Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

Maybe not only for Australians, but for Canadians, Americans, Britons and other Caucasion dominated countries except Norweigians and Icelandish.

I've just heard the news this You Tube site attracted enormous attention from Japanese and Australians.

Australian patrol ships were dispatched to watch Japan's whaling in the Antarctic sea.

The video featured how racist Australia's anti-whaling policy is. Kind of radical and provocative.

The scenes of Australians killing Dingos and kangaroos are included.

I don't know which part of it is true and not.

People here in Japan are so concerned that western nations' anti-whaling movement comes from the notion that whales are cute animals rather than endangerness of the whales. Not environmental, more of political and cultural.

Anti-whaling activisits should insist that their act is solely based on endangerness of the species. They seem very emotional, and forcing their own values on others. I hate Green Peace in that sense.

When I was in U.S., some criticized Japan's whaling but none of them say eating whalemeat is barbaric. I remember one American driving instructor said "I want to try if I can." I ate some whale meat when I was small. It was not so delicious but I don't care if others like to eat. You can eat anything you want except humans on the earth.

We eat beef, pork, lambs and so on. They are all cute. Since we conqure the earth, we've got the rights to eat them.

But in one point other than the endangerness issue, I think Japan should refrain from hunting whales in Antarctic Sea. That is sending fishery boats to far, far to the south harms environment because it wastes so much fuel gas. Japanese traditional whale hunting has been done on the coasting areas of the islands.

This Japanese article has the photo of dismantling of the whales hunted from the coastal sea area. The whale is not what is classified as "endangered species" by IWC. We have the right to hunt minke whales, which IWC classified as "endangered" within our territorital seas. Inuits in Alaska, hunt endangered whale species and it is permitted by US government and IWC. But I think that is OK to do. It is their native culture and what they do is within their territorial sea.  

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2008

On the first day of this new year, I visited the city's most famous shrine, Meiji Jingu. It is located in the center of Tokyo in a huge forest park. I had to wait for an hour to get to the altar. In the New Year's Week, they set up special big altar for the huge visitors. When you reach the altar, you throw a coin to make a wish for the new year. The altar becomes like Trevi Fountain in Rome. The sea of coins on the white matt. See the below photo.

There was a huge crowds and so many shops in the shrine. It was almost a big festival going on but if you go out of the shrine and walk on the shopping streets. You can find quiet streets with shattered shops. Usually, Japanese New Year Days are quiet time and holidays for the family gathering like Thanks Giving Holidays in the U.S.  

You can see what it is like on New Year's Day in Tokyo on this You Tube site.

The footage shows from the entrance of the shrine to the quite shopping streets. In between it has scenes of waiting crowds forced to view the commercial of Kleenex on the big monitor screen, people walking towards the altar, throwing coins.

I went to see the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha." Here in Japan the title was changed to "SAYURI."

The movie was kind of strange but also very interesting.

The characters in the movie speak in English. The hairstyle of the Geishas were appearently different from real Geishas walking on the streets in Kyoto.

The story was good in first half but the latter half was kind of difficult to understand. I actually did not like the story.

Some of Japanese argue Japan portrayed in that film was too strange to see. But how many of Japanese know the old time Japan, especially the life of Geisha? How many of us know how to wear traditional kimono?

So in that sense Hollywood made the best of their efforts.

One thing I find they are better than Japanese films is the scenes of the evening party. Usually those scenes are very bright like today's party room with fluor lamps on the ceiling. That never happened in 1930's. But in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha," the room was not very bright and the Geisha's face was lit by orange paper lantern. That should be real scenes of those days, I think.

The thing I was kind of disturbed by was the main character was played by Chinese actress, Zhi Zhang. She is a great actress, but the point is the character she played might aggravate Chinese people. The story took place in 1930's Japan. It was a time Japan was invading China. The Geisha fell in love with Japanese rich man who once fought in Manchuria. Then after the war she helped him with reconstructing his business sleeping with American military man.

Today is the time the relationship between China and Japan has become worst in post-war time. It is due to our stupid prime minister and his uneducated conservative supporters.   

As one of Japanese citizen who is very aware of how apologetic Japan should be to China, I could not enjoy this movie although the Chinese actress did played that role as Hollywood actress.