March 2008 Archives

Japan has been suffering from a population shortage mainly due to the fact its population isn't reproducing. This combined with the fact that Japan has a massive population of elderly is going to cause problems real soon. Well I recently ran across this article on the Guardian that kind of explains why no one is having babies in Japan. Seems no one is having sex.

"People trapped in sexless marriages blame long working hours, a claim backed up by global surveys of sexual activity conducted by Durex. According to the condom maker, Japanese couples have sex 45 times a year, well below the global average of 103 times. According to one study a fifth of Japanese husbands say they are bored with intercourse, while about 15 per cent say they are simply too tired. A similar proportion of women agree that the spark has gone out of their love lives, although fewer than one in 10 blames their lover's poor performance in bed."

Maybe if Japanese society wasn't completely centered around husbands working massive amounts of hours at work and mothers being overly obsessed with their children then the parents could find some time to... well.. make more babies. Honestly, are Japanese men actually bored with having sex? I find this hard to believe. The large number of strip clubs, porn videos, and sex stores clearly visible around my town shows that there has to be some interest in getting some.

Or maybe the problem is that children sleep in the same room as their parents... Until they're in elementary school. Or that it seems the norm for many couples to have different bedrooms...

I think what bothers people more then the declining Japanese population is the fact that to deal with the labor shortage Japan is having to import foreign workers. Which is a whole different conversation in itself. Oh Japan. Please get some.

Its that time of year again. The time of year where I'm woken up at 7 am on a Sunday morning. Woken up by slow moving cars with loud speakers on them. Cars telling me who to vote for as they slowly drive down EVERY STREET IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD SEVERAL TIMES! Its not funny. No one likes their Sunday sleep interrupted my politicians. But its not just one politician. Its several. Each with their own car yelling at me. Yelling through my super thin walls.

All I know is that if I caused anywhere near this amount of noise, at any time during the day, the neighbors would call the cops on my ass. I know this because they have in the past. It isn't just the political vans. Its the random other slow moving cars bellowing through my rather tranquil neighborhood. Theres the hot potato cart. The futon cleaners. The roofers. The 'love hotel' car. What I can only assume is house siding car. Plus all the others I hear but fail to understand what they're selling.

Honestly, who the heck runs outside when they hear the car yelling about redoing your roof? Wouldn't you call someone for that? Besides ice cream (and possibly hot sweet potatoes) theres really nothing that important that would cause someone to rush outside and demand service from roaming handymen.

I just want to sleep!

There are certain things I miss about the US of A. Sadly you can't really buy the love I need here in Japan.

WILSONNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need kitty hugs. Come to me my Wilson.... come to Josh...

In the mean time, enjoy this story about Japan's loyalist dog every. Its a story so sad that it could make Lou Dobbs cry.

Spring break in Japan means I sit in an office for two weeks looking bored out of my mind. Which I am. A lack of internet, entertainment, and the constant smoke wafting over from the 'smoking area' cause me to slowly loose my grip on reality. Which is why I often spend my time playing Civilization 4. Not because I like it. Far from it. But because it keeps me sane. Plus it kills time. Sometimes the game is very funny.

If you can't see it too well. Tokugawa wants to trade me corn for my abundance of whales.

The fact that this amuses me to no end shows you how much I'm losing it at work. This is after 3 days of office time. I still have another 7 office days to deal with.

When I told Chris that I was mainly going to Korea to eat he thought I was joking. I wasn't. Sure, I like sight seeing as much as the next guy, but I really only went for plate fulls of red meat. Which I got.

Going to South Korea from Japan is like going to Mexico from California. Its something you do for fun over a three day weekend. After three years in Japan I'm actually quite surprised that this was the first time I'd gone there. Chris and I boarded a plane from the Hiroshima Airport Thursday morning and set off to Korea with smiles on our faces. At least until we saw the airline food, which turned our smiles upside down. Arriving in Korea we were surprised by a great number of things. Like how rude everyone was. It wasn't as if they were rude to Chris and I, it was just after years of super polite (and sometimes super fake) Japanese people it was a shock to visit a country where everyone didn't seem to care. To put it another way, it wasn't as if they were rude to Chris and I it was that they treated everyone the same way.

