Absolutely no excuse I know, but...

1) http://www.unu.edu/publications/briefs/index.html

2) http://allsports.jp/photo/00000468_000000027515_00000001970377.html (You may need to click on this link twice to stop it from redirecting)

3) This link might work a bit better... http://tm2008eng.allsports.jp/photo/cart_photo_detail.php?pid=468&aid=27515&phid=1970377&logoshow=true

A little light relief

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

LANGLEY, VA-The most crucial passages of U.S. intelligence have been emphasized with indelible black highlighters.

Hur hur hur. I particularly like the overenthusiasm idea...

No depth too low...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7140000/newsid_7140800/7140800.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1 (See at 1:58)

What's on earth is he trying to communicate? "I may be Bush's poodle but he's got two stupid-looking terriers as soul mates too?" What an absolute embarrassment. And from such a supposed spin-master too. Also fascinating that Bush is finding it almost physically painful to remember his excruciatingly simple lines. Same goes for the plywood wife and daughters.

Stilettos and chihuahuas (sounds like a good recipe...)

Back to the far-too-accessible-from-Tokyo mountain for a bit of a run today. Overtook plenty of little rat dogs and women in high-heeled boots (no little rat dogs in high-heeled boots I don't think but I wouldn't be that surprised). I'm half expecting it to be the same on marathon day itself... Also, nice to see Fuji looming in the distance and know that I've conquered it. And don't need to do so again.

I'd always suspected...

...but now it's official. Japanese 'elite' university students less intelligent than chimpanzees. (Probably marginally better at karaoke though, and about equal on Dance Dance Revolution).

Antarctic jaunt

Some of the passengers from the Explorer (Icebergs in the Antarctic - how unexpected! And they assured us the ship was unsinkable...) claimed they had "lost everything". No they most certainly did not! They weren't refugees fleeing with all of their worldly possessions. They had paid $8,000+ per cabin for an adventurous holiday. They may have lost a camera and some clothes, but to be honest (and after all there were no injuries, let alone fatalities) maybe next year they should go on a cruise somewhere less challenging, like the Med. Seriously, though... With the increasing trend for more 'extreme' holidays there will surely be more and more people going for a jolly in places they really shouldn't be. I wonder who paid for the rescue - I hope it was the insurance company rather than the Chilean taxpayer.

And maybe I'm just a little bit jealous - I can't imagine being on the boat itself was terribly interesting, but they had a real opportunity to demonstrate their good old human spirit... And without having to survive by eating seal and penguin like that nice Ken Branagh did.

Gender apartheid and the world's least subtle advertising (not necessarily connected...)

Lunch today provided me with another opportunity to observe one of the stranger aspects of Japanese restaurants/cafes/bars: the frequent gender disparity. In contrast to the chicken-on-as-stick/beer joints that are entirely full of be-suited men after work (so, from no earlier than 8pm), if you go to a cafe or bar on a weekday before about 8pm, it will be ENTIRELY FULL OF WOMEN. Just as I'm not sure where all the men are hiding (presumably being famously inefficient at the office), I'm not sure what these women do - plenty of them certainly don't look like they have a job. Well, I suppose if you've completed the first few stages of the typical Japanese Female Life Strategy (find good job in order to find good mate, get married, take early retirement [before 30 - even most traders would be happy with that I reckon]) then maybe you don't have anything other to do than be a Lady Who Lunches. Until later in the afternoon, when you become a Lady Who Goes For Coffee. This is indeed a strangely pre-political-correctness society. However, there are no great protests going on, no burning of expensive and fashionable undergarments, not even any significant feminist movement. (Yet...?)

In an almost certainly unrelated but nonetheless peculiar aspect of Japanese life, the one-year contract Softbank (mobile phone company) had with Cameron Diaz has just ended, and she has been replaced by Snoopy. Equally irrelevant, although a darn sight less creepy to see on a five-storey-high poster - Miss Diaz's nose is VERY strange. This ad campaign was a classic example of the unbelievable power of celebrity in Japanese branding. In some of the posters, she wasn't even holding a mobile phone, she was just wearing very bad clothes and associating her face with the brand... Whichever braindead advertising "creative" took home a paypacket in return for the campaign should be sacked. Or maybe not - it was probably very successful. That ridiculous bit in Lost in Translation with the whiskey ad isn't far wrong - Tommy Lee Jones is currently advertising canned coffee by just looking very sulky (something which comes naturally to him of course), and Richard Gere was briefly on posters for the wonderfully named "Dandy House", a men's Este company (facials etc, although presumably his face is no longer made of skin and so doesn't require that kind of service...)

Rrrrrrrrrrright, back to revision for the Inevitable Japanese Test - less than a week to go now.