js6 Snowy vista

In early January 2007, we had a fair dump of snow. Coming from a non-snowy environment in Australia, it was always a pleasure to wake up to the gentle silence of fresh snow. We would draw the curtains in the lounge room and marvel. I have to say, its not so much fun to live with on a regular basis, especially if I was driving into the countryside for work or trudging off to get groceries. Through the window and across the road is a house that was empty for much of our time in Mukogaoka. We never really knew why though, on the one occasion it was occupied, we had all sorts of headaches with parking.

JS5 Our view from the bedroom

Upstairs we had two bedrooms, one housing a homemade three-quarter bed. It was 10 cms too high, an odd contrast to the futons that customarily graced the other room. The photo looks out to the mountains in the rough direction of Moshi, with the prefectural hospital in the background and the 'new' town of Tomagaoka spilling like ivy down the hillside in its wake.

JS4 Towards Mukogaoka

Often as not, I walked a circuit that claimed to be 5 km's long and was, quite impressively, entirely comprised of foot and cycle ways. Not only that, but I could digress onto any number of paths in a variety of directions if I wanted a change. I suppose this is one of the reasons why Sanda has a reputation as a modern, planned, garden city.

This photo gives yet another perspective on where we lived, this time at the next remove. Walking towards Flowertown and looking back. the large white buildng in the background is Takarasuka-Sanda Hospital which was, as future pics will attest, about 100 metres from our house. The four-laned Sanda kansen is to the right, with a small group of struggling shops in the foreground.

JS3 Walks

I did a lot of walking in my local neighbourhood. Usually by myself though sometimes on our last tour with the infant Tom. Even though Mukogaoka is a 'new' town, it is really quite close to the centre(ie. old part) of Sanda. Its also handy to parks and gardens. We seem to have had the best of both worlds.

Sandadani Park was less than a stone's throw from our house, with a baseball park (doubling as a football ground), gardens. ponds, walking tracks and an evacuation area, just in case. In the late afternoon, senior citizens would meet to chat and stroll. Other times, there were joggers, walkers, dogs and cyclists. Gosh, I miss being there. Honto ni.

some catching up

Well, we have been offline for about three months now, which I find only a minor inconvenience. Moving to the new hoos was far more complicated than I had envisaged and the fact is that we still haven't completely shifted from #11. Maybe a week or two to go. Or a month.

Tom is now two, has more language and a greater understanding of his environment. He has many endearing idiosyncracies, an affection for heavy road implements and a wayward diet.

I have yet to find gainful employment though I am doing a bush gardening course in apparent preparation for the sizeable task of creating a garden at #9. Nadia has just got a position with a local community agency(BMOCS) which looks like being very part-tine.

Anyway, enough of this boring tosh. I will continue my Japanese series shortly. I have so many great memories to write about.

js 2 other perspectives on where we lived

Finding someone's house in Japan is not so difficult, though you must first get used to the fact that very few streets have names. For example, our house was 2-11-16 Mukogaoka, the latter being a town (or suburb) within the city of Sanda. The '2' designates the district (chome) within that suburb, the '11' the island(or block) of houses to which we belonged, and the '16' was our actual house number. I'm sure that you can find our house on the 'chome' guide above.

Strangely enough, Japanese friends and students often got lost looking for our place, even when they had a car navigation system!

japanese series: Our house in Sanda.

I've decided to drop the politics and society for a while (about time-ed.) and focus on a series based upon some the pics I took last time in Sanda. Maybe they'll even have a little coherent commentary, but I can't promise that!

First things first. Here is where we lived in Sanda, a smallish town to the north of Kobe in Hyogo, Japan. We spent three years all up living and working at this address. It's the house on the left in front of the silver van with the sign on the wall. Gosh I've got some fond memories of that place!

the new mood

A little over two weeks have passed since the Howard Government met its maker, and already there is a change of mood abroad. It's as if a load has been lifted from the collective backs of all Australians, or at least thinking Australians. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified, the 'Pacific Solution' is being dismantled and the PM is already talking of a sorry (yes, a real sorry, heartfelt and genuine, not just a legalistic regret) to the 'Stolen Generations' of Aboriginal people. I really feel like the nation is moving forward, the ridiculous culture wars of the Howard era (yes, already an era) put behind us, the hectoring moralisms of Howard and Abbott sunk into a pit of concrete, the endless genuflections to Washington, ended. I hope.

