I got up early yesterday morning so I could get a bit of birding on, and the day proved a fine one to do it–clear and warm. I figured that the river is always a good bet, so I stopped there on the way in, and sure enough, there were the cormorants–this time resting on the banks with an egret. I also figured out that good lighting helps with the long-range photography, at least with my camera, and got the best views of the cormorants yet. And that they are Japanese Cormorants, not Greats as I though–they have white chin and breast feathers, while the Great Cormorants are all black.

And in this last one, I even caught a Little Grebe passing through–this being a 3-bird combination that’s probably not too common…

After the river, I headed on into Tokyo proper, and went to Meiji Shrine before going to work. I did spot one new bird–a Siskin, I think–but I didn’t get a photo or even a very good look. But all the rest were birds that I’d seen before. I didn’t catch the Great Tits (I’m still getting used to saying that) that I saw in the brush–they moved too quickly. But I did get great shots of Tree Sparrows and a Wagtail:

But the big surprise was in the ducks. After I spotted a relatively ordinary Mallard…

…I spied a pair of Mandarin Ducks by the lakeside, and got some great shots of one, and of the pair:

Amazing-looking creatures, those. I still have yet to figure out what those tan flaps are on their sides, how they work… you have to wonder at how this duck developed, it’s so ornate. But then I got a surprise. I followed one into the brush beside the lake… and happened into a whole flock of them resting on the shore. The following is just a part of the flock, more than a dozen males and some females.

Quite a sight if you’re not expecting it.

I just had the one day off this weekend, but decided to spend a few hours of it birding again, just checking to see what the local area had. The forest park just around the corner was pretty much empty, but the riverbanks delivered as usual. Saw the Widgeon and Teals again, as well as a Cormorant or two. In a small river offshoot, I got a much closer look at a nice Little Egret. It gave me an even closer look when it flew up and rested on a telephone wire:

But the big surprise of the day was a flock of Oriental Greenfinches, feeding in the shallow, muddy ponds along the banks, formed by recent snow. It was hard as heck to get close enough to get decent shots, making me wish for a 20x optical zoom, but I was able to get some fair pictures of them. But I had to sneak up, and when I got too close, they’d fly a bit more down the riverbank, until they decided it was too far, and then they flew back to the original end. I must have followed them back and forth four or five times, till my finders almost froze, snapping away.

Their bodies have a greenish-grey color, but most impressive is the flash of bright yellow on their wings and tails. Here’s a slightly better, closer view of a few:

A better shot still, and a chance to note that the Greenfinches mixed together with local sparrows; take a close look, and you’ll spot a few of the finches’ plainer cousins:

Or a much better view here, with a finch and sparrow caught next to each other in flight:

Now, the value of digital cameras comes in the number of shots you can take without cost. I must have taken a hundred and fifty shots of the Greenfinches, and most were no good. But the benefit of taking so many shots is that you’re bound to get at least one great one–and here it is, a cropped version shown here, of a shot I got of the flock flying past me, in good focus, many with wings beautifully spread:

If you want to see a larger image, here’s one at 1000 pixels wide, and here’s the full-sized original (444 KB).

If I can get myself up early enough tomorrow, I’m going to try to stop by Meiji Shrine–I understand some interesting birds can be found there, and it’s almost right on my way to work anyway.

What is this with people calling on Sunday morning?

I’m a late-night person. By myself, I have some trouble getting to sleep before 3 am. That would, by the way, put me in trouble in mid-summer, if I stayed up past 4 am, because the sun would rise (no DST here, and we’re on the east side of a time zone).

What my night-owl habits mean, however, is that I don’t get as much sleep as I’d like on the weekdays, when I have to get up to go to work (regardless of the fact that my “early” waking hour is downright “sleeping in” for most people).

So I use the weekend to catch up. Or I try to. Many times I’ll have something I have to do early enough on Saturday, like yesterday when I had a morning class to make up for a missed session earlier in the semester. But, I tell myself, Sunday is the day. I’ll sleep in real late then.

Of course, that’s when the morning phone calls come. Sometimes they’re from work. Sometimes from friends (who then get the when-to-call lecture). Many come from solicitors. But most come from wrong numbers. Maybe people shouldn’t try to dial numbers when groggy on a Sunday morning, I don’t know. Today’s was at 9 am, a woman who called, and at least had the decency to get out “sorry!” in English before ending the call. (most wrong-number callers just hang up right away) But by this time it’s too late, there’s no going back to sleep.

I gotta learn how to shut the phone off at night.

Well, Friday brought quite a bit of the white stuff into town, though the weekend-long storm predicted fizzled out in the end. But we did get a few inches all over town, and for Tokyo that’s quite a bit.

This city is not really geared up to handle much snow. I remember back in the countryside, where we got real snow, meters of it, things would run relatively smoothly. Trains would operate. Business would go on. And in the evening we’d watch the news shows with images of a few inches of snow in Tokyo and people slipping, sliding, and waiting for late trains, and we’d have a good laugh. Of course, it’s not the people, it’s the city and its readiness. Even several hours after just a light snow, the trains were still running late.

One small note–they’ve added wooden planking to the railroad tracks next to the platforms at stations, at least some on the Keio Line. I have no idea if this is a snow measure or not. If it is, it doesn’t seem to help the trains stay on time in bad weather.

