Hakozaki Campus's Wall of Mystery

I was riding my bike across campus a few weeks ago when the above sight caught my eye.

Yup, two ugly, ugly buildings and a parking lot. Not much of a sight. What caught my eye was the wall on the larger building on the right. There is a lot of graffiti on the top two sections of it:
You'll note that someone has expended a lot of effort defacing the graffiti. What I find quite funny is that they obviously had two different people cleaning each section, and each of the cleaners used a different strategy to remove it. These different strategies reflect completely different philosophies about the underlying purpose of graffiti removal.

On the top section, the person basically contented him/herself by defacing the graffiti enough to make it completely illegible. The black ink remains, but so long as you can't actually read what was written, that is good enough.

On the lower section, the person made some effort to cover up the graffiti by using paint that almost matched the color of the wall. Restoring the aesthetic appearance of the wall (such as it is) was the over-riding concern.

What I really like about the person who cleaned up the lower section is that they adopted an extreme minimalist approach. They exactingly painted over only the graffiti and did not get paint onto any part of the wall that wasn't defaced. Basically, they just traced over the graffiti in a different color of paint.

This was very useful because thanks to the fact that the paint they used isn't quite the same as that on the underlying wall, it is still possible to read what was written on the lower section.　It says this:

解放教育構造

Which crudely translates into "Free the structure of education". Or something like that.

I pointed this out to my colleague Fabio one day and we stood in front of the wall for a few minutes pondering the meaning of it. A professor that we knew happened to pass by and we asked if she knew what it was about. She said that during the 1960s there had been a number of student protests during which activists had occupied some of the buildings and this was likely something they had written during that time. Like us she couldn't read the graffiti on the top section, so its meaning has been lost to the ages.

Fabio pointed out that the graffiti isn't the only whimsical thing about this wall. It has these two rusted out signs posted prominently on the section below the lower graffiti one:
It says "Please do not throw balls against this wall." Of course if you look at the location of the wall, it is in a narrow alley wholly un-conducive to the throwing of balls:
The obvious explanation is that the building on the right in the above photo was built sometime after the one on the left and that during the period before its construction this must have been a popular place for students to play some sort of ball game that must have seriously annoyed the professor who occupied the office adjacent to that external wall. I love the fact that those signs are still up there so long after they stopped serving any practical purpose.

The whimsy doesn't quite end there though. This is also the sight of one of those "staircases to nowhere" that so fascinate me:
Unlike the "don't throw balls" sign, the existence of this stairway defies easy explanation. To be fair, there is a door on the left just out of sight of this shot, but it has its own section of dedicated stairway. Why did they build these steps leading straight into a concrete wall? Was it part of some government building program designed to soak up a glut of metal staircases on the market at the time? Was it some comical mis-reading of the blue prints that resulted in one side of the building getting too much staircase and another not enough?

I suppose I could ask around and find out, but I rather like not knowing. It adds to the mystery and appeal of this wall. The explanation would only end up being mundane and boring. Sometimes too much knowledge ruins things. Ignorance can be bliss.

Embarassing Google Searches and My Little Blog

Today's post is about my favorite feature of Google Blogger: the "Search Keywords" function.

Every day Google, on my blog's control panel, tells me what search terms people have entered into Google to find my blog. It is far and away the most amusing part of Google Blogger.

Up until a few months ago my blog was obscure enough that it only came up in very specific and seldom used searches. Like if you put in "Kyushu University Hakozaki Campus" in a Google search my blog would pop up and some people would click on it. Nothing too exciting about that.
Now though my blog has apparently been around long enough to have advanced up Google's page rankings so that it shows up on a wider range of search terms than it used to. This is where the amusement sets in.

