I heard the news on the radio this morning, that power outages had hit parts of central Tokyo. According to updates, about two-thirds of a million buildings were hit, and some people were stuck in elevators in Shinjuku. About 260 traffic lights went dark, and some train lines (notably the Hibiya and Ginza subway lines) were stopped for a while. This all happened around eight o’clock in the morning. However, since this is the O-bon holiday season, a lot of people were out of Tokyo, so traffic was light and disruptions were minimal.

A few points of significance to those unfamiliar with Japan: the O-bon holiday is one of three major annual holiday seasons in Japan (the others are Golden Week from the end of April though the first week of May, and New Year’s, typically the first three days of January). Typically, you don’t want to travel much during those times, because everyone else is. In Japan, people don’t get so much time off, so when the three big holiday seasons hit, everybody makes for the door. The O-bon holidays are a time for Japanese to visit their hometowns, and pay respect to relatives and ancestors who’ve passed away. The peak time is August 13-15, but this holiday break is the least stringently assigned, and can come a little earlier or later for some people.

My other point: the reason why a simple power outage is significant is that it almost never happens in Japan. Back in the U.S., I remember power outages were a fairly common thing–we’d be hit by one every once in a while. In California a few years back, this was magnified by the whole power “shortage” and associated scandals, but even in good years, they’d happen with fair frequency. I never thought too much about them, but in the 90’s, a Japanese classmate at SFSU commented on our having so many, and it caused me to realize that in the seven or eight years I had spent in Japan by that time, I had never been in a power blackout, nor had I heard of one. I’ve commented on this before, but it does seem an interesting question. I thought fewer trees and newer infrastructure were probably causes, and Roy suggested the idea of smaller power grids. I have heard of one grid affecting others and how usage in one part of the country could cause trouble in another part.

For today’s outage, one thing it probably was not was overload. The weather is relatively cool, and a lot of people are simply out of town.

Update: Now we know why. A construction crane being transported on a boat going up the Old Edo River between Tokyo and Chiba apparently hit and took down some power lines there.

A 44-year-old man in Hiroshima made a complaint call to an Information operator several months ago. According to this guy, “the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women’s voices.” He then started making silent phone calls on his cell phone to “104,” Japan’s information number.

37,760 times.

One day, he made a total of 905 calls. Assuming 8 hours of sleep, that means he made silent phone calls every 64 seconds.

He’s been arrested on charges of causing psychological distress to more than 100 telephone operators.

From Wikipedia:

The Chuo Line, one of Tokyo’s major train lines, is so infamous for people committing suicide that many English editorials in Japan have taken to using the word Chuicide to refer to the means. Its relative popularity is partly due to its practical ease, and to avoid causing a nuisance to one’s family, though families are often charged or sued by the railway companies to compensate for the trouble caused by the accident. A typical suicide may cause delays between one and a few hours on one or more lines and is certainly unpleasant for onlookers who may be present.

Another interesting trend related to train suicide is to wear a brightly colored cap (orange) to help shield your face. This is done out of concern for the train conductors, so that they may not be caused any trauma by seeing the face of the person about to be hit. It is also useful as a sign that the person is indeed intending to commit suicide, and that no one should risk their life in order to save them.

The costs to the surving families by the railway companies’ “delay fee” is often in the 100 million yen (approx. 850 thousand U.S. Dollars) range. [Mainichi Shinbun, August 18, 2002]

Now, that last bit is cold. Your family member commits suicide, and the train company bills you close to a million dollars for their inconvenience as a punitive measure. It brings to mind the Chinese government’s practice of billing the families of executed criminals for the cost of the bullet. I’m not sure if the billing works as a disincentive–probably not, considering that people keep on doing so in such large numbers–but even if it did work, I’d be squeamish about being so cruel to those who have just lost people they love.

This article in Wikipedia reports that of the 1,210 people who have committed train suicide in Japan since 1995, 156 of them, or about 13%, have done so on the Chuo Line. The article claims that the “high speed and frequency of the trains” is what draws people to it. But such things have their quirks. For example, more than a thousand people have committed suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge–but only one or two of all those jumpers chose the side of the bridge facing away from the city. It may be a matter of access, but if you’ve seen both sides, you’ll know that the city side is indeed a far more desirable view than the ocean side–although it’s an interesting question as to whether such a thing matters to someone about to leap to their doom.

As it turns out, Hirohito strongly objected to the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals at Yasukuni shrine in the late 1970’s–so much so that he stopped visiting the shrine. The information came from interviews between Hirohito and the former Imperial Household Agency Grand Steward Tomohiko Tomita. Ironic that Yasukuni and the people who most strongly support the war criminals being enshrined there also profess fealty to the Imperial throne. But as is usually the case with people of that stripe, there is little doubt that they will easily find a way to ignore, explain away, or otherwise reconcile this information while still retaining their views.

Update: I was right, but it looks like they’re not even trying to explain how they reconcile the fact–they’re simply ignoring it:

When asked if the reported note will affect his decision on whether to visit the shrine before he steps down in September, Koizumi replied: “No, it won’t. (Whether to visit Yasukuni) is up to each person. It is a personal matter.” …

Asked how he felt about the fact that neither Emperor Hirohito, now referred to as Emperor Showa, or his son, Emperor Akihito, have visited Yasukuni since it enshrined the war criminals in 1978, Koizumi said he could not comment on their decisions.

