Gone Tomorrow

I'm sorry to see that Anne Francis has passed away, not long after Leslie Neilsen.

Apparently they are both more remembered for other roles, but I remember them best for Forbidden Planet, which--along with The Day the Earth Stood Still--is among my favorite old science fiction movies. I don't remember exactly when I saw Forbidden Planet, but it may very well have been at a theater when it first came out; I would have been only six or seven, but my Dad took me to quite a few movies when I was younger than many people would think appropriate for the content.

Dad was pretty iconoclastic sometimes; at least, he didn't seem to hold many opinions because they were popular. His take on "age-appropriate" seems to have been "whatever the kid can understand sufficiently to enjoy", and he determined that by trial and error. He gave me a copy of Moby Dick when I was maybe nine or ten, and I recall enjoying it even though I had to struggle through parts of it at the time, and probably missed a lot of what the author wanted to say. When I read it again some years later I appreciated having had the earlier opportunity even though I naturally understood the book very differently when I was older.

I understood Forbidden Planet differently, too,  when I saw it again later in life, and it motivated me to read The Tempest earlier than I might otherwise have done so.

It seems that a remake of Forbidden Planet is planned. I'm not sure how great of an idea that is; when I heard about what they'd done to The Day the Earth Stood Still in its remake, I decided to catch it on TV or on a rented video, and even if they don't utterly ruin it by making egregious changes from the original, Forbidden Planet without Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen just wouldn't be the same.

That's one past future that I'd just as soon they leave alone.

Hare Today

Happy New Year!

May the Year of the Rabbit bring you all of the health, prosperity, happiness, love, adventure, and excitement that you could possibly want, even in your wildest dreams...and then a lot more on top of that.

Too much is never enough; it may be wiser to be moderate, but it's certainly not as much fun. Wouldn't you rather burn out than fade away?

Think twice about avoiding temptation, because the opportunity may not present itself again.

That probably doesn't sound like very rabbit-like advice, but Napoleon Bonaparte was born in the Year of the Rabbit, and he said, among many other things, "Ability is nothing without opportunity". Walt Whitman was another born in the Year of the Rabbit, and he said "The road to wisdom is paved with excess". I can't argue with either of those sentiments.

Have a great year! 

Burning Bright

The Year of the Tiger is just about gone. I count it as the year when I entered middle age, not exactly a welcome thing but one that was inevitable. It has been a fairly good year, all things considered, with roughly as many ups as downs; I've always known that you need valleys to be able properly to appreciate mountains, so I can't really complain.

I have reestablished contact after a very long time with at least one highly valued old friend this year, and that makes up for a lot of the less happy surprises I encountered.

Blake's The Tiger is from his Songs of Experience while The Lamb is from Songs of Innocence. Most of my innocence is far behind me, but I'm looking forward to lots more experience in the year to come, and--with any luck--many years ahead. I've pretty much always valued experience over innocence, anyway.

I hope the past year has been good for you.

Saved from the Flames

Stories in the news about house fires are depressingly frequent in Japan, and it seems as if they usually involve deaths. I don't think that this is due to less reporting of fires that don't result in death or injury; there are plenty of reports of fires that only do property damage, but I get the impression that a disproportionate number of fires are deadly. Since many of the victims are children, it was particularly gratifying to hear about a fire in which all four children survived.

Personally, I think that it was extremely irresponsible of the parents to go out leaving such young children unattended, and that they are very, very fortunate even though they have probably lost most or all of their possessions. I can certainly understand the desire of a couple in their mid-20s to go out together once in a while without the kids. There aren't a lot of places where a young couple can bring along kids aged 2, 3, 5, and 6 and enjoy themselves more than the kids do, even if you ignore the near-certainty that caring for the kids is going to make the outing more of a chore than a joy.

Since this couple went out at 10 in the evening and hadn't returned by midnight when the fire broke out, I think it's likely that they went our for a drink (it seems too late for pachinko, another common reason for leaving children unattended). I don't know anyone in drinking establishments, whether staff or patrons, who can honestly say they like having little kids around. Some people make polite noises and perhaps comment on the kids' cuteness, but I believe that nobody in a bar thinks kids really belong there, and it's absolutely certain that noone thinks the kids are as cute as their parents do...particularly when the kids get bored or tired and start whining, crying, and running around. Only the most oblivious of parents can fail to notice that, really putting a damper on their social life.

