I share the sentiment

Unusual criminal case

I saw this on the news last night:

An elderly Queensland man has been charged in relation to an alleged string of assaults on women in parks over a two-month period this year.

The 83-year-old man allegedly approached multiple women in public parks, in separate incidents, before assaulting them.

The alleged attacks occurred in the Acacia Ridge and Springfield areas between September and October this year.

I have heard before that elderly men in nursing homes can be sex pests - it's pretty rare to hear of one who has put it into practice in public parks.  And I don't mean to imply that this guy was a mere "pest" - he's actually charged with one count of rape:

The Springfield Lakes man has been charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of rape.

Gawd.

Things noticed

Look, if Noah Smith, David Roberts and David Frum quit Twitter/X I will too, but while ever they are posting there I'll keep reading it. I mean, I don't really want to move into Zuckerworld, which still seems to be the main competitor.

Anyway, a few things from  disgraceful Musk's playhouse:

Back and, um, mildly depressed?

Before I get to regular life again, a few other points to remind myself in future:

*  when buying a data SIM in another country, for me, 3 GB per week seems to be plenty.  And that's with quite a  bit of use for Google Maps.

*  don't forget to take the pin like tool for opening the phone's sim card tray.

*  Japan doesn't give you a mobile number with its traveller's SIMs.  Singapore does.  In fact, Singapore is the most ridiculously generous place for tourist SIM deals, it seems - $12 for 15 days with 100GB of data.  

* curry ramen (a particularly Kyoto thing) is pretty "meh".

* Kobe seems particularly into Indian and Tibetan curry.  Not that I ate any, but it definitely has a lot of restaurants of that kind.

* wearing loafers on a day you are visiting a lot of temples makes the whole "shoes off/shoes on" thing a lot easier than wearing sneakers.

* peak Kyoto autumn is the second half of November, but the first half is very nice too.

*  despite an increasingly tough line being taken in Japan about where smokers can do their smoking, you can still find yourself beside someone doing it in an eating place in Japan - especially a cheaper izakaya.

*  basic "business hotels" are cheap but not exactly tourist orientated.  But a hotel that caters for both the business and tourist market can feature neat things, such as microwaves being available in a central room with which you can reheat food bought from one of the incredible department store basement food halls.

 

Random Japanese notes

* I mentioned before the news stories about the unusually large number of bear attacks this year, and yeah, the country was still talking about it during the visit. Well, by that I mean, I saw a lengthy NHK studio discussion about it on TV, in the rather boring style Japanese TV specialises in.  

*  I also never noticed on earlier visits how much they were interested in eating them.  Maybe some sort of revenge logic going on? :).  There was this bowl of noodles for sale in a rural area:

which translates as "bear soba". But then, even in Kyoto there was a ramen shop (popular with locals) near my hotel which I am reliably told used broth made with bear bones.  

* I also got the impression that hunting has generally become more of a thing in the country.  And look at this story:

Bear bounty introduced by Akita governor pays ¥5,000 per bear to hunters

* OK, apart from bear madness, what else is new?  Well, as every story about tourism in Japan says, there are a lot of tourists around, especially in Kyoto, but people seem to forget how much the Japanese love to visit the city too.  And justifiably.  If temples, history, gardens and food are your thing (or just any one of the above) it's fantastic.  I mean, seriously:

* Why are taxi drivers in this country seemingly all over 60?  It's always been like this, I think, but you just never seem to see a driver younger than 50, I reckon.

* Oh it looks like my flight is soon. Later.

Another minor post about Japan

I'm still in Japan for another couple of days, and can't be bothered doing a lengthier post yet, but just wanted to mention that one TV station here seems to show mainly retro shows from the 70s and later.  

That's how I found myself watching an episode of Galaxy Express 999, 

a Japanese anime series from the late 70s.

I have the feeling I had seen a snippet of this before, but I have to say, the imagery from it is very, very "trippy", for want of a better word.

I was interested to read that the guy who wrote it acknowledged the inspiration for a spacefaring train came from a well known kids book by Kenji Miyazawa (who died in 1933).  

I see from Wikipedia that the series plot is rather complicated, and I can tell from the one episode that it's "sci fi melodramatic" in that peculiar way often found in Japanese anime.  

But yeah, the imagery alone is impressive as a feat of imagination.

May be a Westerner cliche to still be impressed by them, but seriously...

...if Japan doesn't have the first permanent toilet on the Moon, there ain't no justice.  Look at this beauty, in a shop window on a street in Kyoto, looking about as futuristic as a toilet possibly can:

Still looking at leaves

And shrines/temples:

And eating (sometimes) like this:

More soon...

Holiday snaps, continued

As you can see on the right hand side of this photo, even Buddhism can't escape kawaii in Japan:

More detail here:

Anyway, this temple has a family connection, and I think I have visited each time  I have been in Japan.

The gardens around it are very well maintained, and the different colours to be seen today were very pleasing.

Down the road, another temple uphosts a pretty spectacular set of ginkgo trees:

And to the side:

Also, an unusual but of signage:

And tonight, a nicely dressed local:

I have high hopes for some more autumn photos tomorrow, as a result of venturing into the countryside.

Starts with T

Guess the city...

No bears have yet been sighted.

More....

The central station has quite a fan base...and in fact I reckon more so amongst the locals than the foreigners.

Here's a more distant shot..

Behind here, you run into the grounds of the Imperial palace, which you can't see.  But there is a park near here too, which was busy today because it was a public holiday, and about 22 degrees.  

