And so we say farewell to yet another Minister of Agriculture. It’s often said there’s a revolving door at the Min of Ag., and it’s really been on a spin recently.

The Shinzo Abe administration saw 3 Ministers. You wouldn’t have thought there was time, but surely there was. Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who committed suicide in May of last year, was succeeded by Norihiko Akagi. He lasted all of 60 days but you’ll remember him as the chap who turned up at a press conference with an unshaven and bandaged face, looking like he’d taken the wrong route home.

Masatoshi Wakabayashi then warmed the Ministry seat for about three weeks before Takehiko Endo took over officially. Mr Endo then made Akagi look like a stayer by resigning after a mere 8 days in office. Mr Wakabayashi was called back for his second stint in a fortnight.

Seiichi Ota took over the reins at the beginning of August. And today he’s decided to take responsibility (as is the ministerly tradition) for the tainted rice scandal by buggering off and doing nothing at all to help clear up the mess. Very noble, I’m sure.

That’s 6 ministers in 16 months if you’ve lost count. At this rate, within a few years, we’ll all get a go at being the Agriculture Minister.

It’s fair to say that when he “started playing that country gold” more than 50 years ago, there was no country and western scene in Japan. What there is today is largely down to his tireless efforts, and those of his friends.

Charlie Nagatani and his family also run a ’saloon’, Good Time Charlie, in Kumamoto city. When I spoke to him there recently, he was a busy man. But that’s his default setting - “He can’t stop,” his son told me, “He’s like one of those fish that has to keep swimming.” In between stints on stage, Charlie went around the tables chatting with every guest, many of whom are personal friends, all of whom are fans. And when not playing host, he was busily taking orders over the phone for tickets for ‘Country Gold‘ (more of which later).

I asked Charlie about how all this started.

“A friend of mine remembers when you used to play at the clubs on the US military bases when he was in the Army about 40 years ago, based at Brady Air Base, out in Saitozaki. When did you first get into C&W and how? When did you start playing C&W?”

Camp Brady reminds me of a good ol’ days and we used to go there often to perform at clubs way back in around 1968 as well as Itazuki Air Force Base, Sasebo Naval Station and Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station. Well, on my 20th birthday one of my friends who used to work at Camp Wood US Army Base in Kumamoto presented me a Happy Birthday present and that was a country & western band. I first listened it and felt something strong in my mind. Soon I dropped out of studing at University and decided to start a band to be a country music singer. It was 1956 and country music changed my whole life. I felt it has something different compared to other music ( simplicity / sincerity / sadness) and moreover I loved its melody and lyrics.

Every time I’ve been to the bar, Good Time Charlie, he’s been there and played a set.

“How long has GTC been open? Do you play every night that you can?”

I’ve been running Good Time Charlie for almost 33 years and playing 7 nights a week except New Year’s Eve and January 1st.

The interior of the saloon is a country fan’s dream. The place is plastered from floor to ceiling with memorabilia, from photos of country legends, to vintage posters advertising the likes of Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Loretta Lynn. A cabinet contains gifts and awards, including the prestigious Jim Reeves Memorial Award, which he was awarded by the Academy of Country Music in 2005, “in recognition of outstanding contributions to the acceptance of country music throughout the world”. In an alcove hang thank you notes from presidents of the United States, and certificates denoting Charlie’s honorary citizenship of 33 American states.

But there seems to be a close connection with the state of Montana. How did that come about?

Regarding Montana, Kumamoto is a sister state with Montana so most of the Governors who visited Kumamoto come to my club to enjoy our performance of country songs from old to new and I was given an honorary citizenship by former Governor Ted Schwinden.

“So why is C&W so popular in Kyushu? I don’t think the following is that big in Tokyo, but what is your sense about the popularity of C&W in other parts of Japan?”

The reason is there are lots of country music fans in Kyushu, I was born and raised up here in Kumamoto and I really love my home town, so I wanted to remain local to spread it out to all over but it was so hard to keep it and very hard to let them know how wonderful the music is, although I know it’s easy to do it in big cities like Tokyo and Osaka. It took a long time to make country music fans around me but I always believe that country music is the best music in the world. Many American friends wonder about me because I was born in Japan and they all ask me why I love their country’s music culture so deeply more than anybody else in USA.

