Commando God

So this kid is called Kintaro.  He looks like a god who is sneaking up on a giant fish, about to eat it.

But the truth is somewhat less bizarre.

きんたろ。  This boy became a particularly famous samurai because when he was a child, he fought a bear and won.  Kin means money, and gold means money, so I assume the gold laden, giant fish flag with a revered samurai keeps the coffers full.

This is the sign for a restaurant (of sorts) near my house, it's far more interesting than the building itself.  I don't really know what the proprietor is doing in the middle of nowhere, but it's been open for a year (at least) so it must make money somehow.

And just to prove how 'in the middle of nowhere,' it is; this is the view from outside my school.

I can't control the order of the pictures, so here are some other flags.  These ones don't have commando gods about to go Arnie all up in the house, but they're covered in gold - suggesting people everywhere value money more than, say, good health.  Good to know!

This poster confuses me.  First of all, the woman looks like she's being tortured just out of shot.  That smile is the most fake thing I have ever seen in my life.  It's the stuff of nightmares.

Secondly, they're eating rice but wearing eggs on their head.  What.

And part C references the fact they're wearing yellow Judo suits with red belts.  Why?

It rained rather heavily on Monday (I have a two day turnaround with my new camera, apparently) so on the way back from the gym I ended up trying to get some wet weather shots.  It's surprisingly difficult to get a shot that indicates it's been raining, so I ended up with nothing of interest.

I quite like this shot of one of my adjacent apartment buildings, just because the darkness blends into the building, making the light parts really stand out from the page.  Aside from that, not of any interest.

This is another shot into the rain - water all over the lense.

This is what the inside of most of the middle school classrooms look like.  They hold about thirty-five students per class, which means I didn't frame the whole class.

It's funny because these classrooms are a bit bigger than the elementary school ones, but they can have 40 kids in them.  40 Year 6 kids means they have literally no room between their desks, no room to breath or move.  Imagine being stuck on a transatlantic flight for eight hours every day, in economy class.  That's what it's like.  Except the food in the plane is better.

That same apartment complex.

A green fish flag!

I don't know what green means, but it often represents growth, new beginnings, fertility - that kind of thing.  That's my guess and I'm sticking with it.

I bumped the ISO to 6400 and you can see the noise of the camera.  It's the digital equivalent of grain on old film I suppose - and most people think it looks ugly.  I don't mind it, however.  I'm going to put a proviso in here and say too much is a bad thing, obviously, but at these levels I have no problem with it.

LET'S ALL BE FRIENDS.  FUCK THE NON-AYRIANS (Arian? Aryan? How do you spell that?)

Now for a mini rant.

In Japan, every single western foreigner is blonde with blue eyes.  Even though I have weird eyes and brown hair, every foreigner is blonde with blue eyes.  Disregard the fact that blonde people make up less than 20pc of those living in the south east of England, or the fact that not everyone who is blonde will have blue eyes - EVERYONE WHO IS WESTERN HAS BLUE HAIR AND BLONDE EYES.  Wait a second, there's something wrong with that last sentence.

Anyway, the one person who isn't blonde, is ginger.

For the sake of christ himself, why bother with stereotypes if they have no bearing in reality whatsoever.  At least some of the stereotypes I know of, use reality as their foundation.

This is just an illustration of my point - if I took a picture of every foreigner who is blonde with blue eyes, I'd never be able to remove my hands from the camera.

The Japanese-German wartime bonds manifest in surprising ways.  I wonder if this is a long-running joke on behalf of the germans, or whether the idea of blonde/blue is so deeply ingrained that it has just become normal?

Conspiracy theorists GO!

This was the only shot I was able to take, showing rain as it was falling.  It must be to do with the impromptu backlighting from the car.  That's definitely a piece of information worth noting.

