EARTHQUAKE IN JAPAN

I've had a couple of enquiries today after news broke this morning of a large earthquake hitting Japan.

I DO NOT live near the affected areas.

The earthquake struck the WEST coast of central Japan at 10:13 AM. The areas worst affected are about 250 km from Tokyo which is on the EAST coast of central Japan.

The earthquake registered 6.8 and tremors were felt by many here in the Tokyo Area. The tremor in Tokyo was during my first lesson of the day.

So it happened - train accident causing death...!

After a year and eight days in Japan I have experienced my first train accident involving a person - commonly referred to in Japan as a "human accident". In the first three days of being in Japan in 2006 my train hit an object but today it mowed a cyclist down on a level crossing.

I can't believe how the accident happened really. Level crossings here have barrier arms and bells well beyond what one would describe as sufficient. There would have to be something horribly wrong with you or a negligent act to find yourself in front of a train.

Anyway, I was sitting in my usual spot right up in the front of the train. We were cruising along between 85 and 100 km/h when I heard the driver in his cabin make a shouting sound as we came around a corner to the concealed crossing. I'm thinking it was the Japanese equivalent to "fuck" he shouted. Anyway there was a big crash and I could hear something bounce along under the carriages. The driver in a very professional and Japanese way gently applied the brakes and we came to a stop. I would have thought a sudden application of the strongest railway anchors would have been more appropriate but that would have equalled bad customer service! So gently it must be.

It was ages before I knew it was a human accident. In fact about half an hour or so had passed. The driver and conductor got out of the train and walked to the back. Being in search of information because I was late for work I walked to the back of the train to see what they were doing. They were out making sure the level crossing was okay and that the arms were up and traffic flowing. It was all very casual. I was starting to get shitty by this time as I was very late for work. I spoke to a Japanese man and said "too many meetings and not enough action" citing that the railway people who were standing around chatting. He translated that into Japanese and the other passengers in our area were roaring with laughter. The train staff must have a policy not to go searching for the "human accident" victim as death is almost a certainty.

After a while the rescue tender from the city fire department came and I saw them with a stretcher which then made everyone realise it was a "human accident". So by this time they had organised for us to evacuate the train and walk to the next station (bloody miles in 30+ degrees and humidity!).

You can see in the pictures below all the passengers sliding from the train. They took two of the long bench seats out and we all slid down them. It was interesting to say the least! Seats have Velvet upholstery so you slide nicely.

Trains vs humans are very clean. The body was cut up into many pieces and the bicycle was shredded. No blood splashes. Below are some pictures, although not so clear because of my camera phone. Nothing too gorry. What happens in these crashes is much of the body gets lodged up under the train carriage so it's a bit hard to see. Once we had all safely got off the train the rescue team were going to lift the train with some hydraulic equipment to get all the bits together.

One of the pictures, although not clearly, shows really the most visible bit of the deceased being one of their legs cleanly taken off at the hip. Don't worry, the mobile phone camera couldn't capture the details as well as my eyes could so it's safe viewing! Note, the blue tarpaulin in the pictures was not consistently held up and there was more but camera memory isn't so big!

If you look directly under the dangling hoses between the two carriages you can see the remains of the victims leg. It seems to have been torn from the abdomen at the hip region.


All the passengers being evacuated from the train by sliding down the seats with the help of the able people of the Saitama Fire Department.

Looking from the front of the train towards the back. You can see how far the mangled body was strewn under the train. Back to the second carriage.

So it's been a year without wheels

So it's been a year today since I drove a car on a public road. Doesn't seem so long ago although I often wondered if I still knew what to do.

Anyway the opportunity presented itself today with my best buddy Jacob moving apartments from Takasaki to Kitamoto. Jacob and I rented a Nissan Cube from Nippon-rent-a-car Company and drove the 120 km round trip to collect and deliver all his gear to his new place.

Because I'm one of the few folks around with an international drivers licence I did all of the driving. It was so much fun. Driving mustn't be something you forget because right from when we pulled away from the rental depot all the skills were put to use in quite a natural way.

Essentially all the roads are much the same here when compared to New Zealand except in Japan it is left priority rather than right. Nearly all of the signs are in English as well but there are an occasional few which I worked out either through common sense or by their shape and colour.

I requested the man at the rental company programme in the car navigation system to guide us on our journey. I'm not sure what he put in there but it wasn't correct so we went the route we thought was correct and arrived at the destination bang on. 