As I expected, I got a comment on the Ten Commandments post regarding why I think it’s so important, and I think the issue is significant enough to post on here. Much of this text is the same as in my response to the comment in the last post, but I’ve edited it to take the form of an entry by itself.

The question might be, why should we abandon religion? But that is the farthest thing from what I am suggesting. Religion is just about everywhere in America. Religion is in the society, the culture, the media, the community, the church, the family, the individual… and a thousand other places. The single place–not all places, but just the one and only place–where it cannot be is in the government. For the express reason, taught to us endlessly in history, that when a state endorses a religion, that religion dominates to the pain and suffering of all other religions and beliefs. Why did the first European colonists come to the U.S.? Because states in Europe had endorsed a single church, and other denominations and religions were persecuted as a direct result. The founders didn’t put the separation of church and state in the constitution for no reason, after all. We have become complacent to that history, and are in grave danger in failing Santayana’s warning.

The response might be, aren’t you over-reacting a bit much? It’s just a granite monument, not an instant theocracy. But the public display of the Ten Commandments is the camel’s nose under the tent. This is a matter of slow change, like the proverbial frog that boils to death when the water is heated slowly. And each incursion of religion into state is used as a further justification for the next.

Remember the granite monument to the ten commandments in Alabama? Know what it had chiseled onto three of its four sides? “Under God,” “So Help Me God,” and “In God We Trust.” These were placed intentionally as justifications for the displaying of the monument in a public building: America is based upon Christianity and these religious words integrated into government-sanctioned acts confirm it. America is a Christian nation, and has always been.

Except it’s not true–just the reverse, in fact. Not anti-religious, rather simply secular. People complain that the pledge should not be changed–but the present version of the pledge is the changed one. “Under God” was added long, long after the pledge was written. Why not go back to the original? What was wrong with it then? “In God We Trust” was never on coinage, originally–all coins bore the single word, “Liberty,” until religious groups got their way at one point and the new motto was brought in.

And “So Help Me God” was not only another example of religion added long after the Constitution was written, but the Constitution itself forbids the requirement of a religious oath in the taking of public office. Go ahead, read the Constitution. It’s right there, in black and white: government officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Article VI, Clause 3. Now, people would point out that it is a voluntary addition to the oath of office–but what would happen if a president decided not to utter the words? He wouldn’t be impeached, but he’d probably be crippled politically.

And that’s where the whole camel starts following the nose through the tent flap. Now it is essentially a requirement for a president to take the oath, in violation of the Constitution. And yet these religious incursions, each one violating the principle of church and state, are used to justify the next step, the new religious incursion.

If the Supreme Court approves the display of the Ten Commandments this year, then in ten years they will be hearing a case in which we’ll see the ornate display of the Christian bible in a place of honor and respect in government buildings–and the Ten Commandments ruling will be used as justification and precedent. After all, the commandments are scripture–so is the bible. The principle is the same, public edification of scripture is approved, so the quantity of scripture should not matter at all. And that, in turn, would be used as justification for the further steps, and pretty soon, it goes too far–by which time it is well-cemented in law, and any attempt to take it out is met with hostility and scorn, the already-famed “persecution” of the privileged majority. Remember the Pastor Niemoller? He said, “In Germany they first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” You wait for the axe to fall, and it’ll be too late. Protest when the axe first comes into view.

And don’t think it couldn’t happen quickly, either–did you know that in the 19th century, there were two attempts to amend the Constitution to read that “humbly acknowledging almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government […]”? That would have done it, right there, in one fell swoop. The Constitution and its first amendment have been under attack for a long time now, by well-meaning people who think that marrying church and state is a swell idea. In other words, people who don’t read history–or do, and are OK with the results so long as their religion is the dominant one.

If you think that protest against unreasonable religious incursions would not be quelled, that Americans would still be free to object in the late stages of the marriage, think again. Evidence of this is in the comment which protested my suggestion that the Ten Commandments should not be displayed. I was accused of being part of a “vocal minority” attempting to abandon every facet of our culture, and of so “slavishly obeying” the first amendment that I would be silly enough to ask that mention of God be removed from the pledge of allegiance. This from someone I have seen, in past comments, as perfectly reasonable and average. And that rebuff was just for the relatively small stuff now. You think that by the time it’s so ingrained and cemented that church and state are married, that my protests will be greeted with less scorn? Quite the opposite–people will justify the marriage with Supreme Court decisions, religious law, and historical precedent in addition to all that they personally believe, and I’ll be screwed. The people who are seriously religious will react far more inhospitably.

Show me a state which married itself to a religion, and I’ll show you a state where religious freedom was violated. For every mild success of such a marriage, history holds dozens of examples of cruel tyrannies where those not of the “official” faith were crushed. One of the pillars of American greatness has been our ability to avoid that fate. I don’t want that pillar to be eroded, even a little–I want it polished and kept strong.

In the end, principle is at the heart of this issue–and you don’t compromise on principles. Once you do, you’re on your way to losing them entirely.