I believe the main cause of this was this post a couple months ago that had the word "Sex" in the title. It is far and away the most viewed post on this blog and it has completely skewered the search terms that people use to reach my blog. For example, looking at the past month people have arrived here via searches for:

"Fukuoka prostitute"
"Fukuoka sex"
"Sex in Fukuoka"
"Fukuoka brothel"
"Nakasu red light district"
"Nakasu Prostitution"

These seem to obviously have been entered by people trying to find information on prostitutes in Fukuoka. One enterprising visitor confirms this with the most specific search:

"How to Find Prostitutes in Fukuoka"

Oh, my beautiful blog: who will weep for thee?

Another type of search that led someone to that same post was this one:

"Fuzoku on working visa"

Fuzoku you will recall is sex industry work. That exact search term was used 4 times to reach my blog, I guess by someone looking for information on whether such work would violate the terms of their visa. If that person is reading this: I think it probably would, but check with immigration.

The most disturbing search has been this one:

"seansex 9 com"

I don't know or want to know what the hell that person was looking for, but the fact that they used it to reach this blog 3 times makes me somewhat uncomfortable.
Far and away the most amusing was this one that someone used in the last 24 hours:

"Hidden camera: Kansai women's bath"

Oh my god, I fell off my chair laughing when I saw that one. The person used it to reach this rather mundane post here. If you read it you'll notice that it has nothing to do with hidden cameras or women's baths but by some coincidence it happens to contain each of those words, scattered throughout the post.

Its entirely possible the person was doing research on something like the criminal invasion of the privacy rights of women in the Kansai area. Though that would be a generous interpretation of course.

I suppose that by putting all these search terms into a single post I am really inviting a wave of clicks. This will probably become my newest number one post in no time.

UVic Fukuoka fun days

My old law school back in Canada - UVic - has a close relationship with Kyudai. One of the effects of this is that we are treated to the occasional visit by UVic law profs, giving me and the other UVic alumni here the chance to play host and show our distinguished visitors around Fukuoka.

In 2008 shortly after my own arrival Mark, a UVic prof specializing in a number of fields, arrived to teach a course in securities regulation. Unfortunately I was the only UVic grad present during his time here so our hospitality was limited to a lunch at Gusto, a "family restaurant" of (I'm shamed to admit) dubious quality. He displayed admirable graciousness throughout the meal in not pointing that fact out:In July of this year we were graced by a visit from Donna, the Dean of UVic law. With a whole team of UVic grads present at that time - Anita, Andy and I - we were able to show her a bit more Fukuoka hospitality. We took her around Dazaifu and had a really nice time there:
Last week we were visited by Martha, UVic's tax and EU law specialist, who had come to give a lecture on international taxation at Kyudai. The lineup of UVic alumni had changed somewhat with Andy having gone back to Canada and Brett having arrived shortly thereafter. After being treated to dinner on the first day of her visit, we took her to the Fukuoka Museum of Modern Asian art. Brett would probably like me to make it clear that he is pointing not to himself but to the "UVIC" on his shirt in this photo:
We had gone to this museum during Donna's visit as well and I think we are developing something of a tradition of taking UVic people there. Its a nice museum with some traditional "Modern" art:
And the more contemporary head-scratching entries:
After the museum we bade Martha farewell and Brett headed to a department store called "The Loft" where Ena and I later crossed paths with him. He was in the middle of some Halloween costume purchasing, so we followed him around a bit to see what he got. The racks of gag nose-hair caught my eye:
Ena and I did a bit of wandering around on our own, pausing to ponder the imaginative world of Japanese stuffed-animal design:
After that we headed off in search of dinner. The intimate lights of a hidden alleyway beckoned:
Lanterns nestled snugly beneath a canopy of lit offices in the towers beyond:
We settled into an Indian restaurant to dine on the "Suraj" set:
Served under the warm glow of ancient chandeliers:
A fitting end to yet another UVic Fukuoka fun day.

Bowling for Baseball

We had a rainy weekend and decided to do some indoor stuff. Off to the bowling alley we went.

Ena's mood while bowling varies with the color of the ball. Red is serious:
While gold is happy:
We both worked on our form:
And Ena got her first strike in the 4th frame:
We played two games, I bowled a 194 in the second, which is my high score in 10 pin. Ena for her part proved exceptionally talented at setting up spares, improving her score dramatically in the second game, and we both had a great time.

