BBC and the London Embassy

I got a call from Mr. BBC today. They wished to do an interview on morning radio about the relationship between China and Japan. Unfortunately I only saw the email 20mins before they planned to broadcast, so I'll have to leave my insightful analysis for another day. Anyway it was nice to be asked!

I got back to the UK last Friday, and on Wednesday I found myself at the Japanese embassy for a drinks do. Sushi and white-wine. I shamelessly hobnobbed with the Minister for Trade and we chatted away in Japanese about Japan's nuclear policy. At least, I think it was about Japan's nuclear policy. (If you're just saying, "Yes... I agree... that's right...", I find it's hard to go wrong.)

Many have asked me since I got back whether I'm going to do a job using my Japanese. Probably not, is the answer. It's nice to use a skill, especially after having spent so long learning it, but you learn skills to give you more choices, not less. I don't want to limit myself by saying "I must have a job where I use my Japanese". At the moment, other things looks more interesting.

That's it: my last post. Thanks for reading!

Mt. Fuji

With just days to go before I would finally leave Japan I decided to climb Mt. Fuji. Having chosen to take the tough option and I climb it from the very bottom, I kitted myself out with a fleece (North Face, no less), puma trainers, and an umbrella as a walking stick. Two days later I was sick from the altitude and dehydration – but I did it. And I only got lost once.



At the heart of every Shinto temple is a sacred object, and it seems that even though the buildings themselves were abandoned, they dared not move these objects, instead secured them behind locked fences.



Mt. Fuji is a sacred mountain, and many climb it as a pilgrimage. However many of the old temples have been abandoned as more and more start the climb from 5th station.



Split wood and open roofs were all that was left, though some had left offerings of tea and packages at the ruins.





Eventually the tree line petered out, and Mt Fuji, still technically an active volcano, was revealed.



You really felt like you had the whole earth spread out before you.



As night fell I became thoroughly sick from dehydration and altitude. The "old man" whose family I had teamed up with powered on, while I took shelter in a hut near the summit. It was a wretched night but the sunrise made up for every minute of it.

A temple garden at the foot of Mt. Fuji full of moss and wood.

This area of Japan receives heavy rainfall throughout much of the year. The response? The "design solution"? Plant a garden that is at its most beautiful in the rain.

I took the train to the office as usual this morning. I wound my way through the masses of Tokyo's rush hour to Taro Kono's parliamentary office. Through security, and up the stairs to the small cramped office on the second floor. But today's different: suits spill out of the MP's backroom into the reception, listening intently to what's going on inside.The buzz is in the air.

But I don't really know what's going on. I'm still not fluent enough to follow this scene; and even if I was, who knows if I'd be in on the loop. It's not exactly an open political scene.

Is it all going to change?

The LDP's ruled the roost for so long, but their ratings have never been this low. Really, we're talking Mariana Trench here.

Following the second world war, Japanese society changed. People left the rice-paddies and mountains of the countryside and headed to the neon and crowds of the city. This has left many MPs representing nothing but a handful of farmers and some trees. To keep at least some jobs in these rural towns, the politicians have been building roads in the countryside. Lots of roads that nobody needs. Construction companies show their appreciation for the business to the politicians at election time.

Back in Fukuoka I'd often cycle to the local dam. The road followed the river all the way there. In fact, on the other side of the river was another road following the same route, in case I wished to try out that side. t was easy to switch betweeen them. I could try the alternative anytime I liked: there was a new bridge every hundred metres.

This little deal has been made easier by the way the national budget is divided up. In Japan, the road tax doesn't go into a general pot, but just goes on roads. In theory this seems a great idea to me: officials might look at the roads one year and say, "Hey, they're in pretty good nick this year, so 50% off the tax this year!". In truth, no politician wants to reduce a tax one year, if they think they're going to have to raise it the next. So you get roads - whether you need them or not.

So now comes along a proposal to break down the fence that rims off the road tax money from the general fund. Let's use the money to pay for the old people hospital bills! So go the calls for reform. No, let's increase sales tax (VAT)! say the construction gang. And that's the point where Kono and others are threatening to leave the party. If we get an increase in VAT vs. opening up the road-tax budget, we're going off on our own, they say.