A Japanese judge has ruled that all movies made before `1953 are now in the public domain. A 2004 law extended copyrights for another 20 years, but the judge ruled that the law did not act retroactively, meaning that any movie that went into the public domain before that time will stay in the public domain.

You can fully expect this ruling to be challenged. Film studios have gone to extreme measures to ensure that they hold perpetual rights to content, using the legal fiction that a corporation is a virtually immortal person. In the United States, copyright creep has been going on for some time, the most recent having been a new 20-year extension to the pre-existing law that said copyrights last for 50 years after the death of the author (or 75 years for a corporate authorship); this extension was called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by many, as it was seen to be a means of allowing Disney to hold on to exclusive rights of Mickey Mouse and other characters.

So, if you live in Japan, go ahead and copy all those golden oldies like Gone with the Wind, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Wizard of Oz, and sell them on the street corner–it’s all legal now.

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Taku Yamasaki of Japan’s conservative LDP party has made public statements recently to the effect that it would be unconstitutional for Japan to use its military forces to attack North korean Military bases. Of course, he’s the same crazy guy who has suggested that official visits by politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined, are also “strongly suspected” to be unconstitutional.

Japan has been considering possible pre-emptive attacks since North Korea seems to have both atomic weapons and the missiles needed to send them to Japan. Japan’s constitution forbids any military action except for self-defense (hence Japan’s military bearing the name “Self-Defense Forces”).

The problem: “self-defense” is a slippery slope. Consider, for example, that Japanese right-wingers often call WWII, including Pearl Harbor, a “pre-emptive attack” intended wholly in the spirit of “self-defense.” As Bush has aptly demonstrated, as long as you have a good propaganda machine, any war can be justified as “self-defense.”

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Use a gun, pay ¥50,000: a Japanese police officer in Nagasaki was in on the questioning of a man suspected in a minor crime (removing the door of a police box). Now, we’ve all heard about Japanese police officers using violent force to elicit confessions from suspects, causing a great many innocent people to be imprisoned while the guilty parties go free. This case seems to be a classic example of that.

The officer, named Norihiko Irie, got fed up when the suspect professed his innocence. So Irie unholstered his gun and pointed it at the man, threatening him with deadly force. Apparently, Irie also put the gun and five bullets on the desk in front of the man, and neighbors to the police box where the incident took place say that he was also walking around screaming and uttering nonsensical remarks, like shouting the word “Mongolian!”

Later it was discovered that Irie had argued with the man a few days earlier over the man’s driving, and had called the suspect and perhaps another man to the police box to accuse him of removing the police box door as well. It also turned out that Irie had been accused earlier of inappropriate sexual conduct (fondling) by a woman who came to the police box to report lost property.

After the incident with the gun, Irie was brought up on charges of “suspicion of committing acts of violence as a public official” and for “violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law.” He denied ever pointing the gun at anyone. Although Irie was convicted, the judge suspended his three-year sentence, punishing him with nothing more than a ¥50,000 fine, saying that “There is no fear of him committing the same crime again, and he made an apology.”

Oh, well, he made an apology. Yeah, I know that counts for more in Japan than elsewhere, but we are talking about a public officer of the peace threatening someone with deadly force to elicit a confession. Somewhere, I think a line was crossed. Hell, the press reports don’t even make it clear that he was even fired. He was transferred from the police box in January, shortly after the crime, but no more word than that. I would only hope that someone convicted of a crime like that would not be allowed to remain employed by the police, and absolutely never allowed near a gun again.

July seems to be the month for new stuff to open in my neighborhood. I’m a bit out of central Tokyo, but not so far; it’s a nice spot. 25 km from Shinjuku on the west side of Tokyo, Inagi is just a half hour out by train, closer than Tachikawa or Hachioji, and as such is probably one of the closest-in open green hilly areas in the city. My apartment is a 20-minute walk, or a 5-minute bus ride (if you can catch it on time) from the station. There’s not much around here–a big supermarket/home center just a block away, but that’s about it. The closest video store is two stations down or a 7-minute drive (which always puzzled me–this is a big housing area, with maybe around 3-4000 units within 5 minute’s walking distance of where a video store could be, and more units being built–you’d think it’d be a bidding war for the rights to open a video rental place). So whenever anything new comes up, it’s worth noticing.

The first thing to open was the new central library for Inagi City, just a short hop away from my apartment. Their English-language material selection is not great, but not bad; not as good as my own college’s library (naturally, since we’re an American college), but there’s still stuff there. A limited video and CD selection (they have DVDs, but I imagine most are checked out at any given time; what was left included, strangely, lots of Elvis movies), a few English-language magazines, The Japan Times, and maybe 100-200 English-language books.

Their computer search feature, accessible online, is nice, but it has a major flaw: an author search will not reveal English-language materials, though a title search will. Still, I was able to reserve The DaVinci Code; it’ll be there for me maybe in a week or so.

