The Election

Japan goes to the polls tomorrow in a snap national election. Or rather, most of Japan doesn't go to the polls tomorrow. There are two locked in certainties about this election: the first is that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) led by their reactionary, nepotist, politically inbred prime minister Shinzo Abe, will win by a landslide. The second certainty is that voter turnout will be the lowest since the second world war. Here in Hokkaido the consensus is that less than 50% of the electorate will bother turning out and this could drop even further as we are due a bad blow on Sunday with forecasts of 40cms + of snow due to fall. No doubt the LDP will describe their victory as a 'mandate' from 'the Japanese people' to continue their course of fiscal mismanagement and insulting nationalism, but the real winner of the election will be 'apathy'. Which is a pity as the last thing this country needs is a continuing disengagement, particularly by young people, from how the country is politically governed. And the problems are mounting. Earlier this month saw a second successive quarter of minus GDP growth which meant that Japan was officially in recession. The Yen has fallen off a cliff and is now worth 40% less against the dollar than it was in December 2012 (when Abe came to power). This great news for the nation's exporters (accounting for 14% of GDP), whereas consumers (accounting for 61%), who are heavily dependent on imports particularly of oil and food, have been hammered. But because Japanese consumers increasingly don't vote, the LDP really doesn't care. It does care about farmers, and old people, and especially old farmers as these are the sort of people who do vote, so more central heated community centers for pensioners in small, rural villages where the average age is 75+, whereas in towns and cities the waiting lists for kindergarten continue to grow while class sizes in schools are set to increase from 35 to 40 pupils.
Unfortunately, I don't get to vote - apparently "no taxation without representation" doesn't translate into Japanese. Mind you that didn't stop the local LDP candidate, one Manabu Horie (or 'Kojack' as I like to call him) sending me a postcard appealing for my vote. I am not sure what this says about Kojack's, sorry, Horie-san's political acumen, but he obviously knows feck all about the Japanese constitution. Sources close to the one person in Teach Gaynor-Takahashi who does have the vote has said she plans to cast in favor of the communist party candidate. If, it isn't snowing too heavily...

8 today

'Child' no longer fits. He has outgrown the word, both physically and mentally. He's a boy, determined to become his own man. Boundaries set by his parents are being probed and pushed; he increasingly feels the need to stake out his own territory. Only uncertainty holds him back. But that will come with experience, that ever expanding encounter with the wider world. More and more his world and his place in it.
In short he's growing up.
As he should.
Happy birthday Cian.

Coming home

Singapore airport at 4:30am on a Sunday morning. Not exactly swinging but not exactly quiet either. The first flights leave at 6:00am and besides Tokyo, travelers are bound for Guangzhao, Macao, Bhutan, and Manila, exotic locales one and all. And it would seem from the furious gift buying going on in the duty-free area, that these exotic locales are desperately bereft of Marlboro cigarettes and Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey. I content myself with buying a bottle of water and Joshua Ferris' latest book, To rise again at a decent hour. At pre-boarding security I have to hand over my still unopened bottle of water while the Johnny Walker laden hoards clink and clank their way onto the plane. I am sure this is a metaphor for all that is wrong with early 21st century capitalism but at 4:30am I am not up to figuring out what that metaphor may be. At least they let me keep the book.
The flight back to Tokyo is uneventful, though as we were skirting the north west coast of the Philippines, Tyhoon Hagupit reached out with one of its spirals and gave the plane a couple of shakes just to remind us of who is really in charge up here at 39,000 feet. I don't watch movies much any more on flights as (a) they are usually commercial fodder that actively shrink your brain; and (b) I am increasingly suffering from presbyopia (long sightedness) which means I can't focus on anything to close to my eyes like, for example, the small video screen on the back of the seat on a passenger airplane. Vanity (and laziness) has kept me from going to the optician, so I suffer in silence. Or I read, which is much more rewarding than suffering.
Land in Narita airport, gather my bag and then hop on a bus to travel across an hour and a half across Tokyo to Haneda airport. Narita is Tokyo's international gateway airport but does its damnest to make going anywhere else in Japan nigh next to impossible. ANA have all of two flights a day from Narita to Sapporo which means everybody else bar the lucky two hundred or so have to take their weary, jet-lagged, constipated bodies across the city and check-in at Haneda for their domestic flights. Surely there is a metaphor there relating to the sclerosis affecting the Japanese economy but I am not going to indulge you all.
Arrive at Haneda to find that all flights to and from Sapporo have been cancelled until further notice due to heavy snow. Also find the dude who has sold me his 7' 8" Bruce Jones fish and has kindly come out to Haneda to hand it over. So, there I am, wandering around the airport carrying an eight foot long surfboard and wondering how an earth I am going to get it and me to a hotel if I have to spend the night in Tokyo.
Thankfully, an hour or so later ANA announce that the snow has stopped falling and they are resuming their flights albeit two hours late. I fly up to Sapporo on a Pokemon plane surrounded by a large, boisterous Chinese tour group who keep cracking each other up by repeatedly saying "Watashi wa...". The plane is full and I am worried that Bruce may not make it out of the cargo hold in one piece.
He does though, may Buddha bless Japanese baggage handlers. It is -9 when I step out of the airport and trudge through the snow which is an even greater temperature swing than when I arrived in Singapore. Neither I nor Bruce know quite what to make of this. I think Bruce wants to return to Tokyo. My car is covered under nearly half a foot of snow and it takes me nearly 30 minutes to dig it out. I want to return to Singapore but instead I return to Muroran and the warmth of my family. Though Sanae still doesn't know about Bruce.