A small fish flag, showing the commando boy/god.  I think they airbrushed the blowpipe out of his hands for fear of militarising their students.  What am I saying - they teach their kids to march and perform military turns during their ceremonies, and make them stand to attention/at ease during said events; the blowpipe wouldn't be any more militaristic.

The last picture (praise be to commando boy!).

＃EDIT#

I read a few BBC articles today, one of them was immensely profound in my eyes (and probably only in mine) but the others made me laugh.

This article is patently ridiculous, and is made better by the fact that the guy passed a breathalyser (sp?) test.

This article shows why the BBC (or any organisation) can't be trusted with reporting 'facts.'

'Of the 200 hard disks collected, 11% contained personal information.'

We then scroll down further and read:

'Nearly half (48%) contained some information, 11% of which was deemed personal information.'

So which is it?  Is it 11pc of all the hard disks, or 11pc of the 48pc that had information on them?

To be honest I don't think this is a malicious attack on the intelligence of human beings everywhere - more an oversight borne of excruciating dullness within the writing staff.  My point being, this is at best vague to the point of misunderstanding (by myself, admittedly not the best commentary on a writers failings) and at worst, wrong.

A crux worthy last line - if they can get something so simple wrong, how do they fare when treating something with genuine complication?  (Hint: they don't)

And the last article is something I could write about ad infinitum.  (Latin scholars, behold the destruction of your dead language in the hands of a luddite!)

Here, it's a long read (by BBC standards) both for its actual length, and the difficulty of some paragraphs forcing you to read twice.  (I struggled with some of the points, which, at the risk of battering you over the head with it, doesn't really mean much)

I don't agree with everything that's written.

'We would give birth to only one baby per couple - this way we would not overwhelm poor, suffering Europeans with our desire to travel outside our villages...'

This part, for example, comes across massively embittered.  I don't know of any western-led forced sterilization programmes occurring within any African nations, but to humour the writer for a moment, let's assume there were some incentivised programme for a reduction in birth rate.  We have seen with china, and are currently seeing with India, that massive increases in population can have great economic benefits.  The engine driving these economies is a workforce that outnumbers their western counterparts 5:1, with pay many times less than the actual value of their work.

If we take the liberty of saying 'Africa,' when we actually mean the constituent nations, (thereby lumping every country together, something I abhor about how the continent is perceived within Japan) then they are at risk of following the same path.  Sure, it would theoretically be great for production, and might open opportunities within certain economic sectors, but their country will not survive.  The beauty, of which many people are fond, would be destroyed through industrialization.  Beyond that, large numbers of people cannot be sustained.  There are breaking points.  China wouldn't have enacted drastic culling measures if the problem weren't severe, and once India wakes up and smells the faeces, they will start lowering their population.

From the inside looking out, I can, without a doubt, see why any such plans might seem like external pressures forcing our ideals on others - but we cannot survive as a species with this rate of growth in the developing world.  The vast majority of people live in third world countries, the west is not the prime creator of human beings.  To mock us, when we are 1/6th of the global population is short-sighted; to accuse us of xenophobia while blaming the west for your problems - hypocritical.

As for the energy concerns within Africa, (although not raised within this article) every criticism is warranted.  We force renewable tech onto them to ensure we have all the non-renewables for ourselves.  There's not a single way of vindicating such actions, especially considering we won't allow them nuclear options (presumably for fear of dictators making nukes, as opposed to our elected leaders who wouldn't even pass a psychological evaluation to get into our respective militaries).

The writer is falling into a huge trap by suggesting that African nations cosy up with china, however.  They've already started investing in raw resources within Africa, and they'll doubtless treat the various nations with far more respect than the west will ever give.  The problem comes in ten years time.  When the African nations owe the chinese, in the same way that south american nations owe the U.S.A, or various nations have previously owed England.  When the chinese cash their cheques, there will be enormous ructions.  People will die, is the bottom line.

Whether china is a worse option than us is entirely debatable.  Whether china is any better than us is not - the country that holds all the bonds is the country that dictates terms; those terms will never be favourable for the 'little guy,' in the long-term.