I gotta tell you, I can only pray that Bush never gets a chance to replace any Supreme Court justices, especially ones not already on the far right–or else Americans might eventually be forced to pray. The court is teetering so that one single justice could wipe out any hope of maintaining the spirit of the constitution.

Case in point: when discussing the constitutionality of having public displays of the Ten Commandments on public grounds such as courtrooms, two of the justices forwarded a startling suggestion: first, Kennedy said, “If an atheist walks by, he can avert his eyes.” Then Scalia added, “Turn your eyes away, if it’s such a big deal to you.”

These guys are supposed to be protecting and preserving the Constitution? This is their answer to a violation of the First Amendment, when the state endorses a religion? Avert your eyes?

The idiocy of this suggestion should be plain: the issue has nothing to do with the idea of atheists being offended, it has to do with whether or not the state is endorsing a specific religion. A public display of the commandments is, in essence, an endorsement of not just religion but also a specific religion; especially in the context of present-day, well-known claims (false, of course) that the commandments are the basis of American law, the display of the commandments is nothing less than a prohibited endorsement of Christianity.

Kennedy and Scalia here display their subscription to the hype: they seem to have bought into the idea that protests against such displays are about hatred of religion and people being personally offended. The true reason for protests is that such displays are clearly proselytizing; they promote not just religion, but a specific religion, in a way that makes it clear that the state endorses it–and is using taxpayer dollars to accomplish the endorsement. Such an sanction of a specific belief would act to the detriment of all people with differing beliefs, threatening their religious freedom by signaling a step down the path to a society legally dominated by a single faith. The statement that “atheists” (as if they were the only ones who object) should “avert their eyes” can most charitably be regarded as a solution if the justices thought that personal offense were the only issue at hand.

But Kennedy and Scalia must be painfully aware that it is not just about personal offense, in which context the “avert your eyes” suggestion becomes startling and distressing. Is the view from the right wing of the court now one that suggests the government can violate the Constitution so long as large swaths of society that don’t like it can “avert their eyes”? After all, if the government decides to start abridging the freedom of the press, and you don’t like it–avert your eyes! If the government starts torturing its citizens and denies them due process–well, just avert your eyes, silly! That’ll make it all better.

We can only pray that the wiser minds on the court will prevail; still, it is no comfort that men who sit on the bench could actually accept, let alone propose, an “avert your eyes” practice to constitutional violations.

Japan has recently overhauled its paper money. There are only four bills–the 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000-yen denominations. The 2,000-yen bill is a new introduction; I like it a lot personally, but merchants hate it, so that’s that. In practice, there’s just the three bills. So recently, those three got face lifts with several anti-counterfeiting measures, just like U.S. money has been revised recently (more than once–what’s with that?). Here are the new bills next to the old ones (new bills on top):

The old 1,000-yen bills have famed author Natsume Soseki (“Kokoro“) on the front, but he has been replaced by microbiologist Hideyo Noguchi, Whose claim to fame is that he isolated the cause of syphilis (umm, okay). Personally, I think he looks a lot like a Japanese version of Lyle Lovett, what with the hair and all.

The next bill is the 5,000-yen denomination, and this bill has something even U.S. paper money hasn’t had yet: a woman on the front.

The woman’s name was Ichiyo Higuchi, a 19th century author. A fitting decision in principle, as women’s rights have advanced at least somewhat over the past few decades, and this choice seems to acknowledge that. She replaces Inazo Nitobe, a bespectacled educator of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Finally, 19th century educator Yukichi Fukuzawa remains on the 10,000 yen bill, though it did get the anti-counterfeiting makeover:

And maybe it’s just my imagination, but Fukuzawa seems to be standing up just a tad straighter. Maybe he thinks he has to shape up a bit or the next time he’ll get replaced.

Not that Bush’s extreme divisiveness was ever a secret, but they are throwing all pretense aside and now carrying out an agenda that anyone would agree is highly partisan: re-nominating extremist right-wing judges that Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep from being confirmed to higher courts.

The Democrats blocking is not the partisan example: blocking extremist judges is standard fare in D.C. politics. The Republicans blocked far more of Clinton’s relatively centrist jurists than the Democrats have blocked Bush’s wingnut nominees; calling the Democrats partisan here would require the GOP to take the Grand Prize in Partisanship.

But Bush has them all beat. Not only are his nominees almost insultingly partisan, but the idea of recycling the worst of the lot, hoping that the GOP’s increased hold on the Senate will help him squeak his most objectionable nominees through, is unprecedented and about as partisan as you could imagine a president could get.

His current nominee is William Myers, former lobbyist for the ranching and mining industries and former Bush administrator lawyer. But even more important than just the fact that Myers is called a “staunch conservative” even by Republicans, more than that he is a known advocate against environmentalism, is the fact that Bush is trying to seat this far-right-wing jurist on the 9th Circuit, a liberal stronghold which also happens to rule on a high number of environmental cases. This is not in the least a coincidence–Bush is clearly trying to knock out the liberal heart of the judiciary, and is doing it in the most offensive way possible.

Again, none of this is a surprise–ever since Bush’s razor-thin “mandate” win last year, the White House has made clear its strategy to bring back the few judges that the Democrats managed to keep of the bench.