Country Gold is an open-air festival held every October against the stunning backdrop of Mount Aso, attended by up to 20,000 fans, and to which Charlie has attracted some of the biggest country and western stars. This year the festival (Sun. Oct 19) celebrates its 20th anniversary.

“How did Country Gold start? Was it planned or did it just sort of happen? Were you determined then to see it grow into the international occasion that it is today?”

When Former Prime Minister Hosokawa (he was our Governor before he became Prime Minister) built the world biggest out door stage at the foot of Mt. Aso called ASPECTA, he consulted me about doing a country music show there. I sent a letter to the CMA (Country Music Association in Nashville) saying that I’d like to open a country music festival in Japan so will you please introduce anyone who can help me plan it. Then I received a few letters from agents and I picked up one of them and started it and that was 1989 so this year will be 20th Anniversary! I can’t believe it. I thank Judy Seale who I picked up that first year and still she is working with me (20 great years and we are both getting old…). I’ve met many, many wonderful people through this great music in Japan and the States and it’s a treasure which money can’t buy.

****** BREAKING NEWS ******

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has announced his resignation in a brief news conference this evening.

He claimed his government had implemented ground-breaking reforms, but the refusal of the Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) to negotiate meant legislative stalemate. He said that “new policies should be pursued under new leadership”.

Looks like Taro Aso’s time has finally come.

For a bit of balance, and following on from our article on blue bees the other day, let’s take a look at the other end of apiological scale.

If those gentle, quiet blue bees were old ladies on trundling mamachari, then vespa mandarinia would be helicopter gunships.

For vespa mandarinia is the giant asian hornet, and if you’ve yet to meet one, believe me, that name is no exaggeration…

(if you’re in any way phobic, leave now)

Nature-lovers, you might have caught a story in last week’s Asahi Shimbun about a rare and unusual kind of bee to be found buzzing around Japan, and in particular at the Aso Highland Museum Park, in Kumamoto prefecture.

Though the article seemed to downplay the chances of finding any, we decided to make the trip up into the highlands to the museum anyway, as it lies at the foot of Mount Aso, which is always worth trip, bees or no bees.

Dotted around the museum’s garden, there were patches of flowering basil, and busily buzzing around these bushes were hundreds of insects - including some blue and black striped bees.

As I crouched next to the plant, waiting for an opportune moment to take a snap, with the bees buzzing around my head, it struck how quiet they were. In fact they were barely buzzing at all. Occasionally one would stop and hover in front of my face, as if it were checking me out. This made them seem very friendly, though I may just have been caught up in the moment.

More photos of the unmistakeable blueness can be seen here.

Mrs Overoften uncovered this KitKat in a local shop, and knowing I have a passing interest in these matters, brought it home.

This KitKat gives you a vocabulary lesson in various ben (dialects) around Kyushu.

For example, starting in the north, you can see that those folks in Fukuoka say すいとう for 好きだ (suki da), which will translate as anything from “I like it” to “I love you”.

Going west to Saga-ken you see that locals say がばい (gabai) for とても or 非常に, meaning ‘very’.

In Nagasaki-ken やぐらしか (yagurashika) means うっとうしい (too much). Over in Oita-ken, they say どおくる (dookuru) for おちょくる (ochokuru), which is to make fun of someone.

Round these parts, Kumamoto-ken, もっこす means 頑固者 or わがまま (stubborn, obstinate).

Over in Miyazaki-ken, よだきい means 面倒くさい (too much trouble, can’t be bothered). Meanwhile people in Kagoshima-ken are said to say ぼっけもん for こわいもの知らず (brave, but closer to reckless).

And now with this vocabulary lesson firmly implanted in your memory you can sit back and reward yourself with a cup of coffee, and a KitKat. (I am not affiliated to Nestlé but will accept gifts from them should anyone from HQ be reading this.)

