Lovely smiles Hide the Pathetic State of Politics

"I want to do my best with enough love to cover the Earth," said Ryoko Tani, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo, at a news conference Monday to announce her candidacy in this summer's Upper House election on the Democratic Party of Japan ticket.

She is one of few people who can deliver such a line unabashed and with a beaming smile.

That must be part of the reason why the DPJ decided to field her. No normal person could try out for the Olympics and engage in national politics "on the side." People who devote themselves to either one must be annoyed at the idea.

The DPJ is putting up several well-known figures, including a former gymnast, a rakugo storyteller, an actress and a singer. The Liberal Democratic Party is fielding former professional Yomiuri Giants baseball pitcher Tsuneo Horiuchi, and the Sunrise Party of Japan is endorsing the candidacy of Kiyoshi Nakahata, also a former Giants player.

The lineup is so diversified that it almost looks like that of a variety show. These people, who polished their skills and made their names in their own specialist areas, must want to draw on their experiences while working for the public good. But I want to know why they have chosen to be lawmakers, instead of giving lectures or writing books.


In the Upper House election this summer, tens of millions of voters, who are giving up on the LDP and feel betrayed by the DPJ, are going to drift. Sitting next to Tani, DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa told reporters: "I feel as if we won over a million or 10 million friends." Maybe he meant "votes." Celebrities running in the proportional representation system are traditionally thought to attract votes.

When we look around the world, there are inspirational people like Tani who make us want to place our trust in them. However, now more than ever, our politicians need professional awareness and competence to get things done. They must have a passion for rebuilding the nation and the wisdom and skills to work out policies that will give shape to that passion and then explain those policies to the public. A refreshing smile is a mere extra gift.

The political world is in the midst of a complete overhaul. The election is a good chance also for voters to shed old thinking. But once again, it looks like smiles and name recognition are going to be the decisive factors. How pathetic. The choosing of governments based on election manifestoes supposedly enhanced the nation's politics.

Once that connection starts to loosen, it can fall apart in no time.

I find myself thinking, "Is this right?" in the face of a magnificent extra gift.

from Asahi Shimbun


* * *


Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

Hanging Wisteria Flowers

KITA-KYUSHU--An arch of hanging wisteria flowers welcome visitors at Kawachi Fujien.

The 4,620-square-meter park has 100 wisteria vines in colors from various shades of purple to pink and white.


Twenty-two different types of wisteria are grown.

The flowers are particularly bright this year due to cold weather in March and April.

"It's great if everyone leaves the park feeling happy," said Takashi Higuchi, 63, who manages the park.

From Asahi Shimbun
Wisteria

In Japan, the Children Are Buying Bugs

While American children are buying Japanese action figures, Japanese children are buying bugs. That’s one lesson to be drawn from Jessica Oreck’s documentary “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo,” a guided tour of a national predilection that introduces us to insect stores, insect fairs, insect video games, insect vending machines and insect viewing areas.

Ms. Oreck, a filmmaker-botanist double threat, ventures into the woods with a professional beetle hunter (whose career has paid for a Ferrari) and observes children playing with prehistoric-looking bugs as big as their hands. She also visits shrines and festivals featuring traditional dance and music, part of her attempt to tie Japan’s unusual love of insects into its aesthetic affinities for transient beauty and communion with nature. This entails a somewhat stilted narration that introduces us, as if for the first time, to things like haiku and The Tale of Genji.

Punctuated by images of crowded cityscapes, slowly moving trains, neon-lighted streets and green hillsides — backgrounds familiar from Japanese art-house films and serious anime — the diverting “Beetle Queen,” like “Lost in Translation” or Takashi Murakami’s art, says less about Japan than it does about America’s continuing fascination with modern Japanese culture. A scientist looking for a combination of childlike innocence and minimalist sophistication might not see it in Hello Kitty but can recognize it in a horned beetle.

From the New York Times

Children Song: Rain, Rain Go Away

Rain, rain, go away
Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day
Come again another day
Little Johnny wants to play
Little Johnny wants to play


Rain, rain, go away
Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day
Come again another day
Little Johnny wants to play
Little Johnny wants to play

Little Johnny wants to play
Little Johnny wants to play


(Change the name into your name)

Cebu: The Queen of the South

Located in the wealthy residential suburb of Beverly Hills about 6 km north of downtown Cebu is an enormous Taoist Temple. It was built by Cebu's substantial Chinese community (the Chinese make up about 15% of Cebu's population).

The temple is the a center of worship for Taoism, the religion which follows the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tze. You can see Taoist devotees following their rituals on Wednesdays and Sundays, as they climb the 99 steps of the temple to light joss sticks and have their fortunes read by the monks.

Built in 1972, the Taoist Temple is constructed in a highly ornate and, some would say, gaudy style of Chinese architecture, and is topped with a pagoda-style roof.

The temple has an elevation of 300 meters above sea level, and if you climb the 99 steps to the entrance, you will be rewarded with a good view of Cebu City and in the distance Mactan and Bohol islands. Nice sunset views too.

Bantayan Island is an island in the Philippines located at the western portion of the northern tip of Cebu Island, Philippines

Malapascua Island is situated in the Visayan Sea, located across a shallow strait from the northernmost tip of Cebu Island.

Osmena Peak is known to be the highest peak in the province and Island of Cebu. Base on actual GPS altitude, it stand approximately 1000 meters above sea level. Osmena peak is located in the vicinity area of Mantalungon, (a town that is around 700 to 800 meters and probably one of the highest towns in Cebu. Mantalungon has been known as the vegetable kingdom of Cebu. Its really unusual finding this town where you feel it was like an area in the Cordilleras were they have their trading post for vegetable dealers and townfolks and children are wearing jackets at high noon.

