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ISSUE: December 2003/January 2004 |
You're visitor No. |
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Don't forget to check out the Gaijin's |
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This Month's Topics:
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As I prepare this for you waiting millions out there, I am getting heartily sick of the advertising campaign for the latest Tom Cruise epic, which just happens to be set in Japan. The title, 'The Last samurai', might be thought to apply to the hero, an embittered, drunken Civil War veteran who comes to Japan to teach them how to fight -- which suggests Japan was a great deal more desperate than it ever has been! Forgetting for the moment that the only non-Japanese Samurai in history was English (William Adams), this film should be laughed out of every Japanese cinema because of the fantasy ideas the makers have about Japanese history. I mean, doesn't it rather stretch even a gaijin's credulity to see a drunkard American defeating multiple samurai in hand to hand combat? And when he does the same to ninja, and goes on to teach the true meaning of bushido to the Japanese emperor, credulity does what the Japanese filmgoers should do -- its gives up and goers home! However, knowing how little most Japanese know about their history and how they seem to think Hollywood is the font of all wisdom, I expect this will be more popular than it deserves. It isn't just teaching WW2 that needs to be radically changed here, alas.
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Japan's reputation as a safe place to live may soon take a major knock. As you may have read, a London-based Arabic newspaper and weekly magazine publisher received a statement saying al-Qaeda was planning further attacks against the United States and its allies, including Japan. In the statement, Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, claiming to be an al-Qaeda leader, warned the Japanese against sending troops to join the US-led coalition in Iraq. "If they want to destroy their economic power and be trampled under the feet of the combatants of Allah, let them come to Iraq," he said. "Our strikes will reach the heart of Tokyo." Now as Tokyo is probably the least experienced city in the world when it comes to dealing with terrorists, and so although Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has reassured us and the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the government will investigate the reported warning, one can't help feeling rather worried. OK, it is true that Japan has received many similar threats since the September 11 attacks on the US and none has proved serious. However, my feelings of apprehension are not helped when the police calmly announce that they have no plans to step up security, as they have not received any concrete information on planned attacks in Japan. That sounds a bit 'stable door' to me, don't you agree? Does that mean the police will take this seriously after some Tokyo building is destroyed? I don't know, but after the tragedy in Istanbul, I plan to stay well away from both the British Embassy and any British banks!
Footnote: I don't know if this is enough to make the Tokyo authorities wake up, but it was reported that a group of assailants drove up to the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad and fired shots before they drove away. Iraqi security guards exchanged fire with the assailants for about 10 minutes, shooting back at the group from behind a 3-meter concrete wall surrounding the embassy. Doesn't that prove that Japan is not universally popular?
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What Japanese troops did in China during WW2 was disgusting, as everyone outside Japan knows, but the way some so-called academics deny it ever happened is much, much worse. However, not all Japanese are so dishonest, and I would like to praise one man who has come forward to reveal what really happened over there. This 83-year-old man, a former Imperial Japanese Army soldier, recently gave evidence at the Tokyo High Court during a hearing for a damages suit against the Japanese government by 4 Chinese women. As he so rightly said, "My comrades have no intention of speaking, but I will reveal my disgraceful behaviour to make up," . He has stated that when he was a recruit, he was taught how to stab Chinese people to death. He added that while serving in China, he went to a Chinese village and raped a young Chinese woman with other soldiers. He confessed that he killed the woman to hide his wrongdoing. OK, so what he did was horrible and totally reprehensible. However, at least he had the guts and moral fibre to step forward and admit what he did. Japan can only hope to be a truly normal nation when the government and academic authorities do the same thing. As it is, I am sure the self-deluding fascists who deny the Imperial Army ever stole a Chinese apple will find some way to discredit this honest veteran. Maybe he's a secret American or a Chinese agent. with these fanatics, anything is possible.