To suggest one superpower is 'better,' than another is disingenuous, we are all selfish assholes out for the betterment of our own elite.  Africa has to stand on its own two feet, but it can't do that under the shadow of Europe or china.

The fact the writer is so vehemently anti-west shows how badly our meddling has gone.  I wonder if we'll ever reconcile our mistakes (I've given up hope that differences between anyone be reconciled, that is a literal (and I do mean literal in the literal sense) impossibility).  It's doubtful, what with the well of human stupidity extending deep within Africa, Europe and America; but I guess we can be hopeful.

As I said before, I could write forever about this article, but I'll stop there.

These Are a Few of my Angriest Things

Yes, I know the title doesn't make any sense but:

These are the things that make me angry.

So yesterday was Sunday.  Sunday in Japan means nothing being open for more than a couple of hours - kind of like the west back in 1800; when everyone had dysentery.

This wouldn't be a problem, except I wanted to buy some food.  I am a hungry fellow, that's for sure.

Anyway, I was late to the post office (it closed at 4) which meant I couldn't buy food.

Why do I need to go to the post office to buy food?  Well, simply put, everything is cash here.  I'm sure I've written about it before, but a country that relies on cash is a country begging to fall into obscurity.  It appears to me, that a cash carrying society is ridiculous in every sense in this era.  When we devolve into the spineless soup coloured blob monsters from that cartoon where everyone whistles, and they live on the moon (I can hear my dads impression of it now, but I don't know the name); we will all use cash.  It's such a backwards form of bartering - paper assuming value; that's like using spaghetti to build bridges!  (Or something)

We must start using the digital - credit cards for everything.

Of course there is a problem with that.  The Japanese really enjoy being gouged at every opportunity.  They love a good, solid, cactus based rectal examination - that's the only reason they put up with it costing them more than one pound fifty (current exchange rates may vary; bank of Sam) to withdraw money from an ATM that isn't affiliated with their bank.  In fact, I think they pay that much if they have any bank account other than the post office (I make that assumption because everyone I know complains about the price of accessing their own money, so they're either stupid or compliant).  It boggles my mind.  It really does.  You can feasibly take cash out once every two weeks (taking too much risks robbery, too little risks bankruptcy; this being a situation begging for satire)  which means paying three quid a month.  That's thirty odd quid a year, without factoring a trip to a shopping centre (luckily large purchases can be made on a card) or unexpected expenses.  I get bills through my door every other day, so he-who-shall-not-be-named only knows how many unexpected bills a family must get.

That's a chunk of change given to a company, for the pleasure of them having all your goddamn money anyway.

Anyway.

The other thing that's annoying me right now, in this specific sliver of time, is that one of the kids in my school speaks English.  He speaks English well, having grown up in the Philippines.  He is taking daily Japanese lessons (he's only been here a while, and it turns out his Japanese isn't so hot) during what would otherwise be English lessons.  This is a great idea - he gets nothing out of English lessons (he does an amazing job of looking attentive, even when we're basically teaching the class the equivalent of I like burgers (of course it's american, so it has to be burgers) for the fiftieth time) and he needs to practice Japanese.  Now the problem is that he only gets to speak to his mum in English.  Without actually knowing the facts, I'm going to assume he speaks mainly Japanese at home (his dad is Japanese, dads are always the household leaders, and he needs to practice) which means his exposure to English is going to be, at the very best, limited.

He has another four years of this limited exposure.  While English may be one of his native languages, he will lose it.

I understand that should he stop now, he will maintain a base level that far exceeds anything I might hope to achieve with any other language, regardless of how long I study.  He will be able to speak better English in fifty years with no further practice, than I will be able to speak Japanese in fifty years if I practiced every day.

But it won't be great.