I was invited to a barbecue earlier in O-bon week. But not at my friend’s own house, at a relative’s place. And having never been there before, it took some finding.

If you’ve never been to Japan before, it may surprise you to know that roads have no names, and houses have no street numbers.

OK, major roads have numbers. (Though this is not necessarily helpful. Two different roads where I live have the same number.) And in city centres, some major avenues have names. But in residential areas, forget it.

So how do you find anyone’s house, you’re thinking? Well, usually it involves heading in the right vague direction and phoning your friend when you arrive at some particular landmark, where your friend can come and meet you, or is already waiting.

That’s not to say that Japanese houses don’t have addresses. Of course they do. But they’re a convaluted and complicated code understood only by the geniuses at the Post Office. The idea of any convenience to the general public has been entirely left out.

Each city and town is divided into smaller, named areas. This can be difficult for a new arrival. You won’t know most of the names, and this will inexplicably amaze most locals, who will name some place you will assume to be a faraway town, but what in fact turns out to mean “just down there, and round that corner”.

And each of these areas is divided into numbered areas. And depending on whether we’re talking about a village or a city, we keep paring down with more numbers until we get to an individual building. There is usually no geographical basis to these numbers (it’s more likely based on the order the buildings were built), so give up any idea of finding a place simply because you have the address.

So basically, the entire reason for this post is that by the time we arrived at this barbecue, all the best bits had been eaten or burnt, and everyone else was drunk and beyond caring.

What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? A quick poll I took of Japanese kids revealed banira (vanilla) to be the undisputed champion. Which surprised me. In English slang, after all, vanilla-flavoured has come to mean boring. Anyway, what do kids know. Chocolate is obviously the best flavour.

I didn’t find out about it until it was already over, so alas could not attend, but July and August saw the Ice Cream Expo in Yokohama.

And while all the ordinary fare was on offer, there wouldn’t be much point in an expo if all that was on offer was what you could find down at the supermarket.

But in terms of innovative (weird) flavours, it went far beyond the passé basashi (raw horse meat) and wasabi .

Otaku International has a report with a focus on the more outlandish - octopus, squid, caviar, chicken wings, the foul and dreadful natto, mamushi (the deadly pit viper) (I’ll just repeat that - the deadly pit viper), and the star of the show, ox tongue.

‘Chuwy’ visited the expo and tried a good number of the ice creams on offer, and wrote up his thoughts at the entertaining Chuwy Thoughts.

There are some more photos available in a Mainichi gallery.

Don’t get me wrong, the English like to apologise more often than necessary too. If you step on someone’s foot in a crowd, chances are that they‘ll apologise to you. If you get in someone’s way, and do the side-stepping dance, you’ll probably end up both apologising to each other. The English do say sorry rather a lot.

But endless Japanese apologies, like the one still going on at the Mainichi, get on my nerves.

Apologies are invariably very formal. Always with bowing. Perhaps even, in extreme cases, with face to the ground. For company executives to appear in a row in front of TV cameras and apologise for some heinous wrongdoing committed by someone even tenuously connected to their company, and bow deeply as the flashbulbs go off, they are debasing themselves and this is seen as enough.

Bit of a clash of cultures then, because I don’t and can’t judge a person on how he apologises, but on how he goes about trying to make amends. Essentially, I don’t care what you say or how you say it, I care what you do next. Not for me, then, the tatemae of the ritual apology, and then all forgiven. Nope.

Which is why the endless kerfuffle over the Mainichi’s WaiWai meltdown is starting to get a little tiresome.

For readers who aren’t aware, the Mainichi newspaper used to run a section called the WaiWai in which it ran, in English translation, saucy stories from the more sordid end of the weekly magazines. Most purported to be titillating in some way, and you can bet on the majority being entirely made up. But the point is that the Mainichi didn’t even write them. They just ran translations of them.

Well it all blew up on them, and mounting complaints (about how they were portraying Japan to the English-speaking world) forced the Mainichi into a humiliating apology, and they pulled the WaiWai. They then went into full grovelling apology mode.