But if course, a nice day outside can't keep me from a good bookstore, and Maruzen, right beside the station, probably has the biggest English section I have ever seen in Japan.  I mean, look at this - this is just the philosophy row!

This is where I found books that ask the big questions:

Indeed.

And:

Tonight I have ventured North, and the wifi in the otherwise modest hotel is about 10 times faster than what I get at home on the NBN.  

At those speeds, I'll be posting more. Seems a waste not to.

Pretty accurate satire

Odd details of madness

CNA talks about the guy with schizophrenia who killed 18 in Maine:

The Reserve unit told the sheriff's office that Card, a 40-year-old sergeant, had reported "hearing voices" that tormented him with accusations of paedophilia and of having a small penis, and that he had threatened to "shoot up" the Saco drill centre and other places, according to an incident report released by the sheriff's office.

At least one soldier who was friendly with Card told his unit leaders that Card's behaviour was so alarming that he feared "Card was going to snap and commit a mass shooting", according to the Army Reserve unit's September email released by the sheriff's office....

In the Sagadahoc County sheriff's account, his office agreed not to make direct contact with Card after his teenage son and ex-wife reported their concerns on May 3, in which they told a deputy that Card's anger and paranoia worsened after he got a hearing aid in February.

They said Card had recently picked up 10 to 15 handguns and rifles he had stored at his brother's house and that they feared his anger if Card learned they had contacted the police, an incident report said.

You can read the rest of the report to hear how half-arsed was the attempt to find him and remove access to a mini arsenal of guns. 

But it is interesting how his "hearing voices" worsened after he got a hearing aid.   It's a common feature of modern schizophrenia that sufferers rationalise a technological reason why they can now hear what they couldn't before.  I'm pretty sure that's what happened to Evelyn Waugh when he had a bout of hearing voices and put it into mildly fictionalised form in a book.   I did a brief post about this once before - back in 2011 - and it links to an article about this.

This always makes me wonder about how it's odd that this rationalisation is not recognised by the sufferer as a clear sign they are starting on a mental illness.   (Along the lines of "hey, I never used to believe telepathy was possible, and I have heard that people with madness often think it's a new technology, just like I am wondering.  Am I going mad?)   Although I guess it's also quite likely that most people who come down with schizophrenia have not read accounts of it.   

I know, that's not how mental illness works, but I still like to hope I would recognise it...

Hurricane damage

It stills seems that war in Gaza has sucked most of the attention away from the remarkable amount of destruction in Acapulco.   These photos at NPR give a pretty good indication.

I wasn't sure how big a city it was - Google tells me about 850,000.   A great many of them no doubt without any livelihood now due to what appears to be the complete destruction of tourist infrastructure.

Can we just ban reality TV?

Is it just me getting cranky as I age, but this is my second complaint about a reality TV format - this time, Alone.

I've barely seen it - but my main objection is similar to that I have with respect to SAS Australia:  I find the idea of people completely unnecessarily punishing themselves for money or "fame" to be a semi-offensive waste of time.   In the case of Alone, I can throw in some general animal cruelty misgivings too.  Yeah, that rabbit, possum, or (apparently, in the case of overseas version of the show) beaver, moose or wolverine (!) is being hunted and killed for entertainment purposes, basically.  (Well, it seems the wolverine was killed when it came to eat some of the moose the dude had killed.)   

Now look - some hunting of animals I'm not going to lose sleep over, provided it's done humanely and it is put to good use.   But deliberately going out in a competition where you have to kill something to live, which might turn into a "clean kill" or might not, when you could stick to your day job and eat a farmed animal killed in pretty humane conditions ... yeah, I have a problem with that.  Why don't more people?  (This topic did get a run on Reddit, I see. A lot of people defend it by saying that the contestants eat a lot less meat than they would at home - so it's a net benefit to the animal kingdom.  I remain very dubious.)

As for people punishing themselves - well, it probably helps explain why I don't have time for any extreme sport.   Running through deserts, even marathons strike me as a waste of time and effort.  The biggest punishment in Alone is apparently contestants starving - or being cold and wet.  How entertaining.  (Not.)

I'm going to sort this all out when I am crowned benefit dictator by our new alien overlords.  (According to Twitter, they are about to arrive any day now.  I wonder how I get them to pick me?)  

This seems under reported

On NHK, the Japanese government news service:

Bear attacks in Japan are on the rise, with the number of incidents reaching a record high for the period from April to July this year. Amid the escalating cases, the environmental ministry is calling on people to be on alert and take extra precautions.

Bear encounters led to 53 reported cases of injury across the country, including 15 in Iwate Prefecture, nine in Akita Prefecture and seven in Fukushima Prefecture. The overall number represents an all-time high since record keeping began in fiscal 2007.

Some attacks have been fatal. In May, a fisherman went missing while out on a lake in Hokkaido. A search party found a bear with waders in its mouth and partial human remains nearby. A hunter in the search party shot dead the 1.5-meter-long bear. Later, DNA testing confirmed the remains belonged to the missing person.

Ministry officials warn that more bears are likely to appear in residential areas in the northern part of the country this autumn as they forage for food. The acorns that make up their diet have become scarce in their natural habitat.

 I'm going to be in one of those prefectures soon!  

There's also an 8 minute video on the problem, which towards the end features one of those very unintentionally funny to the rest of us Japanese idea where a man in a bear suit is used for educational purposes.