Well, since I started up birdwatching again, I figured I’d need a guide book. There’s always some field guide to the birds of whatever, so I started the search–and found something disappointing: there’s no field guide to Japanese birds in English. There are English guides to just about every other country in the region, though–China, Korea, India, Singapore, the Philippines, you name it, there are English guides, even on sale here in Japan. But not a guide to Japanese birds. What’s with that?

Now, there was an English printing of the “gold standard” guide put out by the Wild Bird Society of Japan (日本野鳥の会, call them JWBD) in 1982, in hardcover–but the book has been out of print for years, and has become somewhat the collector’s edition–I’ve seen them on sale between $200 and $400 apiece. Ouch.

So I figured the Japanese-language version, pictured at right, would have to do. I went to the JWBS store, located near Shinjuku, just out of Hatsudai Station on the Keio/Shinjuku Line. A nice store, that–I didn’t have time to browse, but will go there again. And when I saw the JWBD Field Guide, I thought it was OK–very similar to the North American field guide I had as a kid–but was disappointed that there was not even an English translation of the names of the birds–just the Latin. When I asked, I was pointed to a more recent book: A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan (lower left), which features photographs rather than painted illustrations–good or bad depending on your preferences–but they also have the English names of the birds.

The standard Field Guide has one advantage: the maps showing the birds’ ranges are zoomed in more on the Asian region, with Japan at center; the Photographic Guide features world maps, on which Japan is almost too small to make out (though the map zooms in nicely when the birds are native solely to Japan).

In the end, it was a close thing–but I decided to go for the Photographic Guide. They did a pretty good job providing a variety of views of each bird, and the maps were sufficient; the kicker was the English names. I still might buy the Field Guide–both books cost about ¥3000, a bit too much to buy all at once–but for now, the photo book will do quite fine.

I remembered that I have done some bird photography in the past, when distance was not such a big problem. I was able to find three new (old, really) bird photos; there was one more, of a Rufous Turtle Dove which perched on my dining room window’s flower shelf, but for some reason I couldn’t find it in my records. But here are the others:

First, as a complement to the Lesser Egret from yesterday, an Intermediate Egret (not really imaginative names, are they?) from when I visited Shinjuku Gyouen Park in October of 2000:

The next month, when I went to the Imperial Palace here in Tokyo, I photographed a Black Swan (along with some Tufted Ducks, not pictured) in the moat.

And finally, in June of 2002, I snapped some Mandarin Ducks in Inogashira Park:

And though many people wouldn’t think to include them, there are pigeons, and if you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know I got a very long, good look at two of them being raised on my balcony last year. So including the pigeons, that’s twenty species on the list so far (not counting the Kingfisher and the Turtle Dove).

Despite it being a cold, overcast day, I decided to trek out to the Tama River and the local area for a few hours today in order to do a bit more birding, and I was rewarded with some rather interesting birds. First, among the more common, was the Black-backed Wagtail (sometimes called the White Wagtail), a bird I have seen about for quite some time, but have never been able to photograph well, mostly from its skittish nature. It has a striking black-and-white contrast. Today I found it mostly at the riverbank, usually on the concrete levees. Most of the photos are a bit fuzzy because I had to use the digital zoom, beyond the 10x optical zoom, sometimes up to 32x, in order to get the best shot.

Another common bird was this one–but despite a long search on the Internet, I cannot find its identity. To anyone seeing this, if you know what it is, let me know. They’re all around, in town and on the river. [Update: Andrew from Fujisawa correctly identified them as Gray Starlings. Thanks, Andrew!]

But I should find out sometime later this week–I plan on buying “A Field Guide to the Birds of Japan,” which seems to be the only really useful guide book out there–at least one that seems to have an English version (hopefully) to it. Amazon in the U.S. lists prices for the book up to $300 or so–I have no idea why, maybe collector’s editions or something. In Japan, the book as currently published is just over 3000 yen.

A bird I have seen around from time to time, but not quite so often, is the Little Egret.

The ducks were out on the river, of course, but I saw two new kinds today: the Teal (or Common Teal), and the Eurasian Wigeon (below), which looks like the Pochard, but has white feathers on the front of its head.

The biggest surprise, however, was a flock of largish black birds resting on the shore of a small island in the middle of the river. At first I took them for crows, but as their larger size became apparent and I realized crows don’t really do the river scene, I thought they might be a breed of black ducks. Even when I photographed them, I was unsure what they were–the small viewer on the back of my camera didn’t give up quite enough detail, and since my hands were freezing in the very, very cold wind on the river, I was not in the position to study it much. But on later review at home, the breed became apparent: they were Cormorants–a flock of Great Cormorants, in fact. Again, since I had to use the digital zoom due to the distance, the shots are far from crisp–but the Cormorants are distinctly identifiable.

So add another six species to the list. Of course, it’s always easy at the start.

By way of a reader on Kevin Drum’s site, this interesting aspect to a bill before Congress, in reference to making Freedom of Information Act requests:

Section 552(a)(4)(A)(ii) of title 5, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: ‘‘In making a determination of a representative of the news media under subclause (II), an agency may not deny that status solely on the basis of the absence of institutional associations of the requester, but shall consider the prior publication history of the requester. Prior publication history shall include books, magazine and newspaper articles, newsletters, television and radio broadcasts, and Internet publications.