The bowling alley also has batting cages and they gave us a 2 for 1 deal. In an effort to avoid embarrassment I meekly strode right past the "140 kmh" cage and directly to the "72kmh" one, where I was at least able to make contact with most of the pitches:
Ena didn't take any swings but did pose for a photo in her batting stance. She reminds me of a young Cincinnati Reds outfielder named Eric Davis from the late 80s, though I suspect this may have been coincidental rather than a conscious attempt on her part to replicate his stance:
I also posed for a baseball card type shot:
My body, incidentally, is almost completely immobile today. I haven't played baseball regularly in about 15 years and, it turns out, haven't used most of the muscles needed to swing a bat in that time.

Writing about Japan: The Horrible and the Exceptional

Across the internet there is a rather extensive world of English language writing that is tied together by the single thread of its common subject matter: Japan. This blog occupies a relatively obscure, seldom-visited corner of that world, which is exactly where I want it to be.

In that world, there is a rather eclectic mix of writers. Some have never been to Japan but have a keen interest in something from Japan (comics, movies, video games, etc) and write about that. Others have visited Japan as tourists and may have put up a few photos and some notes about their travel experiences on a blog like this one. Still others are experts in a certain field (finance, international politics, trade, etc) whose writings occasionally touch upon the situation in Japan. Far and away the largest part of that world, however, is taken up by foreign residents in Japan like myself. That part of the world, which for the moment I take to exclude academic writing, is what I want to talk about here.

If we were to develop a sliding scale of quality of writing, with one end being "exceptional" and the other "horrible" then most of the writing in this world would, regrettably, fall on the latter end of the scale. Only a very small percentage would be anywhere near the former.

In terms of horrible Japan writing, I think the single biggest repository is the commentary section of Japan Today, an internet-based news site that mostly focuses on Japan. The commentary section of that site sometimes features items taken off of wire services like Kyodo which, though not particularly interesting, at least display the fact that someone proofread them before distributing them.

The majority of the articles, however, seem to be written by a class of relatively new foreign residents to Japan who are keen to publish something about Japan yet don't actually know enough to write something worth reading. The existence of this class of individuals combined with the apparent absence (or at least insufficiency) of editorial standards at Japan Today combines to create the perfect storm of bad Japan writing.

Some of these articles are embarrassingly bad rants clearly written after someone had a bad experience and is going through some form of culture shock. Really they belong on something like a blog (uh, yes, like this one, I know) rather than a news site. The worst example of this kind of article is this one, in which the clearly embittered author felt compelled to write an extensive treatise after being told that his blonde highlights weren't appropriate in a Japanese workplace.

Another would be this one, which I've discussed on here before, in which the (Canadian) author complains at length about the customs of Japanese baseball fans. The most mind boggling aspect of this article is that its author - whose writing displayed such an astonishing degree of cultural insensitivity and obtuseness - now runs a business (I swear I am not making this up) in which he teaches cross cultural communication! The word "ironic" doesn't even begin to capture the essence of that contradiction.

A second general type of bad writing is the person who writes as though he/she were an expert in a field in which they clearly have no knowledge. This week's Japan Today provided a good example of that type with this gem. You'll note that the article is titled "Eminent Domain Laws in Japan Notoriously Weak" and the author states in the first paragraph that it is an "article entirely for the topic of Eminent Domain laws in Japan."

Now if you are a sucker for punishment and actually read the whole article you will notice a very interesting thing. At no point in the entire article does the author mention a single, solitary Japanese law related to eminent domain. Nowhere, not a one. Is that not strange? I mean you would kind of expect an article about Japanese eminent domain law to at least mention some Japanese eminent domain laws, right? Is that not reasonable to expect?

