Kashii Ousho and Melon Soda

Ena and I have been taking it easy for the past couple of days, its just too hot to ride our bikes or go anywhere.

So yesterday we just kind of moped around nearby Kashii. We ended up having lunch at a place called Oushou (王将) which is a fast food chain restaurant that specializes in noodles and gyouza and Chinese-style dishes.

There was an Oushou in Himeji near where we worked from 2001-2003 and I used to have lunch there sometimes. Its a nation-wide chain, but (apart from the menu) its got a lot of unusual quirks for a franchise restaurant.

The main one is the physical appearance of the restaurants. With McDonald's or most other fast food chains they pretty much all look alike. The interior of a McDonald's in Fukuoka looks exactly the same as the interior of one in Canada.

Now, I eat at McDonalds sometimes and find this sort of standardization useful because no matter which McDonald's you go to you know exactly what they've got and how much it'll cost. In terms of the restaurant's physical appearance though I agree with those who say that this sort of sterile cultural homogeneity is objectionable. McDonald's is really just spreading bland ugliness across the planet.

So I kind of like Oushou from this perspective. A lot of Oushou restaurants have the same problem of McDonald's - bland, uniform plastic decor in a cheaply constructed building surrounded by a huge parking lot. I never go to that type of Oushou.

Kashii Oushou though is nothing like that. It is nothing like any McDonald's or any other major chain fast food outlet either. I mean, look at this:
I love it! This place is great! Its an absolute mess! Boxes are stacked everywhere, the furniture is mismatched, there is a ROTARY DIAL pay phone just behind Ena (the pink one just to the right of her head), they've got a bunch of mixed up posters and photos tacked up to the wall, discarded umbrellas hanging wherever they could find a place to keep them, beat up Fukuoka Hawks goods scattered about, ancient wood paneling that was probably installed in the early 70s along the top of only SOME of the walls!! Its just a treasure trove of bad taste and indifference - exactly what a place like this should be!

Some people might say this place looks awful but I say its perfect. Nobody gives a shit what it looks like. That means they don't have people from Oushou's head office coming down to measure every square inch of the place to ensure that the Franchisee isn't doing anything to even slightly deviate from the standard pattern they enforce on everyone. I'm sure McDonald's (I shouldn't be singling them out, its really every fast food franchise) does this all the time. But not Oushou - if they did the head office guy's head would probably explode the second he walked into the Kashii Oushou!

The food isn't bad either - actually Kashii Oushou is a pretty famous spot locally and among the crap they've got on the walls are tons of pictures and autographs of Hawks baseball players who have eaten there, along with some newspaper articles about the place. We had ramen, gyouza and fried rice:
Look at that fake wood paneling above my head!! Isn't it great? My parents used that exact same type of paneling in about 1977 in a room they used to raise sheepdogs in!! That is how shitty that paneling is! And here we are: 2010 and its in the greatest restaurant in the world!

Well, I exaggerate a bit, but still - I love Kashii Oushou.

The other cool thing about visiting Kashii Oushou is that afterwards we popped into a little grocery store to buy some bottled drinks and I found some melon soda!
Melon soda is on the menu at most fast food restaurants here and I've taken to drinking almost nothing but when we dine in one. But I've never found it in a grocery store until yesterday. I was so excited we had to take the above photo to memorialize the occasion. Actually, just looking at it, I think I might have missed my calling - I would have made a pretty good pitchman for melon soda.

The Right-Field Bleachers of a Hawks Game

Ena and I finally went to our first Hawks game of the 2010 season yesterday. We've been meaning to go for a long time but a million little things ended up interfering with our plans until yesterday.The game was played at the Fukuoka Dome. As indicated in the above picture the Dome is now actually called the "Yahoo Dome" after its corporate sponsor. When it was built it was called the Fukuoka Dome though and a lot of the street signs bus stops, etc in town still call it that. I guess it would be expensive to change all of those things every time they got a new sponsor for the stadium. It kind of annoys me the way they keep changing stadium names (what do they call the Skydome in Toronto these days?) so I call it the Fukuoka Dome.

They've got a nice, tacky statue of a Hawk on a hand giving the victory sign which Ena liked so much I had to take a picture of her in front of it:
We got seats in the right field bleachers, which despite being the cheapest are by far the best seats to be in. We were both wearing our Hawks T-shirts (you pretty much HAVE to wear Hawks stuff if you are in the right field seats):
The reason I say the right field bleacher seats are the best in the house is because that is wear the Hawks Ouendan (応援団） or "Fan's association" organize all the cheering. In the rest of the stadium you can basically just sit and watch the game, cheering whenever you want. In right field though you HAVE to take part in the organized cheering. During the bottom half of every inning everyone stands up and, using plastic bats like the ones that I have draped around my neck in the top photo above, follows the instruction of a lead booster who tells us which cheers we have to do.

