Our bodies are merging

So says Nature. Actually, this is one occasion where we actually found out first through internal channels, a couple of weeks ago.

It seems a bit random to me. I would say that anything that has the potential to replace JAMSTEC's bureaucracy could only be a good thing, but given the scale of this proposed merger, it may be more likely to just add another layer at the top of the pyramid.

The quote about "slashing wasteful spending" is either hamming it up for the public, or shows a minister rather out of touch with reality. After working here for a decade, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that our primary purpose is simply to disburse Govt spending into the wider economy. They half-heartedly dress it up with the pretence of accountable and competitive bidding for research funds, but that is mostly for the sake of appearances.

It is notable in the above table that the cost per person is markedly higher at JAMSTEC than anywhere else - presumably, this is the effect of having a fleet of hugely expensive boats to maintain. There is another one on its way, in fact - the "austerity" budget having limited this investment to a single ship (and it certainly won't be a dingy or sailboard), when they were hoping for 2.

At this point, it seems like nothing more than a vague plan, and a few of them have come and gone in the past few years anyway (like cutting back on the new "K" supercomputer). So this one might also come to naught. Well, it all makes work for the working bureaucrat to do. How would we cope without them?

[jules' pics] Temple Cat

Myohonji, Kamakura. I prefer this photo small. Of course you may click on it if you want to see it bigger. It is a very friendly cat, and will come and purr on your knee given half a chance. It will also climb on people's tombstones, and drink the cups of water left at the graves for the spirits.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/06/2012 04:04:00 PM

[jules' pics] More pink

In case you were getting withdrawal symptoms, here is some more pink from Japan. Once again the magic botan (peony) at Hachimangu are flowering. I still have no idea how it is done - such large flowers blooming in midwinter.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/03/2012 09:17:00 PM

[jules' pics] not so yum yum

Bowls is popular so should you fail to get in before noon you may have to settle for one of the stalls in the grounds at Hachimangu. You can usually find a toffee grape (I must photograph one of these wonderous delicacies for you some time), but on major festivals there are many alternatives, none of which are at all appetising.

Roll over Scotland, these are battered deep fried whole potatoes:
Hiroshima style okonomiyaki: Okonomiyaki is batter with various tasteless stuff on. The Hiroshima style being because of the particular stuff. Usually served with a mildly unpleasant tasting sauce.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 2/01/2012 02:03:00 PM

RSS feed for comments

One limitation of blogger as a host is that it does not seem to provide an RSS feed for comments. Some other blog hosts do this, and sometimes the comments are more interesting than the posts. The closest thing a reader can usually do on blogger is get emailed new comments for a particular post, but only after commenting themselves.

I suddenly realised that it must be straightforward to set up an RSS feed for all comments, simply by arranging for them to be forwarded to a free email-to-rss service. So here it is.

[jules' pics] yum yum raw fishy

All week we eay the inventions of the canteen at work, and, healthy though it may be, by the weekend we are bored of cold bland food and soggy rice, so we eat foreign-style. There is, however, one Japanese restaurant in Kamakura which we are allowed to frequent on ocassion. Called Bowls, it serves bowls of rice with stuff on. The stuff is somewhat novel, sometimes with a Korean or maybe Californian twist. Here's their raw tuna with exotic sesame seed dressing and peculiar foreign-style lettuce-stuff! Doesn't it look delicious!?

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 1/30/2012 05:09:00 PM

[jules' pics] I saw three ships

It seems that every New Year's Day, just after dawn, three yachts launch and go sailing by at Kamakura beach. It is a curious thing. Not a very up to the minute picktur, but I tend to build up a backlog of pictures I like that I haven't got around to blogging. Meanwhile, last weekend was the Wimmin's Conference. I took lots of photos, and they'll go online, but visible only to the other Wimmin. What happens at Wimmin's Conference stays at Wimmin's Conference... ;-)

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 1/26/2012 01:19:00 PM

The "Gaijin Gulag" at Narita

A bit of a bizarre story has been doing the rounds. Initially on Debito, I assumed it would soon fade, but it was picked up by an Economist-hosted blog, which apparently means it is important and worthy of discussion just about everywhere. What happened is that some "Tokyo-based" freelance Canadian journalist was barred from (re-)entry into Japan late last year - he insinuates it was on the strength of some critical Fukushima-related articles - then bullied and threatened by some shady security forces in the bowels of Narita Airport, and finally forced at gunpoint (his words) into buying an overpriced one-way ticked to Canada, leaving home, girlfriend and pet dog in Tokyo. This was all described in extraordinary hyperbole on his own blog (which incidentally has been repeatedly altered in various materially important ways), then highlighted on Debito, and it went downhill from there.