In Japan, at least in big cities, getting a baby-sitter isn't generally a viable option for parents who don't have relatives living nearby, either, particularly late into the evening. Adult neighbors typically want neither the responsibility nor the aggravation, and teenagers don't generally have that much free time. There are cultural/social issues with paying non-professionals for such services, too, and with their accepting pay. And obligations incurred must be repaid, one way or another. There's also a certain amount of social stigma attached to leaving one's children with "a stranger"--even a neighbor or friend--even assuming one could find a willing one and wasn't worried about repaying the favor.

So I can understand, but not condone, the desire of the young parents to go out leaving their kids alone but apparently asleep, thinking that they'd be safe by themselves for a few hours.

Unfortunately, Japanese homes aren't that safe, particularly from fire.  There are numerous reasons for this. Small, often cluttered homes that are either built of or filled with flammable material are the rule rather than the exception. Many homes--although well-stocked with electronic gear and appliances--have inadequate power supplies and insufficient or inconveniently placed wall outlets; this leads to lots of extension cords and multiple-plug taps, often stuffed behind or under furniture, and even if there's no short circuit from damaged wires, the heat buildup can cause fires. Particularly in winter, when the humidity in much of Japan is very low, fires tend to start easily and spread quickly. Ventilation tends not to be very good, heaters--especially older ones--are often not particularly safe, and escape routes are rarely wide or unobstructed even if smoke inhalation hasn't already removed escape as an option.

A building fire alarm, and presumably a (still relatively unusual in private homes) smoke detector that triggered it, combined with a neighbor both awake and alert, managed to avert a much greater catastrophe than this fire could have become. The kids were saved from the flames, and I'm very happy to see it. I hope that the news
will motivate at least a few parents to reconsider when they think about leaving their kids alone in the house, even for a short while.

Up in Smoke

For the first time in quite a long time--like several years--I attended a meeting of the Tokyo PC Users Group, a group in which I used to be quite active. I've been the president of the group, and the VP, and I was the editor of the newsletter for seven years, too. Back in the old days, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot as a member of the group, and it was pleasant to show up again at their meeting held in the basement hall of of the Tokyo Union Church and speak with some of the old friends with whom I've not had much chance to interact for quite a long time.

The inducement to attend was a presentation by Hugh Ashton on independent publishing. It was a very informative and potentially useful presentation, especially interesting because I've read both of his books that he used as examples: Beneath Gray Skies and At the Sharpe End.

It's a long-standing post-meeting tradition to walk down Omotesando  to Shakey's Pizza and continue conversations begun at the meeting over pizzas and pitchers of beer, and in the old days the more valiant--or foolhardy--would, after being ejected from Shakey's at closing time, walk back behind the building to a complex of bar/restaurants that included a branch of the Tex-Max Zest chain where one could investigate a variety of tequilas or just eat nachos and guzzle margaritas.  Once upon a time, we'd go to to an old favorite of mine in the complex, Zenon, where they kept a half dozen bottles of Freixenet Cordon Negro just for me, with which to chase the Myers's rum they also kept on hand for me and my friends. Zenon vanished with the bubble, pretty much, but Zest lasted a long while, as did Oh, God!, an odd little billiards bar that showed movies every night, and a so-so Cajun restaurant/bar upstairs called--unaccountably--La Haina. It wasn't uncommon for the hardiest of the crew to drink and talk until it got light outside...and since the TPC meetings are usually on the first Thursday of the month, that meant an interesting Friday work day.  But we were all somewhat younger then.

I arrived in Omotesando much too early for the meeting, and was dismayed to find that Zest--and indeed the entire restaurant complex--had disappeared and been replaced by an amazingly ugly glass and steel building housing, as nearly as I can tell, a place selling something called "Gorilla Perfume".