Another new opening just this week was the main train station for the city. I haven’t used it for such a long time, it was now unrecognizable to me. The station itself got an upgrade, with escalators both ways on both tracks, and a new shopping building was added on, including a supermarket, drug store, bookstore, coffee shop (Tully’s, not Starbucks), 100-yen shop, a few restaurants, and a sports club on top.

Still no video rental store in sight. Ah well.

As I mentioned before, the new boulevard through the center of town also opened recently, and now I have found a way around the 5-traffic-light trap. Strangely, a one-lane side street running parallel not only is devoid of lights, but there are no stop signs at all in the direction I go. It takes me just past the traffic-light trap, so that works out quite nicely.

Of less consequence to me, a restaurant kitty-corner to the supermarket a block away from my house got torn down and a new senior center was built, with a swimming pool and other exercise and rehab facilities. Good for them. They also opened a new convenience store on one side of it, but I so rarely use those things now that it also doesn’t matter to me.

But that’s all the excitement out here in dullsville for the time being. But more will be built, especially as far as roads and public works. As someone pointed out to me recently, Japan’s version of the military-industrial complex is the government-public works complex. They’re always building some road or bridge or tunnel or new facility or some such, and it always takes them years and years and years to complete. For example, that new boulevard ain’t finished yet. The road comes up to just past the city center, but there is a 100-meter stretch still unfinished; when it is, the road will go straight through to Hashimoto, some 15 km down the way. But it will probably take them 3 years to finish that one little bit. Already, I’ve seen them out there working for the past year on that stretch with no discernible progress. That’s what construction in Japan is like.

If you’re a non-Japanese living in Japan and you fly home every once in a while, you may be getting screwed, according to this article. It seems that foreigners in Japan are getting charged more for airline tickets than Japanese are–perhaps significantly more. The same ticket that costs you ¥70,000 ($608) might be sold to a Japanese customer for just ¥57,000 ($495), a difference of 20%. This is done by selling the tickets via different agencies run by the same company.

In this case, the culprit is No. 1 Travel (the ones with incredibly stupid and annoying animated ads on CNN-J) and its sister agency, HIS Travel. No. 1 sells to foreign customers; HIS sells to Japanese.

A couple consisting of a Japanese woman and an Canadian man found this out when the woman called HIS and asked for a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles. She did not say who they were for (they were for her Canadian boyfriend), and the agency assumed it was for her. They gave her the ¥57,000 price. Later, when the agency found out who the ticket was for, they upped the price to ¥70,000.

So how could the agency justify this, when it is against the law in Japan to discriminate in pricing according to nationality or race? The HIS representative explained it like this:

According to Kinokuni, foreigners buy return tickets because they are cheaper than one-way tickets. They then return to their countries and don’t use the return portion.

“In this case the airline may charge us the full fare which means low profits or a loss.

“So in order to avoid the risk we restricted the tickets to Japanese only customers, who will definitely return to Japan.”

This explanation is, of course, utter BS. First of all, something is seriously fishy if if the airline sells a round-trip ticket for less than a one-way. Even if they can’t fill the return seat, there is no logical reason to charge more than the round trip ticket. Second, if someone buys a round-trip ticket, they cannot be forced to use both ways, and charging the agency for the passenger’s failure to do so is ludicrous; if it is not illegal, it should be made so.

Third, there is no reason why Japanese would not do the exact same thing; if a Japanese goes to live in the U.S. for longer than an open return ticket would allow for, there is nothing stopping them from pulling the same trick, and they likely do just that. Fourth, you cannot charge foreigners more based on a likelihood; not only are you discriminating by nationality and race, you’re also charging the majority of travelers for the transgressions of a minority.

Moreover, the price differential makes it fairly clear that they are charging every foreign passenger the full difference in price, when clearly most passengers (probably the vast majority) don’t pull out of the return. In short, the reason is bogus or it is being used to commit fraud.

Here’s what I’m going to do when I buy my next ticket: I will get a quote from No. 1–which I usually use–and ask a Japanese friend to get the identical flight pricing from HIS. If they differ, I am going to raise holy hell with them. Unfortunately, I will not have the option of telling them that I’m going elsewhere–I mean, I could, but in the past, all agencies that sell to foreigners sell at the same price. It’s not like this one agency does it and no one else does.

That does not mean that you can’t threaten them and give them hell for it.

I advise everyone else to do the same, unless you enjoy being overcharged by 20%.

I was having dinner at a yakitori place with my brother a few days ago, and in the far corner, saw that the TV was on. They were showing a story about something new that the Tokyo traffic cops have: onboard radar.

In Tokyo (and probably it’s the same elsewhere in Japan), traffic cops are very specific, highly annoying, and completely ineffectual at what they are supposed to be doing. Ostensibly, they are supposed to be monitoring traffic for safety. In reality, it’s all a show.

First off, traffic cops are almost exclusively on motorcycles. I have rarely seen a police car pull over a vehicle, and it may not even have been for a traffic violation. Instead, the motorcycle cops, on large white bikes (“shirobai”) and wearing powder blue uniforms, take care of traffic tickets.

