The weather was nice today (meaning it wasn't a blizzard), so I decided to take a little stroll around my town. I walked around about half of the main area of town before I gave up and went back to the warmth of my apartment. Here are a few photos of what my town looks like in winter.

This is my apartment building.

I'm in the top left apartment.

That's where I go snowboarding.

The view from in front of my apartment, straight down the main road.

The Uryu river which passes through the town.

More Uryu river.
A local store (it's Sunday, so it's closed of course). Above the store is possibly the most useless map I've ever seen.
The back streets of town.
Town hall.
One of the many warehouses around town.
The view from the back of my building. You can see the elementary school in the distance.
One of the few eateries in town.
Out town has 3 gas stations (about 2 more than are really needed), which is convenient. Just don't expect them to be open on Sundays or after about 5:00pm during the week.
I had never noticed this orange house before. It has to be the only house in town that isn't painted a shade of white, brown or gray.

Here's something most children of the 80's can relate to. It's a music video for a song called "Sweep the leg". It was written and directed by the guy who played Johnny in the Karate Kid, and features the actors who played the Cobra Kai and also a cameo from Ralph Macchio. If you don't know who Johnny and the Cobra Kai are, you're probably not an 80's child and therefore have no right watching the video. If you do know who they are, enjoy!

There was a news report on tv recently about a large homeless community getting kicked out of a park in Osaka where they had been 'residing'. There is actually a surprisingly large number of homeless people living in Japan. If you walk around the big cities you'll see homeless people hanging out in stations, at the park, wandering the streets or down by the river. At night, most of them return to their shelters - tents made from a ubiquitous blue tarpaulin (I don't know where they get it from, but everyone has the same tarp), pitched in the bushes at the park or on the riverside. Over time, one tent becomes two, two becomes four, and before long they have created a small homeless community. Generally, the authorities ignore them. They don't cause trouble and they keep to themselves.

However, in this case, someone high up decided that this homeless community was ruining the park image and had to go. The residents obviously didn't want to go, so when the police and local government officials showed up to remove them there was a showdown. In true Japanese style, words were exchanges, there was some name calling, a little pushing and shoving and then the homeless town was demolished. Now, I'm not here to make judgments about whether they should have been evicted or allowed to stay. What was more interesting for me was another documentary story a few weeks earlier. In preparation for this eviction, someone filmed a short about the lives of homeless people in this park.

The story was quite interesting. It went into detail about why some of the people had become homeless. Most of the stories were more than simply "no job, no money, so I'm homeless".

Some middle-aged middle-management people had been retrenched and had refused to re-enter a working society where they would be forced to start from the bottom again. In Japan, this is very common. Most people enter a company at the bottom, work hard to climb the ladder, and if they are successful, they might end up near the top of the company when they retire. If they leave the company for some reason, it is very difficult to find a similar level job at a different company This is because companies prefer employees who have shown commitment to the company from the start of their careers.


Some people had family issues. There was too much pressure from their wives, their parents or their children. They couldn't handle it so they left all their money and possessions with their family and took off.

Surprisingly, a few people had actually chosen to become homeless. They had given up good jobs and nice houses so that they could live the ultimate stress-free "outdoor lifestyle". The guy who was the official homeless community mayor (elected by the other homeless people), was one of these men. He helped organise food and shelter for the community, he was responsible for keeping order, resolving disputes and basically keeping everything running smoothly. He was also responsible for organising the official inter-city homeless baseball tournament. Yes, that's right, homeless baseball.

The documentary revolved around their annual baseball tournament. The Tokyo Homeless team traveled by hire-car to Osaka for this year's game against the Osaka Homeless, which took place in the park where the homeless lived. Both teams had put together kits of gloves, bats and balls scrounged from stuff people had thrown away (you'd be amazed at what people throw away in Japan).The game started in the morning and went though to the evening, but had to be called off due to bad light during the fifth innings. The score was something like 65-45 (for some reason the homeless people could bat quite well but couldn't pitch or field to save themselves). They had a barbeque and a few drinks in the evening and then they Tokyo Homeless went back to Tokyo the next day.

I can't imagine Australian homeless people organising a homeless cricket league.

And now, on a completely different note, I thought I'd write about something that has pretty much nothing to do with my life in Japan.

I was listening to the Metallica S&M album the other day, for the first time in a while. The first song on the cd is an instrumental called “The Ecstasy of Gold”. It's a really good track, and from the first time I heard it I'd always had the feeling that I'd heard it before. A few months ago, I found out that it was from a movie soundtrack.

My TV gets about 6 or 7 free to air channels, and 2 free cable-like channels. One of the cable channels is Japanese news and documentaries. The other channel is actually quite good, as it shows world sports (NBA, PGA, NFL etc.) and most evenings there is a foreign movie broadcast in English (all the other channels dub movies into Japanese). This channel has regular movie theme weeks. One week might be Aid Disaster Week (Air Force One, Flight Plan, Stealth etc.), while the next week is Romantic Wedding Week (uhhh...). Some time last year they had a two week Spaghetti Western marathon.

I've always been impartial to Westerns. A lot of them are quite watchable, but I don't think I'd ever go out of my way to watch one. However, I found myself really enjoying the spaghetti westerns. It was interesting to see how the same actors constantly showed up in similar roles in a variety of movies. Take Clint Eastwood, for example. He basically plays the same guy in every movie, although he might have a different name or slightly different backstory.

Anyway, one movie I really enjoyed was “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. Clint plays “The Good”, Lee Van Cleef plays “The Bad” and Eli Wallach plays “The Ugly”. They are all searching for a stash of gold that had been buried in a secret location, and each of them knows one part of the puzzle that reveals the location. There are countless twists, turns, back-stabbings and betrayals. Finally they reach the cemetery where the loot is buried, and the Ugly takes off leaving the Good stranded behind. He charges into this sprawling, ramshackle cemetery looking for the grave that marks where the gold is buried. As he reaches the middle of the cemetery he starts spinning around like a madman, taking in the thousands of graves spread over the hills. The camera spins around too and you see close up shots of his eyes. He really does look like a guy who has lost his mind with gold fever. He knows that the gold and everything he has worked for is so close, but there are so many graves that he's not sure where to start looking. During this scene, in perfect accompaniment to what is happening on screen, “The Ecstasy of Gold” is playing in the background. It's one of the most memorable movie scenes I've seen.

The next scene is pretty good too. The Bad and The Good catch up to The Ugly and they decide that they can't share the loot. The Good writes the name of the grave on a stone and places it on the ground. They all draw their weapons and stand in a triangle around the stone. They know that if they shoot their opponent, it will leave them open to be shot by the remaining man. A great standoff scene. I won't spoil what happens. Go watch the movie.