Squabbling Foreigners...

The JT can't break its addiction to stupid letters from insane gaijin. I guess they think it makes your average Japanese letter writer (all 2 - 3 of them?) look good. Grant Piper, as usual, is at the center of the latest fray which is all about what a good letter to the JT should be like, about, whatever.

Hopelessl...

I thought it must be a joke, but no. The Japan Times changed its layout more than a week ago but the changes were so lame I thought it must be a joke. Stories are more "square" on the page. The fonts have changed. That's it. No new sections. No shift of emphasis from this or that or the other thing. What a waste!

And for the first time that I know of the Japan Times has told an outright lie. Readers have complained about the new weather section, which is not a section at all anymore but just a table showing the expected daily lows and highs of (1) select Japanese cities, with the lows listed first, and (2) select "international" cities, but with the highs listed first. And there are little sunshine and cloud and rain icons. But the JT claims that the meteorological agency has "categorically" decided to stop publishing the weather maps, showing highs and lows and isobars, that every has come to expect, that are quick and easy to understand.

They lie.

So nothing has changed. The paper even ran today (yesterday) two whole pages on the Japanese sword. For the life of me I can't think of anything more boring than the Japanese sword, unless it's the Japanese government. For one, they are basically against the law. Not everyone can own one and some of those who do do so illegally. For two, they are just swords. No matter how Japanese go on and on about the superiority of the Japanese sword the fact is that Damascus steel and Toledo steel were and are just as good, just as hard, and more useful in a fight against an enemy with armor and the sense to step out of the way and defend rather than just blunder straight into a fight with no idea of tactical defense.

Two-thirds of a page were devoted to a swordsmith who seems like a decent guy in that he knows he's just making swords. Fine, but below that was a story on Musashi Miyamoto, who for some reason is a hero to many Japanese, or so we are told. Musashi was a thug and a murderer and by all accounts insane. Perhaps that is the perfect Japanese hero. I don't know but I don't think so and I can't really imagine wanting to meet anyone of any nationality who would look up to such a person.

The other whole page devoted to the sword drones on about Zen (or zen) and slashing and killing and spiritual nonsense and I won't even go into it.

One final point. All the stories on both pages were written by the same writer. JT! Not a good idea! The article on the swordsmith was at least informative. The Musashi article could just as easily have come from Wikipedia's and the author practices the "art" of the Japanese sword as a hobby! JT. Get real. Give us some variety in our perspectives. Assuming that you have one of your own.

Finally, the admission, kind of...

Today's JT included an article by a writer from the LA Times. The article refers to "the governing elite" in Japan. It's about time. The folks running the country come from the same super-rich and juiced-in families who were running things here 50 and 100 years ago. The Japan Times won't come right out and say it, though. Certainly no Japanese staff writer will come out and say it. Get the foreign writer to say it, though, and you can say it but say you didn't.

Today's Irony of Irony: The JT have yet to weigh in on the proper response, if any, of Japan to the recent demonstrations in China, specifically whether or not there should be an tie-in with the demonstrations and the Beijing Olympics.

But the JT did run a story today on a local maker of shot put. That's right. Shot put. He makes the shot puts, the little cannon balls, that shot putters heave around. The shot put maker is angry about Tibet and has told the Chinese authorities they cannot expect to use any of his shot put at the Olympics. Good for him, but I wonder what makes one shot put different from another. They are all the same size and shape and presumably made of the same materials. Do some have splinters?

The JT does not enlighten us on this.

Two controversies are now boiling over at the JT. One concerns the weather section, which has been redesigned by a village idiot, who has been commissioned by the JT to screw up what once was one of the most attractive features of the paper, although JT could never make up its mind what page to feature the weather on.

The overall attractiveness of the paper, or lack of it, will change on April 22, when the look and feel of the paper will be overhauled -- perhaps justifying the recent increase in the price of the JT. The new look of the JT has been a front page blurb in the old look and current JT for several days now.

At least they could have made the changes on April 1. Then if the changes were a flop? APRIL FOOLS!!!!d

I can't wait. And neither should you.

Wonderful Confusion

A wonderful example today of just plain sloppiness.

Page 1, under Today, down the left column. Under sports, Mao Asada....is a close second after the short program at the world championships.

See page 11.

But in the right lower corner we see a color photo of Mao showing her gold medal after winning the women's title at the World Figure Skating Championships. Asada captured her first world crown after finishing second in the short program on Tuesday. (We get the coverage in Niigata on Saturday, after watching the competition on TV on Friday night!)

See page 11.

But on the page 11 there is just the story about Mao winning the entire two-day event, which of course consisted of the short and long programs!

Guys!

But this was nothing compared to the TV coverage of both days of the championships. TV decided to cover the competition after everyone knew the results. After the first day it was clear that Asada and Ando and Nakano were still all in the running to win. That evening TV showed several commercials featuring all three of the Japanese contenders. But on day two, after Mao had already won, ALL of the commercials showed ONLY Mao.