It all sounded a bit odd, and people started asking of the author...so what was your actual visa status? This was met with volleys of vitriolic abuse and evasion. "I first had a work visa for Japan in 1989, and my last renewal began in 2008", he claimed, "I have never overstayed". But work visas only last three years (at most). Eventually, he wrote on his blog that it was in the process of renewal, but then he deleted that bit again. If (and it seems like a big if at this point) he actually did have a viable renewal application underway (not a trivial matter for a freelance journalist, work visas typically require a Japanese sponsor, and are rather specific as to the nature of the work), and had also been told it would be ok to travel with this status, then he would seem to have a leg to stand on, but his repeated evasion and misleading statements make it hard to take his story at face value. At any rate, his subsequent treatment is the responsibility of the (Korean) airline he flew in on, not Japanese immigration. Not that this would justify the treatment, but it does suggest that it may not be such an imminent threat to those of us who are actually living here with proper visas which authorise us to work in our jobs. That's not to say everything is great in Japanese immigration. It's pretty horrible everywhere, though.

His various blogging and commenting on Twitter, Debito and elsewhere gives the impression that he's a bit of a Walter Mitty fantasist, full of stories of his war experience and name-dropping his more famous "colleagues". He boasted about what a great contribution he made to Japan after the Fukushima accident (er, though it was also apparently this coverage that marked him out for expulsion): "But I didn’t flee Japan like thousands of foreigners after the March 11 disasters. I made personal sacrifices to tell the world about the plight of disaster victims, to generate sympathy for Japan. I earned income from sources outside Japan, and spent it inside Japan."

Google tells a different story, that he bravely filed his first-hand reports from Shizuoka, stoking the foreign media hype that many of us were so critical of at the time:

"I'm one of the last people I know to leave Tokyo," Johnson told CTV's Canada AM. Well, it seems like he has gone for good now.

Oh noes we're all going to die

Well, about 5,600 of us, in the next 4 years - or maybe 30. And considering that is a few thousand of of a population of about 30 million (depends how far out from central Tokyo you count) perhaps it's not actually that likely to hit me (or indeed any individual) personally. After all, close to half a million of us are going to die of something or other every year anyway, so an additional risk of well under 1% doesn't seem too much to get worked up over. But it would perhaps be a slightly less irrational reason to leave than the radiation paranoia...

Of course, if the earthquake hits the famous "Shibuya Eggman" nuclear power station, we might get another meltdown too!

Rainy run

Jules is away this weekend so I thought I should find something fun to do. However, I entered the 10k race at the Chiba Marine Marathon instead. "Marathon" in Japanese just means a long run, and as well as the 10k there was a half marathon, but there was actually not a full-length one at all. After what seems like weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine, the weekend turned drizzly and cold, so it wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped.

The facilities were pretty rubbish - in contrast to the Shonan event where they had set up tents, we were randomly packed into in the grimy alleys and stairways of a baseball stadium, and there was nowhere remotely secure to leave baggage. Not that this really matters in Japan. They had also not bothered to rent any portaloos and the existing toilets were inadequate for the numbers. Then there was a nasty and potentially rather dangerous crush at a pinch-point with thousands of people all trying to get out at the same time. It all made me realise just how well organised the Bolder Boulder and Shonan marathon had been in contrast. With the 10km race starting 10 minutes before the half-marathon, and from some distance away, I was wondering if I would get out in time - or indeed, at all - but in the end I had a quick 5 minute jog down the road as warm-up and then only 2 mins to wait at the start line, which in the cold and drizzly conditions was perhaps not that bad an option.

I was a few seconds faster than last time at 42:27 (206th out of ~5000), but had been hoping for rather more of an improvement. The crowd at the start probably cost me a bit of time - it was a rather bigger even than the Shonan and I was in the 2nd block with over 500 people ahead. Also, it was a bit breezy and of course wet under foot, which probably isn't conducive to that good a time. Maybe the biggest problem is I just wasn't trying hard enough though - everyone around me seemed to be panting away desperately from quite early on and I wasn't really that tired at the end.