It won't be the kind of English that will land him a job.  It won't be good enough for his doors to remain open - he will have to adopt a recruitment procurement technique (shifting paradigms, business rhetoric like) akin to mugging.  Recruitment by slightly-crooked window entry.  He will have to sneak in the back door, as it were.  This, frankly, isn't good enough.

He doesn't know it now, but he will never be accepted in Japan.  He may well try his damndest to get a 'respectable,' (insofar as that means anything anymore) job in Japan, and he may well get his foot into the door.  He may rise a few ranks, get a few promotions, but his job will stagnate and he will be cast aside - regardless of how well he speaks Japanese.

But if the Japanese education system has its way, he won't have enough English to go elsewhere.  He will be, quite literally, stuck.

I find it morally ambiguous (at best) to take a bi-lingual kid and force him to become mono-lingual.  Regardless of whether there are any specific aims for 'homogenisation,' (a term they love to use in the literature here) regarding this specific child, it's cruel to take an option away from someone.  It seems almost worse than not offering that option in the first place.

The Japanese kids I teach will never be able to speak English.  The education system is laughable, the attitude here is one of indifference (again, at best) which leads to English being a comedy subject (much like R.E in England) which means that no one thinks of the significance of language.  They teach their kids to be wary of going outside of Japan, so it's a self-fulfilling circle that they are happy with.

Bringing a kid who has the potential to 'see the world,' (for whatever that means to you) into such an environment; not cool man.

Then again maybe I'm reading too much into this.  Maybe he'll get to university after four years of no English language study, join a programme that allows him to learn and spread his proverbial wings.

Maybe he won't give a crap about English (an entirely valid point of view taken by the vast majority of people, don't forget) and settle into a life of being a person sized, society based skeleton in the closet.

Who knows?

Rugby Pictures / We're Going to War

It won't be North Korea that sends us over the edge, but the Argentinian leader who brings everyone to the brink again.  I make this statement because she just took over a Repsol energy plant (oil and gas I think) in the name of Argentina.  This, on the back of demanding the return of the Falklands, and previously nationalising their pension system.  It's all going Pete Tong over there, and I think it'll eventually spill over into violence.  The fact that the local population are buying into the rhetoric is a sign that they must be desperate - desperation leads to stupidity; stupidity in human terms, means violence.

Anyway, geopolitical intrigue aside - here are some pictures!

I took these on Sunday, as TGRFC (Tokyo Gaijin Rugby Football Club) had a game against a north korean expat team, believe it or not.

There are relatively few north koreans outside their homeland, of which (the media would have you believe) most go to south korea (or 'shithole central,' as I like to call it).  The fact that there is a team of expats here, somewhat undermines the view we have of them, as being narrow minded drones doesn't quite fit with living in the land that ultimately caused the korean war.  Think of the hate England has the world over - intensify that a thousand fold, add in mongoloid politicians who enjoy stirring the flames of hatred every couple of years, then to cap it off drop a bomb here or there, or sink some ships for the hell of it.  That is the disdain east asian countries hold for each other.

Having bloodlines and lineages be more important than life is a bloody dangerous thing.  Pray we never return to that way of thinking.

Anyway, I somehow derailed myself.

Pictures.

I've set up a flickr account so you can see the (literally) hundreds of other shots I've taken in the week since getting my camera.  Not all of these are my favourites, but they are somewhat varied.  I've kept a couple of 'good ones,' (for what my taste is worth in your eyes) solely on flickr to encourage you to visit that page.  Nothing is up there yet, but should be within 24 hours.


In other news, the most pointless invention in the world ever:

http://news.walkerplus.com/2012/0413/15/

Just wear a shirt or do the extra button up, for christs sake.

#EDIT#  Oh, and Japan has the death penalty.  Minus 1 point for stupidity on their part.

They hang people.  Minus ten points for being stuck in 1600's medieval Europe.  Plus ten points for still having a human blood sport.  Maybe Battle Royale is based on real life events.

