A new year. A new start. A new set of partially formed and poorly resolved resolutions. Welcome 2007. Hello more of the same.

Posted in General on Monday January 1, 2007. Shoutouts [3].

As I slowly switch focus away from Japan-related stuff here on the blog, it seemed fit to have a permanent archive of my time spend in Japan. So, I’d like to present Tin Ear, Japan a collection of photography and writing I made during my time spent on the Jet Programme.

More structural changes are afoot as I shift the focus of the site and chop and change a little. Mind the rubble.

Posted in General on Friday September 22, 2006. Shoutouts.

Amidst the furor of the World Cup it’s easy for other news to slip under the radar and I’ll admit that I almost missed the shit-storm that’s been going down over the past ten days in St Kitts in the West Indies. This Friday, the nations that make up the International Whaling Commission will vote on a number of issues, and it’s almost certain that Japan and its allies will win a majority of seats on the commission, and pave the path for a return to commercial whaling. As The Guardian reports:

If Japan and its allies win a majority in St Kitts they will have the mandate they need to use the way the IWC operates to their advantage. Campaigners fear their first step would be to end the observer status of Greenpeace and other environmental groups. The pro-whalers would also be able to abolish the commission’s conservation committee and introduce secret ballots, allowing smaller countries to vote with Japan without fear of upsetting aid donors such as the US.

...Last month the foreign ministry convened a secret meeting of pro-whaling countries to discuss tactics ahead of the IWC meeting. An official in the ministry’s whaling division denied that aid packages had been discussed, but conceded that the parties had agreed on ‘logistics’ to ensure that poorer Pacific and African nations made the journey to St Kitts.

It’s almost certain that Japan has been using aid benefits and kickbacks to convince small island nations to join the commission, and vote for the resumption of commercial whaling. As can be expected, the conservation mob are up in arms about this and are urging people to start making a lot more noise. Indeed, if half the stuff Greenpeace is alleging will happen, happens, we’re going to see a very, very different approach to whaling in the coming few years:

First, Japan will propose to eliminate any consideration of protective measures for small cetaceans (dolphins and porpoises) from the agenda. Then comes ‘interference with whale research’, an item under which we expect Japan to call for Greenpeace to be ejected from the meeting because of our success in hindering their ‘scientific’ whaling in the Antarctic earlier this year. It was the Japanese whalers who deliberately collided with our ships and attacked our crews in open boats with metal poles, but they are claiming that WE were violent and aggressive. True there was violence, as grenade tipped harpoons ripped into one whale after another, violence we did our best to stop.

Although Australia has stopped short of a diplomatic confrontation with Japan, they have committed strongly to fighting against the majority. The environment minister, Ian Campbell, had this to say:

“I leave Australia this afternoon not confident of the outcome, but again confident that we’ve done more than has ever been done before to try to secure the conservation majority, but recognising that there is, as there was last year, some risk of defeat.”

The most bizarre part of this whole thing seems to be just how hard the Japanese government is pushing for this, despite very little interest from the general populace here. I’ve read several articles in local papers mentioning surpluses of whale meat due to large catches and poor consumer demand. This is despite a recent advertising campaign, “scrumptious whale,” run by the government with the aim of educating “a new generation of whale eater.” It turns out a lot of whale is actually going into school lunches and old people’s homes in Wakayama prefecture, and even into pet food.

There’s more at The Independent and the results of voting should be clear sometime on Saturday Australia time.

Posted in General on Wednesday June 14, 2006. Shoutouts.

Every now and the you hear some news that just knocks the living shit out of you and leaves you standing there, flabbergasted. The problem with this is, nine times out of ten, that news is entirely horrible: a grandparent dying, planes veering into buildings, a mate drunkenly taking a swing at someone and then being taken to pieces. You function on automatic while it sinks in; speak and react and smile and laugh, all while your brain runs at a million miles an hour connecting the dots and filtering information into a “to digest later” box somewhere near the medulla oblongata. That’s nine times out of ten.

The other ten percent you spin the wheel and end up on entirely the opposite side. This time you’re gasping and looking for something to say because the news is flat-out fucking awesome.

Nick gave me a bell last week and said he wanted to talk about the annual Gishi party he’s hooked up the past couple of years (like when we got dressed up as movie characters, or ran around as samurai). He’d been being very secretive about the whole deal this year, maintaining that it would be worth the wait. All we knew was that the party would start somewhere than wasn’t Ako and then move back there at the end of the night. Turns out the theme this year is “Wedding Party.”