So the meeting crowded around me, as I tap away on my electronic dictionary, might be about that. Or it might be about FID, or DIRR, or some other obscure acronym. (In fact, I find out later it's about India and America's nuclear deal, which is quite exciting, as I got to write the English version of the resolution - which as no-one but Japan speaks Japanese, will be the one actually read. But more on that another time.)

I come out of the meeting to make more room for people who can actually follow what's going on. I browse the internet and read Robert Gates' recent speech in Singapore, US Defence Secretary (honestly that's first on my list every morning - what has Robert Gate's said today?). Anyway:

"Over the past three decades an enormous swathe of Asia has changed almost beyond recognition. By any measure – financial, technological, industrial, trade, educational, or cultural – Asia has become the center of gravity in a rapidly globalizing world."

So nothing new here, I suppose. European power-clashes, British Empire, 1st World War, rise of America, 2nd World War, Cold War; history for so long been a story centred around the Atlantic. Now the Pacific is where the action is. (I guess I'll have to leave out Japan's empire efforts of the Pacific War in my glib narrative...)

ANYWAY, there's a buzz out here. So why I am heading back to old-world London?

A little later, I find myself looking through Koike Yuriko's biography this morning. According to the gossip here she's the first female Japanese Prime Minister. She went off to Egypt upon graduation, mastered Arabic, came back to a media career, before getting swept up in politics. Hmmm... I'm a sucker for hunting for parallels in others' biographies. Look! It's just like me! She's from a small island-kingdom too, and off she went to learn a language, and then came back to a media career...

Yeah right. Well. We'll see. At any rate, the buzz in the office this morning, Asia being the new power centre, and obscure biographies; I can't help feeling like this Japan business isn't quite finished for me.

Violence...

Saw some train-rage today. I just got off off the packed underground train this morning, when a Japanese man ran off and chased after the man who had been standing just in front of him, and violently kicked him in the leg.

Looking through this year's Global Peace Index 2008. The most violent country in the world?

Iraq

The most peaceful country in the world?

Well not the UK, which came in 49th. And not Japan, though it came in 5th.

Who was first?

[Answer in the comments]

Saatchi and Saatchi girl

Who is this? Why is she on my blog? This is from Saatchi and Saatchi...

"Creativity in Japan was at rock bottom. This was (still is) the second largest advertising market in the world and yet international creative competitions were rarely won. Almost all the advertising was formulaic and relied on the use of celebrities endorsing the product; there was little attempt to build long-term brand values and much of the advertising was so similar it was impossible to identify the brand from the campaign.

Every client and Agency copied what the other was doing as if they were too scared to do something different.

'We are saying that to be different is to be good. We want to be the nail that sticks up. It’s the only way of ensuring that the advertising cuts through the morass of meaningless messages,' was my mantra at the time.

...

We had no receptionist in the Agency. Greeting you with a kiss and a hug was Mayu, a DJ and Muse; a spunky girl dressed is if she had just come from a night out in Shinjuku. She DJ'd the music that pounded through the agency. Her task was to make everyone happy. All day she walked around the agency, wandering into meetings, sitting at someone's desk, showing visitors around the gallery. There was no receptionist’s desk. Her cordless switchboard could work even when she was outside the building. On more than one occasion a new business prospect has come in because they have been inspired by the way Mayu had answered the phone.

But this wasn’t her only job. When MTV started broadcasting in January 2001 they signed Mayu up as a VJ to host a weekly request show. She became one of the stars of the channel.

The gallery set the tone acting as a creative stimulus to everyone who worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, providing a constant source of inspiration, both from the work and the artists who exhibited there.

As the Gallery was open to the public, it meant that the agency wasn’t isolated.