Another thing that hit us was how dumb we were in Korea. For Chris this was the first time he had been to an Asian country where he didn't know at least some of the language. Yes, we were dumb tourists. Luckily for us Seoul was used to our kind. Our hotel was smack in the middle of Seoul's "hardware" district. The small shops around out hotel featured every sort of home fixing tools you might need. Nuts, bolts, fans, lights, and chainsaws. It was as if our hotel was situated in the middle of a Home Depo. On the upside we were located very centrally and had easy access to some fun areas in town.

The city had a very different feel from any Japanese city. For one there was quite a bit of room and open spaces. Which made us happy. Also there were a large number of Western Restaurants. Starbucks, Dunkin Doughnuts, Burger Kings, and Outback Steak Houses littered the streets. Among the fun restaurants were also a large number of fun Korean things. Freestanding food stalls were on many main streets. Our favorite was the waffle stands. $1 waffles. Wonderful. Something we also noticed while walking the streets was how warm and physical the Koreans were. We saw couple holding hands, kissing, hugging, being all lovey dovey in the streets. It was refreshing after spending so much time around the rather cold Japanese.

Like any good American tourists to Korea we took a chartered tour to the DMZ. Which could possibly take the prize as the world's largest tourist trap. This from someone who's been to Wall Drug. We saw some wonderful statues, bridges, peace bells, and propaganda films. The only interesting thing was Tunnel #3. Its one of several underground tunnels the North Koreans dug under the DMZ. Through solid rock. Though the tunnel was a little low for a person of my height.

I guess the other interesting thing about the DMZ was how restricted photographs were. There were super strict rules as to where, when, and how you could take photos. The photo above left was taken by me while standing behind a bright yellow line and holding the camera far above my head. Taking a photo five steps in front of the yellow line was a no no. But behind the yellow line was ok. Seriously guys. Whats up with that? Its not as if theres anything that interesting in North Korea to take photos of from in front of that yellow line.

We did actually see some historic cultural stuff as well. Such as the Changdeokgung Palace. Which has The Secret Garden! Ok. It wasn't all that thrilling. But I did mainly go to eat spicy food.

We also visited the Seoul Tower. It sits on top of a hill and has a nice view of the city. As you can see in the photo the city has quite the haze hovering above it. Cough cough.

As for the food? It was really really good. Korean food revolves around super spicy goodness. At one point several large steaks were grilled up in front of us as we gorged ourselves on spicy kimchi (though I am sad that we didn't have time to visit the kimchi museum). So good. On a side note we also ate at the Outback Steak House. Which was also good. I love red meat.

So now that you've read this far its time for some random weird things that happened in Korea!

1) Its impossible to find stamps on a Saturday in Seoul. Which is I'm left with a large number of post sitting on my desk.

2) It seems theres an Evil Dead musical playing in Seoul. I wish I could have gone.

3) An old lady grabbed my arm and yelled at me on the street in Korean. A man standing nearby said "She wants to know where you're from." I told her "America," to which she then yelled at me some more. We asked the man what she said. He only shook his head and said "not good."

4) We saw a Korean man yelling at his friends in front of the Outback Steak House (a different night from when we went there). The only problem was he had stripped down to his underwear. We both wanted to take a picture of this crazy scene, but were worried that he might come after us.

5) Channel 46 on our hotel TV showed nothing but Starcraft. Every hour. All day long. Watch the video below to see how crazy it really is.

So thats my super spicy trip to South Korea. It was quite fun and I'd most certainly go back again just for more food.

Holy Crap! I can't believe I'm seeing this. For the first time in the more than three years I've been bumming around Japan the dollar has fallen to under 100¥ per $1. When I came to Japan in college the exchange rate was something like 120¥ per $1, which was good because I was converting my dollars into yen. But then I got a job in Japan. Where I was getting paid yen and wanting to convert it into dollars. Not good. Sure, the rate would tease me, dropping to 118 or 117 yen per dollar, but not enough to make a difference when I sent money home. That was before the US Economy started to tank and the Japanese economy started to pick up (ok, it hasn't picked up a lot, but ever bit helps!).