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Can you imagine a thief claiming you stole his wallet? Well something similar happened here quite recently, involving that champion of law and democracy, North Korea. The whole world knows (or should) that North Korea forcibly kidnapped a whole bunch of Japanese folk and is still holding the families of the survivors, right? Well now, believe it or not, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations officially asked Japan to stop "terrorist" acts against pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan. Unreal, right? Kim Chang Guk was speaking to a human rights committee meeting at the UN General Assembly and was referring to the harassment of students of pro-Pyongyang schools (who are easy to spot as the females wear traditional "Chogori" uniforms) and recent incidents in which gunshots were fired at facilities of Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). OK, Koreans here tend to get a bad deal from the government, and Chongryon, which is often seen as being North Korea's unofficial mission in Japan, has often been targeted in by Japanese right-wing radicals. What's more, many normal folk might think anyone living in a democracy who supports Pyongyang deserves all they get. But do they really expect anyone to treat these comments seriously? I often think that if ever we make contact with ET-like aliens, the little green men will know a whole lot more about the real world than Pyongyang does!
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I have said often before in this column, rotten parents are a universal curse, and Japan is no exception. But can you believe a mother killing her daughter for the insurance money? No kidding. According to the police report, 63-year-old Teruko Fukasawa conspired with 4 men to murder her 33-year-old daughter by running her over with a car near her home in Saitama Prefecture. It seems that the insurance company paid approximately ¥48 million into Teruko's bank account. Police believe this mother devised the murder plan after she was involved in a dispute concerning her daughter's mortgage, which she could not repay. At the time, the police treated the incident as a fatal traffic accident and arrested one of the 4 co-conspirators, who told them he had caused it. However, a recent fraud case led them to reinvestigate and they decided it was foul play.
Another example of such bad parents occurred in Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo. A 34-year-old man was arrested there for abusing his 4-month-old daughter and giving her an electric shock, police said. This disgusting piece of human garbage slapped the baby in the face and pressed the plug of a live electric cable to her body after pouring water over her. The poor little girl was later sent to hospital and remains unconscious, police officials said.
This may seem a strange section in which to discuss Tokyo's finest, but this story is here for a reason. Believe it or not, we cynics don't always enjoy being proved right. Therefore, as someone who occasionally (?) identifies imperfections within the Japanese police, I suppose I should have felt good reading that 42 Tokyo Metropolitan Police officers had been 'punished' just a month after one of their colleagues had been indicted for allegedly receiving a ¥10 million bribe from a massage parlour owner. However, I'm not just a cynic, I'm a Tokyo resident and taxpayer, so this news does NOT please me. The latest batch of bent cops are believed to have allowed themselves to be wined and dined, treated to rounds of golf and entertained at sex industry establishments, the police said. However, don't get the wrong idea about this. The punishments meted out to these guys wasn't exactly terrifying. The official report stated that the police had cut the salaries of 4 officers, issued a warning to another, gave a written reprimand to 6 and verbally reprimanded 31. I'll bet that has the other bent cops around Tokyo shaking in their boots.
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Maybe this should be in the 'Crime File' section but this report just seemed so strange that I felt it deserved a slot of its own. I am referring to a recent report that an increasing number of parents are getting ripped off by people posing as
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Although Africa seems to get most of the attention in AIDS reports, Asia also has a serious AIDS problem, and whatever the government may think, that includes Japan. Japanese media doesn't carry much about this problem and with sex education still being as badly organised here as English teaching, that problem is bound to increase. Try to get people interested in this problem must often seem like an uphill struggle, and so I really do sympathise with Donald Fountaine. of the Japan AIDS Prevention Awareness Network. His recent comment about the weird idea many Japanese have about AIDS (see 'Say That Again') is sadly true. A great number of Japanese think that AIDS is purely a foreign disease, one of the many evils brought to Japan by we gaijin, and so 'safe sex' is still seen as an oxymoron here. Possibly thinking that being Japanese protects them, many Japanese males still think it's OK to go off on 'sex package tours' to other Asian cities like Bangkok, etc. What's more, their wives don't seem to worry about catching anything when these sexual tourists return home, and if this isn't asking for a major crisis, what is? What's more, Japan still has a lot to learn about how to treat those associated with this disease. To show what I mean, consider the case of the unfortunate child who was rejected by a private nursery school in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, not because it has AIDS, but because one of its parents is infected with HIV. Nice to live in the 21st Century, isn't it? The nursery school in question excused this blatant prejudice by saying that it might suffer 'social prejudice' when explaining things to other children's parents, adding that "if other students' parents became aware of this, they might leave our school." In other words, treating that kid (who is HIV-negative) as a school should might hurt their business. Is that the kind of school you'd want your child at? Me neither. However, with AIDS growing and public awareness remaining virtually medieval, the government's concerns about the falling birth rate might soon become pointless, as the population starts to shrink from other, more avoidable causes. Maybe when too many of the ruling party's voters drop dead the government might admit that it isn't just gaijin who are in danger!