Second, they are picky about when they serve. They are never–repeat, never–out at night or in precipitation.

Third, they choose their prey with severe prejudice. Motorcycles and scooters are at extreme risk, far beyond the proportions of illegal driving habits. Cars are next in line. If you drive a taxi or a truck, you’re golden–they are rarely, if ever, ticketed, despite commonly illegal and dangerous driving habits.

And fourth, they don’t ticket you for being unsafe anyway. They ticket you, apparently, simply because they can, and they have a seasonal quota to fill. Let me explain more on this last point. Police don’t stop people for being dangerous, just for breaking petty rules. Like making a right turn at a three-lane intersection on a 50cc scooter. If it’s 51cc scooter, or a 2-lane intersection, you’re fine. Making the illegal version of the turn is in no way, shape, or form dangerous. And the practice of not patrolling at night or in the rain–times when driving is at its most dangerous and the most lives would be saved by enforcing the rules–flies in the face of the “safety” mission. The traffic cops must have a great union.

Furthermore, police here don’t monitor traffic at danger points. I know a very dangerous street full of blind corners, where there are no sidewalks, pedestrians crossing all over the place, and cars speeding. To top it off, a big police station is at the end of the street. And the cops never monitor traffic there.

Where do they monitor it? Where it’s easy to catch people. At the biggest intersections–not because accidents happen there, but because it is the easiest place to break a law, and since you’re going slowly, they can stop you more easily. (Yes, a few will speed past, I’ve seen it–and the cops didn’t do anything.) At overpasses and underpasses–again, not for safety, these are usually safe as houses–but because they can hide very easily, and pull you over just as easily.

And speeding, until now, was restricted to long, straight, empty, countryside roads with no intersections, crosswalks, or cross traffic of any kind, where the speed limit is ridiculously low (usually half the actual safe speed), and where you can’t turn off on side roads to evade capture. Shooting fish in a barrel. One guy clocks you, and then down the road, another guy flags you down and sits you at a desk where one of a line of policemen give you your ticket in assembly-line form (usually for driving 40 mph in a 25 mph zone that would be 50 mph if it were in the U.S.).

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But now, it appears, the motorcycle cops have onboard radar, so they can officially clock your speed either while parked or while driving. A machine on their dash calculates the speed and spits out a sticker.

So are the streets of Tokyo safer? No, of course not. The traffic cops still stick to the areas of easy pickings. But there will be one small change: slightly more unpredictability. You see, one more point about traffic cops being for show and not for real is predictability. They always patrol the same intersections; the speed traps are always in the same places; they always are out in the daytime in good weather. If you know where they are and when they are there, you can violate traffic laws with impunity, slowing down only when you get to a hot spot. And you can tell this by the way some people drive in Japan.

So the new onboard radar thing will have an effect… but only where they use it, which I will bet you is only on the stretches of the main roads near big intersections, as always. That’s where they were doing their thing on the TV show I glimpsed at the yakitori place.

This is one of the reasons why the police don’t get much respect in Japan. The low crime rate is not due to their effectiveness, that’s for certain.

This is not helped by the licensing system. When I got my motorcycle license renewed, we all had to take a driving test. The test was extremely non-real-world in nature, and penalized you for very piddling stuff–like resting on one foot instead of the other when you stop (your foot near the gear shift has to not be bearing your weight; I suppose shifting weight while stopped is illegal). I saw guys taking the test who seemed fine to me, and they were failed. Beats me as to why–piddling stuff, it must have been. When I took my test, I did fine–but they docked me points anyway, and declared I would have to go to driving school for x number of hours. When I went, the lessons had zero relationship to the things they faulted me for on the test. They made me drive a simulator which felt completely different from a real bike, and which I drove safely despite them throwing unreal stuff at me, until apparently I hit the end of the run and they had some virtual driver blindside me.

So why was I sent to school? Because pretty much everyone is; the guys who did perfectly well but were flunked had to go back to driving school for a lot more hours than I did. They had to pay very high fees to do so. And that’s where the flavor of corruption comes in: the schools and the driving center have connections. I was directed to go to a specific school. Just like the motorcycle cops get a cut of the traffic tickets they hand out during “safety drives,” money infects the system.

And the punitive stuff if you get tickets is useless as far as safety goes. If you get tickets, then when your license renewal comes up, you have to attend traffic school for most of the day. The school is a video-and-lecture, and doesn’t address the violations the captive audience is there for. If you get enough tickets to rake up 6 points off of your license within a certain time period, then you get suspended for 30 days unless you attend an all-day lecture, and must take a test as well. The questions again are pretty much unrelated to your violation.

In short, it’s all just for show, and has little or nothing to do with safety. As for the tickets and fines, unless you are a safe driver to the point of neurosis, you are bound to get them. I myself see them as a driving tax; you just get them and there’s not much you can do about it.

