【PR】

2018年08月02日

Onaga revokes land reclamation permit

Onaga is now up for revoking the land reclamation permit for the Henoko base, with a goal of postponing the entire thing.

Again.

They worry about the corals and the dugongs, which is honorable by itself, but lets look at the reality of the situation.

The Futenma relocation plans have been going on for more than five (5!) decades! They want the military out of Ginowan, because it is a densely populated area. The military is willing to move. No real research on the nature around Henoko has been done until the last minute.

My biggest question is: does the local government really want the military out of Ginowan? I mean, the should not expect the military to just say "fine, we will leave Okinawa then". Instead of just demostrating and putting sticks between the cogs, why dont you try to come to a mutual decision? Try to work together for once?

And the research thing. It is so obvious it is painful to watch. They wait until they dont have any other cards left to play and then they play the research card. If they were working together this had been revealed a lot earlier, now it is just used as a trump card to delay the relocation.

I understand that the local government doesnt want to be treated like a kid, and that a lot of things are decided over their heads. But sometimes it feels like theyre a bunch of teenagers.

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2018年07月24日

Locals get their saying regarding tourism

A new poll just came in regarding locals views on tourism in Okinawa. The poll consisted of a few statements with a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 is "totally disagree" and 5 is "fully agree". 3 is "neither or".
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The first statement is:
"Tourism plays an important role in the development of Okinawa"

The results here were overwhelmingly strong on the agreeing side with a total of 86.4%.
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The second statement is:
"Development of tourism will also enrich daily life"

Here the result is quite more dividing.
Disagree: 37.1%
Agree: 29.1%
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When asked whether they would like to work with tourism,
No: 47.2%
Yes: 16.4%

The most common reasons here were "seemingly long working hours", "difficult to take days off" and "seems physically demanding". The reasons were more about working conditions than about tourism itself.
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Then it started to get a little bit more straight forward when they asked about people find problematic with tourists.
"Bad manner" came up on top with 48.3%, including things like "talking to loudly", "not being able to use a toilet correctly" and "can't wait in line". Other things like traffic accidents (39.4%) and littering (32.6%) were also prominent.
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Here I am starting to see a pattern. Tourists here are predominantly from China. I am not trying to be racist here (even the Chinese government themselves have grasped this problem, trying to start up programs for teaching travel manners and such), but the manner of Chinese tourists are quite often bad at best. Not using a toilet the standard way, talking loudly and not waiting in line is very common among Chinese tourists and this is a phenomenon you can find in other parts of Asia as well. For example, there are signs in Thailand explaining how to use a toilet only written in Chinese. Apparently it is common to squat over the toilet with the feet on the ring in public restrooms, which damages the ring by putting too much pressure on only two narrow points.

I have Chinese friends here and they also often express embarrassment towards this problem, one even saying "I don't think the locals would think like this about tourists if they were mostly Germans or so". Well, I don't know about that, but I think the toilet and the littering problem would disappear. I think education would be more appropriate in this situation.

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2018年07月20日

Typhoon 10 is on its way

Its like that "little piggies" rhyme talking about the typhoons.

Number 7 broke the Nakijin wall
Number 8 decided to never really come
Number 9 left for China
Number 10 weak but promising

Looking at the numbers, it is still nothing to celebrate really, 985 hPa and 25m/s winds, meh. But! It is better than nothing. We have sufficient dam water but the corals could still need some more fresh sea water.

And as always, it's is aiming for the weekend. Typhoons are so nice, they consider your work situation, and they definitely don't want to bother you at work!

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2018年07月18日

Great news cheese lovers!

Cheese in Japan is expensive, ridiculously expensive. The problem stems over to other food including cheese. It is not ok to charge 3000 yen for a normal pizza, except for in Japan. So, while living in Japan, I have had to cut my cheese intake to not go bankrupt (and my body is probably thanking me for it).

Well, It seems like my pallet is once again going to win over my body because the import laws between EU and Japan has drastically changed, making European products (like cheese) much cheaper (yaaaay).

I dont think this will change the price of local processed cheese that much, but I am looking forward to new brands in the cheese corner, at a reasonable price of course!

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2018年07月16日

New laws regarding private lodging

As of June 29, there is a new and stricter law regarding private lodging, or minpaku.

Since Okinawa is famous for its tourist spots, there is no surprise that there are thousands of these private lodgings, which also includes AirBnB.

The first thing that got changed was that the owner of the establishment has to register their property at the local government, resulting in more than 3.000 minpakus disappearing from the market. Ok, they were required to register before this law, but it seemed like no one cared.