Its towering facade blends Muslim, Romanesque, and neo-classical architecture, this church of the Señor Santo Niño de Cebu–which translates literally as “holy child of Cebu.”

Cebu’s oldest Roman Catholic Church, the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño, also still retains the original stone texture and natural color it had in 1735. (Click on photo to view larger image.)

The structure, located right in the heart of downtown Cebu City, is way, way older–it is the Philippines’s oldest church, but it was made out of hard wood, mud, and nipa when it was first built by the Spaniards in 1566 on the very spot where the image of the Santo Niño, left behind by Portuguese and Spanish explorers in 1521, was found preserved in a burned wooden box.

Picture Sources:
Kawasan Waterfalls
Bantayan Island
Malapascua
Osmeña Peak
Basilica del Sto. Niño

Nihon Sankei—the Three Most Scenic Spots in Japan

Japan is island nation of unique beauty, but three locations are traditionally accepted as being the three most scenic spots of Japan. We may ask, how were these places selected? During Japan's Edo period(1600-1867) a Confucian scholar, Shunsai Hayashi, wrote a book based on his experiences as he traveled throughout Japan on foot. In his book, Nihon Kokujisekikou (Observations About the Remains of Japan's Civil Affairs), he bestowed his unqualified praise on the three locations in Japan he thought offered travelers the most scenic beauty in the nation.



The scenic masterpieces of Matsushima, Amanohashidate, and Miyajima are as spectacular today as they were in the Edo period. These three remarkable sites, textured by the sea and abundant greenery, have not only touched the hearts of millions of people but also have served as a colorful background to history itself.



The exquisite beauty of these sites has inspired poets, writers, and artists to immortalize the scenic charm and awe inspiring vision of Japan.




Japan's Meccas that everyone wants to visit at least once.


Essay from Nihon Sankei

Picture Sources:
Matsushima
Miyajima Toori
Amanohashidate- The kid bending over is a student in iTalk. He is Shinossuke. He has a bright future in translating Japanese literature into English.

Yamazaki Returns from Space Station

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida--Naoko Yamazaki and her fellow astronauts returned to Earth on Tuesday after a two-week mission to the International Space Station.



She was reunited with her husband Taichi, 37, and daughter Yuki, 7, who handed her a bouquet of roses. "It smells good, thank you," Yamazaki told her.

Yamazaki, 39, and the six other crew members blasted into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 5.



About one hour and 40 minutes after the shuttle landed here, Yamazaki and her colleagues met with some of the people who had made the mission possible.




"Thank you to the Japanese people for cheering for me," she told a televised interview. "I'm happy to have seen and felt Earth's beautiful nature" (from space).

News from Asahi Shimbun

Two-headed Snake in Kagoshima

TANEGASHIMA, Kagoshima — A two-headed Japanese ratsnake has been found here and is currently being kept at Tanegashima Municipal Government Hall, town officials said.



The 27-centimeter long snake with heads that each extend about 2 centimeters in length was found last week in a Tanegashima man’s garden and is being temporarily cared for at the local government offices.

“I don’t know why it’s got two heads, but it’s an extremely rare find,” a spokesman from Kagoshima’s Hirakawa Zoo said.



Apparently snakes are sometimes seen as a sign of good luck in Japan, so they expect a lot of visitors looking to have their lotto tickets blessed by the snake’s two-headed super powers.

From Japan Probe

Giant Iceberg Breaks Off from Antarctic Glacier

(Reuters) - An iceberg the size of Luxembourg has broken off from a glacier in Antarctica after being rammed by another giant iceberg, scientists said on Friday, in an event that could affect ocean circulation patterns


The 2,500 sq km (965 sq mile) iceberg broke off earlier this month from the Mertz Glacier's 160 km (100 miles) floating tongue of ice that sticks out into the Southern Ocean.



The collision has since halved the size of the tongue that drains ice from the vast East Antarctic ice sheet.

"The calving itself hasn't been directly linked to climate change but it is related to the natural processes occurring on the ice sheet," said Rob Massom, a senior scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Tasmania.

Both organizations, along with French scientists, have been studying existing giant cracks in the ice tongue and monitored the bumper-car-like collision by the second iceberg, B-9B.

This 97 km long slab of ice is a remnant of an iceberg of more than 5,000 sq km that broke off, or calved, in 1987, making it one of the largest icebergs ever recorded in Antarctica.

The Mertz glacier iceberg is among the largest recorded for several years. In 2002, a iceberg about 200 km long broke off from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf. In 2007, a iceberg roughly the size of Singapore broke off from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica.




Massom said the shearing off of the ice tongue and the presence of the Mertz and B-9B icebergs could affect global ocean circulation.

The area is an important zone for the creation of dense, salty water that is a key driver of global ocean circulation. This is produced in part through the rapid production of sea ice that is continually blown to the west.

"Removal of this tongue of floating ice would reduce the size of that area of open water, which would slow down the rate of salinity input into the ocean and it could slow down this rate of Antarctic bottom water formation," he said.

He said there was a risk both icebergs would become grounded on banks or shoals in the area, disrupting the creation of the dense, salty water and the amount that sinks to the bottom of the ocean, he said.
Oceans act like a giant flywheel for the planet's climate by shifting heat around the globe via myriad currents above and below the surface.




(Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Alex Richardson)

News from the Reuters

Children Song: It's a Small World After All

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears
It's a world of hopes, it's a world of fear
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all

CHORUS:
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world

There is just one moon and one golden sun
And a smile means friendship to everyone.
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small small world

(chorus)