Well, this blog is undeniably an Internet publication. I may soon be legally a member of the news media. Granted, of course, that so might be millions of others. But still, it is a recognition of a new age of communication.

Now, I don’t like people who throw around “age-of” designations like Bush hands out nicknames. But there is something important here to note.

Communication, in terms of reaching a large number of people with a message, has always been key to shaping public opinion, whether it be for politics, advertising, or any other matter. But communication has also always been expensive and involved, and thereby limited to a very few people. For the common man, public communication has always been limited to the reach of one’s personal voice. If one were lucky, one might reach a few hundred people. If extraordinary circumstances prevailed, one could draw thousands to listen to your message.

But to reaching a worldwide, nationwide, or even regional audience, there was a major roadblock. To do it by yourself, you could start a popular movement through the force of your cause, so much so that your message could not be kept down–but that is an extraordinary circumstance. Otherwise, you had to control a business which could produce newspapers, magazines or books, or could broadcast radio or television shows. Since this was far too expensive, you were limited to using other people’s communication tools, and that meant that you had to ask editors and publishers. To have your message appear in a newspaper (even as limited as a letter to the editor), a magazine, in book form or broadcast to people, you had to first beg for the chance to speak before a small class of people who controlled those information channels. For the purposes of this writing, let’s call them the “publishing class.” The publishing class has always held the power to silence you, whether it was because they didn’t like your message, or didn’t think it would profit them–or even just from simple indifference.

This was akin to having a small class of people who control the roads. If you want to travel anywhere, you would have to ask the roadkeepers for access to travel. For whatever reasons they pleased, they could deny you access to the roads. If your business did not bring them money, they could refuse to give you the ability to travel. If they did not approve of your business, they could lock you into your village. They could block your ability to move simply because they didn’t like the way you dressed, they way you walked–or even just for no reason at all. You would have the “freedom” to travel, but not the freedom to travel far without someone else’s permission.

We talk about the vital importance of free speech. What we don’t talk about is the freedom to speak far. And lines of communication to the world are just like roads to take you there physically. Speaking to a wide audience remained a privilege, mostly controlled by the publishing class. And that does not constitute equal speech, another aspect of communication justice which is often overlooked.

If you come to a public park, step up onto a soap box, and start speaking your mind without fear of being arrested, that’s what we call free speech. But if I have a lot more money, and come to the park as well to speak, I can set up a huge stage with enormous speakers, have a rock band open for me, and then blare out my message in such a loud voice that even those who are still interested in your soapbox speech can’t even hear you anymore. That’s an example of unequal speech, and it is about as much of an injustice as taking away your freedom to speak at all. After all, what good is free speech if your message is squelched to insignificance?

Such were the limitations of pre-Internet communications: speech to anything more than a small group of people was limited by the whim of those who had more money and power than you.

The Internet is not the answer to the problem, but it is a giant step forward. There are still limitations: others with money and the control of other popular communication channels can still make more noise than you can, but at least you have now been given a new, free channel all your own, kind of like a personal loudspeaker that can cut through the noise that the publishing class makes.

Of course, you still have to attract the audience–no one is immune from that. Freedom to speak is not a guarantee that you will be listened to. Your message has to be of sufficient interest to make others pay attention. But if your ability to communicate is good enough, if your message is significant enough, then attention can be attracted. Your publication will be linked to, discussed, and advertised by word of mouth through a community far larger than the local one in which you reside. Many have already done it–many bloggers have reached even a huge audience. These are people whose voices might never have been heard otherwise.

So the new law being proposed is not a landmark because of the access or legal status that it would provide bloggers, but rather because it demonstrates the recognition of this new channel of communication–a new “estate” in the sense of post-revolutionary French politics. The “fifth estate” has always been what is beyond the media, the “new” voice of influence. But there have been enough voices beyond the fourth estate of the media to fill that category, and the channel that the Internet provides is revolutionary enough that I would see it as justifying a completely new estate all on its own.

So I say directly to the world. Or at least you people who decide read this blog entry, anyway.

Talk about extremes.

Just two days ago, we had a warm spike, the weather rising to 65 degrees F (18 C), possibly even more than that. And tonight we’re having a pretty significant snowstorm, several inches at least. That’s quite a shift in temperature… and an excuse to upload a few photos of the white night to the ol’ blog.

Unless, like me, you already have an iPod model that works fine. But the new ones out today are pretty tempting. The new, full-size iPods are 30- and 60GB, both with color screens, and the ability to import photos directly from your digital camera and then view them on the color screen. The synch then works perfectly with iPhoto to store them (though frankly, I prefer to store photos independently, as my local HD space is limited, and I haven’t taken the time to set up a non-standard library system yet).

The new system would be perfect for traveling–you could store thousands of photos in your iPod, not needing a PC for quite some time, and you’d have your whole music collection there to boot. The next step should be to add movie integration, in part because so many new digital cameras take movies. The iPod pages at Apple don’t mention anything about movies, so I presume the feature isn’t there yet; but with the whole of the consumer electronics industry snapping at Apple’s heels trying to make an iPod Killer, you can bet that Apple will not dawdle in adding features like this.

