Japan in summer

Have you noticed the weather in Tokyo this week?   Last Sunday (my last day there), it was 35 degrees; yesterday - 36!

This is the first time I have spent much time in Japan in summer, and yes, it can indeed be very humid and hot.   I also suspect that sprawling Tokyo would have one of the hottest "urban heat island" effects around, and I wonder how much of that is reflected in the temperatures.

Googling the topic:  hey, my hunch that there is a huge UHI effect in that city is right:

Over the past 100 years, Tokyo's average temperature has increased by about three degrees Celsius, and that of Osaka has increased by two degrees Celsius (C). Since it is said that global warming has raised the Japan's average temperature by about one degree C, the temperature increase due to the UHI effect is probably about two degrees in Tokyo and about one degree in Osaka.

Along with the UHI effect, an increasing number of patients suffering from heat stroke and other heat disorders have recently been admitted to emergency rooms. In Tokyo, the number of such patients brought to hospitals by ambulances increased to 1,300 persons in 2007 from 200 in 1996. Some studies show a correlation between deaths from heat stroke and the heat experienced during extremely hot days and sweltering summer nights.

(There are lots more articles about UHI in Japan if you care to Google it.)

The good news:  I was surprised at how well airconditioned the Tokyo metro trains and stations were.   I'm not sure whether the above ground parts of Toyko Station are as good, though:  certainly, on one previous day we were there, when it wasn't as hot as later in the week, it seemed there was inadequate airconditioning in large sections, and it was quite unpleasant.  But perhaps it was just that day?

Outside of Tokyo, the humid heat (in the high 20's and low 30's quite a few days) was still fairly unpleasant for the on-foot tourist.   But we did only have one day with some interference from rain, so perhaps we were lucky in that regard.

As for dressing for the hot weather:  you will read that shorts are mainly for the younger male in Japan, but I think it fair to say that the willingness of  middle aged Japanese men to wear them must have increased in recent years.  (There were certainly many on sale at Uniqlo, too.)   I regretted that I had only brought one pair with me. 

And as for long, slim legged trousers:  given that I have only recently acquired some relatively slim leg chinos myself (look, they may have been in fashion for 5 to 10 years already, but cotton chinos can last nearly a decade if you can control your weight - OK?) I had not realised until this trip how they make for such hot and sweaty legs in hot and humid weather.

Honestly, men (and women) who wear them outdoors in summer are fashion victims, if you ask me. 

In any event, if you have a choice, I would say it is obvious that the height of summer is not the preferred time to be in Japan.   Autumn and (especially) spring would have to be the pick of the seasons.

Flying to Japan - via Jetstar Dreamliner

One great thing about living in Brisbane is the frequent cheap airfares on sale for Japan (assuming you want to holiday there - and you should)  via Jetstar from the Gold Coast.  

This recent trip, the first one I've been on for 6 years was on a new-ish plane - the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  

First observation:  I had forgotten about how this plane was made with really flexible carbon fibre wings, so I was surprised to see how high they flex upwards just in normal cruising, level flight:

 

OK, so it's hard to give the correct impression from photographing it, but that is a "level" shot out of the window, and believe me, the tip of that wing is riding high.  

As for the interior:   I thought the seats were nice (we're talking economy, by the way), with the flexible headrest part (with "wings" you can tilt up to form a bit of a cradle while trying to sleep) a particularly nice feature.  Even the legroom seems quite adequate to me, and overhead lockers were large.  The "mood lighting", which I remember reading about when it was being built, is nice enough, but not all that noticeable.   The windows with the electronic frosting were large and good for someone (like me) who likes to spend a lot of time peering outside. 

But on the downside, and it is quite a downside:  who on earth designed the toilets?  Is the lid which will not sit back properly a deliberate thing to stop attempts at squatting on the toilet seat (there was a "no squatting"  diagram on the wall, so I assume this can be an issue).   Why is how to flush the toilet not made more obvious?    Why did the toilet on the trip over flush unexpectedly all the time?   Has any other airliner every had twin toilets with such a lightweight wall between the two stalls?    

