1. That “twinkle twinkle little star” and “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz” (or the “alphabet song” as it is known affectionately to some), have the same melody. I never realised until the teacher was singing it in Japanese – then it went #BAM# and hit me. I told Simon and he said #SNAP#. Pretty heavy stuff.
2. I refound a site called pitchforkmedia.com which is better than NME for music news and reviews. If anyone knows a better site then let me know.

That’s it. Although I’m interested to know who already knew that about the two songs, so drop in a comment. IF YOU DARE *Insert scary music*

So that was the Rotary club. I am still none the wiser on how they get money, members and international contacts. I think they may be some sort of stonemason-esque cult. Perhaps they reprogrammed us, like in that movie Cypher, where Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) applies for a job as a spy at Digicorp, but ends up descending into a dark underworld of brainwashing in which he struggles to maintain his own identity. Good movie.

After our brainwashing seminar we hit Himeji. The morning after, Himeji hit back – which would have been fine if I didn’t have to admit to my host mother I had a huge hangover, didn’t want piles of food or water and that all I wanted was sleep and panadol. Alas, predictably by the time I got up, changed and left to get to the fireworks in Aioi the entirety of Shosha knew.

By the time we got to Aioi I was feeling fine. We got in early to get a good spot then did some exploring down the sidewalk-stall filled streets. The fireworks were amazing – all 70 minutes of them. As saftey wasn’t really a factor they’d considered we were up real close. Apparently, 100,000 people turned up to watch them. The place was heaving. A kid who was sitting behind us decided to rate every firework (there were 5000 rockets so it got a bit tedious). At first it was either ‘yowai hanabi’, ‘chotto tsuyoi’ or ‘tsuyoi hanabi’ but after he realised we were laughing at him it got more abstract like ‘super smash hanabi’ or ‘mega ultra grandpa hanabi’. We decided he’s gonna grow up and become either a wine or movie critic, or a panel member for a Japanese TV show.

Tomorrow I’ll be studying for a test on Tuesday, which I expect we may have already been given in parts, which I intend to memorize. Wish me luck.

Jap Glossary
tsuyoi – strong yowai – weak hanabi – firework chotto – a little

I went to the Hiroshima A-Bomb museum on the weekend, which is a sombre and macabre place that I never want to return to. Melancholic audio files on repeat drone in the background whilst you read the information, fragmented and juxtaposed against charred remains and diagrams. Broken, melted artifacts in glass cases are accompanied with the story of someone’s death. Glass shards puncture furniture like they did skin, bottles fused together by the intense heat sit in cabinets. Burnt and melted skin is preserved, suspended in liquid, next to graphic photos of burns set against timelines. Eventually, I stumbled out the exit, immediately ambushed by a questionaire and comments book.

What was I to write?
“Very informative, well put together exhibit”?
“I liked the wax diorama of people melting to their deaths”?

Nobody else seemed to have written anything along the lines of “macabre and horrible” yet, so I wrote that. Throughout the day, snippets of song lyrics and poems kept running through my head, reborn through what I can only say is a sudden realisation of some very important fact which I can’t quite comprehend.

The rest of the day
(somewhat lighter)

After lunch we left the heavy atmosphere of Hiroshima behind us and travelled by ferry to Miyajima – one of the 3 most beautiful places in Japan, according to the Japanese. The monks of the Itsukushima Shrine built a beautiful orange torii (gate) in the shallows of the sea off the coast, which at high tide is reflected by the water below. The only thing more amazing than the gate was the amount of people beachcombing at low tide. After a walk around the shrine, we went into the Awajima mountains, which were pristine and serene. We caught a cable car halfway to the top of the highest point, then walked to the top, where there was a shrine and a beautiful view of the inland sea (and of course, a coca-cola vending machine). There are some photos right here.

I’m currently working on a ‘day in the life’ series – involving pictures of me on a bike, in various places around Himeji (basically the way to uni). I want to make it a bit like a treasure map, where you click on the map quadrant and get a picture of the place, with me me on a bike. Or maybe a bit like that game Myst. It will be a interactive adventure of epic proportions. Well maybe not epic, but definitely proportional (hahaha I can’t remember where I stole that from).

The problem of course, is taking the photo with me and my bike, a fair distance from my bike, whilst still riding my bike. Hmm.