The upside is that the better the exchange rate gets the bigger (in dollars) my salary gets here in Japan. I've had dreams recently where they rate dropped to 50¥ per $1, and where I was able to pay off all my student loans and buy myself tons of diving equipment. Though that would mean that the US economy had more or less collapsed leaving a long dark trail of economic ruin in its wake.

The downside is that the fates of both the US and the Japanese economies are intwined. The Japanese economy relies heavily on exports to the US, so if the US economy fails it will drag Japan down as well. Which would really suck. For everyone. Including me. But for the time being I can rejoice in sending money home in larger amounts than before and keep chipping away at my student loans (and credit card traveling debt...). Though at night I will still dream of favorable currency fluctuations...

Seems Japan is going to disconnect pesky pirates from the internet. ISPs will be sending warnings to users they suspect are pirating and will disconnect repeat offenders. Which beats the US approach of getting sued, but still sucks. I'll be interested in how exactly they intended to find these 'pirates' on their networks? Will they be invading their users personal privacy to get this information, like we do in the US? Or will they just look at how much bandwith people are using, like in the UK?

I rather assume that they'll be doing the later. Going after users with high download and upload levels. Which is a tricky thing as many people could honestly use large amounts of bandwith doing legal things. Such as torrenting free software, movies, and music. Heck, viewing a full quality trailer of the movie Walle clocks in at 100 MBs of downloading. If I was to watch a bunch of trailers in one day (which I do) I would be doing way more downloading then someone who was just downloading one movie. Heck, updating software on my computer is often several hundred megabites at a time. Lets not even get into when I upload massive amounts of photos to my webserver or play online games.

I still find it funny that they would go after people in Japan. This is a country where you can legally rent CDs from any movie rental store. Massive amounts of CDs for $1 each. Then as you're at the checkout you'll notice that they have stacks of super cheap blank CDs and DVDs for you to buy. Hmmm... I wonder if they know what their customers are really up to? (Yet for the life of me I can't understand why they don't rent video games!)

Come on Japan. Be cool. You are the fastest and most wired country in the world. What do you really think your people are doing with those 90 megabit fiber connections they have installed in their homes?

God I hate SPAM. The food and the computer type. I'd been getting something like 50 to 100 spam comments on my blog. Per day. Which was annoying but rather easy to delete. But it was still annoying. Especially since I had to wade through all the spam comments looking for the legitimate real comments. But I finally realized 99% of all my SPAM comments were being posted to 3 or 4 really old blog posts of mine. So I just closed the comments on those posts. Now I have next to no SPAM. Which goes well with my next to no comments on my next to no posts. I should fix that as well.

So there you go. If you want a super easy way to kill SPAM on old blog posts, just close commenting on those old posts. If you need me I'll be smacking myself on the side of the head and saying 'duh' over and over again.

Once again graduation has come to the Junior High Schools of Japan. Once again I attended a ceremony at one of my schools. In case you didn't catch the last two years graduation blog posts I'll fill you in on why Junior High School graduation is such a big thing around here.

To make things super simple Junior High School graduation in Japan carries the same emotional weight as High School graduation does in the US of A. This is because of the way the education system is set up in Japan. For Elementary and Junior High School in Japan school placement is based on location. So, more or less, you'll be with the same kids all the way through Junior High School. But after Junior High School they'll most likely never see each other again. Thats because kids have to apply to High Schools, which requires tests and whatnot. Its a big deal. Its not uncommon for kids to commute over an hour to High School. Some kids will even move to a different prefecture to attend High School. Plus once they're in High School they're more or less studying their little asses off trying to get into a good college.

So its never a surprise when I see hundreds of little teary eyes at graduation. As soon as the kids sit down about half of them burst into tears. This includes the kids in the audience as well. I'm surprised the brass band could even play because they were all in tears. As was typical fashion there were several kids who gave heartwarming testimonials about Junior High School, who were also all in super tears. This sort of thing continued for the good part of an hour. People speaking, kids crying. But unlike years past the kids were not given their certificate of graduation at the big ceremony but at a smaller ceremony in their individual homerooms.