But they are probably all represented by the same ad agency. Just guessing. Wouldn't surprise me.

In Weekend Scene today Burritt Sabin has a good special to the Japan times about the Uraga shipyards. The story is excellent but whoever wrote the headline must be a fan of The Ring movies because "Then there were ghosts" refers only to a single sentence about a haunted light house and a local resident who doesn't answer the question about whether the light house is haunted or not.

Gregory Clark's article, as is often the case, could have been cut by 95%. A single question is "does Tibet justify the calls for a boycott of Beijing's planned Olympic Games later this year?" is his subject.

I think Clark wanted to ask if Tibet would justify an actual boycott, not merely the call for one. In any case his answer to his own question is "no" and if Clark had just answered his own question in the first paragraph the whole piece would have played as a decent contribution to the Readers in Council Section.

Sports and Madness

The Thursday paper arrived today, Friday, and page 21 run a picture of Tiger Woods winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament on last Sunday.

Timely, JT.

On the front page we have pictures of Toshihiko Fukui, who is leaving as the head of the bank of Japan, and of a murderess and Dick Cheney in Iraq, talking about something -- and I say that because the story next to Dick's picture quotes only Bush.

This blog will not quote Bush.

The real zinger today comes on the Opinion page, whose only saving grace is another fine editorial cartoon from Roger Dahl.

The zinger in question is a Readers in Council contribution from a Mr. Arnie Howe and it is just this sort of contribution that JT runs too much of. They should ignore them, chuck them, delete them, cancel the JT subscriptions of anyone who writes such letters.

OK. So what is wrong with the letter. Here's the first paragraph:

Regarding.......(reference to earlier letters).....As a conservative Republican who has always been active in politics and who never voted for George W. Bush for either his first or second term as president, I wonder how judgment comes into play when the U.S. Supreme Court decided (or stole) the first election from the American people and gave it to Bush? Also, who do we vote for this election?

Someone help me, please! What does this mean? Ignore the grammatical challenges that the JT editors should have corrected. The writer is a politically active conservative Republican who has never voted for Bush 43 for president. That's interesting! Who did he vote for? We'll never know and based on the letter I'm sure I don't want to know.

The letter continues:

No one really wants Sens. John McCain or Hillary Clinton, but Sen Barack Obama has just distanced himself from his pastor's inflammatory comments that "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."

Huh? No one really wants McCain and Clinton? Really? Gosh, Arnie. Someone best tell their supporters that!

.....and the logic of the "but".......I have no idea there.

Things get worse, though.

I have read "The Dignity of the State" and agree with Masahiko Fujiwara that democracy basically has failed and may lead to war and the destruction of our world. What can any of us Americans do when it comes to voting?"

Uh, vote? Maybe?

Will the candidates to what they promise and will the elections be fair?

The relationship to the previous sentence being what?

The answers are definitely no and judgment has nothing to do with it.

The answer to the question of what Americans can do when it comes to voting? The answer is "no"?

Huh?

I suggest reviving the Samurai spirit.....as Fujiwara suggests. Maybe the world will see the good in this and follow Japan in getting away from democracy and back to the arts (emotions and forms) and restoring peace around the world.

Maybe, Arnie. Or maybe not.

But here have one of the JT's finest characters. Another foreigner who wants to bring back the samurai spirit. Oh, yeah! Sounds good. Let's bring back the spirit of an elitist group of degenerates. Wait! No! No need to as it's those same degenerates who run Japan!

The Japan Times would do itself and everyone a huge favor by either editing such contributions so they make at least a little sense or by just refusing to run such nonsense in the first place.

I have read Fujiwara's book. The only thing I will say here is that it is far more insane than the contribution from Mr. Hove.

The Sunday Edition

Actually we get the Sunday JT on Monday because we don't live in Tokyo and the JT is too cheap and old-fashioned an outfit to have the paper printed outside Tokyo. In my home town in Georgia I can get the New York Times early edition first thing in the morning, the same morning the later editions come out in New York City. Japan is about the size of California yet can't imagine something as ambitious and consumer oriented as that, or at least the JT can't.

The best writing in today's paper is by Jack Gallagher, in his feature "Sports Scope". His first paragraph sums up the article: There is nothing sadder in sports than seeing a once-great athlete who has hung around too long. Gallagher's subject is Naoko Takahashi, the marathon runner. Gallagher takes a close look at the poor, money-driven choices that Takahashi made in her career. A good article.

Wayne Graczyk's "Baseball Bulletin" is, as always, informative and informative and informative some more.

Those are the highlights.

And now on to the bad and just plain weird.

The "Time Out" section should give itself one. Here we have a half-page article on Ultraman, written by Edan Corkill. Well, Edan. Next time leave this fluff on the JT web site and maybe, maybe give us a one-paraphrah synopsis in the hard copy JT and a link to the bigger non-story.

Felicity Hughes takes up the remaining half of the same page with a story about Cat Cafe Calico, a cat cafe (what else?) in Tokyo (where else?). Cat cafe. Nuff said. But Felicity, how about telling us where the cafe is. You know, like an address? Or web site?