I awoke the next day at 8:00 with a slight hangover and not enough sleep, to get ready for a sea kayaking adventure with my ‘host brother in law’, Kei. Simon also managed to wake up and get to my house before 9:00 to join us. After some painkillers, Aquarius and a half an hour trip to a cove west of Himeji we donned the stylish kayaking gear and had some quick lessons. We were joined by 2 of Kei’s sea kayak buddies. One of them, Ken, (who’s a great guy), introduced himself to us with the unusual line “Hi, this is Ken”, which he followed up with, “So guys hows about we go for little bit of a kayak to over there, do some exercises then come back to over here to get the lunch”. Quite amusing. After our lessons, we decided to head for an island about 5km away, which took us about 50 minutes to get to. We had lunch there, after I fell into the shallows whilst trying to get out with numb legs, then we went island hopping, did some stone skipping and also some exploring.

In return for taking us kayaking we had to go and do some english tutoring, for two hours in a catholic church (we weren’t converted – they just run a class), near Himeji castle. We just talked about Australia and ourselves, then went with them for free dinner and beer at a small okonomiyaki restaurant. After that we went to Murisaki’s birthday party, then walked home (because my bike tire went flat).

I got about 5 hours sleep before Kyoko woke me up to get ready for a daytrip to Ako, which is famous for the (pricey) antique market that is held outside a famous shrine, where 47 Samurais committed Harikiri at the same time for what seems to be a rather complex reason. Jo and I just wandered around, looking at the crazy stuff for sale, like explicit statues, katanas, antique sumo magazines, retro cameras and an unopened ‘Alien’ the movie figurine. We had lunch then returned home.

A great weekend.

I thought I should do a more upbeat blog because people have been thinking that I’m a bit depressed. I’m not, I was just complaining and being cynical. There are entire communities of people on the internet who do nothing but complain, like most forums for example.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing Aikido, which is a form of martial art derived from Ju-Jitsu (in 1942 by Morihei Ueshiba). There are some large differences between the two, however, as I had heard beforehand but never quite realised. Basically, Aikido is like a Tai-Chi version of Ju-Jitsu, where you’re more interested in inner spirit and perfecting a technique. Functionality never really comes into the picture – although having said that, if you managed to do a technique perfectly then you could do a lot of damage. All the techniques are very similar to Ju-Jitsu, but slightly different. The main differences that I can see is that you sometimes rely on the other person’s cooperation and that the stance is different. Even though the small differences have large repurcussions, I’m enjoying it and getting quite a lot out of it. I think I am making “Steadfast progress”. Last night, my rolls were 100% better than the night before (although they’re still very different to Ju-Jitsu – believe it or not). There’s a few things I hope to get out of it:

1. Improve my flexibility – we do about 1/2 hour of stretches before we start
2. Improve my falling (Ukemi) – when they fall over they do it with grace and elegance
3. Improve my body movement and locks (the main things they seem to seek prefection in)
4. Meet the grandson of Morihei Ueshiba – (Morihei also taught Jan De Jong, who’s school I belong to in Australia).
5. Get a bit fitter – we do 6 hours all up a week.

Tonight I’m heading over to the apartments (where the other exchange students live), where there’ll be a curry cookoff. Should be fun. Then I’m going canoeing on saturday and to a flea market out the front of a famous castle and shrine on sunday. But now I’m off to get ready for Uni.

Catcha later
Danny

Basically, I made a mistake when I was filling in my application form for Himeji Dokkyo- I spelt my name incorrectly in katakana (Japanese characters), but spelt it right in English on the same form. The logical plan of action is to correct the mistake – that’s why there is such a thing as administration; if things didn’t change and mistakes weren’t made there would be no need to administer anything.

In Himeji however mistakes do not get corrected. I first noticed this when I received my homestay contract. Naturally, as I didn’t want to commit fraud, I corrected my name before signing it.

A month later, they say there is a problem with my name on the contract and that they would print out new ones – which sounds good – but the problem they had was that there was no such student as Daniel Price. So I was forced to sign a contract with someone elses name on which as far as I’m concerned isn’t legally binding in any way, shape or form.

I haven’t been escorted off university grounds for tresspassing yet however.

Ah well. Im better now although I did have a mild allergic reaction to scallops yesterday.