I believe the omission is explained by the simple fact that the author clearly has absolutely no knowledge of eminent domain law in Japan. In fact the article displays an astonishing degree of confusion about law in general. In the first three paragraphs he discusses landlord-tenant law and then rather abruptly switches to a general discussion of eminent domain in the fourth paragraph without displaying any awareness that the two are completely different things. Landlord-tenant law deals with the relationships of landlords and tenants, eminent domain with the relationship between landowners and the state. They have very little in common and spring from entirely different policy concerns and legal doctrines.

I suspect, though I have no proof, that the author may have done his research for the article entirely on Wikipedia (from which all the facts he cites are available in English). The poor quality of the article is further demonstrated by the fact that the main piece of evidence he provides to support his assertion that "eminent domain laws in Japan are notoriously weak" clearly contradicts that assertion. That case was the construction of Narita airport, which was delayed - according to him - by violent protests. This (from what I know) is factually correct, but it completely contradicts his claim about eminent domain laws. The protests were caused by the expropriation of the land which, of course, could not have occurred without the effective exercise of the state's eminent domain power. In other words, the delays were caused by protests which had nothing to do with "weak" eminent domain powers but the exact opposite - effective eminent domain powers. The author doesn't even notice the contradiction.

These are but some of many examples of such poor writing. To the extent, if any, that bad Japan writing differs from bad regular writing, I think part of it can be explained by a certain hubris that accompanies new arrivals to Japan. Having lived here for a few months or even years they feel that they know the country better than people back home. Which is probably correct, but it unfortunately may lead them to over-estimate their own knowledge and write stuff completely beyond their capability. God knows I've been guilty of this myself on numerous occasions, though thankfully I never tried publishing any of it. Well, save on here!

Anyway, as I said above, the number of writings on the other end of the scale - the "exceptional" - is regrettably quite small. So this will be short. But I absolutely have to put a word in about one anonymous blogger who I think, far and away, produces the best quality writing about Japan in the world of long-term-resident- foreigner blogs (which is, admittedly, a small world). The blog is entitled Spike Japan. Most posts are sort of a cross between travel narratives and general commentary on the state of Japan's economy, particularly in the declining rural part of the country.

The writer scores something of a "hat trick" in blog-writing talent. First, the subject matter of most of his posts are quite interesting as he mostly visits places that have an interesting story behind them - often dealing with the folly of the bubble years or the bittersweet decline of a rural community facing economic collapse. Second he brings a talent for writing that reminds one of Alan Booth, one of the best travel writers ever to visit these shores. The posts are laced with dry wit and an effective ability to draw the reader into the story that unfolds. Third when the author strays into commentary he skillfully avoids making ham-fisted attempts at elucidating deep meaning where there is none or the general laziness that leads some writers (including myself on occasion) to rely on over-generalizations or half-assed research. He doesn't necessarily provide in-depth analysis but he does do his research and presents useful facts that (unlike Japan Today commentators) are clearly drawn from non-Wikipedia sources.

So if you've got some free time and an interest in Japan based writing, I strongly recommend his blog.

Japan Today's commentary section on the other hand is to be avoided like the plague.

My New Hat

OK, let me explain.

Well, if you are a baseball fan, let me explain. If not, don't waste your time reading this.

I'm very picky about hats. When I find one I like, I stick to it. Good hats are hard to find.

So I've been dreading this day for a long time. My beloved blue hat, the hat I've been wearing in half the pictures on this blog, has slowly been falling apart. I've had it for over 6 years and worn it just about every day during that time. Ena gave it to me back in 2004 when we were still living in Himeji. Its been through law school, climbed mountains, been left in restaurants, had just about everything imaginable spilled on it, been across the Pacific twice and done a whole bunch of other stuff. But its developed quite a few holes and after some deep soul-searching I decided that it has earned a quiet life of semi-retirement as my back-up hat.

In considering a replacement I made the decision right off the bat that I wanted to do something I haven't done since high school: make a baseball cap my regular hat. In high school I wore a New York Yankees cap and I don't think a photograph exists of me from the years 1990 thru 1995 without one. I gave them up after finishing high school, a year which also saw the retirement of Don Mattingly and along with it the end of my interest in the Yankees.

