Two resignations this week, one justified, one kinda...: Justice minister undone by cheap paper fan

Justice minister undone by cheap paper fan

Well, that's too bad.  I get the need for strong election laws governing the ways in which candidates can sway voters.  For example, buying them booze and trucking a bunch of drunks to the polls all over town while letting them vote under a multitude of assumed names is probably considered wrong in some places.  Or simply offering bucks for ballots.  We tend to frown upon political parties who do such things to win elections. 

On the other hand, it's perfectly okay for an auto, insurance, oil or defense company to buy candidates outright even if those companies are wholly owned by people or groups who aren't even citizens of the nation where the elected serve.  There are any number of loopholes to make it seem that's not what's happening.  These are essentially changing the definition to fit the needs of the people with the money and the people with the ability to get laws passed to do so for a share of that money.  In some cases it's not necessary to buy the elected official as it is to do his or her work for her by writing the laws that person will sponsor in parliament or house or senate or diet.  Politicians love when other people do their jobs for them, and this arrangement makes it easier for the people at the top to take a big dump on the people below with a minimum of effort.

However it works out, someone benefits and it's rarely you or me.  In this case, some nice person attempted to provide fans in a country where summers are sweltering.  All kinds of businesses provide fun and helpful fans around the train stations.  If a movie studio does it to advertise the latest Pokémon extravaganza, people are happy.  And slightly less sweaty.  That way they're better able to cope with the heat, just like reality television starring bearded mutants helps Americans cope when the local rep proposes a law allowing oil companies to drill for crude in Grandma's brains.  They just wave their colorful advertising fans around the way people back home are increasingly finding ways to talk around the derrick sprouting from Grandma's wig.  Business as usual.

That's why I think this resignation is a bit much considering the crime.  If she'd colluded with Sony and Mitsubishi to change a labor law so that 10-year-olds had to start working 80-hour work weeks with in exchange for their elementary school educations, that would be completely okay.  Give away something useful like a fan and it's "So long, job!"

There's a lot happening in Japan this Golden Week, and most of it isn't good

Lots of bad news here in Japan.  India has overtaken the country to become the world's third largest economy, knife murders, police suicides, the norovirus again, a possible bear attack, one hundred cars vandalized by a paint-happy miscreant, a near crash as an Airbus descended to under 75 meters on landing approach.  Someone murdered an elderly woman right here in our city.  This makes it the perfect time to blow off steam this Golden Week.

Hamamatsu provides an excellent opportunity with its yearly kite festival.  For three nights, the downtown area will reverberate with the clangor of festively-attired drunks blowing bugles and beating drums.  They'll also pull beautiful, illuminated yattai in a luminous display.  I especially enjoy seeing the festival participants who flop down on the sidewalk during the after parties, their bodies spent, their minds liberated from the shitty cares of daily life.  The hangovers are probably worth it.  If they're especially lucky, their companies will be closed the rest of the week, allowing them to recover.  If not, well, that's life here.

Out of all the stupid crap that's happened this week, my wife and I particularly enjoyed the JTB scandal.  An employee there forgot to order buses for a school outing, and instead of owning up to his mistake and taking his lumps for that, he chose to impersonate a student by sending an email threatening suicide if the school didn't cancel its excursion.  This is the result of thinking things only half through.  Sure, coming up with a crazy scheme seems like a good idea at first, but if you push past the initial inspiration, you see how it would never work and instead of getting into a fair amount of trouble for screwing up, you find yourself in major trouble for screwing up and then concocting a nutty hoax.  But if this person were the kind who could think things through to the end, he probably would have also been the kind who remembers to order buses for a school outing.

As for me, I'm going to spend my Golden Week doing creative things and enjoying the blessings of a tranquil life.  I hope.

Over 350 sickened by tainted food in Japan

My wife and I saw this story on the news last week.  A food manufacturer had to recall their products because they accidentally contaminated lot of it with pesticide. The article I'm linking here ends with a mention of last month's nationwide "fake food scandal," in which department stores and hotels had to apologize because the authorities caught them substituting cheaper dishes for the more expensive "real thing."  Both of these hit close to home because I used to live on the microwaveable pizzas the first company produces, and one of the hotels in the second scandal is right here in town and happens to be where our school holds its annual first-of-the-school-year teachers' party.

I haven't eaten a pesticide pizza, but there's a good chance I've eaten fake food.  And people here take these things seriously.  Well, obviously you have to take poisonings seriously.  My point is, whenever you talk about this particular hotel from now until civilization falls and the sun devours the earth, your conversation will include a reference to their wrongdoing.  It's now part of their brand, whether they like it or not.  I imagine some of those frozen meals will disappear from supermarkets or undergone some significant packaging changes.