There are two types of roading systems here: national routes and expressways. National routes are commonly referred to as local roads and the speed limit is generally capped at 60 km/h. The nation is networked with such roads. Expressways span the nation as well but are all toll based and with tolls set at twice the price of gasoline they aren't exactly a cheap option. We opted for the national route 17 because it runs near my apartment and Jacob said he's seen a sign for it near his place so it we just followed it we'd be sure to not get lost. The theory was wise.

I estimated the 60 km journey should take roughly an hour but three hours later we arrived. The routes are littered with traffic lights and the journey is stop, start, stop, start all the way. Obviously there is an incentive to use the expressway system to speed up the journey but then they hammer motorists with the high prices.

Largely the Japanese are good drivers (in their home country). Everyone maintained some sort of order, safe following distances and no stupid changing of lanes etc.

The Nissan Cube was so cute. I especially requested it and paid a little more to have a Cube. It drove very nicely. The power under the hood was okay although I wouldn't have wanted to be relying on it to perform well on a road with steep gradients. I couldn't believe the space in the front and back though - it's supposed to be a compact car but it's amazing how they've organised the space.

Fatality... RIP old woman

Tonight my heart took a hammering and the adrenaline was on high. An elderly woman was killed in my street after been hit and run over by a car.

I had just finished my dinner at my local Denny's when outside my attention was caught by a commotion. On closer inspection a woman lay firmly centred underneath a large Nissan sedan. It appears the car hit her, she fell and then the wheel crossed her body.

No one could do anything. The car needed to be moved, she was stuck underneath so driving it would have made the situation worse. There were no obvious signs of life. Whilst I surveyed the scene to see what had happened and reassured by the sounds of sirens of the rescue tenders approaching from north, east, south and west fire stations I stood back to watch what would happen next. It was pointless me getting anymore involved. It was a panic situation and all the other 'panicers' didn't speak my language and I didn't speak theirs. I think I made the sensible decision not to intervene as there would have been no value I could have added to the situation.

The arrival of the fire department was something they must have been rehearsing for a while. Four fire tenders pulled up from each of the cities four fire stations. One tender was a specialist rescue truck complete with crane and a lighting system. An ambulance arrived at the same time.

The rescue personnel went to work right away and with their whizz-bang equipment and skill they jacked the car and wheeled it aside. At that stage, from my view point, it was obvious the woman was deceased. Her head had no resemblance to its' former self. It was floppy and lifeless on the neck. It was obvious to me the emergency crew were putting on a show for the crowd in terms of attempting a form of CPR to whisk her away to the ambulance. The emergency folks were very professional and preserved the woman's dignity the whole time.

Been having a big reflection tonight since the accident happened. It's been over 12 months since I had to use any of my emergency medical skills, and there definitely has been no calling for them in Japan. I often worry I'll forget at least the basic stuff but being in the environment tonight has restored my confidence again that if there was a situation different to tonight I could make a difference.

Japanese fooled in poodle scam

In the last week or so a funny story has been going around the global media about a scam where rich Japanese women who wanted a poodle as a pet were deceived into buying sheep. The story which I post below is bloody funny, but it has since been revealed that it's all a hoax. Find out about the hoax by clicking here.

Japanese fooled in poodle scam

Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.

Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each.

That is a snip compared to a real poodle which retails for twice that much in Japan.

The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food.

She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep.

Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new "poodle" was also a sheep.

One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.

Japanese police believe there could be 2,000 people affected by the scam, which operated in Sapporo and capitalised on the fact that sheep are rare in Japan, so many do not know what they look like.

"We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company were selling sheep as poodles," Japanese police said, the The Sun reported.

"Sadly we think there is more than one company operating in this way.

"The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain, Australia."

Many of the sheep have now been donated to zoos and farms.

Tokyo Disneyland

I never get sick of Tokyo's Disney Resort. Today I visited Tokyo Disneyland for the second time since I've been in Japan. This is the fourth visit to the Resort - twice now to Disneyland, once to Disneysea and once to Ikspiari (on-site shopping centre).

I went with friends and colleagues Jacob, Brooke and Pip. It's the first time I've been with other people but it was good though. Think it best to go alone the first time then you can spend as little or as long as you like exploring various aspects.

The thing that fascinates me most about the Disney experience is how slick they run their operations. Every piece of detail is worked out. The staff are highly trained, know what they're doing and most importantly are customer focused. There are so many things going on at one time, and the resources in a human and capital sense to make these things happen is impressive.

