Field Theory by Hadyn Green

(The Asia NZ link at the bottom needs an http:// in it.)

Wow, sound just great, the sort of thing we all should do

Some of the malls here give free umbrellas as you leave into the rain. The protocol is that you are supposed to return them next time you visit. The Thai people do as a matter of course. The tourists perhaps less so (since the protocol is not written) although I suspect the many Japanese get it. It's a nice touch even if it's in the thirties outside and you dry almost instantly.

As an aside and perhaps being too picky but the greater unbroken Jakarta metropolitan area is around 40m souls. If you cut that down to the administrative region it's around 22m and 2nd after Tokyo.

These measurements as these megatropolises (megatropoli?) continue to grow and merge are increasingly meaningless I guess.

One striking memory from living in Tokyo for a year in the early nineties was Obon week. Apparently 11+ million leave town (the Kanto Plain, that is) at the same time. A day of absolute carnage, followed by a quiet week in Tokyo. Was kind of surreal.

Finding fruitful employment for all these millions of people is a real consideration. I recall passing by an open trench in central Tokyo on a quietish Sunday night. In NZ, a barrier and a couple of hazard lights would suffice; in Tokyo it required four blokes standing around the trench waving torches + one policeman.

Still, encountering the hordes of salarymen in their identical drab suits can be a depressing experience.

Japan is actually a country in a spiritual crisis and flux. For all the fawning and adoration, this is a country lost and straitjacketed by its own isolation. New Japan sauna is a representation of a jaded era. For the reality, witness the right wing bozos rally every weekend while the Chinese tourists indulge two blocks over.

Osaka is still the punk rock center of the world.

For the reality, witness the right wing bozos rally every weekend while the Chinese tourists indulge two blocks over.

But that was happening in 1991. 'Slow to change' would be another way of looking at it. Witness the longest post-bubble economic stagnation in the history of forever. People have written whole books about it, even.

The Reggae underworld were more my seen.

I wasn't in Japan in 1991 but I doubt that were busloads of mainland Chinese floating around urban Japan. Tourism is now one of Osaka's only lights on the horizon and the uyokou dantai have been more strident than in any of my 15 years here. The world has much to learn from Japan about the dangers of debt-driven bubbles but I don't think many people are taking notice. It's easier to explain why your debt situation is different to another country's.

I'm interested in the reggae "underworld"! Is that like a yakuza take on Audio Active?

New Japan sauna is a representation of a jaded era. For the reality, witness the right wing bozos rally every weekend while the Chinese tourists indulge two blocks over.

To a large degree, Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara is a kind of figurehead for these bozos. The ABC (the Aussie one) has referred to him as Japan's Le Pen. And to us, he's a Japanese Winston First on steroids and P.

Fascinating Hayden, thank you.