Posts

William. Ariake Sea has a lot of crabs. Like, over a hundred, as my son as a tot would have said. It occurred to me to Google why they walk sideways, and this is what I got: "Because crabs have stiff, jointed legs, they move faster and easier walking sideways. Walking sideways means that one leg never moves into the path of another. So a crab is also less likely to trip over its feet." So now we know.

Kirk here with an article about Fiona Minami recent English textbook. As many of you know, Fiona is an editor of this page.
https://www.facebook.com/fionawallminami/posts/10159749798026660
The book is called "Escape the Classroom" and you can learn more about it here:
https://www.englishbooks.jp/catalog/product_info.php/escape-the-classroom-p-50398
Congratulations Fiona!

Kirk here with news that Yahoo Japan! erupted today with a false report that Aso had blown its top. According to this article, that led the supposed eruption to trend on twitter. As you can see, the real Aso was quite peaceful (it doesn't read Yahoo Japan! or Twitter). Quoth the Yahoo: never mind.
「阿蘇山で噴火」プッシュ通知をヤフーが誤配信　Twitterでは戸惑いの声　原因は人為的ミス
ヤフーが「阿蘇山で噴火が発生（14時59分）」というプッシュ通知を9月9日午後2時過ぎに配信。Twitterでは「阿蘇山噴火するの？」と話題になり、「阿蘇山噴火」が日本のトレンドに入ったが、実は人為ミスによる誤配信だっ....

William. A rather strong typhoon is expected to brush by to the west of Kumamoto on the afternoon/evening of the 13th. Keep an eye on it.
地図コンテンツページです。気象警報、大雨危険度、台風情報、気象情報、天気予報、季節予報、ひまわり、アメダス、ウィンドプロファイラ、海上警報、潮位観測情報、波浪観測情報、津波、地震情報、推計気象分布、震...

Chuck Waterman here:
TOPIC: Additional Required Return to Japan software **for smartphone newbies like me.**
Is there anyone else out there who, like me, normally avoids using smartphones? If so, be aware of two more things you'll need to prepare on your smartphone to get throught the 2 -3 hour wallk through the airport checkpoints upon returning to Japan.
1) Make sure you have downloaded a QR Code Reader!
(Yep, I'm old school and didn't have that pdownloaded before I got to the airport. Duh.) They are NOT automatically installed on all inexpensive Android phones bought in the US.
2) The Google Maps **APP** must be installed on your phone.
A ) Having Google with a link to Google Maps is not enough.
B ) Similar apps like "Maps Go" are also not acceptable.
( Of course, I think anyone who has read up on the apps required to be installed on your phone when returning to Japan knows that you need to have the COCOA app and the MySOS app installed. Having them ready to activate before you get to the airport will really expedite your path through the checkpoints. (**my** experience yesterday was only 2 hours and it could have been 95 minutes))

Kirk here with a little update on quarantine rules:
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14435186
Here's a Japanese article indicating that the call for a re-evaluation of current policies from the Keidanren will be considered. However, to my knowledge, no final decision has been made at this point:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20210907/k10013248031000.html
Keidanren eyes end to 14-day quarantine for fully vaccinated | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
Japan’s most powerful business lobby is calling on the government to help revive the economy by waiving a 14-day quarantine period for travelers arriving from overseas if they show proof they are fully vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

Kirk here with some information about how you can get on a waiting list to be vaccinated if someone cancels. The English information is here:
https://www.kumamoto-if.or.jp/kiji003798/index.html
And the Japanese original is here:
https://www.kumamoto-if.or.jp/kiji003794/index.html
The original information is from a publication put out by Kumamoto City called "Shisei Dayori" (市政だより). The International Center translates this publication into several languages, including English. They also make the original Japanese text available. The index is here:
https://www.kumamoto-if.or.jp/list00067.html
The index is mostly in Japanese but you can easily find the links with the words "Shisei Dayori." Each link takes you to a collection of news on several different topics. I just chose one topic to introduce in this post. Please check for yourself to see what other information is available.
If you're interested in this kind of information, you might want to bookmark the page. I found the interface to be a bit confusing. In fact, I wound up calling the International Center to get help, which they graciously provided.