The stalls themselves are really noticeably small, and on the daytime flight over, I also doubted the aircraft had been designed with enough of them.  (Yes, I know, line up for toilets can be common on all long haul flights on any aircraft, but these ones were really overused.)   The overnight flight back was much better in that regard, though.

As for Jetstar service:  well, they are a pretty "no nonsense" sort of airline, so you don't expect to get a lot of attention from cabin staff.   I thought they were OK overall.   (They could afford to get a bit of a better look with their uniforms, though, surely - especially with the men wearing pretty much just a polo shirt.)  

So the Dreamliner:   a good aircraft, marred (at least in Jetstar's case) by terrible toilet arrangements.

Two Brexit views

First, I see from James Annan's blog that it had an immediate bad effect on academics in England, whose working life was, it seems, already uncertain enough.

But today in The Guardian, a bit of a surprising defence of Brexit from Simon Jenkins, although I do find his analogy here somewhat amusing:

Brexit is starting to deliver. British politics was constipated and has now overdosed on laxative. It is experiencing a great evacuation. It has got rid of a prime minister and is about to get rid of a leader of the opposition. It will soon be rid of a chancellor of the exchequer and a lord chancellor. It is also rid of two, if not four, Tory heirs apparent. Across the spectrum the left is on the brink of upheaval and perhaps historic realignment, if only the Liberal Democrats have the guts to engineer it. The Greens and Ukip have both lost their leaders. An entire political class is on the way out. As Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

It seems to me that Jenkins' welcoming attitude, even though he voted to stay, is from a Left wing perspective.   But he paints such a positive picture of its good effects, you have to question his voting judgement in the first place.

A Krugman review

Money: The Brave New Uncertainty of Mervyn King by Paul Krugman | The New York Review of Books

Here's another readable and intelligent review by Paul Krugman of a significant economics book.

Japanese observations - grooming

Let's get started on a series of posts arising from my recent Japanese holiday.  First, the trivial:   Japan and modern male grooming.

Shopping for personal hygiene products in Japan is educational and fun.  As I noted back in 2009, there has been an insult going around the country for some years that the young Japanese male is too "herbivorous", unlike his more carnivorous (read:  more masculine) predecessors, and supermarket toiletries certainly gives the impression that hair styling is of great (one could say, dandy-ish) interest to the modern Japanese young male.   Although, come to think of it, there are a great many waxes, gels and styling stuff available to the modern Australian male in the supermarket now, too.   (And, it's also true that nothing in Japan compares to the heights of silly European male self indulgence in fashion of the 17th and 18th century.   I still giggle every time I see this painting.)

Anyway, looking at the Japanese product range is amusing, with the ubiquitous "Gatsby" brand having "hair jams", waxes and gels with odd, though admittedly creative, names.  From the Gatsby Australian online store (with truly ridiculous prices, I might add):

- the "Moving Rubber" range that comes in Cool Wet, Air Rise, Spiky Edge, Wild Shake, Loose Shuffle, and Grunge Mat.

- the "Hair Jams" come in "Smart Nuance", Tight Nuance" and "Loose Nuance".  I see via Google that there are also, in some markets at least, "Edgy Nuance" and "Rough Nuance".

And then there's your wax, foams, "styling grease" (an uninspiring name for a hair product, if ever there was one), sprays and "hair water" products in the Gatsby range, too.

I used up some loose change at the airport drug store by buying some Hair Jam "Smart Nuance" (see, the company knows how to appeal even to my vanity) and am wearing it for the first time today.  I'm quite pleased, so far, although looking at the Singaporean Gatsby site, I see that I am using it in a far different fashion than recommended.  No, this is not what I do to my hair in the morning:



(I just used two drops - honestly, I'd have to be in a higher tax bracket to be using as much as the video recommends. Not to mention at least 30 years younger.)

