About this blog

I'm not really a fan of blogs. I've read that this generation will be the most recorded generation in history. Everyone has a blog, digital camera, videocamera, etc. However, most of the "information" being offered appears self-indulgent and useless: "Hey, thanks to your blog, your grandkids will be able to find out what grandpa had for breakfast on November 19, 2006!" I once worked with a guy who had created hundreds of PowerPoint presentations consisting solely of minute-by-minute photos of his newborn kid. Who wants to see that? I mean, really? What is the value of all this information being presented and preserved?

There's also a romantic aspect to mystery. I once wrote about how *69 technology signalled the death of the crank phone call: now you know who's calling. The case for UFO's has really dwindled due to the fact that everyone has a digicam now; if UFO's existed to the extent previously thought, surely there'd be convincing video footage by now? Finally, how about the ultimate mystery, conspiracy theories? It's much harder to make the case for these due to the internet - everybody's a reporter.

While these are of course all "good things" (and I could never return to the pre-internet lifestyle) you have to agree about the lack of romance aspect. It's like those theories that love is just a chemical imbalance and music is just a series of signals designed to relax your brain - they may be true, but they are unwelcome truths.

For that reason, I considered not creating a/this blog. Another reason was that there is already a plethora of "Timmy / Tammy goes to Japan and isn't it weird here!" blogs on the net. Besides being boring, these blogs promote the "exotic Japan" element that Alex Kerr wrote about - it exists primarily in your mind as a screen that you put up over the "real" Japan. Oh, for example, there's one guy that blogs about being "kancho"-ed all the time (kancho is when someone's, usually a kid/student'a, fingers form a tent and they try to jam it up your butt). According to my experience / knowledge, I believe this person is exaggerating (at best) simply to get web hits. So, I don't want to contribute to the nonsense / misinformation / boredom.

Thus, I decided to create this blog to set the record straight. Though the exotic Japan blogs such as named above are popular, they're simply fantasy. So, while UFOs or kanchos might not exist to the degree we might have been led to believe, the truth can also be interesting. I hope that this blog will, to some small degree, help or inform someone somewhere. Your feedback, suggestions, and comments are mecha-welcome.

P.S. - Hi James & Jamie! I had donuts and coffee for breakfast today!