And some weeks later, the front page of the Mainichi still diverts to a page-long apology, and a list of promises about how the Mainichi will do better, and then some bowing, a bit more scraping. Get over it already!

Seeing the whole scenario as formulaic, I wonder how anyone can see any genuine value in it whatsoever. And it’s not because I’m a foreigner. At least some of the natives are aware of the silliness of it all too.

In any other country (that I’ve lived in, at least) it’d be akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, but this is Japan, and the Jimintou (the governing Liberal Democratic Party) are of course the party that the public won’t punish.

Today Prime Minister Fukuda is 10 months into his stewardship, with approval ratings below sea-level (of his G8 chums, only Gordon Brown is less popular, and he’s got one foot in the political grave). I doubt even he believes that a cabinet reshuffle will raise those ratings any, but that’s what we got.

There are 17 spots in the cabinet, and 4 of yesterday’s names remained by tea-time. Kyodo reported

Along with [reappointed Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka] Machimura, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe and Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Hiroya Masuda, who does not hold a Diet seat, were the only ones who remain in Fukuda’s Cabinet.

The big news was of course that Taro Aso returns to the fold as the LDP’s secretary general, the post he briefly held in the Abe administration before that came to an abrupt and unexpected close. Most sources are saying that this is seen as attempting to ‘connect with young voters’. Mr Aso reads comics, you know. Which would certainly be a factor in how I decide to vote, oh yes.

Bunmei Ibuki, former LDP secretary general, was appointed as finance minister, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano as economic and fiscal policy minister and Toshihiro Nikai, former LDP General Council chairman, as economy, trade and industry minister.

One unfortunate casualty of the day was ‘Killer’ Kunio Hatoyama, self-confessed al-Qaeda associate, seen here looking terribly dignified and taking his job seriously. After sterling work as the Justice Minister, and creating a new record of signing 13 death warrants in just 10 months in office, he’s replaced by Okiharu Yasuoka.

The Prime Minister later described the new Cabinet as ‘the Cabinet for realizing peace of mind’ (perhaps a little optimistic), going on to say “its mission is to carry out political measures” (perhaps a little obvious).

Pressed on the likelihood of an imminent election, Fukuda said ”The social and economic situations now require us to carry out politics, rather than discussing the lower house dissolution.” So that’ll be a hopeful ‘No’ then.

When asked about the much-discussed hike in consumption tax he told reporters “while fiscal rehabilitation will not be brought about without the sales tax, it is necessary to fully explain to the public how to deal with the issue.” Not consult or discuss, you’ll notice. Explain. Meanwhile, the new Justice Minister says the death penalty must be kept because the public support it. Yay for public opinion - good for back up when you need it, completely irrelevant the rest of the time.

For a full list of the new Cabinet, click here for the Kyodo rundown.

The temperature in my house was over 30 when I awoke, sweating and fully unrested at 7.30 this morning. We’re in for a warm one.

And if ice cream is too fattening, and solace can’t be found in only-good-for-one-glass Japanese beer, what respite is there?

One recommended way of dealing with the oppressive summer is apparently to eat unagi - eel. Eel has been marketed for centuries as a stamina food, a remedy to the sapping heat.

CScout Japan reports on a new ‘black beer’ from Miyashita Brewery, that purports to be the perfect companion to an eel supper. Not sure I’ll be trying it myself, as the brewery describes the beer as “sweet and fragrant”, but perhaps you might. (Though I particularly liked the exhortation that, translated, claims eel and black beer is “new common sense!”)

If you want to take it a step further (and if you’ve come this far, then why not?) you might actually like some eel in your drink. Check out CScout’s whole post for details.

Just when Prime Minister Fukuda was thinking he might have been doing a good job avoiding the sorts of frequent rows with neighbouring South Korea that marked the terms of his predecessors, another furore kicked off this weekend, culminating in Seoul announcing that they were recalling their Japanese envoy.

Yes it’s the continued dispute of the tiny Liancourt rocks, which lie… between the two countries. (Phew, almost said “in the Sea of Japan”. That was close.)

