightening part, he pointed out, was that roughly 80% of the patients were experienced divers or diving instructors.
“Divers believe in their computers for diving too much, or the manuals,” he says. He called for more caution and common sense, noting a 56-year-old tourist form mainland Japan who dived three times in a single day. When she tried diving on the fourth day, after her first dive her legs and hands became numb and she couldn’t walk. A bit later, as she walked again, she dived again. By that night, her hands and legs were again numb, so she visited the hospital where he had to treat her for decompression sickness.
Dr. Uehara says decompression sickness can only be treated with high oxygen treatment machines. He called the treatment “drastic measures for the sick” and encouraged divers to be more careful.
Source: Japan Update
If any of you out there are divers your reaction is probably similar to “What the…”. So a doctor (although how he is “noted” I have not been able to find as there is very little mention of him in English or Japanese online) at a relatively small hospital out in Ishigaki has now said that if you dive three times a day for 2 days then you will get decompression sickness. Note that this doesn’t say your chance of catching decompression sickness will increase (which is possible, hence the increased care in multiple diving days) but that it will happen without a doubt. And his evidence is treating under 100 people over a 13 year period.
There is also no evidence that it is the multiple diving days that have caused this (or it is not stated in this article, and I’m going to hazard a guess that there is no concrete evidence). Kind of reminds me of the Brass Eye special all those years back: “This is scientific fact. There’s no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact”. I will agree that people believe in their computers too much for diving, so will give him that. Although diving to the tables is pretty much safe as houses as long as you know how to use them (which is becoming less the way of the world with PADI’s endless dumbing down of the theory part of the RDP).
I would say much bigger contributions to diving would be people who have to have their gear carried all the way to the entry point by an instructor as they are unable to don it themselves, being people who dive once a year on their trip down to from Tokyo to Okinawa and try to cram as much diving into their time as possible, leaving minimal saturation time before their flight back, and those who light up a cigarette or open a can of Orion beer before they’ve taken their BCD off following a dive. Should note that all of those are pretty common occurrences here in Okinawa.
Or maybe I’m wrong and people all over the world should be cancelling dive trips and only doing one day of diving at a time. What do you think?
This morning at 5:31am there was a huge earthquake which struck 80km east of Naha, and around 29km underground. It was classified as a magnitude 7 quake and was easily the strongest I’ve experienced in my 5 and a half years here in Okinawa. Put it this way: I have never before considered hightailing out of my apartment and getting to somewhere open. Given my position in Okinawa on the southeast coast, I was probably one of the closest to the epicentre of it, too.
Woke up with my phone going off making a strange noise (which I later found out to be the earthquake alert). Seconds later the apartment started shaking violently. This was accompanied by a roaring noise which sounded like a bulldozer was passing by or something of that nature, but the shaking that came with it was too strong for that. I sat up immediately and for a few seconds was ready to grab my dressing gown and getting out. Things fell of my shelves as the seconds ticked by, and it seemed to go on for an age. In fact, the violent shaking lasted around 40 seconds with the earthquake continuing for over a minute I would guess. Eventually it died down and all became quiet again. I checked out the apartment to look for damage to the apartment and to do a little cleaning up.
There was a tsunami warning issued for coastline areas, but nothing on the village PA system was broadcast so I just stayed up watching the NHK reports for a little while. There are only a few reports of minor injuries I think and only a little damage has been sustained (mainly ruptured water pipes). Need to check in with people today to make sure everyone’s ok, but I wanted to check in on here first.
Take care folks, and let me know if you were in Okinawa and what your experiences of it were. Personally, I don’t want another one of those in a hurry.
Over 2 years after the body of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker was found in a bathtub of sand in Chiba, the main suspect was arrested this evening. Tatsuyo Ichihashi was captured by 
police early this evening at the Nanko ferry terminal waiting to board a ferry to Okinawa. After recent leads in the Osaka area and a new photo being published of him following cosmetic surgery he had done, a passenger in the ferry terminal reported a person bearing Ichihashi’s description to authorities at the ferry terminal. Police then approached and arrested him.
Currently, the charge is only the complete joke of “abandoning a body”, although Chiba police are hopeful of upgrading that charge to murder. I’m usually very critical of the Japanese police but it seems like after 2 and a half years they have finally got their man. Since initial posters were released, he has undergone a number of plastic surgery operations on his eyes, nose and mouth (no doubt funded by his wealthy family) and was attempting to undergo another round of surgery at a Fukuoka clinic in the near future. It has also emerged that he has been working undetected in Osaka for over a year while managing to remain under the radar.
But he is finally in custody and now the job moves from the police to the criminal courts to ensure that justice is done. I’m trying to be hopeful but just get the feeling he may only be found guilty in the eyes of the law in Japan of abandoning a body. I certainly hope not and hope that the Hawker family can finally get some closure on this.