This goes on non-stop while the Hawks are at the plate and every player has a different cheer, which requires you to wave and bang those plastic bats in a different way while singing at the player to get a hit.

Its one of those things you have to see and experience to understand how much fun it can be. I tried taking a video of it at one point but my camera didn't do a very good job. This one and a half minute video taken by a fan does it justice though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5DVFyes9Nc&feature=related

You'll notice that he pans the camera across the audience and you see what looks like a pretty normal crowd in the bleachers on the first base side. Then all of a sudden BAM - the camera reaches the right field bleachers and suddenly there are huge flags being waved, everyone is standing and waving their bats in unison, the boosters can be seen standing above the crowd wearing their personally tailored-outfits (kind of a cross between shinto priest robes, construction worker garb and urban motorbike gang-member style) and everyone is singing.

That goes on for the whole game when the Hawks are batting. It takes a while to figure out all the cheers but by about the 5th or 6th inning we had them all down (you just watch what everyone else is doing). During the visitor's time at the plate you can just sit and watch the game. That is because its the visitor's team's turn to do their own organized cheering. There is a small section in the left field bleachers reserved for them. Interestingly people who sit there are contractually obliged to refrain from rooting for the Hawks or wearing any Hawks goods (this is a condition set out in writing on the ticket information form I got when we bought our tickets).

This division of cheering time is by agreement so the two side's cheering doesn't drown each other out. The only time Hawks fans can engage in organized cheering during the visitor's frame is when there is a pitching change. Then they can give one brief cheer to support the incoming pitcher and then they have to give the floor back to the visitor's rooters.
Anyway, the game was a tense one. The Hawks are doing really well this year and are in the middle of a tight pennant race. They were playing Orix Buffaloes. It was a sell-out crowd (we just barely got tickets).

The Buffaloes scored first on a solo home run by Alex Cabrera in the 4th. Ena was not at all happy about that:
In the 5th though the Hawks staged a major rally and scored 5 runs, all with 2 outs. The right field bleachers were going nuts the whole time, it was great. They loaded the bases twice and each time got a 2-run hit by the batter. The Hawks took the lead 5-1 and looked like they might cruise to an easy victory.

Until the next inning. When Alex Cabrera came up to bat again. With the bases loaded. And hit a grand slam. This made me very upset:
Ena joined me:
Way to rain on our parade, Alex Cabrera.

In the 7th we did the balloon thing:
After that, each team added a run each and the game entered extra innings tied at 6. Neither team scored in the 10th or 11th (despite all our cheering) and the Buffaloes got shut down in the top of the 12th.

In the bottom of the 12th fan favorite Shibahara was brought in to pinch hit. And he got a base hit! Right field went wild. A pinch runner came in and the next batter laid down a successful sacrifice bunt to move him into scoring position with 2 out. Tension filled the air and we in right field were cheering with every ounce of energy! Get a hit! Drive that runner in!! Win the game!

And then the pitcher picked the runner off second to end the inning. And the game! Japanese pro baseball games go to a maximum of 12 innings. If they don't resolve it by then, it ends in a tie. Argh! We went through over 5 hours of intense cheering to have it end in a tie? What an anti-climax!!!

Despite our disappointment with the outcome, we had a really great time at the game. Now that we've memorized all the cheers we're planning on going again at least one more time this season!

Academic Freedom, Book Reviews and Ruining your Reputation Through Libel Law

I usually keep this as a travel-blog type blog, but today I thought I'd write a post about an academic issue that, by virtue of its bizarre facts, makes for interesting reading by just about anybody. Its also something that just demands attention being called to it.

A number of us LLD students are engaged in writing reviews of academic books for publication in journals. One topic that came up in one of our group discussions was how far one should go in criticizing a book one is reviewing.

Our attention was directed to this little review of a book written by Dr. Karin Calvo-Goller on the subject of trial proceedings at the ICC (International Criminal Court):

http://www.globallawbooks.org/reviews/detail.asp?id=298

Its a really short review that, I'm sure most will agree, could be described as "mildly critical" of the book. Its not overly harsh in tone and, as far as reviews go, isn't particularly noteworthy or readable. So why was our attention drawn to it?

