Hi, thanks for dropping in. I have been writing a lot and posting a lot of pictures from events long gone. Time for some more current affairs. It is now Autumn in Japan. In the space of a few short weeks the temperature has dropped - most noticeably at night. I've gone from coming home in a sweat to going home wearing a woollen vest. During the day though it still feels summery at times. The massive insects of this land seem to be slowly retreating along with the crabs, frogs and snakes around here. I only managed to see one snake - almost ran over it on my bike! It was only small. I was visited by my first typhoon, but I can hardly say I experienced one. We were on the very outskirts of it and the hill next to my building protected us from the wind, but in the distance I could see some bamboo getting a pretty thorough wind-whipping. Way south in Kyushu and further in Okinawa it wrought serious havoc and some loss of life. They tend to fritter themselves away into "tropical depressions", but when that happens seems to be a guessing game... and what direction they take. There was an earlier one that was making a bee-line for where I live but it then hived off towards Tokyo (I think we are up to number 15. The season for typhoons is ending). Anyway, I'm a little disappointed I can't say I lived through one, but I would most likely regret wishing for it if it did come.
Japan has a new prime minister as of yesterday. Koizumi handed over the reins to Abe, the first PM to have been born after the war (something he himself pointed out in his inauguration speech).
There have been some horrible crimes and accidents involving children. That seems to be a pattern in Japan. I guess the accidents are indiscriminate, but the crimes... ? I think there is a cult of youth - well, you could argue that the world over I guess - the celebration of youth, the disdain for the old, the excessive marketing geared towards the young, cashed-up generation. But here cute, or kawaii, is a real commodity. Children are often doted on, adored and idolised. Don't get me wrong, I love kids, but it seems a bit overboard oftentimes. I guess the flipside of that veneration is that kids can become targets for dark minds. I'm sad to say that my musings about the makeshift shrine on the bridge that I ride across most days were pretty accurate. Apparently someone had struck down a child in their car a few suburbs away and then decided to dispose of the body from the bridge. How horribly sad. Kazuya, my friend next door told me about it. "Kowaii. Kowaii", he said. Kowaii, as opposed to kawaii, means dreadful, horrible, frightening. He said that in the past things like that didn't happen here. But now he says there are many twisted people in Japan. I'm happy to say I've met some of the best, nicest people ever here... and Kazuya and his family are top of the list.
Well, on a much lighter side, but not totally unrelated (speaking of youth-worship), is the rise and rise of Hankachi. I wrote before about the national high school baseball championship and about its star pitcher, Saito Yuki. Saito-kun is now referred to as Hankachi, in reference to his habit of wiping away sweat from his face with a light blue handkerchief. Well, the mania surrounding him has gone ballistic. A press conference was called for this 18 year-old to announce what his plans were for after finishing high school! Amazingly, he said that he is immature as a baseball player and immature as a person and so he'd like to go to uni before taking on the challenge of pro-baseball. You can believe he would have had some pretty lucrative offers already. So, with such modesty, talent, poise and youth-appeal, females from those in school uniforms to post-middle-aged housewives are swooning over him. When he arrived victorious from a tour of the US there were legions of girls and women snapping away with digi-cams at the airport. Kind of like when I arrived here. I saw on the news tonight that at the baseball you can get a packed lunch complete with his trademark blue hanky! Out of control! I'm not sure what you'd get in a lunchbox dedicated to me... maybe some mouldy cheese?