What I would like to see is a country which re-embraces its international obligations at all levels, works as an active participant to solve problems and understands that the global and the local are linked. At home I want a Government that governs competently and compassionately, not eschewing 'tough love', but reinventing it.

And please, can we have a little less talk about matters economic, and a little more about the quality of life, our shared future and even, yes, a little bit of the vision thing.

Oz Politics Unravelling

It's amazing what a single day in politics can do, especially when that day is a general election. From a seemingly impregnable position, with a strong economy and unified experienced team, the Government has fallen, the PM has lost his own seat, and the whole edifice appears to be in flames, with former high-flyers jumping from every floor.

Yes, it is with joy that I relate this amazing circumstance, for I did not like the Howard Government from first to last. I don't dislike conservative administrations per se, its just that I really disliked this one, for reasons outlined in earlier posts.

So, the annointed LP leader refuses to stand for election, the leader of the decimated National Party resigns, there is recrimination everywhere, and contenders for the (somewhat poisoned) chalice are stepping up. I think it might be a fight between Nelson and Turnbull, Abbott being too ideological and Downer too tired.

Interesting times indeed.

could it happen?

For 11 years now, I have detested the Howard Government. It's arguable that they didn't deserve to win the election in 1996 (which was essentially a referendum on Paul Keating) and that they subsequently claimed the hard won fruits of the previous administration. The bulk of economic reform had already occurred before that election.

The Howard Government has had its moments. It has run the economy for the most part with reasonable skill, nothwithstanding those times in the electoral cycle when it handed out buckets of money. I supported the Government on its guns policy (that is, making it tougher to get and own one) and there are some things that only conservative governments can get away with, such as the work for the dole scheme, which was probably worth a try.

But that doesn't excuse the dumping on indigenous people, the dumping on and subsequent incarceration of 'illegal immigrants' , the war in Iraq (Mark 2) and the very ideologically driven stances and policies that pepper its 11 year reign.

There is a good chance that a new Labor Government will be elected Saturday week, though it is not a given, in spite of the polls. The Tories are very good at winning Federal elections, as a glance at the last 100 years of political history will attest. This time they don't deserve to.

Let's rekindle the light on the hill.

sad days

Last night around 3am our good friend Arthur passed away. Arthur had been a fixture in our lives, both here in Hazelbrook and also in our choir, Crowd Around, for years now. He was a gentle, kind person who was always on hand when help was needed. He was a better man than I am.

I prayed at his bedside yesterday for God's mercy, and that shortly he might see the very face of God. That prayer has been answered and Arthur is truly in a better place than he was. We may mourn, but he has crossed that river to the Celestial City. God Bless you Arthur. You have earnt this long rest.

so long nova

News yesterday that Nova, the self-proclaimed McDonalds of English Schools in Japan, has gone into bankruptsy. I certainly won't bid a fond farewell to a company for whom staff and students were a long second to profits, whose infamous ticket system ripped off gullible clients and who, more recently, failed to pay their Japanese staff and foreign teachers.

Of course, Nadia and I did have a vested interest - our own little conversation school in Sanda-but that does not excuse the corporate greed that embodied the Nova system. I am truly sorry for the 4,000 or more foreigners who will now either have to find new work, or more likely, be forced to leave Japan. And for the decent people who signed up in good faith for English classes.

On another topic altogether, the house is only a few tantalising weeks from completion, or at least, complete enough for us to move in. Oh what a saga it has been!