Then the stricter rules. They have to install sprinkler systems, have appropriate emergency exits and such, which sometimes isn't possible when renting out an apartment.

Throughout the years there have been a bunch of complaints regarding these lodgings (basically rental apartments) from neighbors since the owner usually isn't around. In fact, more than 80% of them don't even live in the prefecture. Another common thing is Chinese or Taiwanese citizens looking into earning an extra buck on the increasing tourism from their countries, often not even residing in Japan.

Only in Naha alone, 80% of the 622 minpakus were not registered, and around half of them will most likely be gone before the end of this year.

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2018年07月02日

Franklin not able to pay, U.S. have to

I wrote earlier about the rape/murder case and the trial of Franklin Shinzato, where he was not able to pay the family and the U.S. were not willing to pay since he was a civilian at the time working for an internet company on base.

Well, now it seems that the Naha District Court have decided to send the bill to the U.S. anyway claiming it is their responsibility and the U.S. has agreed to pay.

I can't find any statements regarding where he will serve, but I hope it will be back in the U.S., the prisons seem rougher over there.

I still stand by that I think he should pay through prison labor, this is not necessarily the fault of one country and I think he should be directly responsible for what he has done.

For anyone who have missed the news, he got life.

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2018年06月29日

Stray bullets?

On June 21, Thursday last week, something hit the windows of a farm shed in Sukuta, Nago. The object was around 5 cm long, resembling a bullet.

Here comes the twist, Japanese people don't carry fire arms.
And here comes another twist, just around the corner is a military base (Camp Schwab).

If they involve the military it should be fairly easy to determine whether it was their bullet or not, but apparently there have been an exercise with live rounds just before the bullet was found.

Aircrafts falling apart mid air, drunk guys not being able to keep their hands of women and the wheels, parachute failures...
Now, stray bullets?!

Seriously, get a grip!

And as often in these cases, this was not the first time. A similar thing happened in the same area in 2002, where stray bullets landed in a field next to some local workers...

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2018年06月27日

Problems with maintaining memorial sites

Because of the Battle of Okinawa, there are plenty of memorial sites in Okinawa. The most famous of them is the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman. These sites are an important part of keeping the history and to tell the story of what happened here during WW2.

But, it comes at a cost, they need maintenance. And the people maintaining these sites are getting older and older. Just in June last year, the keepers of a memorial in Naha for students who died during the war had to give it to the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Foundation. At this time, the head of the group was 90 years old.

Two years ago, the government launched a program for relocating and gathering together memorials with no direct owner, so they could have better supervision over them. The problem is that they only got 3 applicants, none from Okinawa, so the project couldn't really continue. They are now looking into making the project more attractive for local governments so they can attract more applicants.

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2018年06月22日

Alipay is growing in Okinawa

The most recent addition to payment options here in Okinawa is from the Chinese web shopping company Alibaba, called Alipay.

From next month, owners of an Alipay account will be able to pay only using their phone for the monorail going from the airport to Shuri Castle. This might be a great step towards a more cashless society, even though the Japanese society are fundamentally quite against getting rid of the cash.

Similar systems have been put up in areas like Tokyo where you can pay through your phone bill, a very neat little addition to the SUICA card. Here in Okinawa we have OKICA, but the system is still very much in need of the actual card.

It would be nice if they implemented a system simular to Alipay, but for Japanese customers, since Alipay is mainly for Chinese tourists.

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2018年06月21日

Naha has the most emergency calls

Data just came out over the amount of emergency calls for all districts in Japan, and Naha came out on top.

110 is the Japanese version of the American emergency number 911. Last year this number had been called 47 722 times, only in Naha, making them the top callers in the country, for the 11th year in a row.

Looking a little deeper into the data we can find that:
24% were traffic related
34% were not an emergency (which means they should have called 9110 instead)
12% were drinking related (including sleeping on the road)

The police claims that the reasons for this number is the increase in traffic, tourism and clashes in downtown areas such as Sakaemachi and Matsuyama.

The entire prefecture had a total of 164 795 emergency called, placing Okinawa on the 14th place nationally. Out of those almost a third were in Naha.

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Random things in Okinawa

Just everyday things I find interesting here on the tropical island of Okinawa.

【PR】

Onaga revokes land reclamation permit

Locals get their saying regarding tourism

Typhoon 10 is on its way

Great news cheese lovers!

New laws regarding private lodging

Franklin not able to pay, U.S. have to

Stray bullets?

Problems with maintaining memorial sites

Alipay is growing in Okinawa

Naha has the most emergency calls