The JT jump on the Metabolic Syndrome bandwagon with a story by Tomoko Otake. The most interesting fact? That the whole concept of MS is so lame, so lazy, and the definition so narrow that have of the 56 million Japanese over 40 would be considered "abnormal"!!!! So of course the old men who run Japan are requiring all Japanese to line up and be "tested" and measured for MS. Projection: In a year no one will remember what Metabolic Syndrome is unless a Eurotrash band comes out with that as a name.

March is St. Patrick's month so Roger Pulvers lathers on the Things Irish in his "Counterpoint" column. His final paragraph illustrates the yawn factor of this story: What will come to symbolize Irishness in the 21st century? That is the question I will address here next week.

You go right ahead, Rog. I'm sure Japan just can't wait to find out what will symbolize Irishness over the next 92 years.

The "Media" section is stronger than usual but as usual can't stay away from tales of free sex and shinanigans in Mark Shreiber's piece about (again, what else?) costume play in Tokyo. Geek culture. Somehow I think there might be a little bit more JT could say about Japanese culture, but that would require some real reporting, so............

Beoff Botting's story on Kazumi Nishio is sad. His main point seems to be that the dominatrix comedian is not dumb. She's a graduate of Aoyama Gakuin. And George H. Bush went to Harvard. Nishio is sure to go the way of Laser Raymond, or however he spelled his name.

The "Book Review" page consists of four stories: two by JT contributors and one each from Newsday and The Observer. We'll ignore those last two. Jeff Kingston reviews Justin Wintle's Perfect Hostage, about Aung San Suu Kyi, but Kingston tells us a lot about the subject and absolutely nothing, not a sentence, about the book. Good job, Jeff! Nothing like staying on subject. Donald Ritchie selects a book about Japanese poetry to write about and as usual he cannot resist name dropping and the little tidbits that show him to be the "insider" he so desperately needs to be. But he does manage to control himself right up until the last paragraph, when he writes "I am told that.....Princess Aiko is memorizing the 100 poems."

Notice that Donny didn't hear this. No, someone told him! Oooh!

The On The Road contribution by Peter Lyons is excellent. Many of Japan's auto innovations in engineering and styling are never seen on the roads here and Lyons tells us why. Nice job.

JT for ADD Sufferers

The Japan Times thinks its readers suffer from attention deficit disorder for this is the third time in a week or so that JT has run a story that insists there is no big deal to Ichiro's hitless streak in the pre-season.

Each story is longer than the previous one.

A good motto for the JT: More to say about nothing at all!

The Readers in Council section today is not nearly as bad as it generally is. Ko Unoki says, rightly, that the average Japanese "citizen is by and large....quite hospitable to immigrants as indicated by the increasing number of international marriages". I agree that the average Japanese person is very hospitable but unfortunately the country is run by below average Japanese.....and the argument about international marriages doesn't hold up. Some statistics about international marriages are in order.

Peter Stevenson blasts those who, like himself, write letters to The Japan Times. He's fed up with the anti-Japanese sentiments that have been expressed in the last several months over the fingerprinting and photographing of foreigners as they enter Japan through its airports. His argument is, "The US does it; why not Japan?" Well, yes! The Let's Be Lemmings argument. A good one, and incidentally one that Stevenson levels at those he is criticizing.

But I agree with Stevenson, basically. What I don't get is why foreigners are finger-printed and photographed every time they enter the country, even permanent residents.

Paul Cassity is upset at the creation of a special panel to investigate US military-linked crimes in Okinawa. He makes a good argument but JT should have edited his letter. His basic point of "why the US military-linked crimes and not crimes by Japanese, since they commit the vast majority of crimes in Okinawa and elsewhere in the country"?

Darryl McGarry's letter might have made more sense if JT had no edited out the meat of it. I can make neither hide nor hair of what McGarry's point might be.

Eric Luong blasts an earlier contribution to Readers in Council by the prolific Grant Piper. Piper make the bold statement that food is not important, and a week or so ago he made exactly the same statement about sports. Poor Piper. I wonder what peters him out if it's not food or sports.

But no section of Readers in Council can ever be consistently bad or good or anything else. The section wraps up with a contribution from Greg Garrison who apparently stays awake at night because women want to earn more relative to men. Garrison, no economist, argues that money that goes to pay women more is taken from men, who then earn less, who then can't support their families, which then forces women to work more to augment the family income, which leads to divorce and victimized children!

And Garrison has a thing about lemmings, too. His final paragraph begins, "As far as other countries are concerned, why follow them all off the cliff? Just take a look at family health in the United States. Is this what women want?"

Poor Greg. Still fretting over what women want. He should make like Mel Gibson and just go have a drink, but leave the ranting at the bar or in the car, Greg.

Or he could re-think his argument about health care by reading the news from the JT from the day before about the 24,089 cases of Japanese patients being turned away from hospitals more than three times before being hospitalized.