Kirk with a link to and summary about a report on RKK's evening news that I found to be interesting. It's about the rebuilding and relocation of the Janes Residence, which was flattened in the 2016 quakes. The historical building was the home of Leroy Lansing Janes who came to Kumamoto to teach various subjects in English in the Meiji period. The historic residence was first located in Suidocho, then moved to an area behind Suizenji Jojuen (the park) until it collapsed. Its new home will be another location near the park (see the X on the map).
The home is being built the old-fashioned way -- by hand. The walls will be mud that is spread over a bamboo scaffolding (see photo). This kind of work is very labor intensive, which makes the process of rebuilding expensive. The price tag is about 500,000,000 yen (almost 5 million US dollars).
Click on the link to see the TV segment. The video explains how materials from the original building are being combined with news materials.
https://rkk.jp/news/index.php?id=NS003202109071719370111

(Fiona) Costa coffee has landed in Kumamoto! The UK coffee chain, which is Europe's leading coffee house brand, now has a branch at Sakuramachi.
https://sakuramachi-kumamoto.jp/17045
And if you happen to be going for a drive in Aso as the weather cools, there is also a branch serving coffee and ice creams in the parking area by the new Aso bridge. There are also viewing platforms where you can see the progress made in post-earthquake reconstruction.
Shinasoohashitenbojo Yo Mule Parking Lot
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aAgmyyekhh6ijESdA

Kirk here. The following page is only in Japanese but, nonetheless, presents a nice visual overview of recent numbers of COVID-19 positive test results:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/coronavirus/data/pref/kumamoto.html

William. I know this has nothing to do with Kumamoto, but who doesn't like pandas? I checked the stats and found that a panda in the wild lives 14-20 years, but they can live up to 30 years in captivity. A panda in Wakayama recently celebrated her 21st birthday. おめでとう！https://kumanichi.com/articles/384799

Kirk here with a follow up to the post I made earlier today about needing to drive home from Narita due to quarantine rules.
Summary of two key points: 1) Document written in English orders foreigners in CAPS while Japanese version is relatively polite and subdued. 2) Return to Japan Support Group may be supporting business interests of Metroresidences (conflict of interest)
After posting about my experience (https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/5916917411714975), I thought I should double check the manual I was given at the airport to see if it says anything about what to do if one is in the process of driving home. It doesn't. It just says "You MUST answer incoming HCO video call." Since it doesn't say anything about extenuating circumstances such as driving to your pre-approved place of quarantine, the impression given is that you are supposed to answer while driving. You can find that manual here:
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/000806890.pdf
It's also interesting to compare this with the Japanese version, which you can find here:
https://www.hco.mhlw.go.jp/pdf/20210831-2-jp.pdf
It says "着信があったら必ず 応答してください。" (If you get a call, please be sure to answer.)
Do I detect a difference in tone? Sounds like foreigners need to be ordered around in capital letters while Japanese people (or people reading Japanese) get polite requests (notwithstanding the presence of the word 必ず [definitely, without fail, etc.]).
By the way, I've detected what I find to be an interesting twist in the Tokyo vs. regional areas dimension of this issue. The "support group" I introduced in my earlier post is sponsored by (run by?) Metroresidences:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan
It seems that the page combines support with a little marketing: "If you need accommodation, Metroresidences is a fully licensed serviced apartment company providing over 600 weekly and monthly apartments in Tokyo. They have 14 days Ride & Stay packages starting from JPY 99,800"
Low and behold, the group also has an official policy of discouraging long-distance travel (in favor of two-week stays with Metroresidences?). I got a comment from the manager of the page implying that I should have known in advance that it wasn't a good idea to drive from Narita to Kumamoto. Please read my response there. You may find it to be entertaining (but you'll need to join the group in order to view it).
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan/posts/1208080356356483/

