Balloon Shapes by cops!

In some other news that has not yet reached my English language paper is that the Japanese government has passed (or in the process of passing, not sure) a bill that will put an IC chip in the gaijin cards that every foreigner living here has to carry.
These Alien Registration Cards are basically a form of identity and police can (and do) stop foreigners and demand to see it.

It's never happened to me, but I've heard from other people about it.

I personally have no problems carrying one, it's used to sign up for libraries, driving licenses, and other official things, so pretty useful.

But not entirely sure why they want to track my movements.
I remember about a year ago this idea was first mooted, and the chip would record when I went into libraries, government buildings and other official places.
The question is:
a) Why do they want to know when I go in these places?
b) Why don't they want to know when, say, my wife, who's Japanese, goes in there?

There's also the potential that the system could be expanded to train stations, busses, cinemas, shopping malls, or anywhere.

Foreigners get blamed for a lot of crime in Japan unfortunately, - mind you the same thing happens in Britain, so that's not a criticism of the Japanese particularly - but usually you only tag criminals after they've been found guilty.

Having said all that, like I said before, nothing has been written recenty in my English language paper about it, so don't really know any details, so for all I know it may be perfectly harmless.

But it's like the fingerprinting of all foreigners (or Aliens, as we are called here - something I find particularly unpleasant) at the airports as you come in to the country.

As soon as you land in Japan you're made to feel unwelcome and a potential criminal.

I would like to emphasise that this is "official" Japan - i.e. government policy, etc.

Individual Japanese are 99% of the time incredibly friendly, welcoming and very polite and helpful to foreigners.

Finally, after about 18months since Nova (the English conversation school in Japan) collapsed due to, shall we say, mis-management of funds, the arch villain of the piece, Monkey Bridge (Nozomu Sahashi) is on trial for "Professional embezzlement involving misuse of the reserve funds og an employees' mutual aid organization".
Which is basically a convoluted way of saying, he stole employees wages and rent from one company (Nova) and put the money in his own company.

When the trial started apparently he apologised to staff and teachers (many of whom had to leave Japan and go back to their home country, some of whose only experience of Japan is working for 2 months for no wages while eating cup noodles every day, before calling home for financial help for a flight home), and said he'd done nothing wrong.

Now the prosectors are after 5 years jail time, he's changed his tune a bit and is now saying he's fully responsible and will try to pay back the money.

He's also claiming that it was all one of his sub-ordinates ideas (to steal the cash) and he (Monkey Bridge) always intended to pay it back.

The ruling is expected at the end of August, and I'm hoping for a little jail time for the man. (Not that I hold a grudge at all )

The other week I had to go to Tokyo for a business trip, which meant I had to take the early bullet train (shinkansen), and get up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am!

I wrote this on the train on that morning:
「
Waiting for the 6:32 am bullet train to Tokyo. I'm surprised at how many trains there are to Tokyo and West at this time of the morning.
About every 8 minutes a train sees to depart like a normal rush hour but 2 hours early (I guess all the salarymen need to be in Tokyo for the 9 o'clock meeting start time).

As the Nozomi train pulls in with its absurdly long sloping nose it arrives like something literally from the future. Perfectly smooth and sleek like a white tube with port-holes.

It pulls in and you're just greeted with white sides of the train (perfectly proportioned so you can see none of the engines from where you're standing on the platform), the door slides open and you step in.

The inside is deceptively spacious. More leg room than a Business Class flight, with wide aisles (seats are 2 and then 3 across) and wide enough seasts for maybe even a Sumo wrestler.

But the most impressive aspect has to be the smooth, quiet engine. Almost imperceptible, just the relaxing click of the train tracks which soon vanishes as you leave the station area.

Quieter than a car and as smooth as a monorail. Lovely.

And the best thing...about 2 and a half hours later, it pulls in to Tokyo station at exactly the time stated on the ticket. Not a minute early or late.
」

Well, all I can say is, my prose is a lot more flowery at 6:30 am.

I wasn't able to get a picture of the train, but did take this shot of my bento (boxed meal) I had on the way back. Tasted quite nice too.

oh, and in case you've ever wondered what a Japanese Business Hotel room looks like (a businesss hotel is a cheap, no frills, tiny hotel room for travelling salarymen - but a good cheap alternative for tourists too!)

Panic seems to have set in in Hyogo, as 8 High school students were diagnosed with Swine Flu over the weekend.
They're from a school just 2 train stops away (between us and Kobe), and so schools and museums in our city have been closed.

One of the funny things about the Japanese is that although they are very careful and cautious in business and other social interactions (a big complaint from Western companies doing business with Japanese is how long and laborious the process is as everything is checked, re-checked and re-discussed over and over again), however at other times, such as a new diet or a potential flu outbreak, there's a sense of panic and overreaction.

(The new diet, in case you were wondering is the banana diet that was a hit here for about a week - some tv programme said if you eat a banana in the morning and a glass of water you will lose weight - bananas nationwide seemed to sell out straightaway. For about a week, till people lost interest and looked for the next new thing). Same thing with the natto diet last year.

Anyway, I digress...

It's not uncommon to see people wearing masks on any normal day, people wear them if they have a cold, if someone they know has a cold, or if someone near them might have a cold. Or of course if they have hayfever.
However, chemists near us have sold out of masks as everyone rushes to buy them.
We stopped off at the local supermarket on the way home last night to find all the staff wearing them.

Having said that I was surprised when commuting this morning, expecting the only person not wearing the mask to be me, but only about 60% of people had them on. This might increase as the week progresses (perhaps as new stocks of masks are shipped in from elsewhere )

I sneezed a couple of times on the train this morning, but to be honest was a bit disappointed by the reaction.
Maybe it was just too crowded for people to slowly inch away from me.

We were shocked to discover that Universal Studios Japan were closing down the ET ride in May after 20 or so years! Guess he was finally going home (ahem)

Well we had to check it out one more time - mainly for the bit near the end when he says your name (you have to tell it to an assistant at the beginning of the ride, who stores it in some barcodey card thing).

I wanted him to say "Terry Swails" - a character from A Bit of Fry and Laurie - although I've just found out he also does weather on the internet at TerrySwails.com. Neat. Anyway, back to USJ...so I said "Terry Swails" to the Japanese girl at the counter, but the poor girl had no idea what I was saying so we ended up with "Te---reee".

Which was nice to hear EeeeeTeeee say.

The weather wasn't too good so the park was fairly empty, just 15minutes queue time for Spiderman and the Hollywood Dream roller coaster (where you get to listen to The Beatles as you roller coaster along), but everyone was also saying goodbye to ET so that queue was about an hour.

No idea what they're going to replace it with but hope it's as much fun as the Munchkin Merry-Go-Round in the Land of Oz