Even Ozymandias's legs had been done away with; no trace of the former character-soaked building remained. I had really been looking forward to a tequila or two, while trying to recover from my first actual viewing of the absolutely execrable "Omotesando Hills"...they replaced historic, interesting old apartments with a huge complex of shops which look from the outside like the world's largest construction site prefab workers' quarters. At night, lit up, they go from terminally bland to remorselessly garish, and I sincerely hope that they--and the architect who inflicted them on Tokyo--are relentlessly haunted by baleful, unforgiving ghosts forever moaning and mourning for the days when some vestiges of good taste still remained in the area.

After the meeting, I was looking forward to at least the hour or two of beer, pizza, and conversation, just like old times...until I found that Shakey's has, for the month of December, and for the sake of those customers who enter the place to gaze at the illuminated ginkgo trees lining the street outside, made the entire restaurant into a no-smoking zone. This means, to me, that they don't want my patronage, so I declined to enter. I won't be going back when they change their policy back, either. In fact, since I don't care for the attitude behind the policy, you won't find me in a Shakey's anywhere, ever again.

The remainder of the evening was salvaged (somewhat) by Michael Wright, who suggested we hike a bit further and visit a local branch of a taproom selling craft beers. The place started in Numazu, and I'd heard of their branch in Naka-Meguro. I confess that their excellent ales seduced me to stay for more than one even though they, too, turned out to have a no smoking policy. They at least have an ashtray outside the door...if not for that, I wouldn't even have mentioned the place (nor stayed for more than one beer, maybe not even one). I see no need to provide a link for them if they won't provide a smoking space for me, though, other than outside in the rain, so if you're interested, you can search for them yourself.

It seems that Omotesando has been added to my list of places to which I can never return, because they have become something too different from what I remember.

Video Ahoy!

A lot of TV airtime has been spent recently on the Senkaku Islands collision video released to YouTube last week. It was a sensation at first because the Japanese government had refused to release it except for a very brief version shown--rather reluctantly it seems, and certainly quite late--to a small group of legislators. This stance was somewhat understandable at the very beginning of the incident, since the captain of the Chinese vessel accused of purposely ramming a Japan Coast Guard ship had been apprehended but not yet tried: the video footage would have been evidence in a trial.

But then the captain was released and repatriated, ostensibly by the local prosecutors' office without pressure from national government politicians. If you believe that, in the face of China's heavy-handed response to the captain's arrest--reducing rare earth exports and arresting Japanese contractors for photographing supposedly secret military areas (a set-up if I've ever seen one)--then you're a lot more gullible than I am.

The captain returned to a hero's welcome in China. Japan was accused of  "caving in" to Chinese pressure or lauded for calm diplomacy in contrast to China's thuggish approach, depending on who was talking/writing. Attempting to capitalize on their "victory", with the typical tiresome so-called "spontaneous" anti-Japanese demonstrations here and there across the country as a background, the Chinese government tried to further their claim to the islands, conveniently ignoring the fact that China had regarded--and even recognized in writing--the islands as Japanese (or at least Ryukyu Kingdom) territory for ages...until it became known that the area is likely to be rich in resources. Suddenly it became Chinese territory.

All of this has become business as usual when dealing with China, and if anything the rare earth export reduction is arguably counter-productive, since it highlights the risk of over-reliance for critical resources on a single source, especially if the source is prone to economic gunboat diplomacy at the same time that it's increasingly running real warships through sensitive waters.

Other Asian nations can hardly have been surprised, given the long-standing Spratly Islands issue, by the way, but that's a story for another time, perhaps.

For that matter, the problem with over-reliance for resources on possibly hostile providers must have had some deja vu notes for any Japanese who have studied--or are old enough to remember from personal experience--the run-up to World War II.

In any case, the collision video, which had been described from the beginning as clearly showing the Chinese boat ramming the Japanese patrol boat, remained unseen by the general public. Once there was no longer a possibility of its being used as evidence in a trial, the only rationale for keeping it under wraps seems to have been an attempt to avoid offending China. This approach didn't impress either the opposition parties or many (most?) of the general public.

Apparently it didn't sit well with at least one member of the Coast Guard, either.