And on a sad note, our choir friend Arthur, who has been fighting cancer for a couple of years now, is close to death. I know where he is going will be a brighter place for him: to see the very face of God! But we will miss him. Truly.

an 'f' in economics

Back in the days when there were two superpowers and just about everyone fitted into one camp or another, it was still possible to have a discussion about socialism. It was still possible to wonder whether there might be a better way to do things than what capitalism had to offer. One could posit the possibilities of systems other than those propounded by the Soviets or the Americans.

Come the 1990's and the fall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, capitalism emerged smugly triumphant, and so began the phase we might now call globalisation. Simply put, the markets should dictate where and why things are produced, what people are payed and how they are employed, irrespective of where they live on the planet. Underlining this logic, as with all capitalist endeavour, is the desire to make money, to up the profit, to safeguard the bottom line.

As pseudo-logical systems go, it seems to work rather well. Many folks in developing countries are being lifted out of poverty, developed nations have never had it so good. Governments can spend on the public good, if they desire, as a result of all this private inventiveness and hard work.

There are a few problems with this kind of reasoning. The environment is rarely factored in as a cost, so there is degradation, pollution and the potential for ecological catastrophe.

In developed countries, the gap between the rich and the poor has dramatically widened, with some governments taking a whip to the latter. Better to blame them for their own poverty, rather than the system.

And finally, isn't there something cynical and terribly wrongheaded about an economic system which is underpinned by human greed? Surely there is a better way to make a buck than at someone else's expense? Isn't the kind of consumption encouraged (actually demanded) by present day capitalism just plain bad? Not just frivilous or shallow, but wrong?

Which brings me back to socialism. Is there a new way of defining a socialist system, free from the authoritarianism of past blunders and flexible enough to let energetic people(ie. capitalists) make their own living if they want? A system that puts things back into a kind of balance.

I'm not an economist. Surely someone with the skills is thinking about it. Somewhere.

old and new

I read recently that Andrew Keen, who has written a stinging critique of the internet, is a rather unpopular man. From the little I have seen or heard of him (including an interview on an American public broadcaster) he seems like an eminently sensible and eloquent chap.

In a nutshell, Keen argues that much of what passes for information on the web is a pure waste of time. Blogs, home pages, infopedias and the like are just an unedited, chaotic and often inanely trivial mess cobbled together by amateurs. Most pertinently, there is no way of gauging quality or accuracy in the manner, for example, that the 'old media' could through editorial oversight.

He has a point. Most blogs, if not free advertising plugs, are unweeded gardens. Well-intentioned beginnings peter into nothing or become strings of personal photos. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, though probably no-one is paying attention.

Worse are the so-called unmediated 'news' sites where information is lifted from 'old media' sources, often without accreditation. Or tedious opinion pieces containing little or no factual content.

Of course, poor writing or shoddy practices were invented in the old media. But where in the past we could fairly clearly differentiate between tabloid and serious journalism and the papers and magazines from which they sprung, the internet offers no such opportunity.

Maybe these are teething problems for the most part, or symptoms of a wider malaise. If no-one controls or mediates the content, then how do you establish standards? It strikes me that this is an impossible question to answer, for people will not accept 'interference' on the web or any imposition on free speech.

So an unweeded garden it must remain.

trends

LIfe is never a smooth or constant stream. I think the closer you come to a kind of harmony, the more other things conspire (inadvertently, that is) to pull you off balance. I know that there are exceptions, though, as they say, they tend to prove the rule. It's strange that I keep finding out about people in our local community who have cancer. It feels like an epidemic though it may just be the demographic....late middle-aged folks on the whole. But its still puzzling and disturbing.

What part modern living plays in this scenario is less certain. Okay, smoking is a relatively modern practice and is now well documented as being dangerous. Exposure to chemicals from industrial and farming techniques may also be a culprit. Stress too. The pace of life. The nexus between producer and production. IT burnout. Hmmm. Who knows?

Some people manage to deal with stress and life's inevitable wobbles better than others. I am one of the others. Stress and anxiety do rather bad things to my body and my mind. I am not usually calm under sudden pressure. I have written before about having a panic disorder which has come and gone for nearly twenty years. Luckily I have a great book and some experience now at coming through each episode (which can last for months at a time) and I have never been afflicted in the way I first was.

