This story broke over the last week and now we know more of the facts, I wanted to take a look at it and offer some fresh insights on it. This will not be a comedy post at all – this is a serious issue and it needs to be treated as such.

The Facts

At about 12:30 p.m. JST, the assailant attacked a crowd with his vehicle, running over three people, then stabbing at least 17 people using a dagger (initially erroneously reported as a survival knife), killing seven people.

This is lifted from the Wikipedia article, which uses various news sources as references. Whilst I am aware it’s not professional to use Wikipedia I am going to in this case as it does give a good general overview of the facts.

The assailant, Tomohiro Kato, posted messages on an internet forum stating things like “I’m going to kill people in Akihabara” and so on.

Blog Response

7:10 To Tokyo posted this update quite soon after the news broke (explaining why the title is ’5 dead’ not 7) and was originally the best article I could find on the subject. He explained something I’d not heard of before called “Daredemo Yokatta attacks” which literally means ‘Anyone is good’ – the idea being the assailant had no particular targets and just wanted to kill randomly.

One part of the article in particular struck me;

I don’t fear becoming the victim of an attack most of the time here in Tokyo because I’m confident in my ability to take care of myself. It’s like I told Spartancus one time on a crowded Tokyo train with a tense atmosphere, “If someone comes at me, he’d better have a lot of heart because I do.”

I wanted to post this again because it’s important – whilst we need to learn from the massacre and accept that Japan is not this amazing “100% safe” country, Japan should not plunge into a climate of fear.

It seems other people agree, too. A nice message and an excellent recap on what is one of the most horrific stories of the year.

My Opinion

How do you write a take on such a horrific event? I guess you look at the facts and try to draw what you can from it. So that’s what I’ve done here – if you think any of them are wrong please comment - I am very interested to see what people are making of this news story.

1. Whilst I agree 100% with 7:10 To Tokyo’s view that you shouldn’t live in fear of an attack, it seems that, with these Daredemo Yokatta attacks on the rise, something needs to be done. It seems impossible due to the nature of the attack – you can’t protect the victim, because you have no idea who the victim is going to be. So perhaps:

2. These internet threats, which have been posted more than once before attacks, need to be taken a lot more seriously. Sites like 2channel and so forth should have some sort of system for people to report posts they think could hold some darker meaning. I am aware this challenges the point of the anonymous posting feature 2channel offers, but it may be a necessary step.

3. That said, I’d hate for the net, or the sites, to get a reputation for housing killers. There are many more well-adjusted people out there – let’s not jump to conclusions.

4. I hope the Akihabara Massacre goes on to be remembered not as a tragic event but as something we can learn from – in every country in the world you need to be continually aware of who’s around you. Japan is not some overly safe country where nothing bad happens.

So there you go – I hope this article is useful. I want to spark some discussion, which is why I added my own opinions at the end. Please use the comments section of Japan Is Doomed if you’re interested – I will get back to you.

Hey guys, prepare for the most boring blog post to date! (I know, how can I top some of those classics…)

I’ve pretty much sorted this blog out for my return to Tokyo now. You can now subscribe via RSS and by email through the ‘Subscribe‘ link in the top right of the blog. Don’t worry if you can’t be bothered to go all the way over there and click, though! Here’s a handy shortcut!

I’m really hoping to get a post every few days whilst I’m there, internet access allowing. Of course, I’m not willing to sit down every night and write huge articles with image editing and what have you in them, but I do want to keep this thing going, partly for you guys but mostly so I can remember what I was up to! The camera is coming with me again, so there will be plenty of photos to gawk at!

I’ve got a project or two lined up whilst I’m there – little things like going back to Yokohama to take more photos of graffiti, and also a video project in the works, but that’s very hush hush right now – mostly because I have no idea what exactly it will entail yet.

If anyone who reads the blog or is involved with JapanSoc or whatever is around in Tokyo, get in contact with me and we will get some Karaoke going or something.

That’s about it. If anyone has any questions do let me know. Now, to save this from being an entirely useless post, I went back through my archive of photos and dug out a few favourites I’ve never posted before and used the magic of iPhoto to make them pretty. Enjoy! (In case you’re wondering – this will probably be the last time I recycle old photos for a while. Probably)

Taken from the bank of the river that runs through Oji. I saw this little guy walking around quite a few times but he never made it into the blog until now. This surely is the start of his career in showbiz.