I am in Singapore at the moment, ostensibly to attend a conference, but really it is to escape the abject poverty our lives have been thrown into after Sanae's reckless abandonment of our life-savings to the 'gee-gees'. At the moment I am 'pursuing' employment options for the three of us. It looks like I will get a job with a Punjab Indian wrecking crew doing work on the MRT line extension; Sanae might get a job at a Japanese hairdressers, but it looks like we will have to send Cian across the Malacca Straits to Indonesia as apparently this bleeding-heart bastion of liberalism in south-east Asia doesn't permit children under the age of 15 to work.
Mind you, the heat could take a bit of getting used to. When I left Muroran early on Wednesday morning, there was a couple of centimeters of snow on the ground and the thermometer was stuck at -2. When I arrived the same evening in Singapore the mercury was bubbling up at +33. That is a swing of 35 degrees which knocked the living (albeit frozen) shite out of my body.
The hotel I am staying in is just off Killiney road, which is connected to Dalkey road, which in turn leads you onto Dublin Road. There are, not surprisingly, also two Irish bars in close proximity. It would appear Bono and the lads invested in some prime Singaporean real estate.

Killiney road, Singapore: home to the best Irish ramen

Japan Cup - a brief eulogy

Well, that didn't go well. The Gaynor-Takahashi Christmas fund has been utterly depleted and our only hope is that Aunty Ciara will divert one of those poor donkeys she's always sending to Africa over to Muroran.
Mr. D, thank you for the tip, albeit a terrible one. Not too sure what to say to our man in Clare with his retrospective punditry. I don't about west of the Shannon but time travel has yet to be invented in this part of the world. Mind you, none of this has deterred Sanae - the Emperor's Cup is coming up at the end of this month and she is already casting her eye around the house to see what she hock down at the local pawn shop....

The Gaynor-Takahashi Turf Appreciation Society - an appeal

An appeal specifically aimed at our regular punster west of the Shannon.
This Saturday will see the running of the Japan Cup, one of Japan's (and indeed the world's) most prestigious flat races. Not to mention one of the wealthiest in terms of prize money - the lucky fleet footed horse will run away with 1.8 million Euros (which, according to last week's property supplement in the Irish Times, will just about get you a three-bedroom family home in some of the odd numbered postal districts west of the Phoenix Park). It is an invitational only event and brings together the best horses of the flat season from all over the world which, according to the the organizers, enables "local racehorses to have the opportunity to compete against horses of an international calibre and to promote goodwill within the racing community worldwide". It is held on the last Sunday of November each year which means, yes almanac fans, this coming Sunday.
And why am I telling you this?
Trading Leather.
To those aficionados of all things equestrian this needs no explanation. To the rest of you have a look on YouTube at the 2013 Irish Derby.
Now I'm pretty sure Jim Bolger isn't taking the horse all the way to Japan just to "promote goodwill with the racing community" or any of that shite. But I need this verified, and verified by those with their noses in the stables over in Coolcullen (figuratively speaking, though with Clare people you'd never know...)
So Mr. Keane, your expertise please. Could this be another Blackstairmountain or should we use the money instead to buy Cian a half decent birthday present?