As you can see above (in photos approved by the school principal) it was a fun filled ceremony. Afterwards I went around and talked to the various classrooms of graduating kids for some goodbyes. I also found myself signing a whole lot of Year Books for kids. To which I found that my name was in the book. And that it was spelled correctly. Nice.

Seriously. I'm both surprised that I'm in there and that I'm spelled correctly. Kudos school. Kudos.

Natalie and I went back to Tomonora to check out the doll festival. Again. Mostly because everything was shut down last week when we went. So before we walked around town to look at fun historical things we went to the small island next to Tomonora to see if we could catch a glimpse of a Raccoon Dog!

These little guys are not actually raccoons but part of the canid family and are related to dogs. Native to China, Korea, and Japan they're highly hunted for their pelts. We walked around the island for an hour without seeing any. But, as luck would have it, we happened to pass near the island hotel as they were taking out their trash. Seems these guys live up to the name 'raccoon' because as soon as the trash showed up so did droves of these little guys.

They're also a big part of Japanese folk lore where its called a tanuki. If you happen to pass by any bar you'll see a big chubby statue of one of these guys. Usually holding a big bottle of sake and having gigantic testicles. Seriously. Massive testicles.

The above picture is from a children's cartoon. Notice the massive balls hanging off the top guy. I've seen this movie before. There are balls everywhere. Massive. Furry. Tanuki balls.

I hope you've enjoyed your daily dose of Japanese culture.

So work still continues on the Fukuyama Train Station. Work of some kind or another has been going on pretty much the entire three years I've been in Fukuyama. Recently they've started ripping up the cement in front of the station in order to build a new underground parking lot/ passenger drop off point/ new bus center. Its a big project that probably won't be finished while I'm still in the country. So far they've more or less dug some very big holes in the ground, which has yielded some interesting results.

What you're looking at is the foundation of the old Fukuyama castle thats been hidden under the cement all these years. From the fun miniature models I've seen at the local history museum I can say (with some certainty) that the stuff they're uncovering is part of the old castle moat. I don't know how, or why, they buried the foundations (I would know but I couldn't read the Japanese next to the fun miniature models at the history museum) but it makes me sad. Japan used to make some really awesome castle back in the day. Some were destroyed in war. Some in city construction. Some in World Wars. But what really weird is how they were all rebuilt in the 70's, which is why Fukuyama still has a castle.

Being a History Major is fun.

Saturday morning I was woken up by a small earthquake. At 4 am. While not scary, it was clearly very annoying.

In case you're wondering, I live right above the white dot that sits to the middle right on the very top border. So goes another day of my life in Japan.

Japan does whale hunting for strictly scientific reasons. Those reasons being....

The scientific research included injecting minke whale sperm into cows eggs, and attempts to produce test-tube whale babies, News Limited newspapers report.

This explains so much. Seriously. So much.

I'm not going to lie, I love my Elementary Schools more than my Junior High Schools. Its one of the reasons why I'm doing a 4th year on the JET program. While Junior High School is often very rewarding and fun, its also probably the most difficult age group to teach. Especially when you don't speak the language. At a High School your kids would probably be smart enough to speak English to you, and at Elementary the kids have such simple Japanese that understanding isn't too difficult. At Junior High School the kids are just in-between. Plus they're at a very awkward age and maturity level. I would imagine the situation would be much the same no matter what country I'm in. (It wasn't the most memorable time for me ether back in the day.)

The other day was my last day of the school year at one of my Elementary Schools and I was super surprised to find that the kids had made me things. Yes, as surprising as it is, the kids do actually like me at this one Elementary School. Just look at the fine craftsmanship on these binders full of fun filled comments. All of which are in Japanese, and all of which will take some time for me to translate. I also like how the Indian Ocean is now between Japan and American. Thats cool. They did try.