[From: Two Parks In One Day] Taken in Ueno Park. The trees give the most awesome shadows. I actually posted this picture in the original update, but having played with it I think it looks way better now.

[From: Atami Part 2: Teaching & Eating] Quite similar to another posted photo. I like this one because it’s the only one where all the kids are paying attention. Nearly – notice the kid in the brown shirt at the front. If I see him again I’ll force him to read my entire blog. That’ll show him.

[From: Gentlemen, Start Your, Uh, Engines?] No idea who these guys were, but they won! So good for them!

10 days to go!

Back on August 13th, 2007 I went, for the second time, to Yokohama, the city next to Tokyo. Sadly I never wrote a blog update about it as it was really just a general visit. But what I shamefully forgot to write about was the graffiti that I took a few photographs of whilst I was there. So now, just nine months late, here are a few of the shots I took. All eight photos are available here. I also hereby promise to return and take more photos of the awesome graffiti of Japan and actually blog about it within the same year!

This was the artwork that caught my eye and drew me into walking down the street alongside the station where all the rest of the artwork was, so in a way this little guy is responsible for this blog post. Don’t tell him it’s over half a year late though, he’d probably get me with that scythe…

This was probably the most shocking picture on the wall, and when you consider it was done by one person as a hobby it’s pretty amazing.

Of course it’s not all doom and gloom in Yokohama – here we have a rendering of what looks like some sort of secret cult’s logo mixed with a Pink Floyd album cover, which is nice. It’s quite suprising how neat the artwork is laid out – unlike England nobody draws over anyone else’s work – each piece ends neatly so the next artist can begin. Very cool.

Finally we have this guy. One of the biggest pieces of work along the wall, it sort of shows you exactly what the place I was walking down was like – very dark and virtually impossible to spot from the main streets. It was awesome, though, I just wish I’d gone when the guys were painting so I could see them at work. Nevermind.

So there you go. I took eight shots in all and the other four, as well as these four in bigger sizes, are available here, so do go have a look. If anyone wants them in a huge size get in contact with me and I can email them out to you.

I promise I’ll head back in the summer and find these works again, as well as loads of new ones, and do a good update to do them a bit of justice!

This popped up on the Japan Times website today, under their ‘Readers In Council’ section, which I think has something to do with people writing angry emails to websites;

I would like to propose that the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) add an English channel to its current general and education channels. The channel would no doubt contribute to improving the English ability of Japanese people, young and old.

It probably would! When I read this first paragraph, I was 100% in agreement. It’s a logical idea – put English language teaching programming on all day, make it easy when the kids are home from school, harder over the middle of the day and difficult in the evening, or something. The article went on to talk about the various benefits,and it seems like a great idea. There is just one tiny problem. The number of people who would learn from the channel seriously would be pretty low, in my estimation. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that – but I don’t think English TV teaching could replace teaching in the classroom.

So, instead of sitting around and wondering what the answer might be, I went ahead and made up a few ideas without thinking about it at all! Clever or what?! So, without further ado, here are my top three English teaching ideas;

1. Subliminal English Teaching
I’m going to get the ball rolling with a relitivly normal suggestion – how about we sneak English learning into everyday Japanese life? I think one thing that might be easy to exploit is printed text, so I’ve come up with a few clever, very subtle edits to popular Japanese comics. See if you can spot my edits!

Don’t worry if you didn’t spot them – that just proves how ingenious my idea is! I can really see this taking off in a great way, so get on board and donate lots of money to “Japan Is Doomed English Learning Manga” because I definitely won’t steal your investments and move to Hawaii.

2. English Teaching Ice-Cream
Take something kids love (Ice Cream) and mix it with something they hate (Learning) and you might just get something they kind of don’t mind! Imagine all the delicious flavours!

Wow! They all look so tasty, I can’t even begin to choose! We’re so confident we’ll sell loads, we’ve even taught you three words for free, just from the advert! So if you’re ever caught in a fire and an aging cat is your only companion, you can boldy exclaim “Run, old cat!” and he’ll be OK.