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Last month, I commented on the distinctly unmilitary nature of life in the Japanese 'Self Defense Force (SDF)). Well, this situation might be alleviated by the recent surge in terrorist attacks. You see, Kyodo News reports that the Senior Vice Foreign Minister, Ichiro Aisawa, has said that Japan is considering allowing the SDF to guard its diplomatic missions abroad. This is nothing unusual, of course, with almost every US embassy having a contingent of Marines. However, it is radical stuff for Japan, and will require a revision to the law controlling the SDF before it can be implemented. However, not all is as it seems. I did spend some time as a diplomat before coming to Japan and so I do know that one often feels rather isolated when serving in unfriendly countries, and I am sure that the recent murder of 2 Japanese diplomats in Iraq has made many of their colleagues feel much less than comfortable. However, if you know anything about the SDF, I doubt if you would feel warm and snug knowing they were guarding you! An American survey held back in the Cold War examined how long the SDF could hold off the Soviets in case Hokkaido was invaded. Their conclusion was that without American support, the SDF would last 45 minutes. Yes, minutes. So don't expect the Japanese Foreign Service to experience a sudden increase in recruitment, as it would require extreme naivety for parents to think this move will dramatically improve the security of their diplomatic offspring!
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Say That Again . . .
Many Japanese work very hard to get the chance to study overseas, as many find the unchanging teaching styles of some local colleges less than satisfying. However, most of their futures bosses did not study overseas and see nothing wrong with the local education system. This can lead to problems. As Hisao Ikegami of Temple University Japan's board of governors pointed out:
"There are so many bright internationally educated Japanese students, but once they come back to Japan, they can't find anywhere to fit in and they end up going back overseas. We lose their talent."
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Not surprisingly in a country where males seem to think they walk a little off the ground compared with women, the police are not exactly sympathetic towards female victims. Needless to say, this is especially true of rape. I don't know where you are, dear reader, but imagine trying to report a rape here. As lawyer Yukiko Tsunoda said:
"Police still don't want to deal with rape cases and prosecutors aren't keen to go ahead with them because neither think rape is that serious a crime."
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Talking of crime (as we often seem to do), the parents of a 14-year-old boy had some novel ideas about teaching him independence. The young man in question was forced to steal from supermarkets and convenience stores by his parents, who joined him in custody. As he explained:
"My parents wouldn't make me dinner and told me, 'If you want to eat, go and steal something.'"
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Although both local and national government try to ignore it, Japan does have a major problem with the homeless, a situation not helped by the record employment in a welfare-free nation. A recent government report estimated that there are 530,000 people aged between 15 and 24 without work, and who are not interested in taking jobs. According to Michiko Miyamoto, a Chiba University professor:
"If this situation is allowed to continue, Japan may start to see homeless people in their teens."
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As reported above, Japan stands a very good chance of experiencing an AIDS crisis in the not too distant future. One reason they are walking right into this horrible situation is pure ignorance, exacerbated by nationalism. As Donald Fountaine of the Japan AIDS Prevention Awareness Network said:
"Many Japanese believe that they will be unaffected if they don't have contact with foreigners and unprotected sex is OK as long as it is not with a foreigner."
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Nice to know that the recent recession was not discriminating, that it affected everyone regardless of class, sex or legality. After all, as author Atsushi Mizoguchi about the Yamaguchi-gumi (Japan's largest yakuza gang) advertising for new recruits in sports newspapers:
"With the economy being as bad as it has been for so long, the yakuza are having trouble making money and finding new recruits."
My heart bleeds for them, it really does!
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The Government's decision to send troops to Iraq might be politically unavoidable but it has rather split Japan, and amongst those most against it are the families of the military. Having previously thought their kinfolk were in boring but safe jobs, the chance of being sent to a combat zone must be quite a shock. One 68-year-old mother of a 30-year-old Self Defence Force member in Aichi Prefecture summed up the view of many when she said:
"My son said he will go if told to, but I told him not to do that. Prime Minister Koizumi can go himself."