Kirk here with some notes about my quarantine experience. Main point: Being far away from Japan's biggest hub airports makes international travel significantly harder for those of us in Kumamoto.
Secondary point: The app we must use (MySOS) doesn't seem to take the need to travel back to Kumamoto by car into account.
First of all, the rules:
"From January 8,2021, all those who enter, re-enter or return to Japan (including Japanese nationals) are also subject to conducting of COVID-19 test upon arrival no matter whether arriving from the countries/regions designated as an area subject to denial of permission to enter Japan or not until further notice. Then they are required to stay 14 days at a location designated by the quarantine station chief (own residence etc.) and to refrain from using public transportation."
https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html
This means that we can't take a connecting flight, or a bus, or even a taxi. The only means I'm aware of for getting back to Kumamoto once we have landed in Japan are 1) having a family member come to pick us up or 2) arranging to rent a car. If there's another method I'm forgetting or unaware of, please let me know.
I'm not sure if they can respond in English but you can call the following number to get confirmation from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Kouseishou) as to what you need to do:
0120-565653
Also, you can get support and read about the experiences of other people here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan/
My flight arrived in Narita. I looked for flights into Kansai and Fukuoka but couldn't find anything. Since I was pretty sure that I would get out of customs after the rental agency closed, I planned to stay in the capsule hotel in Narita Airport (9 Hours). When I tried to check in, however, I was told that they don't accept travelers returning from (or coming from) abroad and that something about that was on the Booking.com website. I said that it may have been there but it was not prominent and that there was not any interface that made me confirm that I was not traveling from abroad. The man at the hotel was nice and acknowledged that the interface needs to be improved and said he would refund my money. Fortunately, I was able to get another hotel near the airport. That hotel would not pick me up because I had come in from abroad (government rules -- no "public transportation") but it was close enough to walk to (in the rain 😞 ).
The next day I walked to the Budget Rental office. It was not an easy walk and I could have gotten a ride in the shuttle if I had returned to the airport but I wanted to be there at 9 AM sharp (opening time) to get an early start. Also, even though they said they would come and pick me up it seemed kind of odd to me that a shuttle to the car rental would be OK but a shuttle to a hotel would not.
At the car rental agency I asked why it was so damn expensive (close to 100,000 for the basic fee to Kumamoto, not including tolls and gas). I was told that someone would actually drive the car back to Narita!! Well, that explains the expense.
During the drive back, I became a bit irritated by the "MySOS" app I was compelled to use. My irritation stems from the failure of the people who built it to recognize that it would take me two days to drive back to Kumamoto. This plan was submitted to and approved by the officials at the airport but, apparently, the MySOS app didn't get the memo. The attached image of my possible violation came up on the morning of the 3rd. I was scheduled to arrive in Kumamoto that evening but, according to plan, was still traveling. The app was saying "You should be in Kumamoto today. What the hell are you doing?" My only choice was to tap on OK and continue my trip home. In my view, it shouldn't be rocket science to program travel plans (not just a daily location) into the app.
Another source of irritation was the daily calls I received while driving. In Japan, it's ILLEGAL to talk on the phone while driving. Yet, on both the 2nd and the 3rd I was driving all most all day so, naturally, when they called I was driving. Since the plan was to be driving during those two days, they could have had the app call me a night. Or, they could have figured out a system that would allow me to report in from rest areas when I wasn't driving. But no, they called me on the 2nd and 3rd as though I was sitting at home with nothing to do, waiting for a call.
The phone call only records me looking at the camera. I guess someone could hear me saying "hey, I'm driving" but the "call" was not a conversation. In that sense, it's more like a robocall, but the robot doesn't say anything; it just records your image and (I assume) any sounds you make.
I might have declined to answer the call because I was driving. The problem is, though, that I'm not allowed to call them when it's convenient for me; I can only respond when they call me. That put me in a bit of a bind; do I answer while driving (possibly an illegal act) or risk violating my quarantine (another illegal act that, I was informed, might cause me to get kicked out of Japan completely)?
One more thought: "MySOS" is not an appropriate name for this app. "SOS" is a signal that I would send when I'm in trouble. But, as I wrote, the app doesn't let me contact the authorities that be. I think a better name would be "MyLeash." And, to summarize, it's a leash made by people in Tokyo who obviously didn't take into account the circumstances of people who live far away from Narita.
End of rant. Thanks for reading. :)

William. A particular concern with depopulation is abandoned houses, which can quickly become covered by weeds, presenting a hazard. Tomiai Town has instituted an innovative solution: unleashe the goats! And if you've never had feta cheese made from goat milk, you haven't lived. https://kumanichi.com/articles/382845

Hello friends, Atsuko here.
Kumamoto city will accept vaccine reservation from 8:30am 25 September.
https://www.city.kumamoto.jp.e.fm.hp.transer.com/hpkiji/pub/detail.aspx?c_id=5&id=33059
The way how to reserve:
https://www.facebook.com/123734781033296/posts/5874673722606011/
If you want to get the shot more earlier and you can get it anytime, how about make your reservation as '' waiting for cancellation''
https://www.city.kumamoto.jp.e.fm.hp.transer.com/hpkiji/pub/Detail.aspx?c_id=5&id=36593
And if you are a pregnant lady, you can make your reservation by calling directly, soon. It seems easy and sooner but only calling 0963005577.
Please be safe, wear mask with smile(*Ü*)