A few months after publishing the above, Joseph Weiler, the editor of the website that published the review, published this fascinating piece in the European Journal of International Law (which he also publishes):

http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/20/4/1952.pdf

I recommend reading it because, well, frankly its a real "page-turner". In brief, Dr. Calvo-Goller, after reading the above-linked critical review of her book, wrote to Prof. Weiler demanding that he remove the critical review of her book, making a number of allegations against the reviewer and the content of the review. Prof. Weiler, finding nothing wrong with the review that would justify its suppression, politely refused, but offered Dr. Calvo-Goller the opportunity to publish a rebuttal to the review that would appear alongside it - which seems an absolutely reasonable way to solve the problem.

A year later, Prof. Weiler discovers that he is facing criminal libel charges in France which were initiated by Dr. Calvo-Goller over his publishing and refusing to remove the review. Its worth mentioning that Prof. Weiler lives and works in New York, Dr. Calvo-Goller lives and works in Israel and the writer of the review lives and works in Germany. In other words nobody involved has any substantial link to France and the reason criminal proceedings were brought there seems to be simply that it has the most convenient judicial system for Dr. Calvo-Goller to bring them in. In civil litigation "forum shopping" is a well known and discussed issue, but in criminal law it is much less so.

Anyway, Prof. Weiler's article provides a really good review of the facts and correspondence leading up to the bringing of the criminal proceedings against himself. He was supposed to go to trial in June, but it was postponed until January of next year.

As his article (and numerous blog entries and other web sources) note, this case is a real threat to academic freedom. I can't agree with him more about how objectionable the whole thing has been.

Less commented upon but equally interesting has been the affect of the case on Dr. Calvo-Goller's reputation. Its interesting that people sometimes fail to understand that strictly enforcing one's legal rights (real or perceived) can, even if one wins the case, totally defeat the purpose of having initiated the litigation in the first place.

Its clear from the correspondence from Dr. Calvo-Goller (reproduced in Prof. Weiler's article) that her main concern was the threat to her professional reputation that a negative review could produce. So she got into this conflict with Prof. Weiler and sued him, forcing him into a corner where his only avenue was to make a public appeal for assistance in regard to the action she had initiated against him.

And now where is her reputation? Its worth remembering that the original review was a tiny, not particularly noteworthy (or even well-written) piece on a relatively obscure website. In other words, the damage to her reputation was probably almost non-existent to begin with and if she had taken up Prof. Weiler's offer to publish a rebuttal probably would have been nothing at all.

Now, however, if you run her name through a Google search (which may provide a sort of proxy for her public reputation) the first page (with 10 "hits") gives you her official web page from her university and a page from the publisher of her book. Another is the review of her book linked above. The other 7 hits are all related to this scandal between her and Prof. Weiler. None of those 7 take her side and pretty much all make her look - well, the threat of libel litigation against myself makes me reluctant to really speak my mind but suffice it to say her reputation suffers greatly in all of them. The second page of hits (there are more than 3,000 in total) is all pages critical of her. Google's "image" results are a bit more imaginative. The first shows her official photo from her university's homepage. The next one shows this same image spliced together with a medieval image of a book-burning. The next one shows an image of a character from the Simpson's known as "the critic" who was a sort of Roger Ebert parody on the show.

I certainly refrain from making any judgment about Dr. Calvo-Goller's professional skill and reputation. Certainly it seems that she is a respected authority within her field. But in terms of public reputation, judging solely from the results of my Google search, turning this from a simple private dispute into a public battle in the courts was a pretty horrible mistake.

This sort of relates to a debate that asks just how rational most litigation actually is. A lot of economics literature is based on the assumption (which they of course acknowledge to be imperfect) that people use the legal system to advance their interests in a rational way. By "rational" they mean people make an ex ante estimate of the benefits of litigation, weigh it against the probable costs and then only pursue it if the benefits outweigh the costs.

But as this case demonstrates, even for a person with extensive legal education it is very difficult to accurately estimate the drawbacks that recourse to the courts can entail. The result is a court case that is completely irrational on its face. Even if she wins, she loses.

Miyazaki Day 3: Miyazaki Jingu

It is only as I sit here typing up this blog that I realize that on all three days of our Miyazaki trip the main "site" that we went to was a shinto shrine. A lot of tourists who visit Japan complain of "shrine burnout" where they get dragged around Kyoto for days on end seeing nothing but shrines and temples that come to look increasingly alike the more one sees of them. In Miyazaki though its quite different as the shrines at Aoshima and Udo Jingu we visited on days one and two were more like adjuncts to the nice beaches and lovely coastal scenery in which they were set rather than sites in their own right.