I got a visit from the NHK guy a few weeks back. For those of you who don’t know, NHK is the public television network in Japan; kind of like PBS in the U.S., but less independent of government. It is funded by quasi-mandatory individual fees (like British television fees), which are collected by besuited men who come to your door every so often. This time I was able to fend the fee collector off by pointing to my Sky Perfect satellite dish, and pointing out that I do not watch any terrestrial broadcast television (though I will admit to peeking when there is an earthquake, but don’t tell the NHK guy–and I wouldn’t mind losing that ability, they can shut off my NHK if they want). He accepted this and went away, unlike other visits I’ve had, where the NHK guy will shove an English-language slip of paper at you and insist that it’s the law that you pay.

The thing is, the rules are less than clear on this. The law does not say it’s mandatory to pay, and there is no penalty for not paying. However, it also says you have to make a contract “to receive NHK broadcasts.” But NHK broadcasts–terrestrial ones, at least–are not arranged by contract, they are there whether you want them or not. But what it comes down to is, they can’t force you to pay. And most foreigners in Japan have figured this out, which is why many NHK fee collectors are either resigned about us, or try to get in our faces and pressure us. They used to have far fewer problems with getting Japanese to pay, but with corruption scandals over at NHK, more than a million Japanese who used to pay refuse to do so now. And that got the government into a tizzy about what to do.

However, the laws may be changing soon. A government advisory council is going to release a report Tuesday with recommendations to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications about how they should suggest to the national Diet that the NHK fee laws be changed. It is expected that the report will propose that NHK fees be made mandatory and that failing to do so carries a punishment by law. They also are expected to suggest that NHK fees be “drastically” reduced. Currently, terrestrial broadcast fees are ¥2,790 ($25) every two months, and satellite NHK is ¥4,680 ($42) every two months (though that includes the terrestrial fee; you don’t have to pay both). How much that amount would be reduced is unknown.

After the report is submitted, the ministry could use it to propose new legislation as early as 2007. If it passes, it is not clear if it would take effect immediately or if it would be scheduled for a future date for implementation.

All this takes me back to my days in Toyama in the mid-80’s. I lived in an apartment building back then where the NHK guy made frequent visits. I was able to fend him off with my magical gaijin powers: I pretended that I understood no Japanese, and that did the trick. Then one day, the NHK guy came when my girlfriend was at my place. I had not briefed her on my technique with the NHK guy, so when she heard me tell the guy at the door that I could not speak Japanese, she innocently and helpfully walked up and offered to translate. Strangely, I forget how I handled that particular situation, though I am quite sure that I never paid the fee.

Back in the late 80’s, when the economy in Japan was still booming and Japan was still poised to take over the world, there was a lot more building going on and a lot more workers were needed. But Japan didn’t want to let in just any old foreigners. They wanted a better class of foreigners. So they got an idea: Japan sent a lot of its people over to South America about a century before, and there are still a lot of them down there that are still pure Japanese, or close enough. Let’s bring in the Japanese foreigners!

Even that surprised me. I remember when I first traveled in Japan. It was in a group led by my Japanese language teacher, Mrs. Hiramatsu. She was born and raised in Japan, even worked as a newscaster in the Kansai region. She moved to America with her husband (also Japanese), and they both became U.S. citizens. Speaking to her in Japanese, there was no mistaking her native language proficiency. And her name is very easy to “spell” in Japanese, the kanji well-known and easily drawn. And yet, whenever I saw her name in print prepared by people we visited in Japan, it was spelled out in katakana–an alphabetic script reserved for foreign words and for spelling out other sounds which were not Japanese words. Simply because she was no longer a Japanese citizen. That bit of exclusivity struck me back then.

Well, it seems like Japan has remembered that exclusivity, as it is now looking at changing the immigration laws that allowed these foreign Japanese into the country since 1989. After a decade and a half of having South American Japanese in Japan, it’s not working out. For one thing, Japan discovered that these ex-Japanese can’t speak Japanese. Hell, they could have asked me–or anyone familiar with sansei on down–and we could have told them that the language doesn’t survive overseas past the third generation. So now Japan has all these South Americans living in Japan. What’s worse, they look Japanese. Hard to deal with that one!

The problem for me is, I don’t know if I’m going to be caught up in this. The changes would affect “long-term visa renewals,” which, for all I know, might include anyone looking for permanent residence–something I’m thinking of, once I qualify in three years. Apparently, applicants would have to pass a Japanese language proficiency test. I can get by just fine in everyday conversation, but I’m pretty sure that I’d do badly on a formal test. Despite having lived in Japan for some years, I teach in English–which would make such a Japanese language provision rather ironic in my case.

I might be worrying for nothing; the measure seems aimed to effectively reverse Japan’s allowing South American Japanese permission to live in Japan long-term as unskilled laborers. But things are getting more and more anti-foreigners around here lately. Not as bad as the 80’s, but it’s as if the government is working really hard on getting back to that mindset. Every year or so, good ol’ Ultranationalist Tokyo Guv Shintaro Ishihara drags out the artificially inflated gaijin crime stats and beats his chest about the dangerous foreigners. And the federal government is using terrorism as a reason to re-institute the old fingerprinting laws for foreigners, which was abolished just six years ago, but is now back.

Fortunately, it’s still just the government, I haven’t noticed this filtering down to the personal level, or even to the local police. Let’s hope it stays that way.