General Update

I went to watch the Tokyo Gaijin play rugby at the weekend (my knee is still too bad to play).  We lost, but it was close.  The lack of go forward really cost us, as our defence was generally solid - something we've been working towards but often falling short of achieving.

There were a few other individual positives.  There's a guy I've never seen before, who tackles like a psychopath.  I don't mean he does anything illegal; he just lacks disregard for his own personal well-being.  It helps that he's probably pushing 100kg's in a country where that's the exception, but how he's still up and walking around is a mystery to me.

We broke their line a dozen times during the course of the match, but only scored twice.  One of them was the score of the season, with linkup play from four or five players culminating in a big fijian with ten metres to go.  Very few could stop him from that far out.  It was sensational, and it appears to be how we end up scoring most of our points.

As I wasn't playing, it was a good opportunity to take my camera along and snap some photos - and snap I did.  I filled up a 32 gig memory card, which came to about 800 pictures.  I was shooting in raw, so each picture was about 20-25 megs.  I shot some video, one of which is on youtube:

(For the full HD experience, you have to head on over to youtube.)

The pictures will be uploaded tonight.

Now here's where I face a problem.  Of the 800 I took, 174 were worth putting on facebook because they had a face on them.  20 were worth uploading because they were interesting.  Do I put them all up and let you sift through them, or do I just pick a few decent ones?

I'm thinking of starting a Flickr account so that I can link people to that, and they can peruse if they wish.

Answers on a postcard please.

Phototastic Bonanza

So I obviously bought a new camera recently.  You can tell, because every post has a ton of photographs that look like someone searched for 'stereotypes of Japan,' into google, and posted what he found.

This was an attempt at that whole blurred out writing thing.  I include it because it's a failure, on the way to a success later on.  Success in as far as it's a direct copy of ten thousand pictures you've seen before.

The middle school  façade

 So this is the front of the school.  It's a façade in that it both acts as the outward facing part of the school, and that it only purports to teach people.  Aha, see what I did there?

Anyway...

Paint peeling

 This shot was actually taken using the HDR option in the camera.  I won't get into what that means (maybe another time) but it can give a few different effects depending on how it's implemented.  In this case, I think it gives a kind of fill-in flash effect for the whole scene.  The shadows are much lighter than you would otherwise expect, and the sky isn't sheer white.  It takes a couple of seconds to adjust to it, for the reasons stated (at least that's why I had to look at it a couple of times - something does seem 'off,' about the picture).

This was taken in a cemetery.  Spooky.

This is the more successful of the two attempts at that asian characters all blurred out 'thing.'  What you can't (thankfully) see are the hundred other slightly adjusted shots.  I don't have the eye for sizing up a shot and just taking one picture; to be honest I think that's something the film generation will have over purely digital users.

This place is just down the road from me, but I don't know what purpose it serves

This is another HDR shot.  Both were handheld so I presume it's all blurred out in several places.  It makes this effect by under and over exposing a number of shots (3, 5 or 7 I think) which leads to the otherwise lost details being visible.

This is a picture

I don't know why I took this one.

A lot of the graves have these long lollipop sticks

Or why I took this one.

It was bicycle inspection day at the school, so all the bikes were out on the 'field,' to be inspected for defects and problems.  Notice how every bike is the same size, colour, shape and make.  The levels of conformity in this country are terrifying.  Everyone has to wear a helmet too.  Nerds!

Just another picture with no real story

Erm...

I liked the contrast between the colourful flowers and the greys of the gravel and stones.  It feels super asian with the designs, writing and pagoda things in the background; but loses some charm points for the stainless steel surround.

I just liked it

I took this because the design on the end-stop was quite interesting, but was too small to exist within the frame of a single picture (I kind of want a specialist macro lense for taking pictures of really tiny things like insects or flowers).

And that's it for pictures.