Anyway, about today's adventure. We set off for Chiba Prefecture/State just after the birds woke up this morning and were park side for the 9.00 am opening.

Here is a map of Tokyo Disneyland. We explored the park in clockwise to begin with and then backtracked to things we wanted to see again. Click on the the map for more information.





We spent just on 12 hours at Disneyland. Sounds like a long day but time surely flies when you're having fun.

The three highlights of our visit were the two parades and one of the shows. The grand fire works display was cancelled due to wind. Below are some pictures of each as well as links to the Disney web pages where you can find more information.


Disney Dreams on Parade Moving On

One Man's Dream II - The Magic Lives On

Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade Dreamlights

The trouble with Chewbacca

To a lot of people Chewbacca is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe. To the Japanese it's something quite different. Let me explain...

A colleague of mine was teaching a very low level Japanese woman over the weekend. The lesson they were doing was about contact details - addresses, phone, email etc.

My colleague, who we will refer to as Nigel, used an imaginary email address of chewbacca@starwars.com.

The word "chewbacca" when translated to English from Japanese has the same meaning as dumb-arse, retard, dickhead, very thick, etc... It's a very powerful and rude word in Japan.

The student is up in arms over it now. She thinks Nigel was making fun of her and her inability to learn English. Yes, granted, she's not the best student we've got - in fact she's at home on the floor of the lower quartile.

Nigel doesn't know much Japanese and was completely unaware of the offence he was causing. Now some of the powers of the company are in damage control mode because the woman has mentioned quiting over it!

If this woman doesn't pull her head in, accept and understand the explanations by the company, then as far as I'm concerned she's chewbacca all the way!

Amen.

Silly foriegner in our restaurant

Tonight I had one of only a few examples of service in Japan which I could fault. Now I've been here nearly a year and the service has been impeccable largely, until tonight when I was laughed at.

Now this bad service wasn't done to me directly but I don't think the staff at Denny's Family Restaurant knew that I knew what they were up to.

Tonight I ordered a serving of gyoza and Chinese noodles. Usually you get served soy sauce to dip the gyoza but tonight they didn't bring any. The noodles come served in a huge bowl but the bowel is full of a stock like liquid. I hate noodles submerged in juice. Anyway I requested another bowel. I was observed tipping the water out of the noodles into the other bowel which they thought was funny and there was a couple of kitchen staff at the kitchen door having a good giggle to themselves.

I then got the waitress over and requested the said omitted soy sauce. I could gather from what was said amongst the gathered staff in Japanese (for which I speak very little but can gauge the drift of some sentences) that they were basically saying "what the hell is he going to do with the soy sauce." I'd already beached their noodle creation so maybe I was going to drown it in soy. Anyway the waiting and kitchen staff all sort of hung around and watched wondering what I was going to do. I was so tempted to order a bottle of ketchup because ketchup and Chinese noodles (much like the Maggi 2 minute variety back home) are tasty with lashings of tomato sauce! But I didn't on this occasion.

I go to Denny's often because it's next to my house, nutritious and cheap. I'm on a mission to go back there and butcher their food to my tasting, annihilate it with tomato sauce, separate the solids from the juices and leave a knife upright in the butter just to give the staff a thrill at the habits of the foreign community.

I hate being watched and giggled about!

Welcome to Fiscal 2007

The Japanese are quite funny sometimes. One such occasion is the build-up to April 1st.

Like in a lot of countries, the fiscal year begins on April 1st. In Japan even more things revolve around this date.

This is the start of the school year too and children who have turned six in the previous year begin school. In New Zealand, I started school on my fifth birthday. Here, kids have to wait so all the new kids start on the same day. I'd be pretty mad if my birthday was in May and I had to wait a whole 11 months (until nearer the 7th birthday) before I could enter school.

Also lots of people start new jobs on April 1st. University ends in February and March and the new graduates enter the companies in large intakes. You can spot the new workers on the train now. They have brand new suits and matching bags, shoes are new and shining and they have white shirts and conservative ties on. Apparently it's a custom that in the first year of your career graduates are required to wear a white shirt everyday and a conservative tie. After the year is up the ties can be less conservative and then after a while it's okay to wear say a blue shirt.

This is the season for burying budgets as well. Departments in the corporations who have money left over from Fiscal 2006 splash out in March because they know if they don't consume their allocation the purse will be tighter next time round. With the opening of new budgets departments have fresh buckets of cash in April.

It's tax season too so the frequency of suicide is at the yearly high.