There was a 5.6 quake (Richter scale) off the coast of Izu a few minutes ago, at 6:24pm. It was pretty strong here where I am (south central Tokyo). Hi-net is calling it a 4.9, but I believe the 5.6 reports from Tenki.jp–that felt pretty darn strong. Rolling more than jolting, here. Apparently it originated very close to Oshima Island. No danger of tsunami, so they say. It was about 80km south of where I am, but it was strong enough to be instantly noticeable, making the curtains sway and so on. Not nearly enough to throw stuff off of shelves, but still it was among the top ten, and maybe the top five earthquakes I’ve felt in the past decade. You might think that’s not much of a distinction, but there are lots of quakes here. I’ve chronicled 21 quakes on this blog, not including aftershocks, the first one being almost exactly 3 years ago. That’s about seven per year, and those are just the ones I’ve felt and could blog on quickly. For example, one hit about a week ago soon after I fell asleep one night, and so I didn’t note that one in this journal. I’m supposing that there may be as many as a dozen quakes a year that you can really feel, should you be awake (or get shaken awake) when they hit.

Although this was decided back in May 2004, I hadn’t heard of it until now. Starting in 2009, Japan will change criminal court proceedings to a jury system–or, more accurately, a joint-judge-and-jury system.

I remember having trouble explaining juries to my students, as Japan has not practiced that system much since WWII. In Japan, court cases are usually decided by a panel of three judges–but public trust in that system is marred by police and prosecutorial misconduct, shown up over the past few decades by exoneration of many who were convicted under false confessions.

Back in the 80’s, when Japan was the meteoric star of the world and America was trying to emulate it, a lot of attention was paid to the criminal justice system. Politicians from the U.S. would visit Japan to study how the police and courts worked. Japan, after all, had a superb record of catching criminals and successfully prosecuting them. Japan’s arrest rate used to be as high as 70% (higher for serious crimes), and the conviction rate has been as high as a ridiculous 99.97%.

Part of the arrest rate comes from the fact that the police have been known to select which cases to even report–many foreign residents in Japan tell stories of police refusing to allow victims to file official complaints for crimes ranging from robbery to rape, instead told by police that it’s unlikely the perpetrator could be found, so don’t bother. Another aspect of the high arrest rate comes from rather strong police powers–one can be held by the police for up to 23 days without charges being filed, bail, or even an attorney, and false confessions are said to be numerous.

The high conviction rate stems, so it is said, from both prosecutors being highly selective about which cases to prosecute, and from the fact that judges tend to treat indictments by prosecutors with great respect, treating them almost as the equivalent of an assuredness of guilt. One case of a British national convicted on drug charges pointed out that the judge who presided over the case had not given a single “not guilty” ruling in at least ten years.

Apparently, the new jury system is a reaction to these problems, as well as a reaction to the fact that Japan’s crime rate has risen dramatically since the early 90’s, when the economic bubble burst.

The new system, explained in almost child-accessible terms here (pdf file) by the Ministry of Justice, will not exactly do away with the current 3-judge panel; instead, six layman jurors will be added to the mix, sitting alongside the professional judges. A majority will decide the case, presumably a 5-4 majority of judges and jurors. Defendants will not have a choice between the new and old systems–only the new system will be available, for most crimes that is.

I became aware of this news by reading in Crisscross News (a English-language Japan news-and-discussion site, which I will not link to as these links die very quickly) story that reported the results of a survey on jury duty. Apparently, about 60% of Japanese people are not at all pleased with the idea that they might be pressed into service, with 33% being strongly against the idea. This is actually an improvement–a year ago, 70% said they didn’t want to become jurors. Most said that it would be too difficult to judge, or that they didn’t want to have that responsibility. The new system will allow for people to duck jury duty, though it’s not clear what will be accepted as a reason for doing so. Jurors will also be paid, but it is not decided how much. I can’t find anything any sequestering or other details either.

Another problem Japan faces is the low number of lawyers; passing the bar in Japan is very difficult, with only 3% of applicants successfully doing so. This is in sharp contrast with the U.S., where there are far too many lawyers. Sadly, language difficulties rule out any hope of an export deal…

I looked out the window not too long ago, and the sky was an alarming shade of yellow, as clouds covered the area. We’ve been having a rather intense thunderstorm, many lightning strikes, in the past half hour or so. I love thunderstorms. Caught glimpses of a lot of local lightning, too. Great stuff. But I hope it stops before I have to go for my eye exam in two hours….

So another year comes, another group of students. Today was the opening ceremony for my college and our affiliate school, and as usual, it was quit the shindig. In Japan, people are big on ceremonies like this. For opening ceremony, all the new students and most of their families come. It’s held at a big hotel (the ANA Hotel in Roppongi, though we also use the Century Hyatt for graduations), and there are speeches (an hour and a half this time, including the speech by the Cultural Attaché from the U.S. embassy), followed by a buffet lunch and entertainment, including a string quartet, a guitar band, a marching band, and many musical and dance performances by students (the guy with the bagpipes didn’t show up this year).

So it was a lot of fun–hopefully setting a good, upbeat tone with our new students. And so starts another year. The beginning of my ninth, as it stands. Here’s to many more.

