Oops

Today's mom's birthday...so is Suzana's apparently.

There was a J-league baseball game in Yonago at Higashiyama ballpark between the Hiroshima Carps (only in Japan does catfish qualify as mascot-worthy) and Hanshin Tigers. Simona bought advance tickets for both of us way back in April because her friend Nick Campney (Evan will love this), former Iowa Herky, is now the man behind/inside Slyly, the mascot for the Hiroshima Carps. Apparently Carps had a history of recruiting foreigners for their mascots. Who knew.

I think the Tigers won. We left at the bottom of the 8th with the Tigers up 8-3. Baseball is still boring live. Just take me out of the ballgame.

Quote from Simona

For the most part, women will have to find jobs, and men will never get laid at parties. It is the way of the world.

Yasukuni Shrine

Junichiro Koizumi has repeatedly expressed his intention to visit the Yasukuni shrine (靖国神社, shrine of peaceful nation) on August 15th, the day that marks Japan's defeat and unconditional surrender.

This, as much as the textbooks and those guano/oil islands, is at the forefront of Japan/Korea/China tensions.

My students never visited Korean War museums, but the 3rd years had been visiting the Yasukuni shrine and museum in Tokyo on their school trips.

So will Koizumi on 8/15, so he says. And this, as well as the textbooks and that guano/oil island, is what's driving China/Korea/Japan tension.

What's the big deal?

I have not visited there while I was in Tokyo. But, according to some internet research:

The name of Yasukuni, 靖国, means peaceful nation.

14 convicted Class A war criminals, as well as 1068 more WW2 criminals were secretely enshrined at Yasukuni in 1978. The news were leaked out 6 months later.

Nearly 21,000 war dead from Korea and 28,000 from Taiwan, most of them forced into war service under Japan's colonial rule, are enshrined at Yasukuni without their families' permission.

The shrine serves, in official delcaration, as "a memorial of the more than 3 million who perished in WWII." WW2 casualty in Asia is approximatly 35 million.

The Yasukuni Museum display shows Japan as a victim of a conspiracy by Western colonial powers and Japan was forced into war in self-defence to bring peace to Asia.
(BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4449005.stm

In a museum film, Pearl Harbor is described as a "battle for Japan's survival," while one exhibit blames the 1937 Nanjing Massacre on the Chinese leaders who fled the city while ordering their men to fight to the death. After the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese, the museum notes, "the Chinese citizens were once again able to live their lives in peace."

WWII is called "the Greater East Asian War", invasion of China is described as "China Incident".

The Museum displays a reconstructed Zero fighter and the Short Sword used by Gen. Korechika Anami who advocated to continue the War even after the 2 Atomic Bombs.

(Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10450-2005Apr22.html

A pamphlet published by the shrine says "War is a really tragic thing to happen, but it was necessary in order for us to protect the independence of Japan and to prosper together with Asian neighbors." In others, the shrine runs a museum on the history of Japan, commemorating the soldiers who fought for Japan, remembering them as kami. The English website claims that "Japan's dream of building a Great East Asia was necessitated by history and it was sought after by the countries of Asia."
(Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni

My students come back from Tokyo and wrote about how war is a terrible thing and should never happen again. Koizumi claims that his visits are an act of rememberance and not reverence.

But are they remembering and learning the right lessons?

The axis of incompetent drivers

My international license expires on 8/1, so I will have to get a Japanese license to drive legally next year.

Unfortunately, for an American, getting a Japanese license is more difficult than simple paperwork--I would have to take a behind-the-wheel driving test all over again. If I were from say, UK or South Korea, I wouldn't have to deal with such hassle.

Only drivers from 3 other countries besides US are deemed un-roadworthy by Japan:

China--communist.
South Africa--racist.
Saudi Arabia--terrorist.

The United States of America is in fine company.

マラソン大会

Just finished running the school marathon with the students. 3.4km, 4th place, 14:24. Behind 高見亮摩, 山本健太, and 引田直紀, just ahead of 大島功也.

