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1. My longtime friend Bob dated a girl Julie for a few months, it didn't work out.
2. In the mean time, Julie has "friended" a few of Bob's friends: me and Sam among them.
3. Julie posts a friends-locked post, she's feeling bad about her breakup with Bob.
4. Sam blabs the whole thing while me, Bob, and Sam are having our weekly post-work drink.
5. Somehow everything gets fucked up and the whole Internet thinks I'm the one who has violated the confidence of a friends-locked post.
6. Everyone on the whole internet hates me.

Years ago, I had a feature on this web site called the Picture of the Day; it was one album in my online photo gallery where I’d send a single snapshot from my mobile phone’s camera every day. Problem was that it was costing about 6,000 yen/month just to mail the photos from my phone to the blog, and I wasn’t disciplined enough to update it every day if I couldn’t do it from my mobile phone.

Now that Softbank has finally included email traffic in its unlimited data transfer fee, I can finally start up the Picture of the Day again, and I won’t have to worry about going broke doing so! Note that we’re not talking about high quality photos here, just a quick mobile-phone snapshot of something interesting that I saw that day, along with a couple sentences of explanation.

The Picture of the Day will be posted on this blog, but so as to not take over the whole blog, the entries are hidden from the main page and do not show up in the main RSS feed, and will not be automatically forwarded to LiveJournal or Facebook. You can see the Picture of the Day by selecting that category in the category list to the right, or if you would like, you can sign up for the Picture of the Day RSS feed.

It was a depressing, horrible, bleak building, and I always felt like I might end up sicker than I started after a visit there. Just two years ago (in 2006!) they finally removed the asbestos from the building.

Still, no matter how dingy it was, no matter how out-of-date the equipment, it was comforting to have a hospital right there, only 500 meters away from my apartment. If I got sick, my plan was always to eschew the largely-useless ambulance and take a taxi to the local hospital instead.

But. I hurt my foot a couple weeks back and limped down the street to the hospital, only to find a “we’ve closed forever” sign on it. So instead I went to the shiny new modern hospital a couple stops away on the train… Sure, they had good equipment and good doctors, and I didn’t feel like a good earthquake could shake the place apart, but it didn’t have any of the character of the 45-year-old Marumo Hospital building.

Marumo is on the route that I take when I have my weekend morning walk, and I went by the other day to see the demolition already underway… A bit sad that 45 years of serving my neighbourhood has been replaced with piles of wood and rubble, but progress marches on I guess…

I found this in the supermarket the other day. As far as I can tell, the English translation is “Audible Cheese”, so of course it was necessary for me to buy a pack.

Well, the cheese was visible, and tangible, and it was certainly smellable (side note: I checked — “smellable” is just as good a word as any) but I was disappointed that it was not the least bit audible.

Hrmph, truth in advertising!

The Tokyo Sewage Commission operates two weather radars to allow them to dynamically open and close drainage pipes in response to heavy rainfall. They provide this data to the public in the form of a very useful website which shows updated rainfall maps every 10 minutes.

I happened to see the following notice on the site this morning:

If you can’t read Japanese, it says “This is accident prevention month! Our goal is to have zero accidents!”

Thank You, Tokyo Government! I had been planning on having several accidents this month; I’m glad that someone warned me about this month’s goal before this morning’s planned blindfolded drive to work…

I had never heard about Angela Aki or her new hit song Tegami~Haikei Juugo no Kimi he until Nick Ramsay blogged about it a couple weeks back. Now no matter how many times I read this song, I can’t stop the lump from forming at the back of my throat.. Somehow the lyrics and music join together to make this a really powerful song.

I figured that there are likely dozens of translations out there, but I didn’t look because I wanted to take a crack at translating it myself without being influenced by any of the others. Feel free to offer suggestions; this was a quickie 10-minute job, so I may have misunderstood something…

[As always, if you're going to post this translation somewhere else, I would really appreciate your linking back to this blog, or at the very least, not removing my name. I'm sick of seeing my translation of Robinson posted everywhere without my name on it.]

手紙　~　拝啓十五の君へ
Letter ~ To 15-year-old you

Lyrics and Music: Angela Aki
English Translation: Drew Hamilton <awh@awh.org>

拝啓　この手紙読んでいるあなたは　どこで何をしているのだろう

Dear you who are reading this letter: I wonder where you are and what you’re doing.