There’s a joke I came up with years ago: you can’t park illegally in Japan because all the illegal spaces are taken.

Parking in Japan is a nightmare, which is why I’m glad I don’t drive a car. Traffic jams and narrow streets are bad enough, but what do you do when you get there? Pay a lot of money to park in a parking lot somewhere, is the usual answer (paid parking starts at $2-3 per hour). But parking is not always available–legal parking, anyway. So you always see cars parked illegally. I always go down a boulevard in Japan, a two-lane street that serves as a major thoroughfare for western Tokyo. All too often cars and trucks park in the left-hand lane, blocking it. Forget double-parking; it’s hard to imagine a place in Japan where that would not completely block all traffic.

Every year, 1.6 million traffic tickets are handed out. And that’s already giving people a fighting chance–parking police (identifiable by their tiny police cars) mark tires with chalk, and then come back later (takes me back to the days when I worked in Palo Alto–the trick was to roll your car just enough in its space so the chalk marks went under the tires and disappeared). That gives people who’ve parked illegally a chance to get out before the ticket comes. Not a problem if you just need to park for ten or fifteen minutes–which is what the takkyubin (parcel delivery) trucks do all the time.

Parking at home can be a chore as well. I have heard that before you can even buy a car, you have to show that you’ve secured a parking place where you live. The parking lot outside my building has a dual-level lift system, where you park your car on a platform, which then rises so another car can park underneath. Vertical parking garages are not all that uncommon.

The problem is, there’s no solution to the problem short of radically reducing the number of cars in Japan. It would be impossible to eke out any more space for parking. So Japan’s new solution (tip of the hat to Cosmic Buddha) for alleviating illegal parking is not really a solution, but rather a compounding of the problem.

Here’s the plan: starting in June, the Japanese police will hand over parking violation policing to private-sector companies. These companies will not chalk your vehicle, but instead will ticket you as soon as they see the violation. They take a digital photo of your vehicle, slap a sticker on it to inform you that you’ve been had, and notify the police, who bill you.

I see several problems with this. First, deliveries have to be made, and it appears that no exceptions will be made. There are a ton of shops in Japan that have no parking lots or driveways; to get their goods delivered, trucks will have to park far from the shops. Takkyubin companies will get into big trouble, as they rarely will have spot to park; they may have to increase their staff to include both drivers and delivery people, else make other arrangements that might cost more and muck things up.

Second, the problem is not that people have legal places to park but decide not to; the problem is that all too often, as my oft-told joke suggests, there is simply no place to legally park. Ergo this “solution” will solve nothing–it will simply increase the number of tickets issued. Can you say “government revenue enhancement”?

But worst is the specter of commercial ticketing, where for-profit corporations are paid a bonus for every ticket they issue. It will no longer be a meter maid who gets paid x yen per hour no matter how many tickets are issued. It will be a company that will have a vested interest in ticketing people as much as humanly possible. Japanese police say they expect parking tickets to double–I say that’s a grossly conservative estimate. Unless there are specific stipulations limiting the number of tickets that can be handed out, there will be nothing stopping these companies from trying to maximize profits by issuing tickets galore–which in Tokyo and other big cities in Japan, will be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Add to this the fact that in Japan, parking violations are expensive ($100 to $150), and take two points from your license–15 points, or 8 parking tickets, and your license gets suspended.

Expect a lot of angry drivers later this year, and probably more than a few altercations between motorists and ticket issuers.

Recently I reported that Japan was going to outlaw sales of secondhand electronics starting April 1st. Due to a great deal of protest, the government has stepped back from the ban, in that they introduced a gaping loophole for shops to drive through. They will allow “rentals” of the goods instead of sales. Presumably, a ¥1000 sale item will instead be rented, with a non-refundable deposit of ¥1000, followed by monthly rental payments of ¥10 or something like that, with the proviso that if one fails to pay the rental fee, the deposit is forfeit and you keep the product. I presume.

A headline at CrissCross news:

Strong winds buffet Pacific areas of Japan

TOKYO — Strong winds hit extensive areas Sunday along the Pacific coast of Japan, with Tokyo experiencing the strongest wind on record for March, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

A maximum wind velocity of 120 kilometers per hour was logged in central Tokyo at 5:48 p.m., topping the record for March marked only two days earlier, at 115 kph, it said.

No kidding. I tried to do some birdwatching along the Tama River Sunday, darn near got blown off my feet several times. By the time I gave up, the left side of my face was numb.

It was like this in February last year, when temps in the 60’s one day turned to snow the next. And so we had the same thing this week; temps in the high 60’s on Sunday, and then on Monday, it starts to snow. Not a big snowstorm like last year, only a flurry–but still enough to turn your head. Two straight years with this phenomenon at about the same time, maybe it’s a trend…

Cosmic Buddha noted the same variances, even more wild than what I observed here.

Because after April 1st–no foolin’ this time–the sale of second-hand electronic goods made before 2001 will become illegal. That’s right, against the law. If you have a shop and sell a laserdisc player, you’ll be subject to a prison sentence and stiff fines. The ban is not total–it does not include personal computers, and only applies to businesses that sell used electronics–but that’s quite a ban, if you ask me.