II only teach 5th and 6th grade at the Elementary schools. To make up for this I end up having lunch with the younger grades. This time is usually spend with them asking me silly questions and being thrilled that I can speak the most basic of Japanese phrases. They're cute. During this one lunch period the kids of the 4th grade class kept giving me random gifts.

Lets see. I've got a custom recycled note pad, a little noise shaker, and a box. Good things to have around.

I really hope that after this summer the number of elementary schools that I go to will increase. Its been very fun and rewarding and, unlike Junior High School, the kids actually seem to want to learn English. Which helps out quite a bit in my lessons.

So my blog more or less looks like crap right now. Maybe you don't think so. But I do. And thats all that matters. My blog has looked this way since I upgraded to Movable Type 4.0, the blogging software I use and have been using now for what seems like 5 years. When I upgraded the system broke my old template I'd been using. Which would probably be fine if I actually knew how to code in CSS.

The problem with the new version is that theres a whole new approach to blog design and management taking up the core of the system. Before there was just a style sheet and main template, now the entire system is modular. Which is probably far better, but very complex and confusing to move novices like myself. This system combined with a system of side bar widgets allows for easy customization and quick changes. But then again, I'd have to learn how to use it as well as learn some fun filled CSS.

To be honest my main blog isn't the reason I'm complaining. Its just I would really love to have a nice design for domotravels.com and joshuadives.com. My main weblog can be plain and simple, but I'd like the other sites to have something fun going on. I've been quite lazy with updating things. Especially with domotravels.com. I've actually got a large supply of domo pictures to upload but I've become unmotivated.

With that being said, if anyone is interested in helping design things... leave me a note.

And then someone took this photo of him. Cute no?

If I was a girl I'd be all over that like white on rice. Or stink on a monkey. Or Jared on a ham sandwich. This is what happens when I phone people. I should do it more often.

Every year my town has a Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival) that takes place at the end of February and beginning of March. During this time you can travel out to the old port town of Tomonora and see everyone's dolls. These dolls are passed down through the family from mother to daughter. Its quite an interesting festival and an interesting part of Fukuyama. I went two years ago took way too many photos. So when Sunday turned out to be a very beautiful day I decided it was worth the effort to take Natalie and check it out again.

Unfortunately we got there late in the day when everything was closing down. Though the upside was that there were very few people around and the city looked really interesting. The last couple of weeks had been so warm that we ran across quite a few trees already in bloom. More than a month early.

There were still quite a few doll displays out to be seen. Though in all honesty I'll be I took some of the exact same photos I took two years ago. Not much changes from year to year.

Tomonora is known for being one of the oldest port cities in my area. Theres quite a bit of history to still be found around here. They even still have a small 'historic' district. If you removed all the hanging wires and plastic pots it would look like Japan 100 years ago.

I found this dino drawing to be rather fun. As well as the broken down beer vending machine. There are crushed up beer cans sticking out of the bottom. Classy.

If the weather is nice next weekend I may try to gather up some people and go out there again. This time during the day when there is more to see and do. Maybe venture out and check out the raccoon dogs on the island. Yeah. Raccoon dogs.

I used to read the comic Garfield a lot as a child. I would check out collections from the library and read them cover to cover. But as I grew older I realized that a lot of the strips were not funny and highly repetitive. Recently the net as been abuz with anti-Garfield mania.

For instance, if you edit Garfield from the comic completely the story becomes about a man and his schizophrenia.

Or if you replace the cartoon Garfield with a real cat, doing what a real cat would do, Jon becomes a very strange, lonely, and obsessive cat owner. (My personal favorite as someone who actually talks to cats this way.)

Or you could just do live action Garfield of real strips. Which is just sad and pathetic when you get down to it.

But I find the Garfield Randomizer to be the best. It randomly combines three panels from a database of Garfield strips to make a new comic. You'd be surprised how often this actually works.

I feel relieved that my Macbook Pro from last summer still kicks some sort of ass.

Seems the latest model's 2.4 ghz processor rates slower than my last model chip processor at the same speed. At least according to gizmodo.

Yes, I am a total nerd.