I have some mixed feelings about wearing a baseball hat, which is related to the mixed feelings about Major League baseball since 2004. That was the year the Expos left Montreal. My high school days as a Yankee fan were more of a fling, my heart really always belonged to the Expos, the team my support naturally gravitated towards . From the first game I went to way back in 1980 with my grandpa, aunt and dad to the last in 1997 when I took my Dad to see Pedro Martinez pitch against the Dodgers just before he (er, my dad, not Pedro) retired and moved west I've been an Expos fan. It was a pretty big blow when they left town, even though I hadn't been to a game (or Montreal for that matter) for 7 years at that point.

Anyway, my first choice for a hat to replace old blue would have been an Expos hat. Unfortunately those are not an easy to find item in Fukuoka. Remarkably however I actually did find one. But what I found was not an Expos hat as I remembered it, but one of these hip-hop style hats with a bunch of crap on it that look nothing like what Expos players actually wore. The Expos logo wasn't even on the front of the cap, it was way off to the side. Clearly that wouldn't do.

My next thought was to buy a Hawks hat. After all, I am a Hawks fan and I do live in Fukuoka. But I couldn't bring myself to buy a Hawks hat. The Hawks hat has no soul. The Hawks hat has a big "S" and a big "H" in yellow letters. The "H", obviously, stands for "Hawks, but the "S" stands for "Softbank", the name of the team's corporate owner.

That is one thing I really hate about Japanese teams, the fact that all of them (except the Yokohama Baystars and, occasionally, the Hiroshima Carp) are named not after the city they play in but after the company that owns them. Having a team that represents your city is something you can get behind. Having a team that represents some faceless corporation is not, especially if said corporation is in the decidedly consumer-unfriendly cell-phone business as Softbank is.

More important from a hat-purchsing point of view is that the Hawk's hat has no tradition to go with it. They just have a revolving door of corporate owners and each time the owner changes they change the name, uniform, color scheme etc. 5 years ago they were the Daiei Hawks (department store chain) and a few years before that they had been the Nankai Hawks (railway company). So the current hat has only been around for a few seasons and I know that in a couple years from now it'll probably be replaced by god only knows what.

Other teams here have a bit more consistency, like the Hanshin Tigers (railway company) and Yomiuri Giants (Newspaper company) that have been owned by the same company for a long time, but I don't cheer for them.

So I had to bite the bullet and get a major league hat. Ena took me around town to do some hat shopping and we ended up at Hawkstown mall, which has a big baseball store. The selection of major league hats was basically limited to MLB teams which had Japanese players: the Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers, Astros, Red Sox and Pirates.

I didn't think it would be right to go back to the Yankees hat and ruled that out right away. The "LA" on the Dodgers hat only served to remind me that Montreal fans now have something in common with old Brooklyn ones, so that was right out. The faint echo of a Yankee fan left in me couldn't stomach wearing a Red Sox hat and the Astros hat just looks stupid so I was left with a choice between the Mariners and the Pirates.

I've been following the Mariners for a few seasons and considering them as a possible new favorite team for a while. I lived near Seattle for a few years and kind of like Ichiro. It was nice seeing Griffey go back there to end his career too, even though it didn' t work out too well this year. So the Mariners hat had all that going for it.

But the Pirates hat? Looking at it, I just knew it was the right one. If there is one thing that contemporary American culture can truly be proud of, I would say it is the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap.

Its brutal simplicity is perfection. A big yellow "P" on all-black and that is it. The Mariners cap with its complicated nautical logo looks very amateur in comparison. And the Pirates cap is more or less the same cap worn by all time greats like Honus Wagner (albeit in different colors), Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and pre-steroids Barry Bonds. What an icon. They were wearing that hat 100 years ago and they'll probably still be wearing it 100 from now.