The ban applies to 450 types of items, including “TVs, audiovisual equipment, video-game machines, refrigerators and electric musical instruments.” Ostensibly, the law is supposed to be for safety purposes, but that’s a crock. The standards for checking the safety of products was changed in 2001; before then, the government required strict testing for safety, but changed it so that manufacturers could test items on a voluntary system. Which means that the new testing won’t be as rigorous as the old one. But the new law is based upon the assumption that the old equipment should not be sold because somehow it won’t be as safe as the new stuff. Makes sense, right?

Of course it doesn’t. It makes no sense at all. Until you factor in the way the Japanese government works with its industries. The automobile industry is the best example. In Japan, if you own a car, you have to take it in for expensive “safety” checks every few years, called “shaken” (pronounced “shaw-ken”). When the car is new, you get three years free; then a safety check every two years. It used to become mandatory each year after the car became ten years old, but that was changed and now the two-year check continues indefinitely. But that doesn’t change much–it’s still hideously expensive. Shaken can cost up to $1,750, not including a weight tax (up to $500) and mandatory insurance (up to $250), which is skimpy and usually must be enhanced with additional insurance (also up to $500). So you might wind up paying an additional $3000 every two years–which is why a lot of people sell their cars before a shaken check comes along–which is the whole idea. Shaken is not really for safety, it’s a gift for the automobile industry, intended to boost their sales. The discarded used cars, often in perfect running condition, are then scrapped or sold overseas, another big industry, as they aren’t worth much–if anything at all–in Japan, due to shaken.

Knowing that, you can now understand the whole new “safety” law about reselling used electronics in Japan. It’s more a gift to the Japanese electronics industry than anything else. So head off to Akihabara in March, and maybe you can find some good fire sales for pre-2001 electronics! Courtesy of the Japanese government.

I know it’s bad sportsmanship, but kind deserves kind: I hope the Japanese baseball team does not win the upcoming World Baseball Classic. That’s not out of any antipathy for Japan, nor for the players, but strictly out of contempt for the team’s manager: Sadaharu Oh. I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

When I first heard of Oh, I had respect for his record, if not for the claims that his higher number of home runs than Hank Aaron actually meant he was a better slugger; Japan’s ballparks are smaller than American counterparts, and if Aaron had been batting in them, he’d most likely have gotten far more home runs than Oh did. But since there is no way to strictly determine that, it’s enough to simply say that Oh holds the record for Japan, Aaron holds the record for America, and neither “wins” over the other.

But the respect I had for the man died when Oh showed unforgivably poor sportsmanship, not to mention racism (ironic for Oh, a half-Chinese man who initially faced racism himself in Japan) when he denied foreign ballplayers the chance to break his batting record–because they were not Japanese. This happened not once, not twice, but three times. First in 1985, when Oh managed the Yomiuri Giants and faced Randy Bass, who challenged Oh’s record of 55 home runs in one season. Next was in 2001, when Oh managed the Daiei Hawks, and faced Tuffy Rhodes, who had tied Oh’s record. Most recently, he denied the chance to Alex Cabrera, who had also tied Oh at 55 in 2002. In all three cases, the foreign players challenging Oh’s record faced the teams managed by Oh in the final games of the seasons. In all three cases, orders were given to the pitchers for Oh’s teams that these players were not to be given the chance to break the “King’s” record. While some other teams gave the batters chances, Oh’s teams have consistently blocked challengers on racial grounds. Oh tried to blame this on the coaches, saying he was “out of the loop,” but the fact that he never disciplined a coach belies this weak excuse. It was also commonly understood that if the players had been Japanese, they would have been given good pitches and not walked:

“The pitchers are always under the direction of the manager. So it is not up to them,” explains 25-year old Tigers fan Yasuhisa Tadera, seated in the left field stands, of the practice of intentionally not throwing strikes.

Sitting behind Tadera is Eiji Matsumoto. “The Japanese just don’t want the record broken by a foreigner,” he says.

So then if a Japanese player approached the record, would he see strikes?

“If [Hideki] Matsui of the Giants, for example, were close, they’d give him a chance,” admits Matsumoto, a 52-year old Giants fan, “The Japanese don’t play fair.”

Any person who acts with such a depraved sense of foul sportsmanship not just once but three times does not deserve any titles or respect. This is, after all, baseball: what happened to “three strikes and you’re out”? For Oh to lead this present team to a victory would be a crowning achievement for a man who has disgraced a sport which still idolizes him–for in Japan, unfortunately, such acts as Oh has taken part in are quietly dismissed. In America or almost any other country, the manager would have been ostracized and banned from the sport for such offenses. Japanese baseball is improving–when Oh shut out Rhodes in 2001, Japanese baseball commissioner Hiromori Kawashima criticized Oh, saying his decision was “completely divorced from the essence of baseball, which values the supremacy of fair play.” But Oh has not been penalized in any way, nor has he taken much of a hit in his popularity in Japan. After all, he was chosen to manage the Japan team this year in the World Baseball Classic. What does that tell you?