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Remember the old joke about 'don't raise the bridge, lower the river'? Well a local authority here in Japan has acted in a similar manner. Consider the problem. The forecourt of Ichikawa station. In this place, there used to be two refuse containers marked, in the usual Japanese manner, 'Cans and Bottles' and 'Ordinary Rubbish.' Like most public litter bins in Japan, these bins were rarely emptied and so, shockingly, they were often filled to overflowing, with the litter piled up on the pavement around them. Indeed, the station here and at Motoyawata attracted about 400kg of rubbish per day between them. So what did they do? Empty the bins more often? Wake up the local police to enforce the litter laws? Come, come -- be sensible! No, what they did was remove all refuse bins and waste receptacles. I kid you not. The truly amazing thing is that after the bins were removed, the waste disappeared. Impressed, the nearby bus terminal followed suit, with the same results. Only in Japan! Now, it seems, a growing number of municipalities here are removing waste receptacles from parks, roads and stations, and all seem to be getting the same extraordinary result. For example, Hirosaki City in Aomori Prefecture has removed rubbish containers from 95% of its public parks. But what has happened to the missing rubbish, you may ask. Simple, it has gone elsewhere. One municipality that followed this trend discovered that people are now seeking more secluded places, such as public toilets, to dump their waste. So station forecourts and public parks might now be nicer places to visit but public toilets are still not recommended!
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Back in the October/November issue of this noble rag (as you'll know if you're a regular reader), I reported on the nasty case of a teacher who abused a 9-year-old boy repeatedly because of his American ancestry. To refresh your memory, the teacher said to the boy "You have filthy blood. Go jump off from your condo building & die." He later added "You haven't died yet. Do it today, OK?" The teacher also repeatedly beat and injured the fourth-year pupil, obviously feeling that repeatedly telling him to kill himself wasn't enough. Sounds very bad, right? True. Couldn't get worse? Wrong. Sadly, Japan has more than its fair share of racist and many of them are in power. You see, according to the 'Japan Times', the Fukuoka Municipal Government has actually urged the judiciary to reject the damages suit (unsurprisingly, the boy and his parents are seeking ¥13 million in compensation) filed against the city and the accused teacher. from the city and the 46-year-old teacher. Can you believe that? Now I don't know if this makes it better or worse, but the municipal government has admitted the teacher did commit some of the alleged acts. However, they still want the case dropped. The teacher, who deserves to share a small cell with a large pervert, has not entered a plea as he has not found a lawyer, whereas a legal team of over 500 lawyers have stepped forward to defend the boy's case. Maybe even lawyers have some standards! However, I sincerely hope that the voters of Fukuoka let the local politicians know what they think of their support for this son-of-a-bachelor, but sadly, I won't be surprised if they all get re-elected with increased majorities!
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Who's a naughty boy then? Once a week, my business takes me to the Toranomon district of Tokyo, to a room overlooking the huge, 13,000 square metre US Embassy compound. All very impressive -- especially when it's rent free! What was that? That's right. The US Embassy has not paid the Japanese government a single yen in rent for the state-owned land since 1998, and now owe around ¥15 million, government officials revealed on Sunday. So why hasn't the world's richest country paid the rent? Well, one reason is that talks between Japan and the United States concerning the rent are "proceeding with difficulty". One reason these talks are facing problems is that the US claims, believe it or not, that Japan gave it the land. Yeah, like Tokyo makes a habit of giving up a huge chunk of ultra-valuable downtown land! Anyway, if that claim is true, how come they paid rent before 1998? Now making Japan pay for its own defence is OK -- although making the local taxpayer finance a hotel and swimming pool (near my home) that Japanese cannot use is a bit much! However, refusing to pay rent for the best guarded real estate in Japan suggests a degree of tight-fistedness. At a time when the Japanese Government is risking a high level of unpopularity in order to send troops to help the US in Iraq, the least Washington can do is pay its bills. Alternatively, let's hope Tokyo forgets its usual subtlety and publicises this distasteful example of unfriendly behaviour.