That might also come with what some have been predicting for the iPod: an Apple Movie Store, just like the iTunes Music Store. The iPod is slowly turning into the realization of the “Watchman,” the portable TV. Needing only to fill the small iPod screen, even the smaller 30GB iPod could store dozens of hours of video on top of an extensive music collection.

The new iPods supposedly come with more battery life–up to 15 hours for the full-size iPods, and 18 hours for the Minis. But what I would like for my existing iPod is simply a more accurate battery display–it is far from perfect when it comes to telling me how much time I really have left. Maybe the new units are better at that… which, with color, bigger hard drives, and much more capability, costs less than I paid for my 20GB iPod. And the thing that is both frustrating and rewarding is that the iPod I have is more than good enough for me now and likely will be for years, meaning I have little excuse to go out there and get a new one. Oh, the irony!

Now that I’ve had time to check them against a few lists, I think I can identify the birds I photographed at the park, and one I wasn’t able to catch–or even see very clearly. And this post is by way of the creation of a new category for this blog, “Birdwatching in Japan.” Since I got the 10x zoom digital camera with image stabilization, I am much better equipped than ever before to try to catch the little (and sometimes not-so-little) buggers on film. Way, way back, I used to be a birdwatcher, and mostly complacency and convenience got in the way–but now I’m getting into it again, and hope to construct a special page to catalog the local birds. More on that later.

First, the ducks: Inogashira Park has a pretty attractive variety.

This is a Northern Pintail, a beautiful bird–note the fine striation on the side feathers (in detail below).

And of course, the reason for its name, clear in this photo:

The next bird, and easily the most striking for its contrast, is the Tufted Duck:

Note the purple sheen to the head feathers, and of course the crest feathers sticking out the back.

The Common Pochard, meanwhile, has a lovely reddish-brown head:

What I thought might have been an immature Pochard turned out to be instead an adult Little Grebe:

It was hard to get a good shot, however; the little sucker kept going under for a minute at a time and popped back up several meters away each time. If several of these photos appear grainy, it’s due to the low light in the late afternoon in the mostly shaded park.

I didn’t catch much of this duck at first–thought it was a common Mallard, but it turns out to be a Northern Shoveler–you might make out the slightly spoon-shaped beak:

The one we did notice, actually, was hard to identify simply because it seemed to be stuck in “shovel” mode–for as long as we watched the bird (for several minutes), it never stopped doing this. So long, at least, that I was beginning to worry about the poor thing. But it was probably just very hungry…

Not that it was the only duck doing something unusual; this duck, hard to identify (likely a female, maybe a Pintail), spent several minutes with her fanny stuck up in the air. She’d probably found some effect in the fountain that allowed her to get food by just waiting for the water to come to her, or something. But it was amusing for everyone watching.

The two non-duck (or -grebe) birds spotted in the park that day (aside from the ubiquitous sparrows and crows) included a Common Kingfisher, notable by the flash of turquoise feathers on its back (almost the only distinct thing I saw when it flashed by).

But the last bird I caught, and perhaps a fairly uncommon one, was the Black-crowned Night Heron, confirmed not just by its markings, but also by the unusual bright white feather coming out the back of its head. Apparently, it is a lot longer usually, meaning this bird might be somewhat short of fully mature:

I noticed it only because a couple of other people had–it was standing stock-still and only a few meters away from the walking path. The photo above is adjusted for contrast, but in the dusk shade, the bird was almost hard to spot at first. Maybe it was resting, maybe it was sitting still to catch a fish or something, but it barely moved in the five minutes I watched it.

I’m sure that Inogashira has more birds to offer; I’ll be going back there sometime soon, I imagine.

Went to Inogashira Park today, and did something I haven’t done in many trips past: looked at the birds. You take them for granted, but there are so many there. At least three or four different kinds of ducks, for example, including the Tufted Duck, Common Pochard, the Northern Pintail, and I think Mallards, though I’ll have to research the identity much more closely. Here is a photo of a bunch of them in a feeding frenzy…

…But the interesting find was this bird, which I haven’t fully identified yet–maybe a Black-crowned Night Heron, but I really have to look into it–when I have time.

One other bird we spotted, but only in a flash, with an emerald or turquoise flash of back feathers–maybe a Kingfisher. I’ve got to go there again sometime soon. But I’ve also identified three parks with bird sanctuaries–one in Setagaya, Koganei Park, and Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa. All should be good places to go.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please read this first. I have received angry comments from [presumably] Philippine citizens who seem to presume that this article brands all Filipina entertainers and/or workers as sex slaves. This is not true. If you read the article carefully, it does not at any point say that all, 60%, or any other number or percentage of Filipinas entering Japan are prostitutes, willing or unwilling. I am not saying that there are no legitimate Filipina workers. This article only states that some undetermined number of that group are forced into prostitution. It could be 3%, it could be 30%, it could be more or less, I have no idea, and I am not guessing. But it does happen, that much is certain. I am not stereotyping, I am not accusing, I am not branding anyone as anything. So please stop accusing me of such. Thank you.

