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Taking World Cup hysteria too far

Yesterday a student of mind breathlessly recounted for me how her husband spent 7 hours Friday night trying to order World Cup tickets over the internet, and how finally at 4am Saturday morning he somehow managed to squeeze 2 tickets from FIFA’s painfully inadequate servers for the England-Denmark match in Niigata later that same day. Just one story out of many showing how Japan has embraced the World Cup.

But as often happens with sports, there are those who take things too far. No, I’m not talking about hooligans, or those rebellious Japanese youths who have jumped into Osaka’s Dottombori river after the national teams’ recent wins. Rather, I’m troubled about this bit of priority disorder from Japan’s Diet (ruling legislative body). Recently there was an arrest warrant issued for Diet member Muneo Suzuki for allegedly accepting a bribe from a constituent. But because Diet members have immunity from arrest by default, the police have to get permission from the House of Representatives in order to carry through the arrest. The above-linked story carries the disturbing claim that the Representatives’ vote on the matter will be postponed until tomorrow so as to not interfere with this afternoon’s World Cup match between Japan and Turkey.

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FBI cover up on anthrax case?

A fascinating story from the Scotsman detailing the accusations of some scientists that the FBI knows who was behind the Anthrax letters of last Fall, but is reluctant to pursue the case for fear what what the suspect — claimed to be someone who works for a CIA contractor — might reveal about the US government’s bioterror plans.

One quote was particularly unsettling:

Equally there is evidence that some of the suspect’s colleagues are not unhappy with the fallout from his terror attacks. [Dr Barbara Hatch] Rosenberg cites David Franz, a former commander of [US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases] who earlier this year said of the anthrax campaign: “I think a lot of good has come from it. From a biological or a medical standpoint, we’ve now five people who have died, but we’ve put about $6bn in our budget into defending against bioterrorism.”
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Other views from Japan Part 1

There are a surprising (to me anyway) number of blogs or diary sites originating from Japan. Not that I had any illusions that I was the only one (I long ago learned that on the Internet, if you think you’re on to something new and unique, chances are there are at least 10 other sites out there doing the same thing). However, before I moved here there were only a couple I was familiar with (kristen’s Japan and Justin’s Links). Since getting involved in writing this blog I’ve made a conscious effort to seek others out, and have been quite amazed at the variety and creativity I’ve found. Interestingly enough, many of the blogs feature photography, which has been inspiring to me as I continue on my photo blog.

Because a few of these sites have been nice enough to point some users my way, I thought I would go a bit further than my “other views from Japan” link list and do a rundown of some of the Japan-originated sites I check out daily or every other day, in alphabetical order. Here’s part one:

Antipixel

Antipixel is a nicely-designed Movable Type site of the “dotted ant” variety (as an aside, one wonders when these seemingly de rigeur dotted ants will become the left-hand nav bar of web design) by one Jeremy Hedley who is an Australian living in Tokyo. Hedley has been uploading his blog thoughts since last October (though judging from some of the dates on his photographs he’s been in Japan for much longer), and is fairly consistent with posts (a lot more consistent that I’ve been recently, that’s for sure). He’s a passionate Mac user, and has a fair amount of postings on computer-related topics, although it’s not a “tech blog”. There is a photography section called Antipicture with some very nice photographs (see #3 On the streeet, as well as his photography category, for photos taken in Japan). And I must admit I’m very jealous that he recently toured Studio Ghilbi and met Miyazaki Hayao of Princess Mononoke fame.

consumptive.org

James Luckett has been in Tokyo since last November, although his blog pre-dates that by a year or so. A simple but clean design using Blogger, and I love the way his list o’ links cascade down the right-hand side of the page. Speaking of links, I think I could spend my entire net life just thumbing through James’ blog archives and following the links found therein, really an amazing assortment of mostly art and photography-related sites that are usually well off the beaten path. (Two random finds courtesy of James: Nagasaki University Old Picture Database; and this documentation of someone’s Southeast Asia trip using the Lomo camera). Elsewhere in his domain you’ll find of James’ various photographic projects (he works with a lot of found material, and in general his work is very textural), including photos from previous visits to Japan. Recently James has launched a new collaborative blog with a Mr. Cieciel called Spitting Image, which is about “all images all the time – the latest news, thoughts, anecdotes, and imagery of note – plus copious links to archives of vernacular, scientific and artistic interest.”

gmtPlus9

Andrew Abb’s 3-plus year old blog features the tagline “a daily weblog from Osaka”, but that might be the most Japanese thing about it in its current incarnation, at first glance anyway. Which frankly suits this reader just fine, for like consumptive.org, gmtPlus9’s mainly art-related links hold a treasure trove of unexplored web places that are like a needed dose of art history. It’s not unusual for Abb to have a John Heartfield day, for example (scroll down to June 3rd), or to point the user towards sites containing works by Malevich, or Orozco, or Moholy-Nagy, as he has in the last month. With respect to its Japan quotient, once you dig below the surface there’s a lot of Japan-related links. Abb is clearly much more advanced at reading Japanese than I am, and therefore I’ve been turned on to some great Japanese sites that would have otherwise remained behind the great Kanji wall (here’s one, for example, of Japanese chewing gum papers that I pulled from Abb’s archives).