Kirk here with news about the 4th Asia-Pacific Water Summit, which will be held in Kumamoto City this weekend. Unfortunately, it’s too late to apply to attend any of the events in person (the deadline was a few weeks ago) but I found this cool video about Kumamoto’s ground water, something that makes it unique in Japan.
The weird thing is, though, that the official website for the summit (which is in English, naturally) links to the JAPANESE version of the video, even though they have and an English version they’ve already made and could easily link to!
https://www.4apws-kumamoto2022.jp
Being the perpetual thorn in the side of city official’s that I am, I called to ask (politely, of course) what the *@!$%# they were thinking. The very nice person I spoke to on the phone said she would relay the information to those in charge. She seemed to agree with me that it was a mistake to use the Japanese-language video (which doesn’t even have English-language subtitles) when tax-payer money has already been spent to make an English version but that she didn’t have the authority to make any decisions about this. She said she would describe the issue to those in charge. We’ll see if it gets fixed.