Kirk here, back from a trip to the U.S. to see family. I'll write about that experience later. (Preview: It's a lot harder to travel abroad from Kumamoto than it would be from Tokyo and the app the government gives you doesn't seem to take that into account.)
The image you see is a bar graph from the Kumamoto Prefecture website showing the daily number of positive test results for COVID-19. You can see that the numbers seem to be subsiding. However, they are still relatively high. The graph is from the following page:
https://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/soshiki/30/92000.html
I'd like to carp a bit about how the prefecture publishes information on its website. My complaint is "pre-English." By that I mean that presenting information in English would be nice but the first thing that needs to be done is to make sure that information is easily accessible in Japanese. If the Japanese is a mess or hard for the general public to access, merely translating that won't do much good.
The problem is that the prefecture's main COVID-19 page doesn't have any graphs of the sort I'm sharing in this post. Here's the URL of that page:
https://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/site/kumamotoken-covid-19/
The main way in which information is published is via PDF files. Those files only have text -- no graphs or images. At this writing, the latest pdf is for September 3rd. If you open it up, you can see that Kumamoto City had 87 positives and that areas outside of the city had 43, making the total 130 on that day. This is OK but it's just one tree in the forest. To get a look at the whole forest you need to look at the "simplified" (簡易) page (first URL in this post). However, a link to that page is not featured prominently. If you scroll down and look at "People who viewed this page also viewed these pages" (このページを見ている人はこんなページも見ています) you see the "simplified" page at the top of the list. Well, of course it's at the top of the list! It's a much better source of information for the general public!
Before I left the country I called the office in the prefecture that is in change of this page and said that I thought they needed to put a link on the page (that can be found easily) to take users to the simplified page. Unless the "People who viewed this page . . . " feature is new, I don't think anything has changed.
I'd like to close with a comment about pdfs. The pdf format is convenient for the workers at the prefecture (and, of course, other governmental offices) -- not for the general public. In other words, since they make A4 (regular paper size) documents all of the time and it's very simple to convert such documents to pdf files, throwing pdf files up on the web is pretty easy. I think those of you who are reading this post of mine on a smartphone will agree, however, that it's not so convenient for smartphone (or even computer) users, especially when you have to view multiple files to try to get the big picture.
This lack of concern for ease of access to public information and a preference for whatever is easy for officials as a problem that has bothered me for almost as long as I have been publishing information on this page and via the mailing list that preceded it. Needing to translate Japanese to English is one problem but why should I have to struggle with badly organized Japanese information in order to do so?
End of rant. Have a nice day and wear a mask. :)

William. Being Californian, I'm a fan of chili peppers (トウガラシ) of whatever type - I do not discriminate. Thus, it was with sadness that I learned that the unseasonal rains have wiped out the majority of the Amakusa chili harvest. How heartbreaking it must be to tend a crop for a season to see it suddenly destroyed.
トウガラシ「朱次郎」苦境　上天草特産、大雨などで収量減 | 熊本日日新聞社
　特産ブランド化して本格生産を始めて丸２０年を迎えた熊本県上天草市松島町のトウガラシ「朱次郎［あかじろう］」が今季、苦境に立たされている。８月中旬の大雨などが生育や品質を低下させ、収穫と天日干し作業に...

William. I studied Chinese before Japanese, and the difference between traditional and simplified Chinese characters make Japanese a piece of cake (it's mostly simplified).『軽』is the traditional character for "light, while 「圣」 is the vastly move commonly used character in Japan. So some in Kumamoto when a parking lot assigned 『軽』 to indicate light cars were confused - many could not read it. So if you feel illiterate, do not feel separate from your Japanese friends.

William. Kumanichi reports on the fourth straight day of temperatures exceeding 35°, and with the recent precipitation, humidity levels are high. In particular, pay attention to your elderly neighbors. They often do not have or do not use air conditioning and are vulnerable to dehydration and heatstroke.
熊本県内　８月の日照時間半減…異例の夏に　９月は平年並みの暑さか | 熊本日日新聞社
　熊本県内は３１日、高気圧に覆われ、菊池市で３４・７度、熊本市と人吉市で３４・６度を記録する厳しい残暑となった。ただ、８月は長雨の影響で、最高気温３５度以上の猛暑日は熊本市で４日。昨年より１２日少なか...

Fiona here with a local news story. An American English teacher has been convicted of smuggling liquid cannabis into Japan. He was given an 18 month sentence, suspended for three years.
液体大麻を輸入した罪　高校元英会話講師に有罪判決（KAB熊本朝日放送） - Yahoo!ニュース
国際郵便で液体大麻を国内に持ち込んだ罪に問われていた高校の元英会話講師の男に執行猶予付きの有罪判決です。 判決によりますと、アメリカ国籍のルーテル学院高校元英会話講師コリンズ・ブラウン・ジョーダン