Kesennuma and its terrifying tsunami ordeal

The recent tsunami basically 'trashed' the town of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture (Japan). What is so awesome and terrifying is the inexorable power of the water - it seems so slow at first, but gradually builds up into a maelstrom of water and debris with whole buildings being swept away:

Can Tho Bridge in southern Vietnam opens at last

It is bizarre how one becomes aware of news now in distant parts of the world. Earlier this morning I was scanning my cable television channels and happened to be watchiing NHK 24 news channel (the English-language 24 hour news service of NHK, a major Japanese televison channel), read about the channel here, when I saw a report of the opening yesterday of the much-delayed Can Tho Bridge in southern Vietnam:



Construction of the bridge started in 2004, but there was a major accident during September 2007 when a 90-metre section of an approach ramp to the bridge collapsed, killing over 50 and injuring around 140 of the construction workers (the exact numbers differ in various reports). Here's a video report from Vietnam television of the rescue efforts following the disaster:



Construction recommenced 11 months after the accident. It opened to traffic yesterday:



The bridge links Vinh Long province with Can Tho, a major city about 170 Km south of Ho Chi Minh City ("Saigon") and is expected to improve traffic flow dramatically to the southern provinces and to boost the economy of the region.

(Having visited and lived in Vietnam for several years I remain interested in what is happening there, even if I have somewhat ambivalent views about the country.)

An SNP supporter's tipple of choice (for pay)

Well-known SNP supporter, Sir Sean Connery, drinks that well-known brand of [not Scotch] whisky from Japanese producer Suntory. Presumably this ad. gets played to introduce the one-time 'Bond, James Bond' when he attends SNP functions?



And he looks so happy, don't you think?

Japan news - the great and the embarrassing (if you're British!)

One of the blogs I've been following for a few years now is one written by an Englishman living in Tokyo as it gives an often whimsical insight into life there. Anyway his latest blog article covers two items which have made the headlines in Japan, but I expect have hardly been noticed elsewhere (specially the second story below).

The first story is entirely serious - basically the fact that this year's Nobel Prize for Physics has been won jointly by three Japanese scientists for:

... their groundbreaking theoretical work which investigated the hidden symmetries among sub-atomic particles. Judges praised them for their outstanding contribution to the scientific world regarding their exploration of the nature of matter, and for making significant progress towards answering questions about how the universe began.

- no doubt followers of the Nobel Prizes in the scientific community will have been well-aware of this, but I don't recall it having been mentioned in the UK in the non-scientific media. Congratulations to the three!

Now on to the real 'meat' of this article, Englishman's second theme, which is about a story about a westerner (thought to be British, although one of the commenters to his article wonders if he was Spanish) who took a dip, in the nude, in the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace in Tokyo - obviously people were bemused and the police not amused. I'm embedding the AP video news report below for your amusement, but I do urge you to visit Englishman's article too, as he has a lot more pictures with some of his trademark 'bubble' comments and they are quite funny:



(It so happens that this is the only part of Tokyo that I have even a passing acquaintance with as when in that city I always stayed at the Imperial Palace Hotel, just across the park from the moat outside the Palace, as the office was very close by.)

Brown's "don't waste food" campaign

A lot of fun is being had in the blogosphere, mocking Gordon Brown's latest initiative, launched partly as the usual Sunday/Monday 'new policy' designed to fill the airwaves for half a day or a day and be soon forgotten, and partly to give him something important-sounding to say at the G8 summit in Hokkaido (Japan).

It's quite amusing to visit this year's G8 website because it has a very important announcement on the homepage that the image sizes are controlled to reduce electricity consumptiopn - fair enough - but the welcome video then proceeds to show various of the political leaders arriving in large aircraft. No doubt each of the Leaders has quite a large entourage, who will all need lodging, feeding and no doubt entertainment (geishas anyone? - not for Mr Merkel, I supppse, maybe she'll get a sumo wrestler). Have these people never heard of video-conferencing?

Anyway, to get back to Gordon Brown and his lectures to us on food. Whilst I think his latest effort at 'spin', as a subsitute for actually running the country even moderately effectively, may in theory have some small validity, his cack-handed presentational efforts don't fool anyone. On the other hand I know that many people, particularly younger people, are in my view overly-sensitive to 'best before' and 'use by' dates and other features of the health & safety mania that has infected our civilisation in recent years.

The flaws in planning ahead when buying food suppplies for a whole week ahead, which he suggests, have been outlined by others. A few examples:
- you do your 'big' shoppping at the weekend for the coming week or so and plan this or that chiiled pre-prepared dish for each evening meal, however later you decide to eat out rather than consume the lasagna or lamb shanks you had pencilled in for Wednesday and on Thursday or Friday you decide to have a take-out meal rather than eat the pizza waiting in the 'fridge;
- both go in the waste bin.