I am of course loathe to mention of any this to Sanae for fear of what I may unleash...

And we're back ... again!

I am, I will have to admit, a tad tentative about writing this. I'm not sure where October went - it wasn't for a lack of topics. In fact the opposite; there was so much going on that I figuratively threw my hands up and kind of hoped the blog would write itself.
It didn't, but it took me nearly two months to figure that out.
What spurred this 'comeback' was an anxious phone call from a Japanese friend last Friday wondering if everything was alright. My contract at the university finishes at the end of next March and he was concerned that I might have already departed for foreign shores given my continuing online silence.
Not yet, but as the dark days of winter descend, I may well give the idea some serious thought. And Sanae will no doubt tell me to 'seriously cop on' reminding of my fatherly and husbandly responsibilities, and enough already with the whiny, introspective shite. She'll probably add something about the snow needing to be cleared from in front of the house.
So, we're back and we will have to go back as I have a lot to catch up on. I'll take it in reverse chronological order, beginning with last weekend. (This weekend mainly involved surfing and applying a couple of gallons of wood preservative to the wooden siding on the exterior of the house.)
It was unseasonably mild and misty last Sunday so Cian and myself decided to go for a walk. Well, I wanted to go for a walk and Cian just wanted to get out of the house in case Mammy made him do any more Japanese homework.
First off we stopped at the spring at the end of the road where we found a rather large and lethargic cuttlefish. I think the old boy was preparing to shuffle off to the great aquarium in the sky. Cian had found a baby cuttlefish here the week previously which was duly added to our pet collection (currently: one goldfish, three cuttlefish, and eight loaches. Over the summer this was augmented by some seasonal and very noise crickets and a stag beetle).
After that we headed up into the hills behind our house. We initially planned to follow the gravel road up but Cian considered that too tame so instead we struck off into the mist shrouded forest. Where we unexpectedly came across a deer.

As we stood there for a couple of moments staring uncertainly at each other it brought back memories of the film 'The Deer Hunter'. Micheal Cimino's masterpiece (though Pauline Kael denounced it as 'fascist') came out in 1978 but didn't intrude on my consciousness until the summer of 1982. In June of that year RTE planned to show live the WBC World Heavyweight Championship boxing match Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney (father of George and one of the original Guildford Four). The fight was taking place in Las Vegas which, with the time difference, meant that the fight would be screening at 4:00am. Back then Irish people weren't minded to stay up all night watching tv, because, basically, they couldn't: programming usually stopped some time around midnight and off to bed you were expected to go. But what with the local interest RTE decided to break new ground with this and transmit live. To try and keep the Irish nation awake, they decided to show the Deer Hunter prior to the fight, the first time it was to be screened on broadcast tv. And in the build up they screened lots of promo clips of soldiers, and explosions, and deer, and men hanging off helicopters, and more deer, and all of it seemingly taking place in a jungle in Africa as to me, at 11, that was where all the jungles were. And to the 11 year old me, it looked utterly, feckin, awesome!
But as I was only 11 there wasn't any feckin way I was going to get to see it either. As it turned out not many people did. On the night in question, about an hour into the film, the transmitter up on top of Three Rock Mountain shorted, blacking out screens across the nation. Which meant a generation of Irish people grew up thinking that Russian roulette was a communist card game.
(Actually they didn't as RTE re-screened the film the following night). Anyway all this kind of meandered through my mind as I observed the deer before he bolted into the trees and disappeared. The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful, so I'll end the post here.