Yeah, Nick “Pinky Pig” John and Kanako “Yellow Monkey” Hayakawa are tying the knot, filling in the forms and then breaking out of the land of the rising sun. How good is it when two people just fit together so well that it’s hard to think of one without thinking of the other. How much better is it when it works out for them: they get together, they live together, they live together. When you look at them as a couple and go, “hey, that’s how this whole relationship deal is meant to work out.”

Congrats guys, December is going to be a blast.

Posted in General on Monday October 17, 2005. Shoutouts.

That was a picture I took a couple of years back in early January, while lying on a beach called Batu Feringgi. It’s on the tip of Penang in Malaysia and it’s a gorgeous, calm beach that apparently is renowned for its peaceful waters and serenity. It was perfect while we were there; white sands, clear water and not another person in sight. Batu Feringgi is where more than 10 people, including four members of a single family, died on Sunday morning in the Indian Ocean earthquake. I’m sure they were enjoying much the same conditions we were, when the tsunami just came out of nowhere and smashed them onto the rocks. It’s really quite frightening to think that something as devastating as that can just come straight out of the blue and utterly destroy your life. I’m sure many people who have travelled in the region are thinking similar things.

Being on JET gives you certain opportunities that you probably wouldn’t have in a similar job in another country. One of these is the chance to travel around South East Asia. The yen is a strong currency and we have ample opportunity to use our days of paid leave to zip off around the region. Japan is a good launching point and especially over the holiday season it’s much cheaper (and warmer) to jet off to SEA than to stay in Japan. A lot of JETs end up in Thailand, especially first years, and Phuket is a particularly popular location. I’ve heard unofficial figures as high as 1,500 jets in the general area but it’s unclear as to how many of those are in Thailand or other areas effected by the quake. Most of my friends who are in the area have checked in, but I think when school starts in a few weeks time, several schools are going to be missing ALTs. That’s pretty fucked up.

This Wikipedia link has all the information on the situation as it develops and includes links to charity organisations around the world who are mobilising relief efforts. The world bank is estimating over 5 billion US dollars will be needed, so please give generously.

Posted in General on Wednesday December 29, 2004. Comments [1].

Looks like the medical community every is freaking out over a possible mutation of the bird flu that’s going around at the moment:

“At the moment the bird flu has a small capacity to infect humans, but if it acquired certain genes from existing human viruses it could produce a virus against which no one would have immunity,” Professor Tannock said.

I just love how the Australian government has issued a warning to Australians not to travel to Japan. Hooray, that makes me feel all the more secure, especially given that there seem to be more kids absent sick than actually at school these days. Maybe I’ll have to funkify up my dress code with one of those surgical masks that seem to be all the rage these days.

Posted in General on Tuesday February 3, 2004. .

Happy New Year folks. Hope your New Years Eve’s went well. I spent mine at this tiny club in Kobe called Troop Cafe which was packed to the gills with insane and very drunk Japanese, with about 15 random DJs playing all night. There was one guy who was playing live (complete with video) who just got Japanese television commercials and cut them up into 5 second clips and looped them to a techno beat, was very very cool.

Hope 2004 holds as many good times as 2003, I’ve had an absolute blast.

Posted in General on Friday January 2, 2004. .

Merry Christmas folks. Looks like this year I’m not going to spend it on the beach, which sucks but hey, I’ll live. Have a good one and drink one for me.

Cheers.

Posted in General on Thursday December 25, 2003. .

This is the face of dejection:

It was actually quite amusing watching the large contingent of Kiwi supporters go from loud and happy drunk, to louder and frustrated drunk, to very quiet and contemplative drunk before finally settling into this cannot be happening sad drunk. Well done to the Wallabies for doing what noone thought they could do.

One more to go, hey?

Posted in General on Monday November 17, 2003. .

Every day I have a whole stack of blogs that I read. I’ve got them chucked into folders loosely name after the category that they fit under. Japan, Friends, Design and what not. So when I’m feeling bored I just open Firefox and choose “open in tabs” and all the blogs in that category open in tabs across the top of the screen.

It’s kind of a shock every day as I open the design category and Hon’s blog appears in one of the tabs. Realising that that post is the last one Hon would ever write always throws me into a reflective mood. It just sucks that he’s not around anymore.

I miss sending him stupid e-mails about how crazy Japan was. I miss him telling me I was warped. Whenever I did anything design related, I’ll always shoot a message off to Hon and he’d always have the courtesy to at least pretend he was interested. That’s more than you can say for most lecturers.

See you Honmeister, the world will be duller place without you.

Mike and Tiff’s blogs have some really beautiful tributes on them.

Posted in General on Friday November 7, 2003. .