Speaking of ‘the chicken and the egg’ – I think I’ve solved it, by applying the theory of evolution. It all comes down to the definition of a chicken – and any mathematician will tell you that ‘chicken’ is not well-defined. (i.e. defined in an unambiguous way using a logical set base of axioms). In short, it’s not precise enough. The real question is – “when does a egg, or series of evolving organisms* become a chicken?“”. I’ll break it down into three questions:

1. What is the definition of ‘the chicken’?
2. What is the definition of ‘the egg’?
3. Which one of these objects existed in an earlier point in history?

Now you see the problem lies in your definition of a chicken, which is difficult if not impossible. So, let’s avoid defining ‘a chicken’ and ‘a chicken egg’. We can just say that there was a proto-chicken, an egg** and then a chicken (in that order). You don’t need to define a chicken as ‘something that lays chicken eggs’, or define a chicken egg as ‘something from which a chicken hatches’ – those definitions suffer the problem of not being well-defined.

So there you have it according to me.

* It has been ‘proved‘ by geneticists that the domestic chicken evolved from Red Junglefowl, a tropical member of the pheasant family.

** I hasten to add that this egg isn’t defined as a ‘chicken egg’ or a ‘proto-chicken’ egg – just ‘the egg’. It is implied in the question that a chicken hatched out of it, not that it is a egg laid by a chicken.

It’s also bug season. So when you’re riding around on your lovely 4 geared bike, you h ave to constantly dodge fuckin’ huge black bug things. They seem to swerve towards you when you’re going fast so they can brush your face just to piss you off. There’s also little midget insect things that make little swarms and then get in your eyes when you accidentally ride through them (e.g. when avoiding a large bug hovering in the air). There doesn’t seem to be any other types of bug though, which isn’t really that suprising.

On a completely unrelated topic, today was the beginning of Golden week – a cluster of unrelated holidays spread over a ‘Golden week’. It would be the perfect time to go travelling, apart from the small fact that 250 million people are thinking ‘It’s the perfect time to go travelling’. I was going to try and make it to the World Expo, but it’d cost about AU$380 for two days accommodation and entry – and there’d be an insane line for each exhibition. I might try later in the year.

Anyway I have a week of holiday time to figure out what to do with, so I’m off.

See you in a few months,
Danny

During the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945) and the Second World War (1939-1945), the Imperialist Japanese forces commited several atrocities, such as the Nanjing, Sook-Ching and Manila massacres. During this time, over 15 million Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, Burmese, Indochinese civilians, Pacific Islanders, and Allied POW were killed.

On August 6th, 1945, the US President, Harry S. Truman, gave the go ahead for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (Nagasaki was bombed 3 days later), to force the “unconditional surrender” of Japan. It has been argued that Japan was essentially defeated already by this stage, however Japanese Military leaders were commited to “fighting a ‘decisive battle’ on Kyushu” (aka Operation Downfall). On August 15, Japan surrendered unconditionally.

Whether or not the use of the atomic bombs was ethical, a war crime, or the correct plan of action is still contested. International law at the time stated that the use of poisionous weapons (e.g. radiation poisioning), was prohibited and a war crime (with massive civilian casualties). However, the US got the desired result: they avoided an all out confrontation in Kyushu (of which the expected death toll was about 500,000) and quickly freed over 600,000 POW’s from concentration camps. For all you cynics – they also gave the soviet union a taste of US power and justified the 2 billion dollar Manhattan project.

The actions of the Japanese military cannot be justified, but can be partly explained by the bushido code which they subscribed to at the time. The Japanese Military believed it to be cowardly to surrender and that anyone who did so was cowardly and sub-human. This does not, however, excuse the actions that the military took (which we unfortunately see mirrored all too often throughout history).

So, the current situation stems from actions taken in the past by the Japanese Military. The ‘feather on the camel’s back’ was the white-washing of the events in Japanese textbooks, as well as Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the security council of the United Nations. The recent rallies in China are related to this. Now, Japan is demanding an apology for the violence in the rally which China doesn’t think they deserve. So there you go.

* Sorry to all of you 7, 9 and 10 watchers – but commercial news sucks – feel good dog stories, weather reports submitted by children, biased reporting (e.g. every Today Tonight story), incorrect information (e.g. Today Tonight on several occasions), and ad breaks are not good things.