things have finally calmed down

Standing tall

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:40:02 +0900

The relief effort is in full swing. The list of great people standing up and helping in the clutch continues to grow. Here are a few that I know about.

Radiation Chart

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:44:27 +0900

Be sure to keep the units straight. The media is broadcasting in microSC (µSv)/hour. This graphic is in milliSV (1000 µSv) as a total.

…Is Another Man’s Treasure

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:48:12 +0900

OK, Saskatchewan, here’s your ticket to fortune! ¥13,000 for a gopher. That’s $155 people. Get out your live traps and start planning that vacation!

My Baseball Card

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:43:45 +0900

Jon Heese #22

Born 02-17-63
Steinbach, Manitoba

Drafted: Tsukuba City Council, 10-26-08
AQU: Private Sector

Ht: 5’11, Wt: 190
Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Position: 1st Base, Pitcher

COMPLETE BATTING RECORD
Yr Club G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BB SO SLG OPS AVG
‘09 Tsu 1 4 4 3 1 0 2 5 1 1 0 2.5 100 .750

What’s Buggin’ You?

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:53:48 +0900

The Japanese don’t have a lot of large wild life, but the beetles are phenomenal. Elementary kids don’t keep hamsters… they keep rhinoceros beetles like the one above. They also like to keep stag beetles, if they can find them.

I recently found the Eldorado of rhinoceros beetles. A local blueberry farm is infested with them – rhinoceros beetles love all kinds of fruit. My sons were over the moon when I first brought them to the farm. Hard to say how my boys’ attitudes will change if rhinoceros beetles are not the rare commodity they have been led to believe.

Failed, but not a failure

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:34:33 +0900

Yesterday was the election for the Japanese House of Councilors (like the House of Lords, or the Canadian Senate). Above is my friend, Rie Yoshida, giving her concession speech (results). Ms. Yoshida had hope and pluck. What she didn’t have was good organization or a lot of money.

Given the present political climate, where both major parties are not even asking the right questions, much less planning for a better future, Ms. Yoshida could have pulled off a victory. Unfortunately, yesterdays election reinforced the saying 十当、八落. Loosely translated, it means: spend ¥1,000,000,000 ($11,250,000) and win. Spend ¥800,000,000 ($9,000,000) and lose.

Ms. Yoshida will be back. She learned some important lessons. If you are going to start a grassroots movement, you need a lot more time. She also realizes that she needs more than the paltry sum she spent. Most importantly, she now knows who her friends are.

Spoiled Rotten

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 21:37:33 +0900

For ¥600 ($7) my son bought a concave microphone kit, something he had to build himself. I’m not sure what he learned from the exercise, but I know he now has one of the cooler toys a kid could want. I know that to get the same thing at his age, (jeepers, more than 35 years ago) it would have cost a minimum wage worker at least a couple of hours work.

I remember the first electronic calculator my parents bought me for Christmas when I was in grade 7. It was not a trivial purchase. Perhaps as little as 10 years later I could pick up a small credit card-sized calculator for a couple of bucks. Not long after that, calculators were pretty much disposable.

With the arrival of the iPad, I see society at a point where computers are almost disposable. I suppose we’ve been there for quite some time, but the iPad really is a device that I foresee people upgrading as often as they upgrade their phones. All it will take is an amortization of the cost of the unit. Cell phone companies have been “giving away” phones for years. The iPad, however, will be more insidious in as much as the purpose of the unit is to transmit images.

In a sense, the iPad (for lack of a genre of computer) is the new TV. Consider how much gold was spent on producing the TV shows of our youth, all to be transmitted to our homes for “free.” Back in the golden age of TV, the scarcity of channels ensured that if someone was watching TV, there were only a few channels to watch. Hence TV producers could “give away” their programs, knowing their semi-monopoly guaranteed a minimum of eyeballs on their show, and, more importantly, on the ads which paid the bills.

The iPad is the child of TV, in as much as it will guarantee the producer of ads access to eyeballs. Apple, they recently bought a company which allows Apple to insert ads in various content streams. The long term strategy will be to subsidize the cost of the hardware in exchange for watching ads. In other words, whereas ads (still) pay for TV shows (content), Apple will allow ads to pay for your hardware too.

I don’t foresee free iPads any time soon, since Apple will continue to accept money for their unit as long as they can. However, it won’t be long before competitors enter the field and instigate a price war. It is already happening in the digital book field, with Barnes and Noble slashing their hardware prices, quickly followed by Amazon. Theirs is slightly different model, but it’s an indication of things to come.

Music

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 13:54:29 +0900

Cruising Facebook the other day I came across the vid above. It sparked a certain nostalgia. From a young age I was constantly in musical activities of one sort or another. In university I studied music education and was always involved in many choirs, jazz bands and musical theatre.

In Japan I’ve found my musical release in karaoke. Unfortunately, all my greatest hits are from the 80’s or earlier. The kids showing up in Tsukuba belt out tunes I’ve never heard before from artists with stupid names. Lady Gag-me-with-a-Spoon????

The Campaign is On

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:02:38 +0900

The big push began yesterday for the election of Ms. Yoshida Rie to the Japanese senate (参議院). With the resignation of Prime Minister Hatoyama, the bankruptcy of the present administration is plain for all to see. Last year the public booted out the LDP after of 40 years of competent leadership and another 20 of wandering in the wilderness. I suspect the problems facing Japan are just too big for any government to admit.

As I see it, the largest problem Japan faces is the impending population crash. Japan is in a unique position amongst the developed world. The public are against immigration but are not willing to produce babies themselves. More than 20% of the population are already older than 65. The large elderly cohort is putting an incredible strain on the pension system and things are looking grim for the foreseeable future.

According to estimates, Japan will lose a third of it’s population in the next 40 years. Last year saw the population decrease by 250,000. By 2050 Japan will decline to 85 million. By 2100, we will be reduced to 45 million. At least land will be cheap.

Les Mis

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:10:12 +0900

One of the advantages of growing up in small town Saskatchewan was that we had to entertain ourselves. I was fortunate to have been in many musicals in high school and university. I often see parallels in Tsukuba as so much of our fun is self created. Because Tsukuba doesn’t have the population base of Tokyo, a person really has to know where to look, or know someone, to find the gems in my city.

This afternoon I attended the Tsukuba University’s musical production of Les Mis. I’ve seen the show in London and Montreal. It is far and away my favourite piece of theatre. Of course the student’s production level can’t be compared to the pros but I was still spellbound by the heart wrenching ballads and thrilled by the finale’s Do you hear the people sing?:

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

I am amazed at the ambition of the organizers of the ensemble. A few years ago they put on Jesus Christ Superstar. I look forward to their next production but am unhappy I’ll have to wait a year.