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I have often had to show that certain unpleasant habits are international, affecting Japan as well as other countries. This sadly includes sick journalism. In a display of tastelessness that even the British tabloids might not sink to, the popular weekly magazine Shukan Gendai recently published a photograph of the bodies of two Japanese diplomats who were murdered while travelling in northern Iraq back on November 29th. Not surprisingly, the Foreign Ministry has said it will lodge a protest with the publisher. It has also said it will request that the publisher, Kodansha Ltd, recall copies of the offending edition. "It is an unforgivable act which tramples on their human rights," a spokesman told reporters. Quite right, too. Now regular readers might need to sit down with a stiff drink to read me supporting the government but this is not political, it is just a matter of decency. The sort of reader who might be attracted by such a photo is the sort most genuine journals would prefer not to have, and encouraging such ghoulishness is a disgusting move. I sincerely hope that this display of tactless perversion will backfire and lose that 'magazine' readers, as it should. I also hope that the editor responsible for this, who is beneath contempt, someday suffers the pain the kin of those slain diplomats must have felt when seeing that photo.
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A forgotten victim of Japan's recent economic downturn has been, it seems, the trade union movement. Trade unions here, which were legalised by the occupation forces after WW2, are very different to those in the West, many being company-based and designed not to cause trouble. However, some industrial unions are a little more union like, and it is these that are suffering. According to Kyodo News, Japan's estimated unionisation rate is likely to drop below 20% this year for the first time since the War, mostly due to cutbacks on full-time workers through corporate restructuring. This statistic was gleaned from a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in conjunction with labour unions across Japan, and does not bode well for working people here. Japan's companies already treat their worker less nicely than most developed nations, with no sick leave, regular unpaid overtime, and obligatory subservience to those in authority. Without even a rudimentary trade union movement, such treatment will almost certainly worsen, and so although readers in lands cursed by 'wildcat' strikes and endless labour disputes might envy Japan's weakening unions, I for one consider it a bad omen for this nation's future.
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Not long ago, I mentioned the problems faced by rape victims here when dealing with the old fashioned, male dominated police force. Well, the government doesn't seem to be interested in correcting the attitudes of the police, but the Justice Ministry is, it seems, planning a drastic revision of the Penal Code to strengthen punishment for rape and other sex crimes. Believe it or not, this would be the first overall revision of the Penal Code since it was established in 1907. The government is prompted to do this by the rising tide of sex crimes, including a gang rape by university students reported in the July-Sept issue of 'Empty Seat. This led a panel of politicians to make sex crime punishments harsher, so the Justice Ministry began considering the creation of a gang rape charge and the extension of the prison term for rape. Under the current law, rape is punishable by 2 years imprisonment or more, compared with a term of 5 years or more for robbery. As a few lawmakers noted in Diet debate, punishments here for crimes against property are more severe than for crimes against people -- which says a lot about Japan! Anyway, stung into action by such comments, a bill drawn up by the ministry's project team calls for gang rape to be punishable by imprisonment of 4 years or more, while the penalty for gang rape resulting in death would be life imprisonment or a prison term of 6 years or more. The bill also calls for life imprisonment or a prison term of 5 years or more for rape resulting in death, instead of the current penalty of a life term or imprisonment of three years or more. According to government data, the number of rape victims topped 2,000 for the first time in 2000. In 2002, the number rose to 2,357, up 129 from the preceding year. Now only the most dangerously naive will think that these changes will make life easier for women here, for no law is any use without the will to enforce it. Japan has many laws but for so long as the police remain inside their kobans (police boxes), doing paperwork rather than patrolling, they are not even worth the paper they are printed on
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One factor behind Japan's lack of economic vitality in recent years has been the much beloved seniority system, whereby your pay is decided by how long you've been with the company, rather than how hard you work. In the post war days, when people worked hard for the good of the nation, this system may have worked OK. But now, however, people work for themselves rather than the nation and when they see a lazy slob getting more pay than they do just because he's older, they tend to move to foreign companies, where pay seems fairer. However, Japan is fighting back. It was recently announced that the auto giant Toyota Motor Corp and its labour union have agreed to switch from the outdated age-linked wages for mechanics and other skilled workers to a system of performance-based pay. The new scheme, revolutionary for a truly Japanese company like this, will begin in April. It didn't say whether it would stop the linked system of promoting workers based on seniority. I previously worked for the world's largest securities company, Nomura, and in those days, security and pay were both based solely on age. That's why during my short term with this ultra-traditional Japanese company (where one female MBA was expected to make tea and photocopies for her male colleagues), more than 50 analysts and similar executives left to join foreign companies. It might be sad that patriotism is no longer enough of an incentive for Japanese workers, but such is life. Japan used to have real talent for adapting to the way of the world, which is why it was never colonised. Let's hope they regain that talent soon.