I don't know, perhaps it's all J-pop and K-pop's fault:  maybe young Japanese women demand their boyfriends have this intense interest in precision hair looks.

But apart from hair grooming, the most notable thing about Japanese toiletries is that it confirms that the entire nation does not have to devote much time to fighting body odour - basically because they don't have that much to begin with.   I would guess that the range of deodorants for sale is about 1/4 of the size of what's available here.  Even foot odour is not much of an issue - it's extremely common to be seated next to a Japanese person on a Shinkansen or aircraft with their shoes slipped off, and never have I have noticed foot stink in a way I have when sitting next to a be-socked Australian.

The relative lack of Japanese body odour has had scientific attention:  it seems a lot of it is to do with the same gene that is responsible for "dry" as opposed to "wet" ear wax.

I should also mention the limited number of shaving foam/gels available:  there is certainly a much broader range of these available in the West.  For some reason, shaving gels which do not foam on the face seem relatively popular.  I've tried them, including on this recent trip, but unless you are shaving in good light, or have dark stubble that is obvious in any light, they don't give a good guide to where the razor has and hasn't been, making final touch ups with the blade after you've rinsed often necessary.   I like the cooling menthol feeling, though, especially in hot weather.  (What is it with Asians and menthol products - they love them in all their forms.)

Still, on returning home, I did appreciate using my L'Occitane shave soap and brush again.  Seemed to give a smoother shave, too.

As for Japanese after shaves:  actually, I do like all of those that I have tried.  Not a huge selection, but the "standard" brands are invariable of a milder smell than their Western equivalents, and in summer, I do quite like the menthol which seems to be a component of most aftershaves.  I recommend people try them - even the somewhat old fashioned smell of Bravas, which my wife thinks is "bay rum" scent and the strongest smelling of the ones I have tried.

So, yes, it's true:  Westerners should not have much faith in finding strong deodorant or good shaving cream in Japan.  Take your own.   But if you're male and want a huge selection of hair product, or good, relatively cheap aftershave, you're set.

Update:   I forget to mention two things.   First, Japanese tubes of men's face wash - even the cheapest supermarket brands - are very good, and actually very useful both for the morning face wash in a land where the only soap in the hotel room is likely to be a body wash liquid soap, and for use as a pretty good shaving soap if you travel with a shaving brush.  You have to like menthol, though.  Chances are it will be menthol.

Secondly, how could I forget to mention this grooming product spotted in a drug store:

Yes, the nasal hair waxing product of your nightmares.  Made in China, you can see in the second picture, so one can get the added thrill of wondering what dangerous chemicals might be in the wax. 

I can imagine this being used in a remake of Marathon Man: "Is it safe?" being asked repeatedly while the wax hardens....

Update 2:  I made a mistake.  I realised it was "tight nuance" Hair Jam I bought, because the dude on the packet had a more conservative style. 

Yay for science

Antarctic ozone hole is on the mend : Nature News & Comment

Minority report

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf minority government? | Club Troppo

A very sensible post by Ken Parish on Australia's silly fear of minority governments.   

Talking Ghibli

Memories of Studio Ghibli – TheTLS

I guess that Studio Ghibli is well and truly beyond the interest of just Japanohiles when the Times Literary Supplement runs commentary on a couple of its films.

The review contains this interesting section:

Both films fit into the Japanese aesthetic tradition of “mono no aware”; most commonly translated as “the pathos of things”, it describes, also, the bittersweet feeling caused by the awareness of transience. This stems from Buddhism, and countless Japanese artworks have traditionally both celebrated and lamented the impermanence of things. Despite its British source material, When Marnie Was There evokes the feeling of mono no aware in the time Anna spends with Marnie; while we celebrate the closeness of their relationship, we also lament the fact that it cannot last.

