News

On Wednesday afternoons I teach at a nursing school in Date, a town some 25km down the coast from Muroran. On my way back I usually listen to the five o clock radio news, or at least that much I can understand. Natural disasters are fine - "Hurricane Sandy, like, ohmygod!", and more general topics such as this week is library week here in Japan are also pretty comprehensible; did you know for instance, that the average person borrows 5.8 books in a year, while for elementary school children that rises to a very impressive 27.3? Bet you didn't. On the other hand, matters political and economic are too full of intricate circumlocutions and polite sounding bullshit to make any sense, though I reckon that's the same for most countries. In the sports news I have no interest as there are, shockingly, no reports on Dr. Crokes' three-in-a-row success in the Kerry championship. And the weather, well that is probably the one aspect of my Japanese language ability in which I claim absolute fluency. Life in here in Hokkaido requires it - it's essentially a survival skill, same as deer hunting and clothing yourself in bear fur.
Anyway, I was driving home, listening to the news on NHK radio. Prior to the national news was the local Hokkaido news broadcast from Sapporo. Now I use the term 'local' advisedly. This isn't the equivalent of Clare FM, where Bazza Keane rules and everyday is a banner day. Hokkaido has a population larger than Ireland's, its regional domestic product is ¥18,360 billion (that's 183.6 billion of those increasingly dubious euro), more than Ireland's rapidly shrinking GDP of 168 billion; Sapporo, its largest city and the fifth largest in Japan, has a population of 1.92 million, making it considerably larger than Dublin's 1.05 million. So 'local' here is pretty much the equivalent of 'national' back home.
And I am digressing.
So, I am (still) driving home listening to the 'local' Hokkaido news. The main story is the inaugural direct flight from Bangkok to Sapporo heralding, it is hoped, a new source of foreign tourists now that the Chinese have stopped coming. The governor chirped some "it's a great day for the region, etc., etc.", while some hoteliers mangle their way through ยินดีต้อนรับ as they greet the first arrivals. Fair enough. Significant economic story. As the cold rain begins to pepper my windscreen I briefly consider making a dash for the airport and catching the return flight back to Bangkok.
The next story up, the second of the day, is about window cleaning at the Goryokaku viewing tower in Hakodate.
I kid you not.
Apparently after a good wipe the windows fairly sparkle, and visitors to the top of the tower can now happily peer at miles of dull, grey, autumnal cloudiness.
Like I said, second only to Thai Airways in the top news of the day. There wasn't, apparently, much else of note happening in Hokkaido on the last day of October. Which isn't entirely true; there was a fair bit, from car crashes to factory closures (unfortunately here in Muroran), as was reported in the following day's newspaper. But for the editors at NHK, these weren't as newsworthy.
This approach to news is quite prevalent in Japan. Unlike back home where news tends to explicate Hobbes famous dictum about life being "nasty, brutish and short", here in Japan they like to take time to smell the cherry blossoms and polish the windows. News tends to be balanced, not merely in terms of avowed neutrality to the topic (though this is debatable), but also in terms of positive and negative stories. You will of course get your required daily dose of gloom and doom, but you will also get reports on the record oyster harvest they are enjoying out Akkeshi way; or how one of the big hotels in Tokyo has started serving venison (I am not telling which hotel, but it's one of the big ones. The really big ones).
And these aren't the sort of winsomely humorous "dog saves duck from drowning" reports you get at the end of the news programmes back home. These are interspersed throughout the program, like the great glazed clean up high above Hakodate. In essence it is a differing perception of what constitutes news. And this in turn evinces a different way of looking at the world - more silver lining less cloud. And this day and age, that's no bad thing.

The Goryokaku Tower in Hakodate. Note the incandescent sparkle of the freshly cleaned windows.