This time the row centres on a manual for junior high school geography teachers which urges the same consideration of the Liancourt rocks (known as Takeshima to the Japanese, and Dokdo to Koreans) as of the northern Kuril islands, which themselves are the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute with Russia. The problem is that later in the manual, it is explicitly stated that “the Northern Territories are an integral part of Japanese territory.”

Cue the flag-eaters in 3, 2, 1…

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak was said to be “deeply disappointed”, while the foreign Ministry announced that Ambassador to Japan, Kwon Chul-hyun, would be recalled in protest, and they’d be summoning Japan’s ambassador to Seoul, Toshinori Shigeie, for a good telling off.

(Next paragraph contains Perspective and Proportion - avoid if allergic)
The passage at the centre of the row appears in only one (of 14) approved Junior high text, and as the Asahi article notes, “only four of 14 junior high textbooks in geography and civics” make any mention of the rocks at all.

After the dreadful knife attack in Akihabara last week, it was discovered that the killer had announced his intent on an internet message board, but his threat was not taken seriously.

Well anything in that vein is being taken very seriously now. On Monday, police made two unconnected arrests of idiots posting online death threats.

Yo Suzuki, 29, of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, was arrested after posting his intent to “to unleash an attack to ‘kill 100 people’ on the streets of Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district” on the 2-Channel bulletin board.

“I saw the TV coverage of the case in Akihabara and thought I’d create a bit of a stir,” Suzuki told the police, referring to the June 8 case where a random killer’s rampage on the Akihabara district of Tokyo claimed seven lives.

“I did it half as a joke,” he said.

Meanwhile in Fukuoka, a 17-year-old girl was arrested after using the same message board as Akihabara killer Tomohiro Kato, to threaten -

I intend to carry out a massacre at a station in Kyushu which will go down in history. I’m the same as Kato. I feel sympathy for him. I will be executed because I will kill more people than he did.

She too later claimed, “I was just joking. I didn’t imagine it would turn into such a big deal.” Well you got that wrong then didn’t you.

A Tokyo trucker, Masahiro Fujiwara, 47, has been arrested on charges of counterfeiting after using a colour photocopier to produce about 10 ¥10,000 notes.

His plan was to replace the bills in his wife’s purse with the fake ones, and go out drinking.

His wife, of course, had no notion that the money in her purse was fake, and spent two of the bills later. Which is when the fireworks started.

He reluctantly turned himself in to police after he was grilled by his wife, who suspected that the bills in her purse were fake, according to investigators.

Ah, the image that that sentence conjures up…

It took my wife a year to train me to take a shopping bag with me when I went over to the konbini to buy lunch. It was all I could do to remember my shoes and what I was supposed to buy when I got there. And when I got there, I usually realised I’d forgotten the bag. But eventually, like Pavlov’s dogs - only different - I was conditioned to hear the call for lunch, and automatically pick up a shopping bag.

What has taken slightly longer is training the staff in the konbini to stop trying to give me another bag every day. Along with chopsticks, spoons, forks, and wipes that I don’t need.

I stood at the cash register, counting out money, the bag tucked under my arm, and keeping my left eye on my money, I’d have to swivel my right eye - chameleon-like - to catch them as they grab a plastic bag. I’d tell them I didn’t need one. They’d express surprise, then thank me, then apologise. I tried variations on this which involved opening the bag obviously while counting out my money, but found that not only did this do nothing to dissuade them from thinking I might like another bag, it also required three hands at the very least.

After two years of standing at the till going through this Groundhog Day routine, I was shaken out of my complacency today. I chatted with the cashier about the weather - good, safe, conversational ground for the English and Japanese - and then something peculiar happened. We just stood looking at each other waiting for someone to do something.

I realised that the routine had been thrown to the wind - she’d overcome her reflex to reach for a bag. Unprepared, I stood there, gormless, with my MyBag (yes, ‘my MyBag‘) under my arm (no, not ‘my MyArm’), until my brain creaked back into action.

When I stepped outside, it was no longer raining. The sun was even making an effort to shine.