'Isn’t remarkable?' I said in an interview. 'Here we are, attempting to connect and communicate with the consumer every day, yet we close ourselves off behind concrete walls. We want to be an open space that everyone can come in to'

[Ed: I just love this idea]

Go East young man! (or woman)

“My god this place is just exploding … . we have so many great opportunities here and we are really only constrained by getting good people in … . jeez if I was in my late 20’s or early 30’s I’d be here in a shot”.

Two posts (here and here) from the David Brains at Edelman, make me happy to be out here.

"Maybe it is a function of my advancing years, but I am amazed that even ambitious young people in the business seem to be viewing their career in very narrow geographic and discipline ways."

And one more:

"Someone once said ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’ and that sometimes makes us blind … working and living abroad is the best way to open your eyes to be a truly global operator."

I like the idea of being a "global operator".

He singles out (fairly, I think) Brits and Americans as the worst provincials - cursed by their native English ability to never going anywhere. Honestly, until you've survived somewhere where the first language is not yours... Shame we haven't got an Empire anymore. There was a time when every young bright thing would spend a few years abroad, rewriting the Indian education system or putting down an insurrection. Great on the CV.

But then, on the other hand, I've heard horror stories about people trying to get jobs going back home ("re-entering the market"). Sitting in interviews, good applicants are told that they are wild and unpredicatable free spirits, and not to be trusted. Plus with an immigration policy like Britain's maybe you could say we don't have to go abroad, abroad comes here - or "there", I should say, still being in Tokyo.

Is working abroad a dirty-mark on the CV?

Japanese are the hardest people in the world

Japanese camera crew interrupted by American gang.

Homeless in Tokyo

Homelessness is different in Tokyo to that which I've seen in other countries. Many are ex-salary men, eduacated and sober, a contrast to the mix of mentally ill, drunks and drug-addicts that make up the homeless population of western cities. In many parks, you see neat and tidy shacks built from discarded timber and blue sheeting. The semi-nomadic residents clean the parks they live in, connect their "houses" to drinking fountains, and are generally tolerated by the authorities. The results are kind of middle-class shanty towns. Some interesting pictures here.

There's an interesting report here from Channel 4 on the "cyber-homeless", people who instead of sleeping on the streets live in my cyber-cafes - which have always been my preferred option to hotels and youth-hostels. You can watch it here.

My only quibble with the Channel 4 report is that the flat they picked to look around was hardly a typical flat for a young single person. I mean it had more than one room! That makes it a millionaire's mansion for Tokyo! The estate agent quoted a figure of 290,000 when you can find many flats for 50,000 or 60,000 - and that's right in the centre of the city. A bit sloppy, but otherwise good in highlighting the raft of charges that make accommodation market so rigid in Tokyo.

I got to see the Japanese parliament in action today. Very interesting.

Actually the session's start was delayed because members of the opposition party blocked the door to the Speaker's office. He was trapped inside!

Anyway not as violent as the Taiwanese.



Check out this slap.

Diet

Nothing to do with getting thin, the Diet I'm talking about is the Japanese parliament.

I'm working for this guy: Kono Taro.

Ignore the creepy picture on the website - hope to change that soon. Seems a good man. Apparently, "one of Japan's most dynamic young politicians".

In classic fashion, he's following his grandfather and father in the family business, and since boyhood has been groomed for the world of politics. He was sent off to study in the US and also, interestingly, did a stint at the Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw, Poland, where he got locked up for the night after visiting the home of the Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa.

Will let you know how it all goes.

Incidentally, nothing to do with this politician:

"Miyazawa became Prime Minister on November 5, 1991, and gained brief fame in the United States when President George H. W. Bush vomited in his lap and fainted during a state dinner on January 8, 1992. The Japanese even invented a verb for this incident: busshu-suru or busshuru—literally, “to do a Bush,” ie. “to vomit in public.” "

My new address in Tokyo:


大きな地図で見る

Or click here:

The address is:

東京都渋谷区千駄ヶ谷４－１２－４サクラハウス千駄ヶ谷４丁目A001-01

Brendan Miller A001-01
Sakura House Sendagaya,
4 Cho-me,
4-12-4
Sendagaya
Shibuya-ku
Tokyo