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With the festive season upon us, it seems a good time to take a look at the subject of tourism. I don't mean the camera-toting Japanese who will be heading abroad during the New Year break, but the millions of tourists Japan needs to come here. For far too long, the government here has treated tourism like a poor relation, delegating this task to a collection of groups scattered across several ministries. similarly, the tourism budget has been a joke, resulting in Japan receiving roughly the same number of tourists as minuscule Macao! If the government is indeed serious about increasing tourist arrivals here, as it recently claimed to be, then it could do a lot worse than read a recent article by Mo Bangfu, a Chinese journalist based in Japan dealing with why so few Chinese travel to their eastern neighbour. In an article entitled "Can Japan's Tourism Industry Capture the Hearts of the Chinese?" he seems to show that as things stand at present, it cannot! That should worry the government, for the number of Chinese travelling to foreign countries is increasing by around 10% annually. According to the World Tourism Organization, the Chinese will be the world's top tourists by 2020, when 100 million of them are expected to travel abroad. So why is it that they prefer not to visit Japan? Well, as this article points out, one reason is the one that keeps most foreign tourists away from here -- Japan's inns and hotels. For example, Chinese tourists tend to be the sort of people active on the Internet, but when Mr Mo went on a package tour in Japan, he found that none of the hotels offered Internet access. Also, whereas most hotels around the world have a checkout time of noon, the usual checkout time at Japanese inns is 10 a.m. Now I cannot speak about conditions for Chinese visitors but I can speak of how things are for Western visitors. Outside of Tokyo, hotels rarely if ever have any English-speaking staff, and the restaurants idea of foreign cooking may leave a bad taste in one's mouth -- literally! It is also worth remembering that whereas most hotels around the world quotes rates per room, Japanese hotels usually quote rates per guest -- but if you cannot read Japanese, you may not know this till you get your surprisingly inflated bill. Japan has a great deal to offer foreign tourists but until the government takes tourism seriously, and hoteliers remembered that the old Shogunate ban on foreign visitors is no longer in effect, this potentially lucrative industry will remain a Cinderella!
'New Year is by far the #1 holiday in Japan, and so virtually every shop and business closes for varying number of days at the year's end. Therefore, if you plan to stay here through the holidays, make sure you do your shopping before watching the crowds welcoming in the New Year at the Meiji Shrine on TV. Also, remember that the Japanese traditionally have 2 gift giving seasons a year: The midsummer one, O-chugen, and the year-end one, O-seibo. So don't forget to do your gift shopping early!'
(Taken from the 'Gaijin's
Guide to Living in Japan')
'If you are spending New Year in Tokyo and feel like watching the crowds who traditionally gather at shrines to greet the midnight change, you might prefer to avoid the Mieji Shrine near Omotesando. This place attracts around 5 million people during the New Year holiday period! Instead, why not visit your local shrine (not a Buddhist temple -- New Year is a Shinto thing). Alternatively, try the crowded but not ridiculously crowded Hie Shrine, which was originally built in 1478 in Edo Castle. Near Kokkai-Gijido-Mae Subway. Call 3581-2471."
(For more suggestions, check out the 'Gaijin's Guide to Enjoying Tokyo')
Miss last month's 'Empty Seat'? Not to worry. You can check
out the Gaijin's previous ramblings with remarkable ease by clicking on one of the links on the right. |
2002 |
2003 |
Well that's another 'Empty Seat' on the road. What's more, that's another year gone! What the hell happened to 2003! One minute it's the latest year and now it's almost over. Now your humble scribe will breaking tradition this year, and for the first time since I landed in Japan in 1991, I shall be spending Christmas outside of these islands. A beach-type Christmas for the Gaijin, that's just what the doctor ordered. However, I shall be back in town for New Year and probably spending it in Tochigi, which will doubtless be pretty damn'd cold! However, I shall be back in Tokyo in time to gather some material for the next 'Empty Seat', so don't panic. Wherever you are, I hope that you have a safe and enjoyable festive season, and may 2004 bring you health, wealth and happiness. Take care, and catch you again next year!
The Gaijin
Don't forget: If you want to know when the next 'Empty Seat' is online, or just want to contact the ol' Gaijin, you can use the Guestbook link below or drop me an email. I'll read it all, honest, & then . . . Well, we'll see!
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since 03/12/15 !
