Muroran Line Man

On Saturday, for lack of anything better to do, whatsoever, your humble scribe, his reluctant wife and Boxcar Cian took to the rails and made that lonesome journey on the southbound train from Muroran down to Toya. Felt like I was in a Bruce Springsteen song, circa 'Nebraska', 1982. Outside there was lots of cold, windblown, winter scenery; the steel mills shining dully in the brittle light, the endlessly smoking towers of the cement factory; the bare, brown fields lined with skeletal trees. Inside the train people crouched in their seats, their lives hard worn, their luck, what little they have, hard won.

Actually, I don't know what their lives or luck were like. I was on a descriptive roll and I thought I'd just go with it. In truth, there was actually a rather boisterous group of pensioners, out for a day trip down to the hot springs in Toya. They spent the journey sharing a naggin of whiskey, so by the time they reached the station they were in fine form. And I met three of my students from the nursing school I teach in, who spent most of the journey embarrassing Cian with their constant squeals of just how "sooooo cute" he is.

Excitable student nurses aside, Boxcar Cian loved it all - two hours riding the rails, excitedly pointing out the various express and freight trains that sped past as we made our leisurely way through the badlands of west Iburi.

Saturday

The 'contrast' I alluded to in my previous blog was a reference to the Saturday after Friday's visit to Sapporo. After eight hours of unrelenting urbanity, my sensitive soul cried out for the high mountains and blue skies of Muroran.

Kind of.

It was a nice morning, I didn't have much else to do and Sanae felt guilty after her day of department store indulgence, so she let me head to the hills for a couple of hours. So up Mt. Muroran I went. I wasn't alone. According to the register kept at the hut at the start of the climb, there were 42 other fellow climbers wending their way up and down the mountain. Of these 24 were over 60 years of age, with the oldest a sprightly 82. And he started off at 7.30 in the morning when the twinkly TV weather woman told us the temperature in Muroran was -4. Now, that was down at sea-level, so up here it would have been closer to -8. And he got up and down in just over two hours, which, if you consider Mt. Muroran is only a 120 metres or so lower than Carrauntoohil, was pretty impressive.

Anyway, not only did I enjoy the climb, the scenery, and the fresh air, I also enjoyed being the third youngest person on the mountain.

Sapporo - Highs and Lows

Last weekend was a study in contrasts of sorts. On Friday we had a bank holiday so we took the bus (or as Cian describes it, "the big green Donan bus") up to Sapporo. Sanae wanted to go shopping, Cian wanted to ride on the subway and, as the two were mutually incompatible, it was left to me to fulfill the hopes and dreams of all. Selflessly I opted to ride the subway with Cian while Sanae did her bit for the Japanese economy.

Before 'going underground', Cian and myself made our way to the top of the TV Tower in Sapporo. Not content with the dizzying view from same, we decided to heap adventure upon excitement by descending from the viewing gallery via the, holy shit!, OUTSIDE stairs!! Yes!!! In a haze of adrenaline we climbed down the tower, all 90.7 metres , Kong Kong style, braving ice-covered steps, freezing wind, and, eh, dazzling sun.

Maintaining the endorphine rush we reached the ground and, holier shit!, kept going down, down into the subway station and onto the first train that came our way, to hell with the destination!

Wild, man, wild.

Then for the next two hours we 'rode the rails' whilst clutching a brown-paper bag clad bottle of Jim Beam and humming the theme tune to 'Midnight Cowboy'.

"Look! A subway station."

The terrifying, unrelenting descent down the Sapporo TV Tower stairwell.

"Everybody's talking at me..."

Where we are

There is an excellent (albeit long) article about Ireland's economic woes in, of all the places, the current issue of Vanity Fair. The link is:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?currentPage=all

Reading it one gets the impression that Michael Lewis (the author of the piece) thinks that we are an amazingly subservient people (no doubt due to 700 years of extended practice under English). Our stoic, almost inanely stubborn acceptance of 'circumstances' has engendered no more reaction than the occasional angry polemic by Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times and the slow ramming of the front gates of Dail Eireann by an irate Mayo-man.

The purposefully bland, uncountably shameful, overwhelmingly condescending phrase of Brian Cowen - "We are where we are"; seems to have become the main tenet of a grim, bleak faith; one which takes as its liturgy the claim that if we stick this out for four years or so, we will emerge blinking into a new, purified economic light.

We won't.

In relative terms, Japan suffered something much worse back in 1989 when their own property bubble went spectacularly and disastrously 'pop'. (At its dizzying, extravagant high, property in central Tokyo was valued at $1 million dollars per square meter. Yes, per square meter. The Imperial Palace, all 2.86 square miles of it, had a property value greater than the entire market for Californian real estate). Two decades later and the country's public debt is the highest in the world and continues to set all sorts of nightmarish financial records as it continues to inexorably increase. That's twenty years later folks, and still no end in sight.

So no, don't settle for 'where we are'. Be angry, hell, be feckin furious, you have every right to be. Should somebody bearing the letters 'FF' come knocking on your door looking for "d'auld vote", don't set the dogs on them. Rather, invite them in, be pleasant, sit them down, offer to make a cup of tea, and just when they are beginning to relax kick the almighty shite out of them. And then set the dogs on them.

Holy Superfreakonomics!

Sumo. Ahh yes, sumo. That most traditional of Japanese sports. One would go so far as to say, and indeed, one will, that it is a sport 'steeped' in tradition.

From the annual calendar of hallowed 'bashos' that trace their lineage back some 500 years or more, to the pre-bout purification ritual that involves scattering salt around the dohyo (ring).

Well, there going to need an awful lot more salt. Feckin truck loads of the stuff if recent events are anything to go by.

Earlier this week the police released transcripts from mobile phone text messages between sumo wrestlers fixing bouts. Money was promised in return for various big guys lying down and rolling over like cute little kittens when demanded. So far 14 of the big sweaty men have been incriminated along with their stable master (yes, they live in stables. And eat hay too). More are sure to follow as various critics allege that up to 80% of all matches are fixed.

And this is merely the latest in the long line of scandals that have scattered, eh, pepper over the sport, nay Japanese way of life. Prior to this there was more salt needed to account for the illegal gambling activities of a number of wrestlers, the sport's less than covert ties to the Yakuza, rampant marijuana use, death by hazing of young inductees into the sport, and perhaps most notoriously of all, the death on the same day, in the same hospital of two wrestlers who were about to go public with details of all sorts of nefarious goings amongst the men in the top-knots. The police declared them 'accidental deaths' but, Lord, Paddy Power wouldn't be able to offer you odds on two whistle-blowers dying by natural causes in the same hospital a mere couple of hours apart.

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that the Spring Tournament has been cancelled - the first time this has happened in 46 years, sponsors are fleeing, TV coverage cancelled, and the public disgusted. Put Brian Cowen in a mawashi and I could be describing Fianna Fail.

Some of these statuesque purveyors of a noble Japanese tradition are in fact, cheating bastards.