Jason’s Random Thoughts

It’s the end of another year, and the next is about to begin.  This, of course, means a few things.  It means that there is very little time left to leave a comment on this site for a chance at Canadian cash, and it means that it’s time for yet another blog post talking about the things that have made this a memorable year in my life.

January

I was lucky enough to spend New Year’s Day 2007 in Japan with my Reiko.  This was the first time I had been outside of Canada for the new year, and it was the first time in almost 8 years that I had actually done something for the occasion.  Although I get to spend every New Year’s Day with Reiko now, it won’t make the first one any less special.

July

In mid-July I was let go from my employer of almost five years.  This was a pretty big day in my life as I had given countless hours to the company.  Hopefully, some of the software I had developed is still solving the business needs, but I will admit that I’m concerned about how much of it is still left in the original form.

August

After some hassles in America, I finally made the move to Japan!  Two weeks after calling this country home for the first time, Reiko and I were legally married at Kakamigahara City Hall and we started our lives together as husband and wife.  We still have a ceremony coming up in May of 2008, but the paper marriage is still a pretty big day for both Reiko and I.

October

Employed again!  After going months without work, I finally managed to start working at a place in Nagoya in a field I had never expected to work.  While it might not be my dream job, I’ve put quite a bit of effort into being the very best I can be.  Hopefully this will open some doors with other companies, though.

When I think back at the last 365 days, I’m absolutely surprised at how much has changed.  I’ve gone from living alone in Vancouver to living in the same home as my wife and her family.  Instead of writing software for an international print company, I’m speaking English to people who want to improve their language skills.  And, if that’s not enough, I’ve gone from drinking two or three litres of coffee every day to a single up every few days … something I never thought possible.

Do I have any resolutions for the new year?  Nope.  If something’s important enough for me to change it, then there’s no time like the present.  Waiting for the new year has always seemed like unnecessary procrastination to me.

How was your 2007?

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In his Christmas sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury warned us that human greed is a threat to the planet.  This statement was initially met with a “No duh”, but it can’t be left just at that.  While I can certainly appreciate the message, and the obvious intentions behind it, I can’t help but wonder if the message was directed towards the wrong people.

The average person in the world is pretty good about controlling their greed.  We know we don’t always need certain things and, thankfully, most of us are not wealthy enough to go out and purchase the latest and greatest item at any given time.  Most of us also use our material posessions until they’re broke before replacement, which keeps working items from finding their way to the landfills more often than not.  On top of all this, many families that can afford to make the changes to more environmentally friendly items like LED light bulbs do what they can to be responsible.  Most people recycle, and many of us have learned to curb the terrible habit of throwing trash on the ground.

Yet despite all these things, we’re still being made to feel guilty for our dirty little world and the state of the environment.  I think we’re only a few years away from the general public telling others to pay less attention to the average consumer’s waste habits and more attention to the elite’s and corporations that produce 90% of the world’s problems.   Seriously, it’s not the average person that’s to fault for the condition of the world.  We can change all of our light bulbs, recycle, drive Toyota Prius’ or switch completely to public transit, tile our roofs with solar collectors and heat our homes with geothermal energy, but all of that will mean squat when some organization dumps nuclear waste into the ocean or clear cuts a forest.  Get off our backs.

It’s time this message is turned around and given to the Al Gore’s, Bono’s, Pope’s and other high-profile environmental activists.  Stop using private jets.  Stop living in massive houses.  Stop driving huge ass vehicles.  Stop promoting that “carbon credit” bull-crap, too.  I swear, that’s nothing more than pure marketing genius.  Let’s pollute the planet any damned way we want, we can just pay $20 a ton and feel better about ourselves!  Bah, get out of your darned jets, plant some trees by hand, and take a regular plane with regular humans.  Fly first class if you must, but stop being such a hypocritical douche.

Once we can convince the high-profile people to start living the life they’re guilting us into living, perhaps we can then move our focus to the corporations that poison our world with toxic materials and annoying advertisements.

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While catching up on the few million websites that were updated today, I happened upon this article on Gyaku talking about the Japanese government’s plans to further regulate three areas of the internet.  At first my reaction was “since the feds can’t do anything right anyways, this won’t amount to anything”.  But after thinking it over a bit, we could be seeing the start of something terrible:  losing the freedom of self-expression.  I won’t go over the entire article, since the one on Gyaku was written quite well, but I would like to discuss the apparent plan to regulate web content.

According to the article, a recent study by Professor Emetrius at the Hitosubashi University outlines some basic guidelines for regulating web content through the application of the existing Broadcast Law.  The final report sets down the steps required to move forward and submit a bill with the proposed regulations to the Japanese government during the 2010 diet session.  Since that’s just two short years away, it doesn’t give me much time to learn fluent Japanese and get right into politics … but it won’t stop me from getting the word out.

In this report, the primary efforts are spent blurring the line between “information transmission” and “broadcasting”.  As it is, this distinction becomes less meaningful as we’re all essentially broadcasting ourselves through digital media every time we share something with the online community, but this planned legislation wants to solidify it and give it a name.  In this case, that name is “open communication”.