中和違った漢字

招待 　(しょうたい）
Japanese: to invite
Chinese: to entertain, to be hospitable

名字　（みょうじ）
Japanese: surname
Chinese: name

暗算（あんざん）
Japanese: mental arithmetic
Chinese: to complot or backstab (mental arithmetic = 心算)

整形（せいけい）
Japanese: orthopedics
Chinese: plastic surgery

Nanking Massacre

Sorry to lay this one on you, but I'm feeling pretty upset right now.

I started reading the book Embracing Defeat last night. Reading about even hints of Japan's actions during WWII in Asia makes me mad. This is just the reaction of a reasonably educated Chinese American who hasn't been in a native Chinese country for more than a decade, imagine what people in China or Korea must feel?

Here's a link to facts about the 1937 Nanking Massacre--referred to in the Japanese textbooks as "Nanking incident," "an incident in which many Chinese were killed," "during Japan's advancing in and out of China."

http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/

Warning: don't open up the photos. Seriously, you probably won't be able to sleep for days. Some of these photos are the same ones I saw during a class in 6th grade in Taiwan. I can still remember the whole thing. Each of the 12 classes in 6th grade had to go through this, and some classes had done it before us. But NO ONE, not one single 12 year old, would tell us anything about this "special class." During our turn, I remember our teacher didn't say a word about what we're going to do, just quietly lined us up and took us down to the basement library. "You have 45 minutes." No other directions were given once we're there, just a pile of A4 sized glossy booklets scattered on all of the reading tables, titled simply "Nanking Massacre." I remember as the class went on, some girls ran out of the library, some were sobbing in the corridors, and everyone were afraid to make eye contact with each other.

Today, my teacher is asking me to make a reading comprehension exercise for the 3rd year students, focusing on the passive tense. Any topic is okay.

Kobe beef

I was in Kobe last Monday through Wednesday, at the Portopia Hotel, for a conference of all recontracting JETs. Pretty standard affair by now: workshops, lectures, networking, partying, meat-marketting, etc. Speaking of meat-marketting...

I tried Kobe steak in a downtown Kobe steakhouse near the Shinkobe station with Adam, Ian, and Adam's Liverpool buddy Jonathan. The experience comes with a price tag of 6000 yen a head (about $60) excluding drinks.

Only sirloin and tenderloins were available, and were cooked at the teppan grill in front of us with nothing other than salt, pepper, and minced garlic. A dipping sauce of a mixture of soysauce, lemon/lime juice, sesame and ground daikon radish was also available, but it tasted more like salad dressing rather than steak sauce.

The raw beef was thoroughly marblized,

and was cut and grilled in bite-sized pieces.

Following the advice of the chef, we ate the steak while it was supercially seared and essentially raw. It looked like seared tuna sashimi--and tasted like seared tuna sashimi. The texture of tenderloin was closer to otoro (fatty cut of tuna) than beef. Though not my favorite of the two cuts, the sirloin was chewier, but had more flavor and juice than tenderloin. However, the unique flavor was not lasting--the texture and flavor deteriorated as the meat was cooked more. The last couple of pieces on the teppan were good but a far cry from extraordinary. The extended cooking probably cooked all the marblized fat out of the beef.

While it really did taste like no other steak I've had, I wasn't so sure if what looked like less than 8 oz of Kobe beef was really worth the \6000 price tag.

Pool cleaning

During last period (2nd) I was at the pool, scrubbing the walls and the floors with the 2nd year students. Near the end of the the cleaning period, everybody were in a soap-sliding craze. 徳永貴之 collided into another kid. The other kid got up, but Tokunaga-kun stayed face down at the bottom of the pool floor. I was the first to approach him and when I kneeled down I noticed the blood puddle. I waved the PE teacher to take a look. 瀬川-sensei helped Tokunaga-kun up, a couple of students went and got the school nurse. I stood helpless by while Tokunaga-kun sprayed and dribbled blood through his nostrils and the puddle got bigger and bigger.

He's being driven to the hospital now by 中島先生 and 教頭先生. I think it may have been just a broken nose and a cut upper lip, but my god it looked a lot worse than that.