A Cunning Plan

HEY GAIZ! U NO THAT THING THAT COUNTRY DID THAT TURNED IT INTO AN INTERNATIONAL PARIAH? WE NEED A PIECE OF THAT. THAT’S THE GOOD SHIT.

Unexpurgated minutes there from the most recent meeting of Prime Minister Abe’s Senior Advisory Panel.

It’s Me! It’s Me!

Japan is home to a very specific type of con-artist. There’s something called ‘Ore Ore’ Fraud (that ore being pronounced not as in a miner striking a seam of metallic rock, but as in an aggressively drunk Spaniard sarcastically celebrating the murder of a cow), which essentially translates as ‘It’s me, it’s me’.

The con works like this: the scamsters aggressively and persistently harangue their victims, often in their own homes, repeating the same simple message – “It’s me! It’s me!” – and through providing that information and nothing else hope that the natural credulity and weak-mindedness of their targets will act to embellish whatever details are necessary to convince them that this ‘me’ is someone who they actually know and appreciate and value. Once this cognitive sleight-of-hand has been achieved, the fraudsters then convince their marks to give them stuff that if they actually thought about it in any meaningful way at all they’d be extremely reluctant to bestow on them.

The Shock of the New

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything specifically about Japan, but then this categorically isn’t a blog about Japan, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I don’t. No, YOU shut up. Anyway, the reasons for this go beyond just a lack of time. The simple truth is that I’ve been keeping this blog for almost three years now and it really feels like I’ve covered most of the stuff in the news already.

This Racist Dolphin Spoke About The Comfort Women. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!

Join me as I go all out on a click-bait friendly round-up of the week in shitty Japanese media relations. Please join me. Please. I can’t do this on my own. Really. Probably best if you took away my shoelaces and any sharp objects as well. You don’t even have to hold my hand. Just be here and promise to call the emergency services if necessary.

How Does He Smell?

Terrible

I know, I’m getting as sick of the (geo)political claptrap as the rest of you but really, this one is too good to ignore. The Japanese and Chinese ambassadors to the UK have been using The Daily Telegraph to perform what I can only assume to be a hideously ill-conceived piece of postmodern performance art, wherein they act out a warped parody of Spartacus by accusing one another of being Lord Voldemort. Yes, that one. From the Harry Potter books. I swear I’m not making this up.

Fingering the Pulse

This could have been so much worse

My ongoing twitter experiment to try and maintain some semblance of a grasp on current events continues to bear mixed fruit. The consensus on recent events appears to be that we’re all going to die in the now inevitable Sino-Japanese pissing contest over a bunch of rocks, but that’s OK because no one is allowed to talk about it anyway.

Little Pause

See what I did there?

They say it’s better to travel than to arrive. Whoever ‘they’ were obviously never attempted a 16 hour intercontinental flight with children under the age of three. Doing it with just the one was bad enough, so I can’t say I’m exactly cock-a-hoop about the prospect of trying it with two. At least last time all he did was eat and sleep and cry, and one of the first two of those usually sorted out the third. This time he can actually walk, and that doesn’t bode well.

The Geography of Thought

How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why

Richard E. Nisbett, 2003

(June 2013)

  

God, I hate this book so much.

Choice

So then. Toru Hashimoto. The man makes my face hurt. Seriously, it’s a genuine physical reaction every time I see him on TV or in the newspapers or on the internet or in my dreams and still waking nightmares smiling with his smug self-obsessed areshole of a face with the same blissfully ignorant grin you see on the face of a toddler who’s just taken a crap in the middle of the living room carpet and is now pointing at it with witless pride and expecting congratulations because he’s made the entire house stink of shit, and he did it all by himself.

More Weight

“The number of teachers hired for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program would be doubled in three years...”

As the old saying goes, “Quality not something something I forget the rest fuck it let’s just throw money at the problem.”

When all you need is a knife

Taro Aso, current finance minister and deputy prime minister of Japan, has spoken of his annoyance with what he perceives as the negative impact of certain sections of Japan’s elderly population. His opinions chime with those of a significant body of commentators who feel that the allowances made for some older members of Japanese society are excessively generous and forgiving.

“The problem won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die,” said the 72-year-old former prime minister.

Credit where it's due.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

I recant. I repent. I confess. Forgive me father for I have sinned. Nevermore shall I blaspheme and take the name of AKB48 in vain. I am converted. The scales have been lifted and on the road to Akihabara mine eyes have beheld the glory, the fury, the majesty and the triumph that is the blistering satire of AKB. I was blind but now I see. The Lord is Light and She has illuminated my ere wretched path with the wisdom and the knowledge that, in a land justly unheralded for its political lampoonery, AKB48 are perhaps the most ambitiously conceived, expertly executed, and insidiously subversive commentary on the body politic ever unleashed on an unexpecting world.

Work with me on this.

Obligatory Election Post

Here’s something I’ve noticed about Japanese elections: they’re a bit noisy, aren’t they? What with all those vans driving around just shouting people’s names. Why, just the other day I…

Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got

Christ, I’m going to have to write about the fucking rocks, aren’t I?

In which I bitch about TV commentators being shit

Which is rather like complaining that water is wet, I know. But Christ on a bike, did you see the Olympics’ closing ceremony on NHK? Just fucking useless. Take a fucking bow.

But can it play the fiddle?

"A Japanese electronics company unveils its £900,000 robot which weighs four tonnes and is 13ft tall. The robot can be controlled by an iPhone and is fitted with a futuristic weapons system, including a gun capable of shooting 6,000 BB bullets a minute, set to fire when the pilot smiles."


Priorities, people. Priorities.

Microaggression

Apparently this is a thing now. Who knew?

Monday to Friday

Part One went up on Friday, for those of you who missed it. Up to speed now? Right then, on with part two…

Apes on a Train

I tried to be strong. Truly I did. But, lord knows, I’m a weak and venal man and the temptation was just too powerful. I was never going to make it through forty days of the devil whispering sweet nothings in my ear and so I’ve caved. Caved. Collapsed. Folded like a dead-beat poker hustler watching his final chips disappear in an illicit Chicago speakeasy.

Here are my mandatory microaggression posts. I hope you’re fucking happy now.

A Storm of Swords

Part Two: Blood and Gold

George R R Martin, 2000

(April 2012)

I started reading the Song of Ice and Fire books last year, in all the excitement surrounding the TV series. They’re very good, but catching up on all the published ones in a dash meant they fell prey to Box-set Syndrome a touch. More than that though, I actually started then stopped reading this book last August, before picking it up again recently (TV hype once more). The reason for that hiatus has less to do with reading them all at once and more to do with girls in bikinis and Kim Bauer.

You should be aware than in the course of explaining that, I’ll be pissing spoilers everywhere. Pissing them like a nervous toddler taking his first swimming lesson.