Odds and Ends

Not much time tonight, so just a few thoughts from the day - school was less painful only in that I am pretty much familiar with the subject - Japanese Self Defense Forces - so I'm not sure how much I actually understood, or just knew already.

I was stopped at our local "conbini" by an old Japanese lady as I was depositing my bag full of "pet" bottles (water bottles mostly) in the recycle bins out front - per the very detailed instructions offered by my city. In a very friendly manner she explained to me that if everyone brought bags of PET bottles like I did, the bins would overfill too quickly - this makes logical sense to me, but, but, I was just following the rules. Seems there's some room for common sense. Anyway, PET bottles will now be accepted on the "non-burnable" days. If you were paying attention to previous blogs, you would know that those days are on Tuesdays. Ok, got it. But like any good Ginsu commercial, there's more. While I can recycle the bottles themselves (stripped of the label of course) from home, if I would be so kind as to bring just the bottle caps to the conbinis and place those in a special bin, she would be very grateful. She gave me a 5 minute explanation about why, and this is what I got out of it - if they process the bottle caps with the non-burnable materials, the carbon dioxide that is emitted from the process (just of the caps, mind you) will get into the bloodstream of our children, and the next generation of children will be sterile or have some other horrible disease. Ok, ok - don't put me on a guilt trip about kids. So now, we've added another bin to our ever growing population of trash containers - one just for lids to plastic bottles.

On one of our tours yesterday, we visited the Ichigaya Memorial Hall (see pic) that is part of the Japanese Defense Agency (equivalent to our Pentagon). The hall has a long history, and has even physically been dismantled and moved across town - but the Grand Hall is most well known as being the site in May 1946 as the Court of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. It's amazing in the interior for all of the optical illusions embedded to ensure that the Emperor appeared larger and higher than any of the subjects that may be in the hall. We got to sit where the wartime Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and other leaders were sentenced to hang for war crimes. It was a bit eerie, but very interesting.


The Prime Minister quit two days ago. Have you heard? Doesn't seem to be making much of a stir here. You'd think that in a classroom with a bunch of Japanese parliament and business people, there'd be some talk about it. Not really - no water cooler talk of it at all. I had lunch with the lady that I mentioned yesterday, and she works in the parliament, and had very little to say. I've found that in the two times I've asked Japanese women their opinion on something, they are VERY reluctant to share their thoughts. I'll have to explore this some more.

Joe just got back from speed dating - need to go get the scoop!

Ja Mata!