Drummed off

ABC closes opinion website the Drum with immediate effect | Media | The Guardian

Well, I'm not too cut up about this.   I didn't find myself visiting it all that often, and despite the never ending complaints of Murdoch and the IPA about the ABC crowding out private news companies, I still don't think that  the ABC does on line news and news commentary all that well.  (Especially when it comes to breaking stories, I have often found the ABC website quite slow to be updated.)

As for the TV show:  again, I'm not a fan, and only watch it occasionally.  There's something determinedly bland about it, and its attempts at balance by heavily featuring IPA talking heads is more like false balance: the positions of the IPA are actually pretty extreme and ideological (and in the case of climate change and tobacco, positively despicable), yet their talking heads are rarely challenged about the organisation they work for by the host or the other guests.

If it was up to me, I would kill the TV show, too.

The Return

Well I'm back from Japan, and more posts are coming soon.

A couple of things:

1.  my hunch about the election being much closer than most pundits (or certainly, the betting market) expected turned out pretty right.*

2.  I think I read that Tim Wilson won his seat with an increase in the Liberal vote (even when the predecessor was the high profile Andrew Robb).   For a man already with an ego the size of Tasmania (well, if self promotion is any guide to such things), this is a bad sign.  I half expect that if Turnbull loses the PM job, Timbo will be putting himself up as a replacement candidate immediately.


*   I'll add this to the list of things I have correctly picked over the years - that Rudd would be at risk of being stabbed by his own MPs - well before it happened;  the exact number of college votes by which Obama would win his second election (true - a prediction made at a Catallaxy thread); and that Helen Dale would leave her job with Leyonhjelm within 2 years.

Cohen on Brexit

Prominent later life anti Leftist Nick Cohen really gets stuck into the pro-Brexit politicians in the Guardian today.  More reason to think it was a bad decision.

Brexit noted

I really haven't followed the Brexit story in any detail at all, except that I was applying two excellent and reliable rules of thumb:

the rabid Right, and the anti-regulation, must have small government at any cost ideology tank (it's not really a "think tank",) IPA was thoroughly for it; and

Krugman thought it a bad idea, while acknowledging at the same time the problems of the European Union as originally established, and saying that the economic downside won't be quite as bad as some claim.

It is therefore a certainty that the vote outcome is not a good thing.

Krugman's nuanced view is well worth reading (see last link.)

Also, it's a tad ironic, or something, that the Right took advantage in this campaign of a refugee crisis that is essentially of their own making.  If it weren't for the fact that socialism is perfectly capable of still conducting fantasy experiments that cause economic and social disasters (see Venezuela) the "street cred" of the Right in terms of experiments it's been willing to try has been taking a battering in the last decade or so.  But some idiot somewhere  is usually still giving nutty economists grounds to point and say "ha!  Look at how bad Leftist experiments are!"

Current sources of happiness

*  Brooklyn Nine-Nine, currently running twice a week on SBS 2, I think.  It is just the funniest thing on television.  I think I may have missed the entire second season though, so I perhaps should go looking as to how I could see it.  On Netflix?

*  Anticipating rabbits. 

*  Anticipating a Spielberg movie (I saw today that The BFG is out on 30 June.  Not sure if I will have to bribe the teenagers to see it with me, or not.  They reluctantly went to The Jungle Book, but both liked it.)

* A detailed story about a sport fart incident in The Guardian, which reads as if it could have come from The Onion. 

* I dunno, I still think an election upset in Australia is a possibility:  probably with Xenophon and The Greens undertaking to support a Labor government.

*  Speaking of the election, when going to vote early the other day, one of the staff recognised me from 30 years ago.  For the last 20 years, she had been living in the next door suburb, no doubt shopping at the same local shopping centre, but we had never run into each other.   Anyway, after giving me sufficient hints as to where I should remember her from, I did remember her first name.  Good.  Brain not degenerating too much yet.