3. Mandatory Tattoo System

If you’ve ever been to the UK, you’ll know that Chinese written characters are seen as incredibly cool. They are all over t-shirts and are used a lot in tattoos. I have seen a few horribly mis-translated ones – one time a girl told me her tattoo meant “To be let free”, when in fact whoever did her tattoo obviously didn’t like her, as he had written 「盛者必衰」which means “the prosperous must decay”, according to my friend and Google. The point is, nobody wants a mistake tattoo. Which is exactly why I argue everyone should have to get a tattoo! Then they’d darn well study their English before choosing one! You wouldn’t want to end up with an ‘awesome’ tattoo like this:

I don’t think it’s fair just to do it to English learners – everyone in the world should get a tattoo in another language. At least that way, you’d have something fun to talk about if you went abroad…

(Quick note: I don’t have any tattoos because I’m too scared. I’m not even really a huge fan of them. There’s another little thing you can put in your scrapbook entitled ‘All About Mike’.)

Conclusion
So in conclusion I feel we can see that I should not be allowed to have ideas. In all seriousness, English teaching in Japan needs a reshuffle, especially from the government side. The exams are way too much about memorization – that needs to change. Maybe it will one day. Maybe one day I’ll write a serious update about it. Until then, I will continue to only deal with problems of the ice-cream variety.

(Another Quick Note: If you really have a scrapbook about me please email me so I can contact the authorities.)

It’s finally over! After I left my three hour East Asian cinema exam today, I walked away from exams and studying for over three months! I’m finally free! For those wondering, the Japanese exam went quite well I think, and as for East Asian Cinema, well I didn’t really study that much for it but again I feel it went reasonably. Let’s just hope the results are OK, and I can get into my second year!

Anyway, over the course of my East Asian Cinema course I was supposed to watch 11 films, most of which I did aside from when I was falling asleep in the lecture theater. Reguardless, here’s a quick review (and I mean really quick) of each one, in order of when they were made. Some of these reviews are probably quite unfair, but to be honest I’m just dashing through them and it’s simply what I felt about each film.

Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) [MY REVIEW]
It’s a great film, a Kurosawa classic and one of the reasons Japanese cinema is so big in the West. 9/10

Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985) [MY REVIEW]
The perfect film to get a few friends around for and sit there asking what on earth is going on. Mad, but with a lovely message and a pretty warm feel throughout. 8/10

Qiu Ju (Zhang Yimou, 1992)
This is meant to be a comedy about a woman who’s husband is kicked in the crotch so she goes off to get the law to do something about it. The problem is this film is incredibly boring. I’m sure it’s interesting if you’re really intrested in Chinese culture, but I wouldn’t advise it otherwise. 3/10

Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993)
Starts off with kids being brought up in the theatre and being tortured by their teachers and it’s awesome – nice and cutting. Then they grow up and it goes all political, and it’s pretty plodding. It’s way too long though. Every time you think it’s over, you get another three scenes. Not bad though. 6/10

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)
Two love stories tied together very loosely by a take away in Hong Kong. It’s alright, I suppose. Not a huge fan though. They also play the song ‘California Dreaming’ about three hundred times throughout, and believe me after a while it gets really really old. 7/10

Swallowtail Butterfly (Shunji Iwai, 1996) [MY REVIEW]
Probably my favourite movie of them all, simply because of all of them this is the one I didn’t expect I would like, but I really did. Edgy, with lots of references to foreign life in Japan. Maybe not loved by all, but for me this is a masterpiece. 10/10

Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
If I like an anime film it must be amazing, because I don’t get 99.9% of them. But this is really cool – enough violence and action to make it interesting and plenty of clever meanings and so forth. Bloody hard to write an exam answer about, though… 9/10

The Tale Of Chunhyang (Im Kwon-taek, 2000)
This is a visually stunning film adaptation of a traditional Korean folk story, but other than the aesthetics it’s not overly great. Passable. 7/10

Address Unknown (Kim Ki-duk, 2001)
Easily one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen, but it’s not bad. Just don’t watch it with your kids. 7/10

Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001)
This is a pretty cool Chinese film about some kid who gets his bike stolen then goes to get it back. It’s a bit confusing at times but there’s some good stuff in here. 7/10

Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
The most awesome revenge film ever. Come on, if you’ve not seen it you probably should get on with it. 9/10

Well, I hope that was interesting. I want to do a proper review of Princess Mononoke at some point as I did with My Neighbour Totoro, so stay tuned for that.

In other news, now that the exams are over I have little to do but prepare to leave for Japan. I’m going to post one more big update about that before I go, and then it’s time to fly! I’m really hoping I can teach myself how to do video blogging before I go so I can mix it up a bit and do some video blogs for the site, but that’s pretty unlikely as I am pretty dumb. But there’s no harm in hoping, right?