These two words, open communication, are insanely vague and can mean everything from sending text messages through cell phones, to writing this post right here.  Online content is currently excluded from from government regulation thanks to the limited scope in the existing laws.  But with the change, all online content with the exception of private messages (email, text messages, instant messaging, etc.) will be targeted by this policy.  Blogs, websites, online forums and every other means of communication online will be subject to the new laws.

What are the laws going to be, you ask?  Well, online content judged to be “harmful” according to standards which aren’t clear and/or don’t exist yet, would be subject to law-enforced correction or removal.  The report doesn’t talk about prison time, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility it might exist.

Considering how I now live in this country and hope to call it home for many years to come, I’m strongly opposed to any regulation of the internet.  China’s trying to do this and all it’s managed to do is create a 2-tier internet in that country.  Other nations have strong controls on their ISP’s and it’s changed the entire purpose of the online system.  What’s the point of being online if you can’t get the information you need or hear opinions that might not be popular with the existing government?

For now this legislation will only be for content that is hosted from inside of Japan, but how hard would it be to take the incredibly vague “open communications” name and apply it to content hosted anywhere on the planet?  Rather than legally go after someone in another nation, though, it wouldn’t take much to have all ISP’s put a block on a particular site, or filter out pages with specific key words.  Heck, my previous employer did this and it infuriated me … made the internet almost useless enough that I stayed focussed on work for more than six hours a day
Seriously, though.  Governments shouldn’t be regulating content.  Right to free speech is in the Japanese constitution, just as it is in the constitutions of several other nations that claim to be democratic.  Taking away these rights is tantamount to “Thought Police”, and I don’t care to think about such things in my home countries.  You can leave that crap in America.

I hadn’t planned on becoming involved in Japanese politics, but if this is the road they’re going to start travelling, then I can’t keep my mouth shut and let it happen.  I might not like what people have to say sometimes, but I’ll be damned if someone takes away the right to say it.

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Reiko and I were out shopping for our wedding rings today and I must say, I’m surprised that we can rarely find exactly what we’re looking for.  We’ve been to so many shops all over Gifu and Aichi prefectures, and none seem to have exactly what we’re looking for.  Perhaps it’s time we sit down with some graph paper and design our own.

It’s not that the rings here are not attractive or anything, really.  Instead, we’re just having trouble finding a matched pair of wedding bands that would look good on both of us.  Then there’s the issue of style.  Both of us are looking for something relatively simple and attractive, but the rings seem to be either overly functional (a.k.a. no imagination) or overly feminine.

We did manage to find a nice set here in Kakamigahara today, but it’s a toss up between two styles.  Tomorrow we’ll be going to another place to see if we can find what we want there.

Anyone know how much it costs to have a custom set of rings made?

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Cell phones in Japan seem to be the ultimate achievement in technology.  Everybody has one, and most people spend several hours a day staring at the tiny screens to read and send messages, play games or watch TV.  However, there’s another common use for these little devices and it leaves quite a few foreigners feeling uncomfortable:  Unapproved snapshots.

I can think of three seperate occasions where I caught a person intentionally taking my picture without permission and, each time, it was done the very same way.  A young woman would hold up her cell phone in an obvious manner within 10 meters and would wait until I looked her way to snap the photo.  Considering how almost all cell phones have cameras and are permanently attached to at least one hand in this country, this means there could be even more of my photos floating around.  Some colleagues have noticed similar activities and it makes me wonder if there have ever been unforseen consequences for the native photographers.

Taking someone’s photo without consent in Canada or the US can result in a trip to the hospital or a police station if not done properly.  In most cases, it simply involves a subject demanding a photo be deleted, but sometimes it does get a little violent.  So why is it any different in Japan?

After speaking to a few people here about Japanese photography habits I’ve learned that situations such as this are innocent 95% of the time and should be taken as a compliment.  It means that someone thinks you (or your dog, or whatever they’re taking a picture of) is either attractive, cute or funny looking and they’d like the opportunity to talk about you with friends later.  Chances are that the photo will be gone and forgotten within a week of the snapshot.

This kind of reminds me of summer time when barely clothed humans are crawling the beaches and city centers while everybody is talking about the people around them.  The only difference here is that someone is taking your appearance somewhere else to be judged or scrutinized and you don’t have the same opportunity.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s time to do some random street experiments….

So here’s my idea, and you’re free to do the same if you ever find yourself in this situation.  I’m going to carry a good quality camera with me and ensure it’s always ready to click within 5 seconds.  Then, whenever someone points a cell phone at me in an obvious manner, I do the same right back at them with a 10 Megapixel Digic-III powered Canon.  There are exceptions, of course, but I think this would be an interesting exercise.

Do the photographers want to be photographed themselves?  Would they be bothered by the 8 Megapixel difference between their puny cell phone CCD and my Canon SuperDigital?

Once I have the opportunity to try it out on a few people, I’ll let you know.  Sometimes I wonder if my random street experiments will land me in some sort of legal trouble ….

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