十五の僕には誰にも話せない　悩みの種があるのです

15-year-old me has worries that I can't talk to anyone else about.

未来の自分に宛てて書く手紙なら
きっと素直に打ち明けられるだろう

If I write this letter to my future self, surely I will be able to honestly and openly express myself.

今　負けそうで　泣きそうで　消えてしまいそうな僕は
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの?
ひとつしかないこの胸が何度もばらばらに割れて
苦しい中で今を生きている
今を生きている

Whose words should I believe now, when I’m on the edge of losing, on the brink of tears, and on the verge of disappearing? When this heart that I only have one of is constantly being broken to pieces? When I’m living through these difficult years?

拝啓　ありがとう　十五のあなたに伝えたい事があるのです

Dear 15-year-old you, thank you for you letter. I have some things that I’d like to say to you.

自分とは何でどこへ向かうべきか　問い続ければ見えてくる

If you keep asking yourself “in which direction should I head?” the answer will come to you

荒れた青春の海は厳しいけれど
明日の岸辺へと　夢の舟よ進め

The rough seas of adolescence are harsh, but the ship of your dreams will continue to the riverbank of tomorrow

今　負けないで　泣かないで　消えてしまいそうな時は
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの
大人の僕も傷ついて眠れない夜はあるけど
苦くて甘い今を生きている

And when you don’t want to lose, to cry, when you don’t want to disappear, believe in your own voice. And even the adult me has times when I get hurt, even has sleepless nights, but life is bittersweet.

人生の全てに意味があるから　恐れずにあなたの夢を育てて
Keep on believing

There is meaning to the entirety of one’s life, so follow your dreams without unease; keep on believing.

負けそうで　泣きそうで　消えてしまいそうな僕は
誰の言葉を信じ歩けばいいの?
ああ　負けないで　泣かないで　消えてしまいそうな時は
自分の声を信じ歩けばいいの
いつの時代も悲しみを避けては通れないけれど
笑顔を見せて　今を生きていこう
今を生きていこう

Whose words should I believe now, when I’m on the edge of losing, on the brink of tears, and on the verge of disappearing? When you don’t want to lose, to cry, when you don’t want to disappear, believe in your own voice. And whatever your age, sorrow can’t always be avoided, but I now try to live my life showing my smiling face.

拝啓　この手紙読んでいるあなたが
幸せな事を願います

Dear you who are reading this letter,
I wish good things for you.

I’ve been a bit too busy to post much of anything lately, so I thought that I’d be lazy instead and just post a few snapshots that I’ve taken over the past little bit…

This is how you have to travel if you are planning on taking a suitcase anywhere by motorcycle. Coincidentally, this was also how I got a monitor home from Omiya just a week before…

I must admit that this is something that I never expected to see at a concession stand: Turkey Drumsticks

I was on my way home from the Grand Prix motorcycle race in Motegi, Japan, which as you might expect is a pretty testosterone-filled day. Luckily this car pulled into the 7-11 that I was stopped for a rest at, which balanced out the day nicely.

I really hate that the post office requires you to write “Small Package” right under your name and address like that. IT’S NOT TRUE, DAMNIT!

If I’d known that “Foreigner with Glasses” was an acceptable Hallowe’en costume, I could have saved myself so much time and effort!

Drinking just 1 Liter of oil means that you're consuming over 7200 Calories! That would take (some long amount of time) to burn off by walking!

Mainichi Daily News ran a story about a week back about a dry-cleaning firm and its treatment of foreign labour:

Six Chinese female trainees at a dry-cleaning company in Yamanashi Prefecture got into a row with the company when they complained that they were being paid under the minimum wage, and three of them suffered injuries including a broken bone, it has been learned.

The article goes on to say that the employees complained that their monthly salary of 50,000 yen (about USD $500) was far below minimum wage, and that their overtime pay of 350 yen/hour (later raised to 450 yen/hour) was less than half of the region’s minimum standards for overtime.

When the six workers submitted a written request for their wages to be raised, the dry-cleaning company showed up at the company’s dormitory with 10 other people, and tried to force the women into a van taking them to the airport and sending them to China.  During this scuffle, one woman’s leg was broken when she jumped out of a second-story window trying to escape, and two others were also injured, presumably by the company employees who were trying to force them into the van.