I just knew that if I kept quiet for a little while something like this story would come up. And lo & behold it has. Haven’t had so much motivation to do writing on here for a while, but this story I saw on Japan Update I just had to report on. The headline read “American GI’s arrested in two separate incidents” which drew me in for 2 reasons. Firstly I’m sure the apostrophe shouldn’t be in there, and secondly to see what horrific crimes they had been arrested for. Assault? Rape of a minor? Murder? Not quite…
One American is in Japanese custody on charges of stealing game dices from a snack bar, while a second has been charged with being drunk and crossing onto private property.
A 22-year-old stationed at Camp Schwab was caught shortly after he stole game dices at an Okinawa City Chuo area snack. Police say Calvin Edward Chandler took the dices, then fled. Staff saw Chandler take the dices and chased him, while others called police. He was caught and charged with stealing two dices, valued at ¥3,000.
A 20-year-old Marine stationed at Camp Foster was arrested after he knocked on the door of a residence in Chatan Town’s Miyagi area. Sean Patric Slein approached the residence and knocked on the door, frightening the woman occupant. She called the police who arrived shortly and found Slein still outside the door. The police asked him “Who are you? Why are you knocking on this door? This is not your area. This is somebody’s private yard.” The police then arrested Slein who was reportedly drunk at the time.
I mean, really… where should I start? I think bad English is as good a place as any! In a week where I’ve seen an exhaust manufacturer inexplicably called Drug Bomber, and a car horn with the manufacturer tagline “We produced with spartan air” around the edge of it, this completes a Triple Crown of Engrish! One of my English pet hates is people using “dice” as a singular word, when they should be using “die”. But this article takes it one further, and introduces a new word into the Engrish language called “dices”.
Right – that’s that out of the way and now onto the story itself. Is this even a story? Well, according to Okinawan news agencies it is. So this first guy stole a pair of dice from a snack bar. Those dice, unless made from platinum or some special Louis Vuitton dice, would cost around 100 yen (70p) from the local cheap product store. Although given that in these places a beer can 
cost over 1,500 yen (£10) then maybe it’s plausible. But can you imagine the police’s reaction when they got the emergency call?
Bar owner: “Hello. We have an emergency here at bar Papa Rich (not the name of the club in question but a similar snack bar). Someone has just fled the scene stealing property from the bar. Please come quickly!”
Police: “Calm down, ma’am. Take a deep breath. What has been taken”
Bar owner: “A pair of dice. He’s getting away!”
Police: “…”
Bar owner: “It’s a foreigner!”
Police: “We’ll be there right away, ma’am!”
The last bit is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not a big stretch of the imagination. You think there must have been something else that would cause the police to take action, but maybe not given the stories that make the Okinawan headlines regarding members of the US military here.
And then the second story is another bizarre one. The guy was arrested for being asleep on her doorstep, or did he try to break into her place? By the sounds of it he knocked on the door and there is no mention at all as to whether she even answered it (although answering the door late at night is usually a no-no unless, like me, you are woken at about 5am by a dozen police officers as your neighbour has been murdered, but that’s beside the point). It seems very unlikely that someone should normally be arrested for knocking on a door when it’s late at night, otherwise I’m sure the vast majority of salarymen throughout Japan would have been arrested at some point in their lives!
Maybe the police were just under their “US military personnel arrest” quote for September, and needed to get a few final arrests in before today. Either way, it does look pretty pathetic and that they are really scraping the barrel for stories to put the old “round-eyes” in a bad light.
In the NBA they have March Madness, but it definitely appears to be a case of summer silliness here in Okinawa, with foreign teachers seemingly trying to rival Marines as foreign scapegoats. Incidentally, the Marines have very surprisingly been out of the news in recent weeks, which is odd as any stepping out of line or drunk & disorderly behaviour gets pounced on. Maybe they’re just working on something big! As long as there’s not a repeat of Lockdown ’08 then I think everyone will be happy!
But back on topic. Was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to post the red pill thumbnail next to a story for a while, but alas it wasn’t to be. Was told by a colleague today that they’d heard yet another JET Programme participant, American Martin S (should note American is not his first name, although that would be impressively Patriotic if it was), has been fired in Okinawa, in addition to the two girls involved in the previous “mind candy” incident (for which public prosecutors dropped a case most widely thought to be on the condition that a job termination was on the cards and so they would most likely be leaving the country anyway). From what’s been said it was related to this initial incident and has been reported on Okinawan TV today.
At the same time, a letter has been sent through from CLAIR (the organization administering the JET Programme) reminding ALTs of their duty and responsibility while they are in Japan. My reaction to this is probably best summed up by the picture you see to the left. There really isn’t much to say beyond what has been said before. Hopefully this will be the last incident we hear about for some time here in Okinawa. It has been relatively quiet down here for about 4 years and then the past 12 months have just been a little crazy.
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