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“Japayuki” was a popular term used in the 1980’s–literally, it means “Japan-bound”–to describe young foreign women, predominantly Filipinas, who came to Japan on the promise of work in the entertainment or housekeeping industries, but wound up all too often working as prostitutes, essentially slaves in the sex industry. Their passports taken from them upon arrival, locked in small rooms with many other women in the same situation, and forced to pay off “debts” to their owners, these women were treated little better by the police, who commonly did not “find” them until they had served their owners for some time, and were treated as criminals themselves, instantly deported from Japan after being arrested. If the men who trafficked in them were ever arrested, it was rarely if ever reported.

And this is not something that disappeared in the early 90’s–it still goes on today, perhaps just as strongly now as it did back then.

The sex industry in Japan has long been overlooked by the law. Go to Kabukicho near Shinjuku, or any of many other red-light districts in Tokyo and in Japan, and you’ll find the sex industry is pretty blatant. I recall even seeing a late-night television show many years ago in which a house of prostitution was even shown, following a patron inside where money was paid and the patron was directed to a room where a girl in a towel sat on a bed and directed the patron to use a condom (then cut away). The address of the brothel was even flashed on the screen.

This is, of course, in violation of Japanese law, but there are laws and then there are laws. The sex industry is ignored except for once every year or so when a politician accompanies a police raiding party, with news cameras in tow, in a raid against some club or another. It makes the evening news, prostitution is in check, yadda yadda yadda, and then business goes on. Yakuza gangs have long been similarly tolerated despite illegal gambling, prostitution and drug peddling; some say it’s because the police are too afraid or ill-equipped to do anything, others say it’s because the police and the yakuza are chummy, and others still say that the police tolerate the yakuza because they keep their turf clean–they keep other thieves in check and don’t step over understood lines of conduct. You can even see gambling going on, sometimes even institutionalized. Pachinko, for example: when you win at pachinko, you’re only supposed to be given prizes, not money (which would essentially be gambling). But there are little “shops” around the corner from some pachinko parlors, I am told, which will take the gifts you won and give you money in exchange.

Whatever the case, the yakuza are allowed to operate without too much interference, and so are the human traffickers–until, we are to believe, just now. Japan signed a U.N. treaty against human trafficking in 2002, and now it has to live up to its agreement–and is even more in the spotlight because of its very unsavory reputation in this area. The question is, will Japan really crack down on this industry? Or will it just continue to turn a blind eye, while having unenforced laws on the books that make it seem like the problem is being addressed?

One way to evaluate this is to look at what the new anti-trafficking law does. Although the provisions of the law are not laid out in detail anywhere I can find, three provisions are reported: first, immigration laws will be tightened. Presently, 130,000 “entertainer” visas are granted per year (something should have appeared fishy right there long ago, one would think), fully 60% of them issued for Filipinos. The reform? The Japanese government “will abolish a provision that allows singers and dancers certified as such in their home countries to automatically receive a Japanese visa.” Apparently, most Filipino “entertainers” are certified in the Philippines, which the Japanese government claims leads to human slavery. Hmmm. Sounds a little evasive to me; it does not seem to say anything about how the licensing will be monitored in Japan, or how Japan will stop the local criminals from doing the exact same thing on this side of the immigration counter. Nor is it clear how this will affect legitimate entertainers; there is protest from the Philippines and from within Japan about how this would hurt legitimate workers and employers.

Second: women found working as sex slaves arrested by police will not be immediately deported. The stated reason is so that the women will be able to stay to testify against the traffickers, but not much more is stated nor is very clear. Will the women be deported after testifying? What if they refuse to testify? If they are allowed to stay on, what support will they be given so as to have legal employment? Will they be protected against the criminals who employ them? I sincerely doubt all of these questions could be answered satisfactorily.

And then there’s the third provision, and perhaps the most dubious: foreign nationals may be summarily deported simply on the suspicion of being human traffickers. This may sound okay on the surface, but there are two huge caveats. First, it seems to suggest that a large number of the traffickers are non-Japanese. While I have no data on this, I quite frankly doubt that this is even close to being true, seeing as how territorial the Yakuza are. The provision seems more likely yet another attempt to paint the problem as a foreign crime, not as something the Japanese would be responsible for. And second, there is the question of abuse. No courts are involved, and from the appearance of things, no evidence is required. Apparently, the police could simply arrest you, claim you’re a trafficker, take you to Narita Airport and send you off, never to return. I don’t expect that English teachers or Otemachi businesspeople will be deported in such a way, but Koreans, often stereotyped as gangsters, could be targeted especially, and the law could at some point be used as carte blanche to conveniently expel anyone the government doesn’t like.

I would be far more impressed if the police actually started doing their jobs–something that Japanese as well as foreign nationals agree is all too seldom the case.

A new story out there in the news is the downloading of TV shows. Apparently, Britons are the biggest culprits–it’s pointed out that since it sometimes takes “months” before American TV shows get to the UK, impatient fans turn to BitTorrent to download the TV shows from the Internet. Almost one in five of all TV downloaders is in the UK.

A few months, eh? Try a few years, if ever at all, here in Japan. Even if you have cable or satellite, getting your favorite TV shows is hardly guaranteed, and usually lags three or four years behind the original broadcast. But then, there are not as many people here who would enjoy The West Wing, for example, in English only. And ironically, many people downloading not-yet-broadcast shows are in America; some shows like Stargate or Battlestar Galactica (the newer, much better one) are broadcast in England or Canada before the U.S. sees them.