On the last day of our trip we decided to stay in the city. Our bus back to Fukuoka left at 4PM and, now wise to the realities of Miyazaki transport, we decided not to risk getting stranded out in the countryside waiting for a train or bus that only ran 3 or 4 times a day while our ride back to Fukuoka was leaving us behind.

So we decided to head over to Miyazaki shrine, which unlike Aoshima and Udo Jingu is a shrine that you go to see for the shrine itself. It is dedicated to one of Japan's mythical ancient emperors and is laid out more like a palace than a shrine.

Despite its grandiose stylings, the somewhat "small city" reality of the present day shrine is given away by the presence of large numbers of roosters wandering freely around near the shrine entrance:
I have no idea what these birds were doing there, some of them were to be found wandering the street leading from the train station too. They definitely added to the atmosphere of the place though.

We followed a path through the woods (the shrine is surrounded by a forested park) which took us by these two guys:
Whatever religious purposes these statues may have once served has likely long since been surpassed by their current role as a place for idiot tourists to take gag photos of themselves.

The path eventually took us to the shrine. There is a long avenue leading up to the main buildings:
The entrance is quite impressive:
It is one of those shrines done entirely in "earth tones" without the bright orange that is used on most shrines (like Aoshima and Udo Jingu).

This is where our luck with the weather finally gave out. It was raining off and on all three days of our trip, but by good fortune on days 1 and 2 it had always rained while we were doing something indoors (riding a bus, eating lunch, etc) and had cleared up when we were outside. But at the Miyazaki shrine it started to poor rain and we were forced to take refuge under the roof of this structure:
This was actually really cool though. Because it was raining (and a Monday) nobody else was visiting the shrine. So we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. The structure we took refuge under was in the centre of the shrine (its where people make offerings to the gods) so we had a really attractive setting to wait out the rain.
Unfortunately this turned out to be more than a passing shower and we eventually decided to leave the shrine. The Miyazaki Prefectural museum of nature and history was located in the same park as the shrine so we decided to head over there as we suddenly found ourselves in need of an indoor activity.

This also turned out to be lucky, as it is actually a really good museum. The walk from the shrine took us to the outdoor part of the museum, where they have a few thatched-roof farmhouses they had brought from various parts of the prefecture and rebuilt into an open air museum:
As with the shrine we had the place all to ourselves and decided to temporarily take shelter in one of them:
After that we went straight into the main museum building. Going in I was a little wary that this would be some small-town museum that took five minutes to go through, but in fact it is a really quality museum that has excellent exhibits that compare well with any museum I've ever been to.

The first floor was the nature museum, the highlight of which was probably the dinosaur display:
The second floor dealt with history and had exhibits tracing Miyazaki's history from paleolithic times to the present. It was a great way to spend a couple hours on a rainy day.

After the museum it was time to head back to Miyazaki station to catch our bus:
All in all, Miyazaki was a great place to visit. The only hiccup was the public transit, though with better planning we could have gotten around that (so if anyone reading this is planning on visiting Miyazaki, check the bus and train schedules in advance!!) and at any rate it didn't have much of an affect on our enjoyment of the trip!

Another point that I should make is that, surprisingly, every single place we visited in Miyazaki - Aoshima, Udo Jingu, Miyazaki shrine and the prefectural museum - had free admission. About a year or so ago I wrote a big rant on here about how poorly Victoria compares to Japan in that regard and my trip to Miyazaki really reinforces that view. If any one of these sites was in Victoria you'd probably have to pay 15 to 20 dollars to get in and as a result locals would never visit and only well-to-do tourists would be willing to make the splurge. Free admission (or admission at a reasonable rate of 4 or 5 dollars) in most of the big attractions in Japan (theme parks are an exception) really enables normal people on shoe string budgets to do more travelling secure in the knowledge that they won't be forced to shell out tons of cash on admission to sites of sometimes dubious merit (yes, Victoria Miniature World, that barb was directed at you).

So, Miyazaki prefecture, my hat is off to you!

Miyazaki Day 2: Udo Jingu

On day 2 of our Miyazaki trip we decided to head down the coast to Udo Jingu, a famous shrine out in the middle of nowhere overlooking the sea.

We were pretty excited to go down there because the bus ride would take us along this coastal highway that was reputed to have some fantastic views. One tiny failure in our trip planning though was that we failed to consider the fact that Miyazaki is a much less populated prefecture than Fukuoka, which means that public transportation is infrequent and inconvenient. We ended up just missing the bus that we intended to take which meant that we had to kill a ton of time in town until 12:45PM to catch the next one. We sort of realized that we have been spoiled by Fukuoka's trains and buses which run every 10 or 15 minutes from sun up to midnight.