A 43-year-old man who has been described as an "officer" in the Coast Guard has--after a week or so of media frenzy about who leaked the video--reportedly admitted to uploading it from an Internet cafe in Kobe near his ship's berth. Since details of his name and rank haven't been made public as of this writing, it's not clear whether he's a commissioned or warrant officer or a petty officer. It's also not entirely clear how he obtained a copy of the video, although it seems to have been pretty freely available to many Coast Guard members through their computer network. This is important both because of what it may reveal about weaknesses in the organization's data control systems and because of the degree of secrecy that was afforded to the data; the latter may make a big difference in what the Coast Guardsman is charged with, depending on whether it can be regarded as having been secret information when he released it.

Many Japanese government organizations, both local and national, have had problems with the security of their data in recent years. Some of the leaks have been accidental, including those due to careless use of file-sharing software applications. Others have been more sinister, with data illegally sold to unauthorized parties.

This leak, however, judging from a TV journalist's interview with the man himself prior to his public revelation, is different. It appears that he uploaded the video because he felt that the public had a right to see it, and by implication at least felt that the government was wrong in continuing to suppress it.

Public response so far, at least to the extent that one can trust the mainstream media to report it objectively, seems to be leaning in favor of the man being a hero who should not be punished. Others apparently feel that regardless of his personal feelings/beliefs, he violated a trust in a manner inappropriate for a public servant. There certainly is a case to be made for either opinion; which you prefer is up to you.

Either way, I think it's pretty likely that his career in the Coast Guard is finished. The opposition party is--predictably--even calling for the resignation of the Coast Guard commandant to take responsibility for the leak. It's difficult to imagine a mere patrol craft crewman continuing his career under those circumstances. The future wouldn't be a bright one for him or his family even if he weren't old enough to make new career opportunities extremely difficult to find.

Personally, if the truth is as it appears to be, I wish that I were a wealthy owner of a steamship line, so that I could offer him the job that he's almost certainly going to need.

Cheers, Mike

I just received an e-mail notification that an old friend, Mike Marklew,  has passed away.

I first met Mike when he was managing the now-defunct Tokyo British Club in Ebisu. I was a member for the last year of its existence, and spent a lot of time talking and drinking with Mike both in the members' bar upstairs and in the public bar, the Barley Mow, on the ground floor. It was he who gave me my "Big Mike" nickname, because there were so many other Mikes among the regulars there; it could get complicated to figure out which of us was being discussed  in some of the ale-fueled conversations.  Toward the end of the club's existence, when money for wages was tight, I did some pro bono bar tending in the Barley Mow to help provide some time off for the depleted staff. Mike was always quick with a clever quip or a well-poured pint, whichever side of his bar I was on.

Shortly after  the British Club closed its doors for the last time, Mike oversaw the construction and opening of The Black Lion Pub in Meguro. I was a regular visitor there even when the pub was still a construction site in what had been a parking lot and small office, before they had their operating license, when--since they weren't yet legally allowed to sell drinks--the "bar" was an ice chest filled with bottled beer, and there was a bucket for "building fund donations" in lieu of a cash register, and I've been a regular there since. Mike ran the place for a few years before moving to other places, and eventually moving to the UK to care for his elderly mother.

We've kept in touch by e-mail since then, with much of the volume of our correspondence being a constant flow of jokes and amusing pictures or videos from him to me and a huge collection of his friends, interspersed with a few more serious messages and updates on what he was up to. Once in a while he'd ask for help or advice on some computer problem, which I was always happy to give if possible. More often he'd pass along information about mutual acquaintances in various parts of the world--and even in Japan after he left--with whom he kept in touch far more diligently than I have.

I'll miss Mike's loyalty to his friends, and his witty observations on just about anyone and anything. I'll miss his inexhaustible stock of anecdotes, many from his extensive travels and numerous jobs throughout his life. I'll miss seeing his name in my e-mail inbox and wondering what odd bit of humor, wit, or clever observation I could look forward to seeing. I'll miss the feeling that, even though he's far away, an old friend is--or soon will be--enjoying a pint and observing, with an amused twinkle in his eye, the human condition.

I'm pretty sure that Mike had a firmer belief in an afterlife than I do. I hope he was right, because I'd like to think that he's sitting at the corner of some celestial pub's bar, where the pints are always perfectly poured, and it's always Happy Hour.

Cheers, Mike.