Tomas and Thomas

I'm afraid that one of my strengths and weaknesses is that, when something comes along that I take an interest in, I tend to go in boots and all. I fear that this sometimes means losing a sense of perspective. For who, when wandering amongst trees in a dense forest, does not sometimes lose sight of the sky?

Thomas the Tank Engine. An unlikely candidate, I grant you, for an obsession. But with Tom almost 6 months old and me thinking about our times to come playing together, I started looking for train sets. It's true that, given my own train deprived childhood, this might me my own version of acting out of the childhood I never had.

So I set about looking at kits, and pricing sets (very expensive, by the way) and zooming hither and thither between one on line toy shop and the next. I found a heavily discounted set at Pee Dee toys in Australia and, after joining ebay au, won another smaller set in my first auction. I think that I should stop now, but the temptation to add to the small railway we now have is almost irresistable. But resist I must.

Well autumn is almost here. There are telltale signs in the air, a mere zephyr of cooler wind, a few early leaves on the path. Its still hot, mind you, but its turning, ever so slowly.

Scandal in the Underworld.

Alas Pluto is no more. I remember as a teenager reading 'The Search for Planet X' , one of those cheap Ashton Scholastic novelettes. It charted the efforts of Clyde, or Clive, Tombaugh (I think thats right?) a young astronomer who was certain that something was tugging at Neptune. I mean, gravitationally. And he was right. Enter tiny Pluto, the ninth planet.

I guess something about Pluto has always been a little odd. It doesn't have its own exclusive orbit around the sun. It's very tiny compared to the 4 interior gas giants and is even smaller than the Earths moon. Speculation persisted that it was an escaped moon. It was really a little like the odd one out.

But in the collective, if uninformed, imagination of the public, it was a distant and slightly cute entity marking the supposed boundary of the solar system. Alas its neither cute (the surface being entirely hostile to life) and it is far from being at the edge of our solar system. Nowhere near it, in fact.

Having said that Pluto, while losing its status in one regard, gains another. Its is now king of the dwarfs. There are worse fates surely.

The End is Nigh, perhaps..

A few things have joggled my mind recently. One was a program on Discovery Channel about the Earth in 200 million years hence. Gone is mankind and pretty much every other lifeform we know today, replaced by flying fish and land dwelling squid. Then there was an article in the Yomuiri Shimbun from the US, an elegant column about the passing of time (the journalist having turned 64) and his feelings on what he called, these 'low dishonest times'. Then, of course there are the daily headlines about war, global warming , nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Together these various media presented a few pieces in an increasingly gloomy picture. In short, if human folly doesnt get you, then the environment, global catastrophe or evolution will. Humans have always dwelt amidst their own folllies. But we have never before faced so many threats seemingly coming at the same time. For those hopeful of a technological-get-out-of-jail card then I can only add this. Technology, whilst often fascinating and beneficial, is, often as not, a part of the problem. It may present some solutions, for example, to global warming, but it is demonstably the cause of it in the first instance. I mean, of course, the human application of technology, as there is no other application that I know of.

The trouble is, I am an optimist, for the most part. But I'm coming around to the view, things being what they are and what they could quite easily become, very little short of Divine Intervention can save our hapless species.

1945 and all that.

Being on a two week break has its benefits. This also being the anniversary of a number of WW2 (Pacific) events, I have spent quite lot of time watching the History Channel. Yesterday was a bit of a marathon; back to to back programs on the last days of all theatres of war in WW2. I've never seen a lot of the newsreel footage before, so it was just plain fascinating.

The same day's Daily Yomuiri carried the first in a series of articles on just who was to blame for the Japanese debacle in the same war. Quite reasonably, the authors lay the blame at the feet of Japan's military and political leaders of the period. There is certainly no point in encouraging revisionists in this country (or elsewhere) that Japan had some noble cause (destroying Western colonialism, no less) or that the Pearl Harbour attack was some perfidious American plot.

Alas, conspiracy theories doing the rounds have suggested that Roosevelt knew about the impending attack on Pearl and did nothing about it in order to bring America into the war. The stupidity of this theory is easily enough dismissed through plain common sense, not to mention the weight of historical evidence. I have never seen a conspiracy theory that offered anything other than false assertions or circumstantial evidence, so I guess thats why they will never be taken seriously. So why they hold such a fascination I don't know, except that, perhaps, they empower the believer in a similar way that members of esoteric movements do. 'I have special knowledge - you don't.'

Something like that.

The Tango-Hanto Tango

Our first family holiday ever (!) was to the Tango-Hanto peninsula on the Japan sea. Miwa kindly booked us a ryoukan ('Crab Heaven') in Amino, a typical seaside village The lure of the beach was just too much so we stripped down at Kizu and headed for the, er, surf, such as it was. The following day was spent almost exclusively at Kotobikki, one beach around from our ryoukan. Golden sand, clean water and happy families. What a joy to see the Japanese at play!

And really, apart from the quaint floaty devices (such as Winnie the Pooh tyres), the beach experience here is pretty much the same as that in Australia. Everyone stripped down to the essentials, everything on show. No pretention. I don't know if it carries the equivalent psychological adjustment as it does back home, I mean, that egalitarian booster that comes from being at the beach. Perhaps these days it lasts only as far as the carpark and the BMW. I don't know.

Yesterday, still feeling a little sunburnt, we trecked home slowly via Ine ( a gloriously cute fishing village on the Tango coastline) and Amanohashidate (one of the 'three beautifuls'), where we ascended the funicular for the view. I still think the sand bar puts me in mind of Abe Lincoln's beard. Or something else.

summer ascensions
my son's skin red with heat,
long line of pines, blinking.

Sanda Summer Festival

The things I love best about Japan coelesce at festival time. The Japanese are relaxed and seem, suddenly, to have oodles of time. Yukatas vie with denim. Traditional dances and music juxtapose J-pop and ballet. People eat and drink in the open. They say hello to us and want to try out their English. Such a difference!

Saturday we walked the river to watch the annual festival fish catching event. Goldfish are placed in the shallows and people wade in with nets. What they catch they take home. Later we strolled the lantern and streamer festooned laneways, past lively stalls, and on to the main arena, the city office car park. It was terribly hot so we hung about backstage in the shade, sipping kirin, chatting and, well, just watching the Japanese enjoy themselves.

I include a photo taken of said site, this being our friend and housemate Miwa, eating the popular sausage on a stick. She won't thank me for publishing this shot! But what the heck, its festival time!