Nonetheless once we got on our way things were looking good. Until the rain hit. While we were going through the Hori Kiri pass (one of the best viewpoints along the coast) we hit a major rain storm:
We were really worried as we didn't have umbrellas, but luck was with us as by the time we arrived at our destination the rain clouds had moved on and it was sunny again.

The ride took about an hour and a half and once we got out of the suburbs the views were quite nice. The bus actually dropped us off in a little village a couple of kilometres from the shrine. We walked along a coastal road from there which offered some nice views of the washboard rocks:
Eventually we arrived at the Udo Jingu ("Jingu" means shrine). It is without a doubt the most beautifully located shrine I have ever been to. Actually I would say that the shrine and its surroundings are together the most beautiful site I've been to in Japan. The walk from the entrance to the main shrine takes you along some fantastic coastal scenery:
The clash of colors provided by the green palm trees, the blue sea and sky and the orange shrine features is really amazing:
And of course throw in a cute couple (well, a cute girl and her gangly husband) and the scenery takes on a whole new look:
There are a few small shrine buildings stretched out along the path leading up to the main one:
To get to the main building you have to go down some stairs going down a cliff face:
The main hall itself is not large but is quite beautiful - not so much for the building itself but by virtue of its being snuggly fit inside a little cave:
It is definitely the most interesting location for a shrine I have ever seen.

You can walk around a bit, the cave isn't very large but they managed to squeeze a little pathway behind the shrine building:
After moseying around the cave a bit we went and bought these little clay pebbles:
You are supposed to throw them at this rock jutting out of the sea below and, if you get them into this one spot you'll have good luck (at something, I've forgotten what deities this shrine is dedicated to):
We were both able to hit the rock but our clay pebbles bounced off into the sea. I'm not sure if you had to get them to stay on the rock for it to count or not.

After spending a pleasant while exploring the shrine and enjoying the views we once again got screwed over by the quirks of Miyazaki's public transport system and our own lack of advanced planning. The last bus back to town left at 4:20PM (the town of Fukei, where the bus stop was, looked like it had a population of only three or four hundred), which meant that we had to start walking back to the bus stop after only spending a little over an hour at the shrine.

Instead of returning by the coastal road we walked up a set of 800 steps that took us up and over the hill behind the shrine:
Technically this is the way we were supposed to have entered the shrine rather than the coastal road we took. The stairs actually provide a shortcut.

At the top of the hill we paused to enjoy a nice view of the mountain scenery:
A 20 minute walk later we were back at the bus stop waiting for our return ride back to town.

Back in town we had dinner at a nice little restaurant and retired to our hotel room to watch some TV and rest our feet!

Miyazaki Day 1: Aoshima

Ena and I had our little summer holiday this week and spent 3 days down in lovely Miyazaki. Miyazaki is on the southern part of Kyushu Island and, though its only a 4 hour bus ride, has a significantly milder climate than Fukuoka. It gets warm currents from the south Pacific and the water off the coast is about as warm as it is in Okinawa hundreds of kilometres further south.

We stayed in a hotel downtown. Miyazaki is the capital city of Miyazaki prefecture and our hotel was right next to the prefectural government building, which is something of a tourist attraction in itself:
We arrived in town at about noon, having taken an early morning bus from Fukuoka. We decided to go hit one of Miyazaki's most famous sites, Aoshima:
Aoshima is an interesting little island just off the coast about a 25 minute train ride from downtown Miyazaki. It is no ordinary island but has quite a few interesting features. The first are these:
The island is completely surrounded by these long rocky strips called the "devil's washboard." Actually these types of formations are found all over the coast off of Miyazaki and it is rather mesmerizing to watch the waves crash over them. This is what they look like close up:
The next interesting thing about Aoshima is its shrine, which has the only buildings on the island:
Its not particularly big but its quite attractive. You walk straight up from the beach to it and you can see the ocean from the front gate, which has a ton of good luck charms for sale:
The next interesting thing about Aoshima is that the forest that covers it is almost entirely made up of palm trees:
There are palm trees all over Kyushu, in Fukuoka as well, but this is the first time I've come across a palm tree forest growing naturally in Japan. It is quite attractive.

The final interesting little thing about Aoshima is this:
Well, not just Ena, but what she is standing on. The island is made of billions and billions of seashells that got washed onto the devil's washboard.

There is also a great beach at Aoshima:
I did a bit of swimming after we visited the shrine:
After spending the day in Aoshima we retired to Miyazaki city's bustling nightlife and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant:
After that, back to the hotel to rest our feet for the next day ahead of us!