Photo from Roseville California community site, entitled ‘The Urban Tumbleweed’

Brighter, sunlit summer evenings are something I miss since moving to Japan. I hide inside under air-conditioning during the day, and by the time I finish work, night has already fallen. In winter you expect that, but in summer?

Really, who needs bright sunshine and searing heat waking you hot and sweaty at 4.30 in the morning, but still have the sun setting no later than 7pm?

Today, the Prime Minister “expressed support for introducing daylight saving time in Japan”

[He noted] an increase in calls for the country not to go against a worldwide trend. “Japan has become one of the few countries that do not use daylight saving time. I think calls are increasing for Japan to introduce such a system,’’ Fukuda said.

Please please please please please…

Reigandou is in a forest on a secluded hillside just outside Kumamoto city centre.

Also known as Musashi’s Cave, it’s the spot that legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto retreated to in the final years of his life, to write Go Rin No Sho (’The Book of Five Rings’).

These days it’s something of a pilgrimage destination.

The path to Musashi’s cave is long, and the mountainside along the route is dotted with ‘500 Buddhas’. On a sunny spring day, in a silence punctuated only by the buzzing of insects, it’s quite a sight.

It’s been argued by many that awareness in Japan of AIDS and HIV is nowhere near as high as it should be.

About a year and a half ago, Kyodo reported the results of a survey which revealed that -

Nearly eight out of 10 long-term care and nursing-care facilities surveyed in Japan have refused to accept patients with HIV who wished to receive long-term treatment or care for their ailments and chronic health symptoms, a survey showed Thursday.

A majority of those facilities cited lack of expertise on AIDS and HIV for their refusal, according to the survey conducted by a team of medical experts led by Hideaki Nagai, head of the department of respiratory diseases at the National Hospital Organization Tokyo National Hospital in Kiyose, suburban Tokyo.

At the time, I said, “A lack of expertise? Haven’t HIV and AIDS been under the world health spotlight for a quarter of a century now? You could excuse the general public a certain level of ignorance, but it’s clear that when these facilities say they can’t help, they’re covering the fact that they don’t want to help.”

But perhaps ‘a lack of expertise’ is right on the money. The Mainichi is running a story this morning about a clinic in Shimane prefecture that, it has been revealed, used the same intravenous needle to take blood from 37 patients…

If you ever find yourself in Kyushu’s Oita prefecture, I recommend a visit to Takasakiyama (Mt. Takasaki) to see the troop(s) of macaques that have made it their home.

Mount Takasaki is famous for its colony of 1500 monkeys. Tourists can venture as far as the old temple partway up the hill (monorail available for those who’ve already put in some hard tourist hours!).

The colony is actually split into three groups of roughly the same size, and the groups come down to the tourist accessible area (because it’s also their feeding area) at different times of the day, for a few hours.

And while there, they spend their time grooming, playing, and sleeping.

And chilling.

And posing for photographs.

Public broadcaster NHK has decided that if non-paying viewers won’t answer the door to the collectors, then they’ll get in by other means.

By law, anyone with ‘equipment capable of receiving a television signal’ is required to pay subscription fees to NHK. But with the number of dissenters growing, along with the cost of going round door to door to collect the money, NHK has decided alternative action is needed - large text messages across the screen which urge payment and block the view.

In a move aimed at satellite viewers, a Ministry panel has been “studying ways to prevent viewing of NHK programs via broadcasting satellite by people who have no subscription for any of the services or reception of satellite broadcasting programs by subscribers of terrestrial broadcasting.”

After studying ways to prevent such TV viewing, the panel set up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications concluded that the superimposition of messages pressing for payment of subscription fees in letters large enough to obstruct the view of programs would be effective.

Viewers can either subscribe to terrestrial broadcasting programs at 2,690 yen per two months through account transfer payment or to terrestrial and satellite broadcasting services at 4,580 yen also per two months through transfer payment.”

NHK subscription fees currently start at ¥14,910 a year for terrestrial, and ¥25,520 for a satellite contract. There is, however, no current legal penalty for non-payment.