While BitTorrent is available on the Mac, it seems best suited for the PC. On the PC, there are several choices, but Torrents work the best. KaZaA is old news, poorly executed and usually slow. Shareaza is a much better download platform, but interestingly, Shareaza when used as a BitTorrent platform is the best I’ve heard of (when clicking a download link, specify Shareaza as the app to handle the torrent file). If the torrent file is popular, speeds in the tens of KB/sec are very common, and downloads over 100 KB/sec are not unheard of. The Daily Show, of all things, downloads faster than it takes to view the show–though you can’t watch it as it comes down as BitTorrent downloads take in bits and pieces of the file in a haphazard order, only allowing for viewing once the file transfer is completed.

TV shows are usually available as torrent downloads within a few hours of being broadcast, often in HD-quality AVI video files (viewable with VLC Media Player on the Mac) at about 350 MB for a one-hour show (really, 43 minutes since the commercials are all cut out). Sci-Fi shows are numerous among the most popular, but “24” tops the lists.

You access torrent files by going to sites which track them. The media industries are on the case, though–most torrent tracker web sites have vanished from the face of the Earth lately, probably due to threatened lawsuits or harsher legal actions. But it’s a futile gesture on the part of the media companies–eventually, trackers based in countries that will not prosecute such cases will be left standing. Frankly, the anti-piracy movement will always be like sweeping back the ocean–there will always be a next wave (Napster to KaZaA to Torrent to… ?) waiting in the wings. So what is the industry to do? Well, as I have already laid out in a three-part blog entry (part 1, part 2, part 3, the third part being the most relevant here), I think the industry has to join ’em to beat ’em, and eventually switch their paradigm to narrowcasting TV shows with advertising preferred by individual users. As I explain in the entry series, I believe it could end up not only defeating piracy, but actually increasing revenues for the media companies. In other words, you have to stop fighting the inevitable future and take control of the technology by offering something better.

Torrent sites simply keep track of all the files which are currently being traded; they link to “torrent files” which are small packages of information on how to connect to other users to download the file in question. Right now, the better torrent sites still standing include BTEfnet, TV Torrents, and Torrent Spy (the last one, incidentally, remaining as one of the only sites to track files other than just TV shows). And not surprisingly, many torrent sites originate from the UK.

Some months ago I went looking for the Pac Man arcade game, during a bout of boredom or insanity, I don’t know which. I looked first for the PC, seeing as how they always seem to do games for Windows first, but wasn’t able to find an acceptable freeware version. But then I found Pac the Man 2 for the Mac, a freeware Pac Man true to the arcade genre, and it’s actually very good. If you have countless hours to waste and don’t mind getting your fingers all achy, go ahead and try it.

By way of that introduction is the site I linked to for the download: Version Tracker. A site that keeps track of new versions of software, and often completely new software. You can search the archive, or you can resolve categories. Under Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X or PalmOS (I linked to Mac OS X above) you can access Shareware, Freeware, Beta or Commercial software, or choose a software type (Utilities, Games, etc.), presented in sortable lists. I usually do a weekly check for Freeware under the Mac OS X section. Each download has an area for use reviews and version histories. It’s a pretty good tool for getting the software you want.

A good Mac download from the past few days: Drop2DV, a video encoding app that allows you to take either MPEG files or VOB (DVD Video) files and convert them to DV files, which are easily editable by iMovie–and MPEG/VOB files are not easily–if at all–editable by standard software. I just tried it out, and it works–at least for me…

Google has been busy lately. If you follow their blog, you’ll know that they just came out with Google Maps, a new map engine which right now covers only the United States. But it has a very good advantage over other online maps: you can use the cursor to move the focus of the map in real time by clicking-and-dragging, as opposed to clicking an arrow or new area and then waiting for the whole page to reload. The Google Map page even has a slider for zoom, which also works much more smoothly than what other map pages have. Go ahead, give it a try.

They also have some other very cool stuff. You can get a free blog through their Blogger pages, which can even act as blog-generating software on your private web site. Google’s News engine catalogs 4500 news sites and is my present news source–I rarely visit the news sites directly. You can search all the news on the web by any topic or specific keywords, and sort by relevance and date–a very convenient way to get your news. For students, Google Scholar searches essays and papers of an academic nature–sometimes too technical, but quite useful much of the time. A lot of other stuff also available on their “more” page.

And then of course, there’s GMail–the free gigabyte email service that prompted Yahoo and Hotmail to finally give their own clients more than a few piddling megabytes of mail storage. GMail has always had a nicer interface, operating more smoothly and script-like, and without the garish ads and other images that pollute the other mail pages–Google’s ads are contextual and text-only, and found solely and unobtrusively at the bottom of message displays. But one big advantage they recently added: POP access, for free. So now I can check my GMail account in Eudora, where most of my email is already, instead of having to visit GMail’s page all the time, or depend on third-party GMail notification apps (which have eventually failed me in one way or another). Oh, and though they still don’t allow people to sign up on the GMail home page, they are handing out invitations like candy–I am informed that I have 50 invitations left. How will that ever be enough?