The company president later visited the foreign workers’ union headquarters and apologised:

“If they were Japanese I wouldn’t have done it (tried to force them to leave). I was asked for a high amount of unpaid cash and thought I couldn’t negotiate. I’m sorry for their injuries.”

Nice.  ”You don’t have to worry, Japanese government.  I wouldn’t have tried to kidnap Japanese girls after they demand that I start following employment laws, only dirty foreign ones.  Please rest assured.”

That’s OK though; the Justice Ministry has said that the company might be punished:

“The failure to pay wages, the human rights violations and other actions constitute illicit behavior, and there is a possibility that this warrants banning the firm from accepting trainees for three years,” the official said.

Translation:  ”You might have to wait three whole years before being allowed to abuse other foreign labour in this way”.

In the “Western bloggers in Japan” community, there is often a lot of grousing about what is seen as horrendous acts of racism: “I had to see 8 whole apartments before I found one that would rent to a white man!”  ”Boo hoo, when I went to buy my iPhone I had to show a different kind of ID!”  ”A lady gave me the stink-eye on the subway!”

Truthfully that stuff bothers me a bit too, but I can’t get worked up about the small stuff when I know what kind of problems the immigrants who aren’t lucky enough to have been born in a rich country face:  Not being able to rent anything but the most disgusting shacks of apartments… working long hours in poor conditions…  in some cases, being imprisoned by the Yakuza and forced to work as sex workers for Japan’s business and government elite..  And then when finally one case actually makes the news — an abuse and kidnapping and assault case — it’s met with a slap on the wrist like that.

This sort of thing is what the “Westerners in Japan” blogosphere should really concern itself with; not petty bullcrap like iPhones and video rental memberships.

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I have mentioned the “Here in Japan…” speech before. This is the lecture that we tend to hear, that tries to convince us that any argument between a Japanese person and a Non-Japanese person is actually a cultural difference, rather than a simple difference of opinion.  This is because Japan is a Beautiful and Unique Flower,  and no human civilization anywhere else on the world has anything in common with the Japanese… oop, sorry, I need to take a break to refill my sarcasm tank.

Anyway, as most readers of this blog will already know, Google released its Street View service in Japan last month.  This is a service that had Google drive through the streets of Tokyo (and presumably other metropolitan areas?) and take pictures every 100 meters or so, and make those pictures viewable in Google Maps.  Like a lot of people, we all had a lot of fun with it at the office…  People were looking for their houses, favourite stores, the office…  We were checking our parking spots looking for our cars and motorcycles, we were checking favourite hangouts to see if we could see anything interesting.

But it didn’t take too long for the cries of protest to start from the Japanese blogging community. This post (english translation here) is the most famous and the one that I’ll talk about.

Anyway, there’s a reason I started off this post talking about the “here in Japan” lecture.  Mr. Higuchi’s letter to Google raises some good points, but it’s so couched in the whole “we Japanese…” us vs. them mentality that it’s really hard to read those points without emotions getting in the way.

His letter rubs the wrong way almost from the start:  He is quite convinced that the employees of Google Japan feel the same way as him (Why wouldn’t they?   They’re Japanese, and We Japanese Are All The Same), and that they have simply been unable to convince their idiot American bosses of the truth that Google Street View offends Japanese Sensibilities.

But really, let’s look at his main point about why “We Japanese” do not like Street View: “We Japanese live close to the street in small houses, and so consider the exterior of our houses to be part of our living space as well”.   He backs this up with examples of things that only “We Japanese” do, such as shoveling snow from the road/sidewalk in front of their house, and decorating the front of their house with plants and the like.

Now, those of you who have lived in non-Japan parts of the world can see where I am going with this: this is not a “We Japanese” thing; this is clearly a “We Humans Who Live In Close Proximity” thing.  If only he had started off differently, like “People in Tokyo live in even closer proximity than people in New York, so maybe you haven’t considered this…” this would be a lot more well-received than playing the “You Americans could not possibly hope to understand We Japanese” card.

It’s time for everybody, on all sides of debates, to learn:  Different culture groups aren’t really as different as first they seem, so if you are trying to make some argument like that, see if you can phrase your argument in terms of “we humans” rather than “we [race]”.