With hindsight, a new job in a hyper-stressful occupation (teaching) and below average self-esteem made the onset of this disorder more likely. What I need to learn now is acceptance, that some things can't be changed. Memory is simply too powerful. And, to live more in the moment, rather than at some distance in the future. A day at a time, and with gratitude.

I have a lovely wife and a beautiful son.

mol triumph

Why have I posted this picture? Our sofa arrived via this Japanese merchant ship, a long journey and a tale of two towns. It's now our temporary bed(I mean the sofa, not the ship) pending the move to the new house, sometime in November, tabun. Tom has our bedroom, courtesy of Tresillian. The sofa was an extravagence to send home. It's just that we wanted a little bit of Mukogaoka, in Hazelbrook.

sticks

Tom has, apparently, picked up something of my affinity for sticks. I often catch him waving, poking or fishing with them. He likes to give them to me and sometimes we indulge in a rudimentary kind of swordplay. Boys! Always naughty little warriors!

Weekdays I take him to parks for a change of scene for the both of us. I guess all boys like puddles, creeks and ponds. Water holds a deep fascination, especially if its running. Then, if you have a trusty stick or two, you can prod and poke and even have a stick race. I must admit that leaves get less snagged as a rule, but the stick is a fine boat all the same. Certainly Tom thinks so.

spring cometh

Warmer days and still cool nights. This morning the sun had more bite than usual but the breeze was a just a touch chilly. I love that combination - the sense of warm and cool on your skin at the same time.

The plum blossoms are out and I suppose the cherry trees in Leura will flower in a month or so. We missed the sakkura last spring in Sanda by the slimmest of margins, maybe a day or two. But nature has conspired to give us another springtime in the same year. Two springs, two winters and an autumn. Summer can wait, as it usually must.

Wintry Tom

Winter has been colder than ususual, though nothing by comparison with Sanda, where I recall ice forming on the inside of windows! But last month was quite balmy and I took this shot of Tom in our backyard at #11. We won't be here much longer and he won't have all that nice grass and flat yard to gambol in.

Despite how difficult our final tour of duty was in Japan last time, my thoughts fly more and more to Sanda, to friends, students, life there. Maybe we can visit again soon. Maybe.

Of dukes and spongs

Speculation persists that Mark Viduka, the Soccerroos captain, will retire from international service soon, ostensibly to focus on the task of settling in at his new club, Newcastle United. A shame if it happens. The Duke has another World Cup in him at least and I think his leadership and experience up front could be a critical factor in the Asian playoffs. And of course, we now know, if we didn't before, that Asia is a tough competition and qualification will not be a doddle.

And whilst on the subject of religion (football = religion ??? nani?- ed.) Bishop John Spong is in town. Spong is a modernist who wants to drag the ancient church into the modern age. I rather like the erudite and charming Bishop, but I find it difficult to reconcile his membership of a Christian Church (Episopalean) with his professed beliefs, which might reasonably be summed up by the 12 thesis he posted about a decade ago on the internet. Amongst other things, the modern-day Martin Luther has argued for a new church in which, amongst other things, theism is dead (I take it to mean that there is no God), Jesus was not the product of a virgin birth, did not perform any miracles and did not rise from the dead or ascend to heaven. Nor did he die for anyone's sins, this being an entirely barbaric concept. Prayer is of no value (since no-one is listening, presumably), moral values derived from old textual sources are a nonsense,,,,I think you get my drift.

Of course, Spong is not alone in holding such views. Liberal theologians of the last century often speculated on whether there was indeed a God and so forth, but it strikes me as Pythonesque for a man to dress and act like a Bishop and yet talk so mild-manneredly and so obviously like an atheist.

Alas, I fear that you can't take the metaphysics out of religion. Once you lose the mystery, you also lose the wonder. The mystical is the most interesting part for my money. Don't throw the baby our with the bathwater, Bishop. Leave people their hope, even if you think it is grounded on the delusions of our ancestors. Because, you never know, it might not be.