*  And speaking of memory:  I had a dream the other night in which I was annoyed I could not remember the name of a friend's child.  (Which would have been true while awake too, as I knew I had been thinking of the child recently.)   Anyway, it was in the dream that the name suddenly came to me.  Seemed a mundane thing to be dreaming about, but interesting how the brain recalled it while asleep.

* About to catch a plane, for the first time in a few years.  Posting may be light for a little while...

Current annoyances

Hey, what good is maintaining a blog if you can't complain to no one in particular?

1.   Ear candles being sold in pharmacies.   Yes, I first saw them in a pharmacy years ago, but last night I saw them again, and in a suburb with a big university student population.   This really annoys me - a totally useless, fantasy science based product that is barely a step above employing a witch doctor to provide consultations in the corner.  (In fact, that may be considerably safer.)  Lift your game, pharmacists!

2.  The extraordinary number of words still devoted to a violent fantasy soap opera each new season.   You know the show I am talking about (OK, Game of Nudes About to be Killed, or whatever) - and given that I noticed some news story devoted to explaining how a particularly realistic violent death was done in a recent episode, I still consider it extremely likely that the show is morally degrading.  

3. While I'm getting indigent about corrupting TV shows - what about Drunk History??  I've tried watching a couple of episodes of the British version of this show on SBS on Demand, and I was going to go on a rant about the depravity of modern England, but I gather now that in fact the British version came after an American version, which I have never seen.   In any event, I can't imagine a stupider idea from a social policy point of view than starting a show with "And today's narrator, after downing 2 pints of lager and 8 double scotch and soda, will now tell the story of ...."   I mean, for God's sake, are they serious about the amount claimed to have been consumed at the start of the show - because in one episode it sounded literally enough to kill some people if it was consumed within a couple of hours.   Honestly, I really can't imagine a worse idea:  well I can, although I suppose executive producers may be somewhat wary of going to jail if they try a show based on comedians who have just snorted two lines of coke.  And if they try one based on stoned comedians in cannabis legal America - being stoned just doesn't make people funny, from my limited experience around them.  But in any event, as far as I could make out, the end result even with alcohol is just not very funny.  It is a terrible idea.

More lightning deaths, or just more news?

India lightning strikes leave 93 people dead - BBC News

Seems to me that for some reason, international deaths by lightning are attracting more media attention lately.  Is it just journalists noticing this for the first time, or is there an unusual amount of lightning this year?  

Best to lose

Gee, I think it in David Leyonhjelm's best interest not to win re-election to the Senate.  The stress of the job is changing him in subtle but noticeable ways: 

Krugman talks Europe (again)

When Virtue Fails - The New York Times

Rabbiting away

Soon, I hope to be meeting rabbits - scores of rabbits. 

So it seems appropriate that I note Beachcomber's recent post about killer rabbits.  

I expect the ones I meet to be nicer.

To be read later, I'm a bit busy...

How American Politics Became So Ineffective - The Atlantic

South Pole rescue

Daring Antarctic rescue mission sets off for South Pole : Nature News & Comment

Someone's sick at the South Pole station and a little twin engine plane is flying there to the rescue.  It has happened before, but the conditions are extraordinary:

In 2001, Ron Shemenski, another physician overwintering at the station, came down with gallstones and pancreatitis. The NSF decided his condition was severe enough to warrant bringing him out. “I didn't want to look back on that year and think there might have been something we could have done to save his life,” says Jerry Macala, who was the station manager for the winter and participated in discussions about whether to evacuate Shemenski. Eventually, a Twin Otter flown by Kenn Borek pilots touched down on a runway outlined by
flaming barrels.

“It was very cold, more than 90 below,” says Nathan Tift, who served as one of two meteorologists that winter. The evacuation was “so strange”, he says, “just because it had never happened before”. Crew members filed out and took a photograph of themselves with the visiting Twin Otter. But then, when the plane tried to take off, they realized that its skis had frozen to the runway from the friction of landing.

Workers had to rock the plane from side to side to liberate it, so that it could eventually take off.