And the Pirates themselves? Well, they did play in the NL East against Montreal, which is sort of a black mark on them. But I absolutely love the fact that they are the worst team in Major League Baseball. I love the underdog. This year marked their 18th consecutive losing season. That isn't just a National League record in futility, it isn't just a major league record in futility: it is an all-time record in every single major professional team sport in North American history. Gotta love that. They also have some pitiable similarities to Montreal's final years: low attendance coupled with the threat of relocation looming in the background. I've never been to Pittsburgh and probably never will, but somehow the total miserable experience of that team translated into the perfect hat-sales marketing campaign focused directly on me. I assume this was by chance rather than design.

So there it is: my hat shopping process described in a huge essay. Its a common refrain that women spend much more time and thought than men on shopping for clothes. But the sheer complexity, agonizing, self-doubt and trepidation that accompanied my decision to make what to anyone not a life-long baseball fan would consider a routine purchase has done a lot to dispel that myth for me.

Go Bucs!

Oh Kyoto

I'm really starting to dislike Kyoto.

Well, actually, I like Kyoto, but I also have a lot of antipathy towards it. I've been to that city about 8 or 9 times. Its got a lot going for it - loads of beautiful cultural sights and other things.

Just a few weeks ago I was offering the city faint praise on here. As usual, every time I start to display fond feelings for it, the city unveils a whole new reason for me to have mixed feelings about it.

This time its because they are going to tear up a nice park (well, a large part of the park anyway) and build a giant aquarium on the spot. You can read about it (well, more accurate to say that you can read criticisms about it) here and here.

Mainly this makes me upset because I hate to see green space getting torn up on principle. More than that though I don't like to see it torn up for something that really doesn't make much sense.

To recap, a landlocked city which has no maritime connection but a unique wealth of UNESCO world heritage sites is going to rip up some of its rare urban greenery to build a place to see fish in the expectation that it will cause tourists to flock to the city.

Never mind that the neighboring city of Osaka - which actually sits on the sea - already has a huge aquarium. Never mind the fact that this will include a dolphin tank (re: "The Cove"). Never mind that public resources could be much more effectively used promoting the city's natural and historical attractions. Never mind that.....oh never mind. It just seems like a bad idea, enough said.

One thing to note is that Kyoto is following what seems to be a time-honored tradition of ill-advised one-ups-manship among cities here. The rule seems to be that whenever city A builds something really big and flashy, cities B through Z have to follow suit and build their own versions of whatever it was that city A built.

Theme parks are one example. After Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983, a large number of localities in Japan followed suit with a theme park of their own. This process accelerated in the 1990s when theme parks were seen as a way to prop up local economies. While Tokyo Disneyland was and continues to be a massive success, the vast majority of the copy-cats (with exceptions like USJ in Osaka) have been horrendous failures, as I've noted here before. Fukuoka has a couple of these like Kashi kaen and Uminonakamichi, parks with ridiculously bad rides that somehow defy economic logic by remaining in business despite being completely deserted most of the time:
Another example is that most major cities in Japan have at least one giant ferris wheel. Fukuoka does most cities better by having two of them, built right next to each other:
At one point in their recent histories several major Japanese cities briefly boasted hosting a record-setting ferris wheel for however long it took for another city to build one slightly bigger.

The problem of course is that once a bigger one gets built elsewhere the ferris wheel that used to be biggest becomes obsolete and economically hopeless. The big ferris wheel in the above photo is now permanently closed and awaiting dismantling.

So, anyway, Osaka has a big, successful aquarium so Kyoto has to have one too. Well, obviously this is just conjecture on my part, I have no idea what the city planners were thinking when they approved this thing (behind closed doors as opponents of the project have complained). Still, it does seem to fit the general pattern. If they were turning a parking lot or former industrial site into an aquarium I probably wouldn't complain so much. Go ahead, blow your money away. It does seem a real shame though that a bit of parkland is being diverted from the public good in such a way.

(Note: the image at the top of this post is from Wikipedia).