My system for many years has been to buy durable items (tinned or dried goods) irregularly, but in sizeable quantities. I buy fresh items (meat, fish, vegetables, fruit etc) in much smaller quantities, but much more regularly. I do not eat pre-prepared food. Ever. It is a simple matter to make an omelette or a salad, for example, and takes no longer than heating some pre-prepared muck in a micro-wave. It is also, in my view, less likely to be over-laden with salt and other questionnable chemicals, added purely for the convenience of the manufacturers and their profit margins.

As for 'use by' and 'best before' dates, I know what each of these terms means. I tend to obey the 'use by' warnings, specially where these appear on dairy products, although I do not believe that certain dairy items (blue cheeses, for example) need to be thrown out the moment the 'use by' date comes around. I positively ignore warnings on fresh meats, other than chicken or pork. I prefer my beef to be well-aged and trust my own judgement not to eat items which really are 'off'. I rarely if ever wash fresh fruit, such as cherries, strawberries or blueberries - possibly I occasionally (but almost never, in reality) have a slight tummy upset, but I think this allows my body to acquire some beneficial immunity to future infections. The most I do is rinse things briefly under a running tap. I'm still alive.

I rarely throw much away except around Christmas, when I probably over-cater in a fairly profligate way and have to throw quite a lot away afterwards, and if I am catering for larger numbers at other times of the year (for the occasional dinner parties or buffets I hold).

Whilst the Prime Minister may have a point, though, he makes himself look foolish by seeming to lecture people, specially when he could actually be doing what we pay him to do - manage the country effectively - something he has signally failed to do.

A 'doggy' tear-jerker from Japan

A very touching short film from Japan about a young girl called Mika and her dog Marimo:



- this did strike a chord with me as it will very soon be the first annniversary of the death of my own little dog Tara.
(thru Toby at Vividblurry)

"Pitfalls facing gay recruits overseas"

There's an interesting letter in today's Financial Times high-lighting some of the special problems gay staff with long-term partners may face when endeavouring to have their partners accompany them on overseas assignments. The case in the letter is not about some backward country, but the second economy in the world, Japan, which decided it no longer wished to allow a gay partner living there with his 'spouse' to re-enter the country after a trip abroad.

Midweek YouTube - Nintendo (Japan) and James Bond

Now, just pretend you hadn't read the title above and then answer honestly whether you had any idea this was an ad. for Nintendo until one of their game-players and logo were helpfully added to the screen:



Maybe it's different if you can follow the Japanese sound-track. Fun though.

Sunday YouTube - possibly a new series?

... and this one's educational, too! Enjoy the amazing weirdness of YouTube - it seems everything is there if you look for it ...

Admirable awareness of historical realities ...

... leads to the resignation of Japanese Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma. He dared to say that the dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was 'inevitable' and [was] "something that couldn't be helped" because the US must have thought they "could prompt Japan's surrender, thus preventing the Soviet Union from declaring war against Japan". Interestingly I hadn't appreciated that last aspect of the matter, although it is a fact that the war did end within days of the second bomb being dropped - and I doubt very much that this would have happened otherwise. Mr Kyuma represents Nagasaki in Parliament.

This brings to mind a luncheon I attended with a colleague whilst on a business trip (from Hong Kong) to Japan. Whilst in Tokyo we were taken to lunch each day by one of our Japanese colleagues and one one occasion our most senior Japanese colleague took us to a Japanese version of what a 'typical' British restaurant might have been like 70 or 80 years ago - immaculate table-cloths, crystal glassware and silver cutlery and the kind of British cuisine and dishes that are rarely seen nowadays; mediocre is the word that springs to mind. However, completely authentic if my own earliest childhood is any kind of guide. We took it for what it was - a kind and thoughtful gesture in an endeavour to make us feel at home; our Japanese colleague was completely unabashed by his total reverence for everything British. However, that's not really the point of this little story. The Japanese colleague would then (mid-1980s) have been in his mid-50s, just as I am now. Toward the end of WWII he was only 15 or 16 years old, so too young to have taken part at the start of the war, but as things got worse toward the final denouement younger and younger people were being drafted into the military - in the case of my colleague he was being trained as a kami kaze pilot. His manner of delivery was dead-pan, partly the result of his excellent but very precise use of the English language no doubt: "Luckily I didn't have to go on my mission, because the war ended the day before I was due to fly. Unfortunately all my family lived in Hiroshima." - his words have been imprinted in my memory ever since. Neither I nor my (English) colleague knew quite how to respond to what we had just heard, but in truth I don't think there was much useful that we could have said - even with the benefit of 20 or so years of hingsight. The best I can come up with is that war is hateful and that some of the things that happen in a war are specially hateful, but unfortunately some of those hateful things are necessary.