For other news, check this out.  We all know marriage is an antiquated idea designed to destroy the independence of both parties, while ensuring large organisation (church, government) can keep us towing their line (taxes, petty religious morality).  While the idea of marriage, and to a wider extent, religion, is obviously detrimental to the advancement of the human race - I respect a man who corners a woman in such a magnificent fashion.  Why propose in public?  To ensure the answer you want to hear.  Of course, if you want to propose you must be a complete lunatic with no spine, but that's neither here nor there.

In other news, one of the best ideas on the interwebs is in beta.  I've made a couple of sketches and am going home tonight to upload them onto my profile.  NotAllama, for all of you who dare to challenge my creations monstrosities abominations.

Pictures, and Maybe a Video

So I went around school taking pictures, most of which were of the kids playing around at lunchtime.  I don't know the legality of using those kids photographs (you can get sent to 'drop the soap in the shower,' kind of prison here for taking a picture) so I won't upload them here.

I will upload a couple of pictures I took elsewhere though.

Bloody kids

I wanted to go up to the roof of the school, but some kids snapped a nail into the roof lock.  I'll get up there eventually, there must be a great view of the surrounding area.

White cherry blossoms

This is the image everyone has of Japan, cherry blossoms in Spring.  It would be a terrible shame not to include a picture that you can find a million variations of using google images.

Fish flags.  Obviously the symbol of childhood.

These are koinoburi, which is koi flags.  I think I reported on them last year.  They're something to do with childrens day and good luck.  I've no idea what specifically, though.  I know these koi represent struggle against hardship (think salmon swimming against a mountain river), but beyond that I have no real specifics.

My house is about fifty metres to the right.  Quite rural.

A wide shot of the flags show that this particular area takes them quite seriously.  Koi, Koi everywhere!

That's not my house

This is one of the white cherry blossoms near my house.  They're not as prolific in my area, other places have hundreds arranged to be as photogenic as possible.

And the Pièce de résistance:

Please feel free to read the description so I don't have to write the same things twice or thrice...


Disappointingly, it's only 480p.  It was recorded in 1080p, honest!

A Few More Photos

I found a couple more photographs of myself.  One is from aaaaaaages ago, the other is bananaman.

Everything looks classier in black and white.

 For some reason (I don't know what that is) this picture came out in black and white.  I can assure you that the original is quite colourful.  You can see just how much so, below.  I suggest you click the pictures to see the full sized versions, they truly are a spectacle to behold.

These two pages are the entire staff for one of my elementary schools.  I'll only be going to this school once a week from now on (score!), and that's on Fridays.  I don't know how many teachers have changed positions.  The Japanese enact a rotation policy for all teachers, so you may well end up going to a different school every year.  It's a great idea in theory, because new employees tend to exude energy, if not confidence.  The younger teachers can also, theoretically speaking, spread around the new philosophies of teaching (you'd be surprised how quickly ideas are thought up and debunked).

This falls flat on all fronts however, for reasons I will now explain at great, painstaking length.

New teachers don't have a reputation, which means kids walk all over them.  There are no enforcers in Japanese schools, so discipline is somewhere between medium and maximum security american penitentiary systems.

Each school behaves in a subtly different way, which means you could have the sweetest gig in the world (like at my old mountain school, it was quite literally the nicest school I've ever seen, in all regards) just to be dumped into a 40 kid fifth year class the next year.  The anxiety over not knowing where you're going to be working from year to year is terrible.  It's bad enough for me (ALT's are expendable in the same way as prophylactics) without a family, or frankly, care in the world.  If you had either of those it would be awful.

You might have a twenty minute commute one year, only to have an hour commute the next.  There's no point moving, because you'd end up on the wrong side of a move the very next year.

In Japan, new employees, teachers and even students adhere to a strict hierarchy - thus rendering any effusive energies fruitless, as they must kowtow to any and all above them.

So that's basically how the Japanese education system never got past the pie-in-the-sky planning stages, and yet somehow still exists today.

Say that to my face

This is the scariest face I can muster.  Useless.