Tag Archives: Japan

Quick Review: The Cove

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On the surface, The Cove is not a typical film that I would watch: a documentary about nature. But I found The Cove to be engaging. A few thoughts about this award-winning 2008 documentary:

1. The story follows the actions of Richard O’Barry as he tries to expose the slaughter of dolphins in a protected cove in Taiji, Japan. O’Barry’s backstory is very interesting: he was the trainer for Flipper but immediately switched sides to protect dolphins after one of the show’s dolphins died (he says she committed suicide) in his arms. O’Barry assembles a team of people to help expose what is going on in Taiji as some in that community attempt to stop him. To me, O’Barry is the heart of this film – his decision and actions to try to save dolphins shows remarkable dedication and stubbornness in the face of difficult odds.

2. It is hard not to like dolphins: they are intelligent and are graceful. But O’Barry suggests one part of their appearance that may work against them: they appear to humans to always be smiling and this masks the times when they are in pain or are suffering.

3. Why do whales and dolphins get all of this attention, both in this film and from zoo or aquarium attendees? There are plenty of animals that are mistreated and locked up. There has to be an interesting social history here.

4. One of the side plots in this film is Japan’s role in the International Whaling Commission. This international body has difficulty stopping Japan from doing anything. Again, this could be a whole story or film in itself: how Japan skirts international law and advisories to conduct whaling activities.

5. One strong point of this documentary is that O’Barry’s team actually attempts to do something (and it is set up like the plot of some action film) as opposed to documentaries where people talk the whole time and viewers are shown statistics.

Overall, I enjoyed this film: the fight against what happens in Taiji, Japan makes for an interesting tale.

(This film was highly rated by critics: it is 96% fresh at RottenTomates.com with 116 fresh reviews out of 121 total.)

Explaining a short-term dip in chronic homelessness

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A sociologist provides an explanation for the short-term dip in chronic homelessness in the United States:

Amid increases in poverty and unemployment, [the United States and Japan] have seen continuing decreases in street homelessness. The most recent Homeless Assessment Report to the U.S. Congress states that the chronically homeless, or those who have been on the streets or in shelters long-term and have disabilities, decreased by 10 percent from 2008 to 2009. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has reported a national decrease of street homelessness of 16 percent between 2009 and 2010…
While the provision of subsidized housing is crucial to get people off the streets, a lesser-known component in both nations has been the flexible, holistic and trust-building work of frontline staff persons at organizations linking people to and keeping them in housing.
This argument suggests that it is not just about providing resources (such as housing) to help reduce chronic homelessness but having staff help point them to and keep them using such resources.
I wonder how much data there is to back up this argument. Additionally, do governments see/acknowledge the value of these staff positions, particularly in lean economic times?

Japan’s difficulty in tracking people over 100 years old

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Japan is known for having a high life expectancy: according to 2008 public data, the world’s life expectancy is 69, the US’s is 78, and Japan’s is 83. With this higher life expectancy, Japan has a large number of centenarians, people who are over 100 years old. But there is a problem: the Japanese government has had problems keeping track of this population group.

More than 230,000 Japanese citizens listed in government records as at least 100 years old can’t be found and may have died long ago, according to a government survey released Friday.

In August, the Justice Ministry ordered a review of records that found about 77,000 people who would be at least 120, and 884 people who would be 150 or older. The head count followed a flurry of reports about how elderly people are falling through the cracks in Japan as its population ages rapidly and family ties weaken.

In all, the survey of family registration records nationwide found that 234,354 centenarians were still listed as alive, but their whereabouts were unknown, the ministry said.

While this could be chalked up as simply a bureaucratic problem, the news story suggests these findings line up with concerns about how the elderly are treated in Japan. This then could be a larger issue that concerns social and family relationships and the fabric of Japanese society.

So much technology, so little writing

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Some students in China and Japan are finding that they are losing the ability to write. It sounds like they can see the words and know how to spell but they are losing the ability to remember the characters:

Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.

“I can remember the shape, but I can?t remember the strokes that you need to write it,” she says. “It’s a bit of a problem.”

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Surveys indicate the phenomenon, dubbed “character amnesia”, is widespread across China, causing young Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.

Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems.

I don’t know how much of a problem this might be. If one is engaged in one media realm (texting, the Internet, etc.), it makes some sense that writing skills would decline and perhaps disappear. While I still remember how to write letters, I have found my writing endurance has declined. Particularly for people younger than me, I imagine writing might seem pretty archaic compared to the quickness of digital technology.

There is a suggestion later in the article that this might affect reading skills. There are also suggestions that the Chinese language is changing with the advent with new technology. Ultimately, languages and communication options do change over time. This is a great example of how changing technology can affect and alter language.